Idea to do this class came about as result of …

• Class "Who Wrote the Bible"

– Question asked: "Why are some things canonical and other things not"

• Could follow this class with exploration of this question

• Discussion of book club books, especially:

– Why Christianity Must Change or Die(Spong)

– What’s So Great About America(D’Sousa)

– Life of Pi (Martel)

• Advent Quiet Day Labyrinth experience

• More than one incident of "I don’t get it."

– Jokes, books, movies …

Change - Macro and Micro

• What changes are happening in our world?

– How do these affect me? How do my reactions affect the changes?

• What changes are going on in Christianity and how do I deal with them?

– How do these affect me? How do my reactions affect the changes?

• What changes have I gone through personally? Do I accept change or resist it? What other changes might I have to deal with in the future?

• "I will never get a cellular phone."

• "I can see no reason to ever get e-mail."

• "I’ll never accept a woman as a priest."

Change is inevitable … except from a vending machine.  --Robert C. Gallagher

• "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

• We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

• "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

• "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.  Sarnoff became a pioneer in radio.

• "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".

--Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

• "There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."

-- Albert Einstein, 1932

• In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and defined the concept of "paradigm shift" from which we get our definitions of "paradigm"

• A paradigm is something that governs ones view of the world

• A paradigm is set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them

– Especially in an intellectual discipline.

• A mature branch of science is governed by a paradigm

– Paradigm sets the standards for what is legitimate work within the branch of science it governs - defines how to conceptualize, study, gather and interpret data, and even think about a particular subject

• Example: If paradigm is that light is composed of particles, you get different rules for what is acceptable research than if the paradigm is that light is composed of waves

– A major shift in scientific thinking involves a paradigm shift

• Worldview / Weltanschauung

• Mindset

• Beliefs

• Assumptions

• Values

• Perspective

•Bias

•Groupthink

•Philosophy

Test your Paradigms with this riddle:

"The beginning of eternity,
The end of time and space,
The beginning of every end,
and the end of every place."

Answer on next slide.

• Where is the CD player in this room?

– (In class demo. The answer: In the laptop computer).

• What was the initial public reaction to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City?

– Initial assumptions about race of perpetrator(s)

 

Answer to the riddle on the previous slide: Were you expecting the answer to be something esoteric like "God" or "Time"? Actually, the answer is: The letter "e".

• The Psychoanalytic Paradigm: Psychopathology is the result of unconscious conflict

• The Learning Paradigm: Psychopathology is the result of learning

Paradigms have ramifications for how a psychopathic individual is handled!!!

• Help us to cope with incoming sensory data by filtering out what is irrelevant or unimportant – make it easier to deal with the world because we don’t have to continually judge the validity of every single experience

– Without paradigms, scientists couldn’t function because they wouldn’t be able to organize information and make predictions

– In a crowded room, your paradigm allows you to filter the noise around you so that you can hear particular persons – pick them out of the crowd

– Imagine driving in traffic if there were no paradigm that says "red" means "stop" and "green" means "go"

Film, Followed by Episcopal Lightbulb Humor