I’ve recently had the privilege of stumbling across some of Laurentian University’s History professors on the world wide web. I thought it fantastic that they are beginning to use social media, as it is such an important part of society for prospective students, current students, and recent Alumni(such as myself). The department has its own twitter account, which is in its infancy stages @luhistory . Dr. Janice Liedl has a twitter account @jliedl . Dr. Andrew Smith has his own blog, where he posts about topics ranging from economics to politics, http://andrewdsmith.wordpress.com/ .

As the title may imply, this is not going to be a light post. I’ve recently been having discussions with some friends with varied backgrounds, and I felt some of you, my readers, may be interested in hearing about a particular discussion. The discussion I wish to talk about involve religion, and the differing beliefs myself and my friend hold. My friends know that I enjoy speaking about pretty well anything philosophy related, which obviously includes religion. My friend was kind enough to send me a video excerpt of a play put together to explain her beliefs, in response to my questions of what she believes in. After the video I sent her a reply, and this is an excerpt from that:

To quickly summarize existentialism: “In life, a man commits himself, draws his own portrait, and there is nothing but that portrait.” -Sartre
He further extends that idea to explain how the hope for salvation must come from humanity itself, not a divine being, and therefore the question of whether or not a divine power exists is irrelevant. He is firm in his belief of this, because he feels the Christian ideal of salvation requires no effort and therefore makes people lazy when it comes to working for their own salvation.
He also argues that humans find solace in religion because it cures “anguish,” which is the state of mind when one realizes they are completely free to think and act how they wish without fear of any sort of cosmic repercussions (no judgement, no karma, etc).
He concludes all humans must accept full responsibility for their actions, and can not point their finger at anybody else for how they behave. Responsibility and freedom are intended to go hand in hand, and the decisions a person makes when they accept responsibility for all of their own actions, are completely different from the ones they make under the influence of fear of a divine power.
On a morality level, when an individual acts well as opposed to committing wrong acts, due to a fear of some cosmic repercussions, it cheapens the morality of those actions. Would they act the same way if they had no fear of cosmic repercussions?
Some would argue that the morality of behaving ‘good’ is irrelevant so long as the person is in fact behaving well. Which is the old “ends justify the means” mentality.

My stance is not meant to bash religion, or discredit it, because everybody is free to believe what they wish. The fact that I believe in secular humanism and existentialism, should in no way come with the tag of “hater of religion,” by any means. A stigma exists that preaches atheists can not cooperate with religious individuals, but I feel it is misguided.
If two individuals both seek the same goals, albeit through a different belief system, they should work on those goals together, and work on their unrelated goals separately.
My friend is a person who is genuinely interested in helping people, and improving the lives of others, and I see no reason why her religious beliefs should be a source for discrimination or alienation. It is interesting to write that statement as an atheist discussing a Christian, because the tables for discrimination seem to be reversed generally. I wonder what the percentage of atheists/agnostics, as opposed to Christians, is in North America, among people who believe in one or the other.

Today I had an interesting discussion, which led to many interesting discussions (naturally). The first discussion interested me because the topic of a person hitting their prime came up. When does a person hit their prime? In terms of looks, it was said to be 22 or 23. I didn’t quite agree with that. I think that people reach their full beauty in their 20s, but I’ve seen so many beautiful people in their 30s as well. I wasn’t concerned much with beauty anyways. I wanted the meat of it. If we were talking about physical prime, I want to know when people were their strongest. I felt it was in their late 20s, in concurrence with an Edmonton Aging Symposium video I had seen a few years back, along with the common soccer claim that soccer players hit their prime around 28 (yay Thierry Henry, you’re still in your prime for World Cup 2010 ;P.)
I was far more concerned with intellectual prime though, which is ridiculously difficult to narrow down. It would have to be sometime after the teenage years (obviously), but not so old that one’s brain begins to break down with age. The old age comment is difficult in itself.. not all people suffer from breakdowns as they get older. Some continue to nurse their brains, and never really fall into the whole dementia phase of old age. Aside from that, how do you measure when a human brain is at it’s best? Do you talk about scientific figures, and how much data can be stored, as opposed to how much is being forgotten? Do you discuss IQ scores and explicit knowledge? Or do you consider the mind to be the key thing? Do you consider how sharp-witted and intelligent a person is?
The answer seems to be quite complex. Most of the categories being discussed are subjective, such as beauty, intelligence, IQ scores, wit, and even the possession of knowledge (which schools have tried, and failed, to test for centuries). Subjectivity hinders any real accuracy with this conversation, and it’s down to each of us to decide what we feel a person’s prime is. Personally, I don’t see why somebody can’t be in their prime for their entire life, in a fashion.