To understand the process by which human logic attempts to ascend to God, it will be most beneficial to start with a classical argument for God’s existence, which has been presented by many thinkers over time, known as the ontological argument. This argument is found in various forms, some of which are stronger and weaker than others, but for our purposes let us consider the argument more or less as it is framed by Anselm in the Proslogion:

(1): That-than-which-none-greater-c an-be-conceived (Hereafter TTWNGCBC) is a being which cannot be thought to lack any conceivable perfection.

(2): Being is a conceivable perfection

(3): If we imagine TTWNGCBC as non-existent, then we are imagining that TTWNGCBC is lacking a conceivable perfection.

(4): But this is absurd by (1) and (2), therefore if we think of TTWNGCBC, we must think that it is an existing being.

Notice that Anselm uses a “reductio ad absurdum” argument in his formulation. The argument might be more simply (though less precisely) stated as: God has every perfection; existence is a perfection; therefore God exists. It’s worth noting that Anselm figures proving the existence of TTWNGCBC is sufficient to prove the Christian God, although TTWNGCBC is a rather weak being compared to later philosophical formulations of God by Christians (especially Thomas Aquinas’ “ipsum esse subsitens”).

Of course, the fundamental assumption which is made by Anselm’s argument is that TTWNGCBC can be thought of. To address the implications of this argument, it must be asked: Can the human mind conceive TTWNGCBC? This is an epistemological question with, as we can see, important metaphysical implications.

With regard to epistemology, reason is a discursive process by which the human subject comes to know himself and the world around him. More precisely, it is a process by which man relates himself to the world around him, abstracting from his sense data to know the intelligible part of being (called “form” in an Aristotelean/Thomist metaphysics). Yet the world in which man finds himself is full of imperfection, finitude, mutability, and temporality. If man’s reason abstracts from his senses of this imperfect world, then how could he know God, whom he has called perfect, infinite, immutable, eternal (atemporal), etc.? If he can know God’s infinitude, perfection, etc., it is only by exception or negation in relation to those things in the world.

At this point it will be beneficial to consider the difference between

Philip Larkin’s “Ambulances” exemplifies the hollowness of life in the face of death.The poet’s ease and conversational tone is juxtaposed with the eeriness of reality. Calvin Bedient asserts:”Larkin is unillusioned with a metaphysical zero in his bones. “Ambulances” highlights the pragmatics of life and contrasts it with the inevitability of death.

The symbol of the ambulance at once emblematizes death. They are like closed confessionals’. Sitting in the ambulance, one is like an open book outpouring all the woes of life mentally and is resigned to fate. In both the ambulance and the confessional, the last resort is submitting oneself to God. When apprehended as a symbol of death, it is indeed closed’ as Death possesses no openings. The silence’ of death is juxtaposed against the loud noons of the cities.’ The noon is glaring and so are the glances that the ambulance receives. However, it does not return any of these stares as it is totally apathetic to the practicalities of life.

The phrase “Light glossy grey” though it refers to the colours of the ambulance,they may also allude to the various stages in life. The Light, the infant stage; the Glossy, the prime of youth; and the grey, the aged individual. It reiterates how individuals in all walks of life are vulnerable to the universal phenomenon, and :”All streets in time are visited”. The ambulance may come to rest on any kerb, any person may be the victim regardless of criteria. It may be children strewn on steps or road, or ladies coming from shops amongst the smells of dinner. People consume dinner’ or food as a basic prerequisite to life; here the smell of it lingers as Death holds the centrestage. The bodies are carried away only to be stowed’ away like the blankets. The colour red’ signifying blood and the white’ face add to the gloomy atmosphere of the poem.

The solving emptiness’ stresses the existential dilemma of man. His doings and achievements are reduced to nihilism in the confrontation with death. People reaffirm the truth for a second as it dawns on them with its omnipotent force.”So permanent and blank and true.”It is a persistent reality,as much as it is blank and hollowly secretive. As the doors of the ambulance unfasten, people exclaim in sympathy. However, this sympathy is mote than empathy; it is pointed at themselves, who may be the next victims.

