I live in the wrong part of the country. Dunedin is lovely, don’t get me wrong. However there are opportunities of a whole range of sorts that I am missing because of where I live. I won’t go into all the details of that, just trust me. We’ve decided that we should move to Auckland. Plus it’s much warmer, and we have family in that part of the country who we haven’t seen much of.

I’m a family man and we’re not particularly well off, so I can’t responsibily move unless there’s there’s a job to move to. I’m applying for jobs already, and while I’m explaining each time I apply that we do intend to move to Auckland, there’s going to be a natural reluctance to hire people from out of town when there are local applicants. I thought I’d give a shout out here in case there are readers in that part of the country who might know of something, or who might even be in a place of influence who might be able to offer something. There’s a whole range of areas that I could work in. I currently work for the Inland Revenue Department in Student loans, doing technical work on accounts and also liasing with other agencies (like Studylink, the Ministry of Education, the Immigration Department and tax agents). I also get in touch with customers by phone and also address their queries by email. It involves applying legislation, and I’ve also played a role over the last year and a bit in clarifying the legislative requirements of the roles that my team has been involved in, and also coaching fellow staff members. Prior to this role I worked as a customer service rep in the call centre for Inland Revenue. Prior to that I managed a bookstore.

You already know (probably) about my academic background, but in general my approach is that unless a role requires years of experience in a highly specialised field, I can do it: anything involving communication, coaching, training, tutoring, or anything that involves explaining technical information. I also work well with numbers, and I even have a couple of papers in accounting. I could do web based work and even some graphic design work (it’s not like I have professional expreience there, but I made this site and the graphics here – bearing in bind that the blog is a wordpress blog, although the graphics are mine). I also have a background in music, recording and audio engineering (have you seen my site www.podcastermusic.org ?).

So if you’re in a position to suggest anything in the Auckland area – anything at all really – please do drop me a line and let me know.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Not too long ago I announced that there were some changes afoot. Although we’re keen supporters of homeschooling, we started sending our children to a nearby very small Christian school and my wife was going to look for work. It had become clear that there just wasn’t time available for me to work on writing, publishing, and generally putting in the work required to work towards the kind of academic role I’m looking for, plus another income wouldn’t go astray.

It will come as no surprise that I’m a firm believer in the providence of God, so it’s only appropriate that I’m now very thankful to God for the way things are turning out. Just a matter of days after deciding to send the children to school Ruth was given a job at a nearby rest home / hospital, working between 19.5 and 30 hours per week, give or take a little. Within a week of this happening, I got a change of hours at work approved, meaning that soon I’ll be working four days per week. The way New Zealand’s welfare and tax system works means that we’re only slightly better off financially than before (but hey, slightly is better than not at all). The other side to that is that we’re earning a much higher proportion of our income, which is much better. Also, although the change of hours at work has been approved, there is a project at work that I need to make myself available for (one that we’ve been planning for a while), so the new hours won’t kick in for a little while yet, but it’s pretty much a done deal. Also, I have exams on the 16th and 17th of November, so initially what extra time I have will be spent preparing for those. But the upshot is that we’re doing a little better now and I will have more time available to work on my own projects, which is what we had hoped for.

I had expected that this process would take a couple of months, but from start to finish it took only a couple of weeks. Think me terribly superstitious if you will, but I’m calling it a sign.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him, all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

EDIT: I’ve started putting some of my music clips up at YouTube, and this one is apropros here!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Under most circumstances, homeschooling is the best form of schooling/education for children that exists in the world. I say most to allow for extreme or unusual cases where things don’t work as they should – severe disabilities or disorders, long term illness, I don’t know, there are probably other cases too, but you get the idea. Having said that though, homeschooling provides scope for a much more individualised approach for your child’s education, meaning that there will be plenty of people for whom a special needs child will make them better suited to a homeschooling environment.

As far as educational outcomes go, the worldwide evidence is simply overwhelming: Homeschooling is superior. It is a hands down victory. This cannot be stated clearly enough: If anyone suggests to you that the case is not obviously, clear cut, backed up universally by all the available evidence and beyond dispute, they need more exposure to the information. This is a settled issue: Homeschooling on average produces markedly better academic results. This, for many parents, is the main drawcard for the homeschooling option.
See here, here, here, or… you get the idea. I won’t multiple examples. Just Google it.

It is simply a falsehood that you can’t teach children well unless you’re an accredited teacher. Homeschooled children receive a superior education to children who attend the local government school. It also enables a far more customised approach to education. Children are diverse, they don’t all learn the same way, and what works for one child may not be as effective as another. While a school might be able to pump extra teaching resources and time into catching up with this diversity and moving away from an “education mill” model, for the homeschooler it is natural – why wouldn’t the education of each child be uniquely tailored to that child?

