The Beginnings... And An Experiment...

With dread, I realized that I neglected this blog, yet again. This is a problem, especially since I really like the idea behind a blog like this, and the topics that have yet to be discussed...

It was while pondering the strange fate of this fairly new blog that I came up with a very interesting idea... A friend and I were discussing the different ways we might bring teens together. We were hoping to create a network for teens to support and encourage each other, as well as maybe even begin to provide physical assistance to areas in need. This was several months ago. More recently, (today) another friend and I began to discuss how much time is "wasted" through Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and the other two dozen social networking services.

While musing upon these two separate ideas, I decided to put them together: What if there was some means through which teens could do something useful, in the median of social networking? Something that takes as much time as they want to put into it, and provides some output?

My mind switched into high gear, and began racing around the track of ideas. When I put both of those ideas together, along with this blog, I came up with the obvious solution: Find other teens who are willing to give this blog a try. If you have a handful of teens who are willing to post, at a minimum, once a week, you could have daily content, thus generating traffic, and thus getting whatever it is you have to say out to the world. Plus, by having multiple writers, it provides some accountability for posting. The idea is to pair teens together, and let them start their own blogs. Every two dozen kids, you give them a blog. They create their own network, and then you can create another network of the authors.

So I decided to put this idea to the test. I invited several of my friends onto this blog, and (hopefully) they will begin posting. I am hoping to provide a place where both kids and adults alike can come to be encouraged, inspired and uplifted through Godly advice, suggestions and random thoughts, but all with a Godly worldview as the framework, and the Bible as the foundation.

Hopefully the test will prove successful, and we can launch a forum for the sharing of ideas, resources, etc. I look forward to seeing these projects through, and if you want to help, let me know!

An Eternal Golden Braid...

With all my talking, raving and discussing of this book, I thought it was time to share it with everyone else...

Perhaps one of the greatest books ever written, Douglas Hofstadter has created a masterpiece with Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. When you first pick this book up, you are immediately faced with its daunting 777 pages. All of them filled to the brim with scientific and technical words, diagrams, puzzles, art, mathematics, and even music. The author describes it as a "metaphorical fugue on minds and machines in the spirit of Lewis Carroll." but it is really much more. Many people have come to look at this book as the relationship between science, music, mathematics and art. But more importantly, the connections between these, the symmetry involved in going from one to the other, and finally, how humans are able to do what we do.

But when you really begin to dig into it, and begin to analyze everything that is being discussed, you realize that there is more than what meets the eye. With different analogies, he builds the groundwork for how the human brain, and thinking in general, has been developed, and the many attempts that technology has made to create a human brain. With his likening of the human brain to a colony of ants, he digs even deeper than that, and looks at how DNA defines who we are. He looks at how the brain interacts with the rest of the body, and how art, music, mathematics, and just about everything around us is interlaced and how closely connected everything is.

From the worldview point of view, he avoids the creation question all together. In fact, he even mentions at the end of one of his chapters that he could discuss at great length where we came from, but he chose not to do so, but rather to leave that up to the reader. Because of this, you can interpret this book either way. He has very carefully written this book, and while I tried to figure out which side he is coming from, I was unable to decide.

So, all that being said, I highly recommend this book to everyone, regardless of your area of focus, education level, interests, or anything else. It presents many interesting ideas and theories, and it is loaded with amazing selections of art and intriguing discussions between different characters.

To Engineer is Human - Henry Petroski

Perhaps one of my favorite non-fiction books, Henry Petroski looks at a very different aspect of engineering that has not really been touched on before; the role of failure in design. In fact, he goes as far as to say that failure is necessary to have a successful design. It’s a seemingly depressing book, if you were to judge it from the writing. But once you really start diving in, you will find a wealth of theories, stories, and real engineering concepts.

He looks at the design and creation of art, buildings, sculpture, bridges, cars, buses and even literature, through Oliver Wendell Holmes magnificent account of the Deacon’s Masterpiece or the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay. He looks at the unexpected way life happens, and proposes that accidents are more than just accidents; they play a vital role in design and construction of anything man has ever tried to do.

As for the writer and his worldview, he hints several times that he might be a Christian, but as it is a technical book, he understandably leaves God completely out of the picture. The worldview of the book is very earth-based, and is completely grounded in a science realm. Everything in the book seems to be written from a biblical worldview, but there is just no way to know for sure.

Over all, I thought it was a very well-written book, and the author seems to know what he is talking about. Perhaps the best part about it is when he talks about when he was a student, and was filled with fear of failing. But what he essentially says is that is the very fear of doing something wrong or failing that drives us to continue on and work harder. I think this is a great book for anyone who likes technical books and a must-read for anyone going into engineering or science related fields.

4 Questions

So what is a worldview? What does it do? How does it affect us? What impact does it have on the culture? What is culture? What kind of affect does the culture have on us? What defines the music we listen too, the books we read and the movies we watch? Is there any standard by which you can measure anything?

I purpose that there are 4 different questions that you can ask about anything, and the answers will give much insight into whatever it is you are talking about...

1) What led to the creation of he/she/it?

2) What do you know about he/she/it?

3) What does/do he/she/it value?

4) And finally, how has he/she/it changed our culture?

These four questions provide an excellent launching platform for further discussions as well as providing a basic understanding of whatever it is you are investigating...

First Post

So this is going to be a blog with the sole purpose of exploring, contending, fighting for, and talking about worldviews. More specifically, it will be a forum that will be used, for now, to post reviews on books, movies, music, etc. It will also be used to identify and define the worldviews that are presented in the books, movies, music, etc... We will be analyzing everything from a biblical worldview, and how other things relate to us, as christians in this fallen world.

If you have any suggestions on material that you would like analyzed, feel free to email us at biblical.perspective@gmail.com.