Still Learning

Friday, July 12, 2019

Still Learning

Awhile back I became aware of a streaming service called Kanopy. Kanopy is a video platform for libraries and universities which offers a wide variety of films, including a nice selection of documentaries. Library patrons are allowed to view videos free of charge. Since I do not really like watching videos on my phone or computer I was pleased to see there is a Roku app. The agreement our public library has allows 10 films per month. I could easily blow through 10 films over a weekend. I will look for films I cannot find on the other streaming services to which I subscribe.

A couple or 3 weeks ago I saw a notice that The Great Courses were being made available to registered Kanopy users. The really good part of this is users have unlimited access to the courses. Viewing of courses does not count against one's monthly allowance. A really good arrangement since the courses generally consist of 24 films with a running time of about 30 minutes.

I have gone through the courses on Mythology and The Black Death. I am almost through the How Great Science Fiction Works course and it is really good.

Friday, July 12, 2019 in Education, Film | Permalink

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Useful Quotes

Eighteenth century natural law philosophers, and others before them, treated feudal society as a norm rather than an outgrowth of a real, if imperfect, Christianization of society and its relationships in terms of Biblical law. Thus, God's law became a given and hence "natural." Such thinking is not only non-historical, but also distinctly non-Biblical. Scripture tells us that nature is fallen and man depraved by a sin nature. Nature is not to be seen as a source of law or revelation. Only God is true and only His revelation is law. His creation may reflect His law, but is not a source of it. If nature is the, or even an, independent source of law, then man is its mouthpiece. Natural law is an open invitation to the autonomous mind of man interpreting nature as law. In a more Christian era, it was easy to see the prevailing ethic as "natural." It was not natural; it was the moral capital of a Christian culture which had self-consciously limited state authority after the fall of Rome, the last great pagan empire of antiquity. Law does not come from nature; law comes from the Creator of nature. In the physical realm "the laws of nature" are a mis-named reference to God's established laws over the material creation. Likewise, the reference in moral philosophy to "natural law" credits nature as the self-evident source of ethics and law.