The one comment that I hear more often than any other when somebody finds out that we homeschool our children – and other homeschoolers will guess what it is before I ever say it – is, “what about the social aspect? Do they learn to interact with other children?”

Here’s how I look at it: Take animals in the wild vs animals in farms. Do animals in the wild get to interact in a normal, healthy way with other animals? Of course. What about animals in a farm, or maybe a zoo? Do they interact naturally with each other? To some extent, yes. Children in homeschooling are like animals in the wild. They, with their families, form natural communities: Families, neighbourhoods, churches, sports clubs, social organisations, you get the idea. What’s more, because it’s not a forced environment like a zoo or a farm, you don’t have the serious social problems associated with schools: bullying and being forced to belong to the same social group as the bully, being forced to associate with groups that are frankly bad for them (gangs, antisocial behaviour, violence, smoking/drugs, fill in the blanks). Picking up a line from my sister (they also homeschool their children), when people ask me whether our children are “missing out” socially I tell them: “Oh no, we make sure they don’t miss out. We beat them up, steal their lunch, teach them bad habits, encourage them to be promiscuous, all that stuff.” The other person usually sees the point! Do we shelter our children? Of course. We’re their parents, and they’re all younger than twelve years old. What kind of irresponsible people would we be if we didn’t shelter them?

I want to reiterate this is clearly as I can: In virtually every way, homeschooling is superior to other kinds of education. Schools just cannot compete with it. It’s barely even a close race. I say all this in  advance in bold terms because I don’t want anyone to think that what I say next reflects in any way a lower view of homeschooling. I continue to hold the above view of homeschooling.

Now for the next part: In a couple of days time, our children will start attending a school. It’s not a public school (we’re not crazy), but it’s a school. Five days a week, from 9am until 3pm (I think). It’s not a decision we relish for their sake, but it’s one we’ve had to make. My wife is a wonderful mother and has been doing a really outstanding job with our children. But something had to change. As I’ve been saying from time to time, I have virtually no time to do the things that I really need to do if I am ever going to move into the area of employment that I spent all those years getting degrees for: academia in theology or philosophy (or both).

What’s more, I currently work a pretty low paying job, and our financial situation could be a lot stronger (actually, it needs to be. I don’t think the employer envisages someone on this salary supporting a family). I figured it would only be a temporary measure while also work at home, I get material published and boost my profile to improve my chances in academia, but the trouble is, working full time actually prevents me from doing that to the extent to which I need to do it, so I end up just staying in that low paid role, supporting our family. Financially, something does need to change.

So we need a little more cash, and I need a little more time, even just a free day each week. So the children are going to school – a less than ideal situation education-wise, but the best school that we are able to make use of, a small local Christian school with a very flexible approach to education. Ruth is going to be looking for some work, maybe just a few days a week, and when that happens, I will see if I can work fewer hours.

If that all goes to plan, I will be much better placed to work towards landing an academic job, and if/when that happens, we will be in a position to revisit Ruth’s employment situation and the children’s education options. The long term plan is about what’s best for the whole family. We’d like to be in a position to homeschool again.

Glenn Peoples

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

So where have I been? The blog has been very quiet lately and the podcast has fallen silent. Where to begin!

First, as suggested by my cave man post, things are a little frustrating on the future employment front. New Zealand is just the wrong place to be a scholar in the humanities. Because there are so few major academic options in the form of universities and similar institutions here (countable on one’s fingers), you simply must either have an illustrious career history already, or you must be friends with the right people. Neither of those things currently apply in my case, so I’ve got a lot of work (no, not professional work) ahead of me before that becomes a live possibility. Getting anyone’s attention is going to involve a considerably above average research/publication output (that is, above the average of somebody already in an academic career), without the benefit of actually having time allocated to my schedule to do that like someone who is already working in the fields I’m aiming for. I could manage it well were it not for that time factor. That means trying (very often unsuccessfully) to squeeze out all the available time from the gaps in my evenings, beween eating, sleeping, and having a relationship with my wife and children. As I mentioned a while ago, I’m taking a couple of classes by distance as well (towards a diploma in business – everybody needs a backup plan). Those classes will be over on the 17th of November when I sit the second of my two final exams, so I will gain a little more time then. Until then, it’s probably best to give up on my empty promises of getting the current podcast episode finished.

As a family we’re also looking at some changes to make even just a small amount more time available, possibly involving changes in schooling and employment, but that’s all still just in the realm of possibilities at the moment and we haven’t decided anything. It’s a terrible thing, but I’ve frequently envied the unemployed for their wealth of time (not that I could afford to be unemployed!).

