Philosophy Vs. Theology

Drew Dalton said that philosophy is the search for questions, theology the search for answers.

I think the differences go way beyond that statement, but it gets at their fundamental similarities and differences. So why do people find philosophy so difficult to understand? I believe it is because they don't want to be "barraged with the questions to all those lovely answers." That's a quote from The Ugly Organ.

What I Saw This Morning

A man in a suit and tie, carrying his Bible, walking along the side of the road in the wind that only the Palouse knows. I assume he was going to Church. He was wearing a leather cowboy hat and the wind was pushing one side up flat against his head. His tie was flapping behind him in the wind. Moscow in the Summertime.

Best Comic(s) Of The Week 20

So here we are at the twentieth post. Coming this weekend will be a retrospective of the first twenty posts, cataloging which ones have either stuck with me or become a part of my daily conversations (Sneak Peak: "Damn Kids! Log off my E-Lawn!"). Well, let's get on with it.

Funny thing of the week:

We've got two this week. First off, Matt reposts a wonderful discussion on choppers and suburbia.

Secondly, we have Metal Gear Awesome Part 1 and Part 2. These are NSFW. They come from The Awesome Series.

On to the Dailies!

SMBC was on this week with Child Prodigies and Puppy Dog Greeting Cards.

Cyanide and Happiness: To be a Magician and Smoking's Very Bad.

Pearls Before Swine: Pig goes Goth

Dilbert gets the same project as Alice

Get Fuzzy: Language

Non-Dailies!

Here we have the best one of the week from ExtraLife: It's the Small Things, which I would like to add a line to: Fracking Toasters.

XKCD gets in on the MK Wii comics.

The Warehouse: Alternate Abe Lincoln History

2P Start: Lego my Statue

And that's it this week. Thanks for stopping by!

Best Comic(s) Of The Week 19

Now that Dead Week and Finals Week are over, hopefully I can find time to post on my blog more often. I'm only taking a couple of classes over the summer. So this week's funny thing is How to Make A Sawed-Off USB-Key from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Dailies:

Cyanide and Happiness was just on this week: Ground Beef, Fed Up, and Happy Birthday.

Real Life Comics: What Greg Reads, and Iron Man Debate.

SMBC: Grandma and Bobby, and Argument.

The Book of Biff hit 500 comics this week and pulled a couple of really good ones out of his eyebrows: #500 - Lift, 1990, Crystalline and Diacetyl.

Dinosaur: The Devil and GTA IV

And I finally found a place to read two of my all time favorites online: Dilbert and Pearls Before Swine.

Dilbert makes a difference at work.

Pig Dreams Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

And the Non-Dailies didn't really live up to the Dailies this week.

XKCD: Forks and Spoons

Ctrl+Alt+Del: The Baby Adventure Continues, Part 1 and Part 2.

The Warehouse: Volley for Touchdown

ExtraLife: Grand Theft Entry

And that's really it this week. I hope all you semester folks got through it all alright. Good luck and stay safe for summer. I'll still be here every week with some comics that made me laugh.

Best Comic(s) Of The Week 18

Sorry it's so late. Finals week is this week. Last week was dead week. Well, the funny thing of the week will be... Um... well, not funny but actually a great recipe for bread, without kneading. And it works. Try it out.

And on to the Dailies!

The best one this week is BSG Spoilers by Real Life Comics. Any why would it win? Because I am 3/4 through season 2 and everybody else has seen it all, so I say "Shut up about BSG" a lot. Apparently there will be an interpretive dance-off for the fate of humanity. God I hope Adama wins.

SMBC: Breathing

Cyanide and Happiness: In Space

Biff: Expand

Non-Dailies!

XKCD: Perils of Stove Ownership

The Warehouse: Those Ain't Answers

2p Start: So Close Yet...

Cudly Cyborg: Reading the Constitution

And that's it this week.

Destruktion - Why Heidegger & I Were Both Wrong About Abbau

I have said before that Abbau (Destruktion) - to unbuild or deconstruction (pre-Derrida) in English - requires or demands a sort of rebuilding. Today, I finally realized that it doesn't. Let's talk of Heidegger for a moment. I wrote this in a paper:

In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, Heidegger explains that Phenomenology is a method of studying, or of doing, Philosophy: "These three basic components of phenomenological metho — reduction, construction, destruktion — belong together in their content and must receive grounding in their mutual pertinence." He identifies destruktion as the term Abbau, German for "to unbuild." Whatever the implications of Abbau, Heidegger is careful to not leave it at taking apart, or disassembling, saying instead that one cannot simply destroy "traditional horizons and traditional angles of approach," but that the destruction requires a building of a new angle of approach. This implies, or proves, that the destruction is valid, or necessary in the first place.

I realize now that it is much more primordial than that. Destruction, destruktion, or deconstruction do not require a rebuilding, they are a rebuilding. Just thinking about this cursorily it seems to make sense. If we had nuked our homeboys in the CCCP, the world would be different. That is common sense. So is destruction then just another form of building? Heraclitus of Ephesus, the enigmatic Greek philosopher, stated in fragment 98, "Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony." I am slowly understanding this fragment more and more, and I think Heidegger was wrong about Abbau. He assumed that humanity had to make a second effort to create, but really, that first effort is all we need. If I destroy a building, I have created a new environment. The second effort - perhaps collecting the pieces and purposefully building another home - is not necessary. Creation has already happened and that second effort is another cycle of destruction and creation. So yes, destruction and building are the same.