discussion

Today in Earth Science we had a "forum" discussing issues of faith and science. It's easy to see how it could be frustrating to be involved in such conversations where just about every single other student is a traditional age freshman who hasn't really ever thought about these things before nor have they even begun any sort of training in how to think clearly (i.e. to be a philosophy major). The major difficulty with this is that it's hard to keep the discussion focused. That's the difference between someone who's capable of thinking clearly and someone who's not: keeping focused during a discussion and searching for a mutual understanding of the meanings of terms (or at least what are the possible meanings of those terms). Of course this is something which is difficult to do. Some people can do this naturally, they're the best people to talk to. I think I have maybe one or two friends who can actually do this. (I can't...i.e. i'm not a natural). But I think it's possible to develop it as a skill, but you have to do a lot of writing, thinking, and discussing. And it requires one to hold a lot of information in one's head at a given moment during a conversation. If one cannot do this then the discussion deteriorates into a mere wandering without any overall direction. This didn't happen today, fortunately. Unfortunately, I don't think it's because people in this class are clear thinkers, rather, the conversation didn't deteriorate because only a few people (out of like 30 students) were actually talking. These people don't seem to care too much. Maybe they do...i don't know. We'll it's almost 8:00pm here...time for 24.