I’m looking at some research/teaching fellowships outside of New Zealand at the moment. It’s hard to know what Universities expect in a fellow. Their advertisements make encouraging comments about looking for someone who has just obtained their PhD within the last five years, and yet it’s common to see people who are fellows who have a long career with scores of books and other publications behind them already. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve put together a modest research proposal and bibliography for any such applications. It’s a proposal for a project that I’ve been wanting for some time to use as the basis for a book for publication, on a history and defence of the moral argument for theism. It’s a subject that has received surprisingly little academic treatment, and I know of literally no published book at the moment that represents what I intend to produce, a fact that I find incredible when considering the sheer number of works published on the other classic and modern arguments for theism (e.g. cosmological, ontological, fine tuning). After I’ve read through the proposal a few (dozen) more times to make sure it’s as I want it to be I’ll post it here at the blog for your scrutiny.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

Whoops, I missed it by a couple of days.

On Friday the 26th of May 2006, the first ever blog entry appeared at Say Hello to my Little Friend. Has it really been that long? Actually, the first one you see was meant to be the second one. Being a bit of a blogging newbie, and insisting on installing the blog on my own domain, I managed to screw something up and lose the very first blog entry, which contained an introduction to the blog plus a short tribute to the then recently deceased Ron Nash.

Those were the old days when I didn’t even have a podcast! The first episode (a test episode) of the Say Hello to my Little Friend came on the 20th of May 2008, nearly two years after the blog started. Time flies! Although there is (obviously) still a blog here and hopefully a relatively interesting one at that (last I heard it was in the top 50 New Zealand blogs), the podcast has become the main attraction here (it rose quickly to become New Zealand’s top Christian podcast, which is a scary fact – and one that brings extra expenses).

I wish I had more time and resources to put into the blog and podcast, and I hope that my career direction in the not too distant future (sigh) will make that possible, but I think it’s fair to say that after three years things aren’t too shabby. I don’t know how long I would have kept it up had there been no signs of people actually reading and listening, which has been really encouraging. I’ve been blown away by some of the feedback I’ve received via my contact page (click “Main Site” in the right hand column to go to the front page where you can get to the contact page). So thanks to all of you who follow this blog and keep me going! Remember, if any of you want to write something for the site or the blog, let me know.

Thanks for being a part of this endeavour!

Glenn

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

If you’re one of the people waiting for the next installment of the podcast series on philosophy of mind, or you’ve notice that the rate of production for blog posts is fairly low at the moment, and you’re wondering “Glenn, why are we always waiting for stuff?” read on.

There are some really great Christian blogs and podcasts out there. Not as many as I’d like, but there are some fantastic ones. A lot of them have some (but not all) of these features in common: The people whose material appears there don’t work on the blog or podcast, which is handled by people who do that and get paid to do that; the blogs/podcasts are those of people who are currently working in their academic area of interest and who – as part of their time spent in their normal employment, are researching and writing material some of which will appear in their blog or podcast; the blog or podcast is itself part of a full time professional ministry activity so there is no day job to get in the way of that ministry; they are not themselves working full time, eight hours a day five days a week (perhaps they are students or they work part time), and as a result have considerably more time than some people to work on material for their blog or podcast; they are either unmarried or they do not have children, so they do not spend their time on their spouse and/or children; their blog and/or podcast is created by a team of two or more people so that they are not the only person creating posts or episodes. There may be other situations that escape me right now, but those are the ones that I can think of.

None of these scenarios resembles me and what I do at Say Hello to my Little Friend, as much as I might like one or two of them to.  I go out each morning at the start of the day and work eight hours a day in a job that has nothing whatsoever to do with my academic qualifications or areas of interest. I come home, have dinner, and get to spend just a couple of short hours with our children, I get a little quality time with my wife, and I’m left with precious little at the end of it. I use that time to write blog posts, respond to comments, do research for future blog posts or podcast episodes, write and record podcast episodes, search for academic job listings in my field of interest, apply for jobs (writing application letters, filling our application forms, tweaking my CV for specific roles, etc) and so forth. Unless I have something pre-written from another project, it can take up nine hours or so to write a podcast episode, and I have to get up the next morning to go to work again, so I can’t stay up to the wee hours to get it done.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I just want to make sure everyone realises the major mismatch between what I’d like to do here and what I’m able to do here, so they appreciate what they actually get here just that little bit extra, and also to temper any expectations I might have created for listeners/readers here with a dose of reality.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

 Loading ...

For those of you who are Facebook users, feel free to add me as a friend there. Be warned, I am seldom to be taken too seriously there! My Facebook name is “Glenn Andrew Peoples” of New Zealand.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

I interrupt the usual blog to complain about the fact that I can’t sleep. It’s 12:25am on Monday morning, I have to get up for work at about 6am, and it’s 28 degrees Celsius (that’s 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit for my American friends). That might not be much where you come from, but here it’s hot for this time of night!

