Well, it happened. My second day of class. And I gotta say, I knew this was coming, but I'm still not happy about it. Someone needs to tell these kids that this isn't a psychology class. We're not asking why these people believe what they believe. It's not a philosophy class, we're not trying to decide which ones are stupid and which ones are akin to which.
We're here to learn about other religions. Period. At least I am, and I certainly don't appreciate wasting 10 minutes after every concept to A) try and tie Mormonism into everything B) discuss in which ways these people are dumb for believing what they believe.
And I get it. I don't agree with Calvinists about 99% of what they believe, but I'm not gonna sit here in an academic setting and talk about how blown my mind is that they believe what they do. If you don't like it, just keep your trap shut. Normally, I don't say this - as I don't agree with it in most situations, but for this one? I'll say it as much as I please.
Ugh. Anyway, we learned some neat things about holism, humanism, deism, fideism, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. It was pretty neat! We also learned a smidgen about karma and nirvana. Just a tiny bit. But I was really excited. If I wasn't LDS, I think I'd be some denomination of Buddhist. I mean, not quite, as I believe everything has a spirit, but I definitely believe we're all interconnected and that karma harms everyone as a whole.
Yes, I know I said before that I don't believe in karma and that's in the sense most people see it: "I do something bad, so something bad will happen to me later." But that's not quite how real karma works. As someone tries to break away from the whole and start focusing on themselves, they generate bad karma, and not only for his/herself, but for the entire whole. The goal is to reach nirvana, which is (in my words with my limited understanding) being to an extreme state of selflessness and understanding of suffering. At least that's my understanding of the Buddhist nirvana.
Anyway, I liked it other than the tomfoolery. Hopefully it won't happen again and they were all just nervous. Hopefully. I'm just there to learn.
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