Stephanie Bell's Archive

Our unconscious mind relies on previous experiences, on expectations, and on prior knowledge. We have control of the memories and facts that effect our unconscious choices. In the example given in class with the people’s pictures being flashed next to a figure that we had been taught in our history class to be either good or bad, we would then describe the person as being good or bad. Some people would argue that we have no control over how we relate the two picture to each other. I however, believe that we have control over how we view those people and the things that we associate with those people. We have been taught to view Hitler as an evil person who caused a mass genocide, so we would have associated negative qualities with Juice’s picture. But if we had chosen to associate Hitler as a good politician and successful leader, then we would have associated those qualities with Juice. So we do have free will over our unconscious because we chose how we will remember circumstances and people. We can remember the good qualities or the bad qualities and those are what will later play a role in how we judge similar situations.

I think that it is okay to test fears in children. The experiment with little Albert is a good model for how fears come about in any situation and we wouldn't necessarily criticize the other circumstances that are the same. Fears are all learned anyways and you can overcome a fear. I was able to overcome a lot of my fears as I got older because I realized that a lot of them were unreasonable. I was afraid of bugs, but I didn't have a reason to be afraid of them. I was afraid because I heard someone else scream when they saw a bug. I assumed that they were fearful for a reason, so I became scared. When other people scream it is like making a loud noise behind a child. We then learn to be afraid of the situation because of the things we learn to associate with it. I was always more fearful if I heard others scream then when I am alone. 

I always thought religion was a personal choice and I still do. But I find it interesting that odds are that we will believe similar concepts as our family does. When we talked about genetics playing a role in religion it made me wonder how close my families' beliefs are to mine. I stray off a bit from what I was raised to believe, but if you look at my family a lot of us stray off from what we are originally taught and we all question what our parents tell us to believe. I didn't think about it a whole lot until this class but now I am curious as to what made them decide to start questioning religious teachings. 

This lecture reminded me of a conversation my dad and I had prior to me leaving for college. How do we know what other people see is the same as what we see? On "FML" one time I saw a post about a dad who had taught his daughter the colors wrong because he thought it would be funny. After reading this I laughed but then thought about it. We only know what we are taught to be colors. We are taught blue is blue, green is green, and so on; but how do we know that the color we perceive to be blue or perceive to be green is actually the same as the color the teacher perceives to be blue or green. What if the people we believe are "colorblind" actually have it right and we are actually the ones who do not see colors properly? 

How far does free will go? I was talking to my roommate about this the night before we talked about it in class. We discussed how people often say that they are looking for The One. Did God make one person for each of us? If so then do we really have power over our life if God will make us choose this one person? Maybe God knows what choices we will make with our lives and based off of that he knows who we will ultimately chose and makes a person that will fit the choices that we make in our lives. My roomie talked about how when you say that God meant for you to be with a specific person that she thinks it is like saying that all of the events in your life happened in order for you to meet this one person. But is this really the case? What if the person who is made for you goes against God’s will (because I would assume that if I have free will that the other person would too)? Personally, I would not agree that all of the events in my life have led up to me meeting one particular person.

If our free will is limited then is it still free will? I feel like the answer to that would be no because we are not given full control of our own lives. And why would God make so many other people available to us if he had already chosen the one? Why would he not just create us to have some overwhelming feeling of finding the one when it happens. (Now I am not married and may not have found the person so I am not one hundred percent true that I would not know when I had found the one.) I feel like this is just another one of those small details that make our life what it is. If God is not concerned in the minor details of our lives but instead is interested in how we use our talents to help other people, then I feel like something like choosing a mate would not be on his top priorities. Unless perhaps, our mate is suppose to somehow influence the rest of our life and possibly change the course of where we are headed.

Last year I was the only person in a Bible study in my dorm who was
not Church of Christ. I realized that a lot of the freshman were quick
to jump on the bandwagon and were like people in the cave. My views
were still Christian but a little different and when I challenge their
beliefs their were quick to say I was wrong. I felt their views were
distorted because they were only looking at the situation from their
side and not trying to understand what someone else may think. Some of the girls in the Bible study were really offended and tried to say that I obviously was not Christian just because I questioned how they were saying you should treat people who do not believe in Christ. They claimed to believe that the best way to teach people about Christianity is to go build churches and take them to them. I was trying to argue that the best way is to live the way the Bible teaches us and then people will be more interested in what you try to tell them. I have been to countries where Christianity is not the main religion, and people think that their religion is best. If we try to go tell them that they are wrong in their beliefs and that our views are right, then they are going to think that we are trying to be disrespectful to them. This is like when someone challenges a person in the cave and they refuse to believe what they have not seen.
Stephanie Bell