I guess I can’t complain too much when I see the heat and the awful fires in Australia wreaking such havoc and claiming lives.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

I work full time, and the time I spend at home after work and on weekends is fairly valuable. The upshot of this is that while I remain in these circumstances I simply can’t spend as much time as I’d like to reading, keeping up with subjects I like to follow, and writing pieces for publication. It’s a vicious cycle really – In order to get an academic position it’s important that I keep abreast of my field and continue to have a publication output, but as long as I’m not in an academic role where these things are part of my job expectation (and while I’m also working full time in a different type of role), it’s not always easy to do these things.

That being said, here is what I’m working on at the moment on a very part time basis:

“Chasing the justificatory Goalpost” – This is a piece that’s actually nearly finished, and I really must get around to getting it submitted. I may have mentioned it before, actually. It’s a piece criticising some proponents of political liberalism (especially Gerald Gaus) for employing a sliding goalpost when it comes to the criteria that he uses to exclude policies with a religious basis from legitimacy in a modern democracy.

“Is there an Echo in Here?” This is a comment on the way that critics of divine command theories of ethics are just parroting previous criticisms of those theories, without taking into account the more than adequate responses to those criticisms that have been in print for many years now. I actually submitted this one to a journal but had it turned down (I’m comforted by the fact that my PhD supervisor had the same experience with this particular journal). I must brush this one off and submit it elsewhere.

“Luke 16:19-31 and historical background” – I need a better title for this one. In a departure from philosophy and a return to theology and biblical studies, this is a piece on new Testament Studies. It looks at the well known tale of the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 and offers agreement with the thesis of Joachim Jeremias that it is in fact an example of Jesus’ use of a contemporary and widely known story (i.e. one that he did not invent or necessarily agree with) to make a moral point against those who used it. I look at some dismissals of this thesis and show them to be lacking in merit, and I look at some implications of the thesis.

“Loathsome Spiders and Angry God” – This one is on historical and systematic theology. In the debate over the nature of eternal punishment – in particular in traditionalist critiques of the annihilationist perspective, Jonathan Edwards is exalted as some sort of hero for the traditional cause, and if we poor benighted annihilationists would just look at his powerful reasoning, we would be put in our place. In this piece I look at the reasons that a couple of theologians have given for saying this, and explain how it’s a load of rhetorically loaded claptrap.

“Intuitionism as Reliabilism” – This one is a foray into epistemology, not really my major area of expertise, so I need to prepare carefully. For those who know what these terms mean, “intuitionism” and “reliabilism,” you’ll know that they are typically construed as competing theories. Here I suggest that they need not be construed this way, and that in fact intuitionism is best seen as one species of reliabilism.

“Natural Law and the Divine Will” – it is sometimes thought that Natural Law theories of ethics and Divine Command theories of ethics are always exclusive of one another. Here I explain that while this is sometimes the case for specified types of Natural Law or Divine Command theories, it is certainly not always the case.

“The Liberal Theocracy” – Not so long ago I did a podcast episode by this name. This article is a more detailed version of that presentation. I explain that the supposed contrast between a liberal democracy and a theocratic society is a false one, founded on either ignorance or bias, or both.

“Responding to Wolterstorff on Divine Command Ethics” – I’m currently reading the latest book from Nicholas Wolterstorff entitled Justice. In it, he offers an argument against divine command ethics. For me, that’s like painting a bullseye on his forehead.

And last but definitely not least:

“The Moral Argument” – This is a full length book project, and given my rather vicious time constraints at the moment, it’s a long term project, in which I explore various historical formulations of the moral argument for the existence of God. I then delve into the meta-ethical issues in the context of contemporary analytical philosophy and argue that in fact the existence of moral truths consitutes powerful evidence for the existence of God. I close by responding to objections to the argument.

So that’s what’s keeping me busy right now!

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...

The new version of the Apple iPhone hits New Zealand this week on the 11th of July. The only telco company to provide iPhone plans is Vodafone. They teased the nation recently by advertising that they’d be selling the iPhone from only $199 on a two year plan.

It sounded great, and I was going to buy one. It turned out not to be great at all, and I won’t be. For that price you get the 8Gig iPhone on a two year plan, at TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS PER MONTH, considerably more expensive than the most expensive plan that will be offered in any other nation on earth, with a plan that offers significantly fewer minutes and data.

The price is almost unbelievable. It seemed impossible, but them’s the facts. Needless to say, the excitement has worn off. Here’s John Campbell grilling a rather unfortunate Vodafone public relations employee who had the very unenviable task of fronting up to the media.

Not for me, thanks.

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...