Monday, March 2, 2009
Four Forms of Idolatry
1. Idols of the Tribe-"The bias of human beings to jump to conclusions based on what is new or strange rather than investing time to understand what is true".
What this means is that when something new was discovered and no one new that much about it the church would not allow it to be proven true and just say that it goes against the church. This stopped them from learning new things and kept the church in power because everyone thought that the church knew best.
2. Idols of the Cave- "Creating individual biases through the education system".
This means that they just interpreted the words into their own meaning. Meaning that the saying or phrase can mean one thing but they would give it the meaning they want it to have. The church sort of is like the Allegory of the Cave because they only show you images they want you to see.
3. Idols of the Marketplace- language created to share knowledge (e.g. philosophy is more concerned with winning arguments than revealing truth) locks us into specific ways of knowing.
This one is also like the first one and it means that the church is again trying to force their views on its members. Most of Europe was uneducated so they didn't have to worry about getting caught and if someone did every go against the church it was called heresy and they were killed or baned. This just helped give the church more power and keep them in control more.
4. Idols of the Theatre- Christian west has given reverence to four of five Greek scholars and has ignored any other understanding of the world.
This is also like the others becuase the Christian West would only selelct a few of the scholars and focus on them and completely ignore all the other ones. Forcig people to believe that only these are right and the others are wrong. This makes people think that the church knows best and when they learn about the specific ones from the church then they too automatically think that the other scholars are wrong. The church is really good on imposing its ideas on it followers and it only picked the philosophers they liked. I am kind of glad that the church isn't in that much power anymore because then our lives today would be very different from what they are right now.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Affirmative Action
Logic
All cats are adorable.
Garbanzo and Bean are adorable.
Garbanzo and Bean are cats.
Another example would be:
If Edward get good grades on my blogger, that means I did them all.
Edward didn't do one.
Therefore he didn't get a good grade.
This specific one is an example of Modus Tollen.
The other one is Modus Ponen
Robert Pattinson lives in LA
I saw Robert Pattinson. (I wish I did)
Therefore I was in LA
The third type is Modus Tollen:
If you are fan of Twilight, people think your weird
People think I'm weird
Therefore I am a fan of Twilight
So you see this logic can actually be quite fun to make you, and can try it too.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Question?!
Divya
Galileo and His Daughter
Monday, February 23, 2009
St. Thomas Aquinas' Says WAT?!
The third way talks about the two types of objects in the universe which are contingent beings and necessary beings. He says that contingent being is an object that can not exist without a necessary being causing its existence. Which means that we as humans cannot exist without the help of others and we existed through the help of others. Which is true because we as humans are always trying to solve the mystery of how we came to be and then we always turn to god for the answer. We turn to God because nothing else makes sense and we have to have an explanation and it is better to say that god did it than it is to leave the question blank. Its like when you take a test and you don't know the answer to the problem but your teacher says to guess so that you might even get some credit. We use god to answer the problem we can't solve by ourselves.
The worst wave to me was the first way because in it he talks about motion and how that an object in motion is put into motion by some other object or force. Which makes sense for some things but not all because i am typing this on my own and their is no other object that is moving my fingers but my brain and nothing is putting my brain into motion. I f god is the mover of all things then I personally think that it would take a while for us to move because, I know God is powerful and all knowing, but can he really be everywhere at the sometime and having people move and go about their daily life. If god really is the unmoved mover then won't he need a mover as well.
So you see somethings the Aquinas said might be true but either way the all need to modified so that they can apply more to us.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
St. Augustine and Gothic Architecture (How do THEY relate?)
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Hilter and His Common Fallacies
We already knew that Adolf Hitler was a bad and evil person but his book also helps prove how wrong his ideas and way of thinking were. in Chapter 11 of his book he says a lot of things that are incorrect and can't be supported or proven true. Most of his sayings can be considered to be biased or mostlu opinions. One example can be scene in the third paragraph when he says "Every animal mates only with a member of the same species,"this is false analogy because there is no solid concrete evidence that this is true word for word. Also he is comparing one aspect of the human life to an aspect of the animal's life. This can also be looked as ad hominem because he is attacking a specific group of people and saying that it is wrong to mate with them. another example is when he says "Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level produces a medium between the level of two parents. This means:the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life." What he is saying is that the kids of mixed races will suffer and are against "Nature" this also is a false analogy because again because their is no proof that mix races actually go against nature. He is also saying that one race is better than the other and higher than one. But I don't even think that, that is something that can be proved because we have a lot of people who are mixed races in the world today and we are doing just fine so his sayings are all mostly faulty use of authority and he uses his authority in a bad way to spread the wrong message. These two are only two of the many examples of fallacies that can be found in this book and you can check the book out yourselves to see what I mean and decide if you agree with me.