Ozark Mind Games 2003 Report: Monday

 
 
Ray Bohlin presented the opening teaching session, Campus Christianity, with an exhortation to think biblically, cultivate a teachable spirit, pursue excellence and be faithful.


Rick Wade provided the foundational worldviews lecture, covering the three basic worldviews we address: naturalism, pantheism and theism. Just about every lecture of the week will refer to these worldviews in helping the students figure out how the various issues and topics we examine fit into this worldview scheme.

 
 
One of the reasons we love Ozark Conference Center is the excellent food. There is a lot of great conversation at the tables, too.


The Probe staff eat all our meals with the students, not each other. It's not necessarily a time to do more teaching, but a chance to find out more about the students God sends each year to spend the week with us. We can also continue the discussions that the teaching sessions raise.

 
 
After lunch, and before we all met to discuss the reading assignments for the rest of the week, students had some free time. Where there are boys, eventually cards will come out. No matter what age the boys!


A few feet away from the card game, Todd Kappelman stretched out on a couch in the meeting room of Mountaincrest Lodge reading about Ernest Hemingway, the author of the short story that he picked as his reading of choice this week. . .

. . . And around the corner, Clara Utley and Elizabeth Voelker played a duet.

After a relaxing afternoon, we gathered after dinner for the evening sessions. Sue Bohlin led an all-staff session on Human Nature. We examined the way the three worldviews would answer three important questions: What is the purpose of life? Are human beings good, evil, or neither? What happens at death? The other Probe teachers roleplayed two naturalists and a pantheist, helping to answer the three questions and responding to the students' questions.

Ray Bohlin dressed up as Harvard entymologist and sociobiologist Dr. E.O. Wilson, assuring the students that the only purpose in life is to survive and reproduce, and our Mind Games notebook is nothing but propaganda. Todd Kappelman became French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, and Rick Wade turned into local New Ager "Guru Jack."

Todd Kappelman took off his dark glasses and sarcastic, surly attitude and became himself again to teach "An Introduction to Ethics."

The Ozark staff always provides an evening snack for us. While munching on giant pretzels, Ray Bohlin pulled out his computer Risk game. Here Grant Winnes, Ray, John Wray and Shaun Boyle let the testosterone and competition begin to build. :-)