In the fourth stanza, the poet shifts the scene to the interior of the ambulance. The patient senses the sudden “shut of loss’, the fear that death is around the corner. One wonders when Death is portrayed as a universal phenomenon; he projects the victims of death in this poem predominantly as women. Perhaps his misogynistic views attribute to this aspect. The last defining moment of the poem, also has the woman apprehending the unavoidable fear. Perhaps, is the poet suggesting that fear is essentially feminine? She is cut off from familial ties that are the dearest to her, and all ideas of fashion pale into insignificance here. Individual tastes and differences no longer matter. The poet is slightly satiric here. In his “Whitsun Weddings” also, he projects women as “parodies of fashion”. The victim is far from the exchange of love’, distanced from the give and take of love. The trafic parts’ are side-stepped: all the directions and guidances received in life have no significance on the threshold of Death.

“And dulls to distance all we are.”

On an encounter with Ambulances, we are left with a sense of desolation and are isolated as Death is. All sense of materialism is reduced to naught.

A poetry analysis of Sonnet 43,by Elizabeth Barrett Browning will always end up talking about love for this one of the most famous and loved romantic poems in the world and is written as a sonnet. A sonnet usually has fourteen lines and an iambic pentameter rhyme. Sonnets are nearly always written about the theme of love, almost like a love song. This sonnet,like many others, shows how the poet, in this case Elizabeth Barrett Browning, must be disciplined in confining her thoughts to a particular structure.

The first eight lines of this Petrarchan sonnet,the octave,present the theme of love and the degree of the depth of love felt by Elizabeth for her husband. Here she compares her deep feelings to religious,spiritual and even political aspirations:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

The last six lines compare the feelings she has at the moment to those emotions of love she experienced as a child. Concluding the poem, she hopes that she will go on to love her husband even more in the future if God permits. If not, then there is always Heaven!

I love with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

At the beginning of the poem Elizabeth Barrett Browning discusses her own personal experience of love in terms of its intensity. She loves Robert Browning of her own free will in a very pure way expecting nothing more of it than the joy of love itself, comparing it to suffering – perhaps similar to that of Christ on the cross. She is reminded of the childlike love she had for Christian saints in her girlhood – although she does describe these as ‘griefs.’ Passion she says, is much better put to use in love than grief.

She uses repetition to reinforce the strength of her love (I love thee) and for its alliterative powers (th)

The poet aligns her love with life itself and its laughters and sorrows and breathing and concludes on a metaphysical note, believing their love as a couple will cross through the grave to the other side – to heaven.

Note:- my page references come from the first print run of the UK HarperCollins paperback.

What follows is part analysis, part philosophical/theological discussion based on the book Looking for Alaska by John Green. These are the thoughts that have been running through my head since I read the book – blame my brain for the incoherency. He has produced one of those rare books that manage to be deep and moving without being pretentious or preachy (unlike for example The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom). It is important to note that what follows is my interpretation about the book and its themes.

The final words of dying poet Franois Rabelais were I go to seek a Great Perhaps’. Miles decides to search for the Great Perhaps’, to seek “real friends and a more-than-minor life” (p.260), at Culver Creek boarding school. He doesn’t want to wait till death before his life begins. So the intial question is: what is the Great Perhaps’?

Taken literally the search for the Great Perhaps’ is of course a paradoxical one; if one knew exactly what it was then it would not be a Perhaps’, but rather a Definite’. Alaska is something of a personification of this. Alaska and her death are the biggest unknowns of all. Her personality is unpredictable, stemming from the part she played in her mother’s death (if she called 911 would it have made a difference anyway?). Miles and the Colonel will never solve the mystery of Alaska’s death (was it suicide?) because they can never know for sure what Alaska was thinking the moments before her death.

Alaska’s biggest question was “How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” (p.189). This is the question Miles must answer to move on. So what exactly is the labyrinth? After her mother’s death Alaska “collapsed into the enigma of herself” (p.260). The labyrinth that Alaska is stuck in is therefore her own construction. It is a metaphysical maze of her own fears, her own regrets – ‘the enigma of herself’. Similarly Miles’ labyrinth is the part he may or may not have played in Alaska’s death. Alaska escapes her labyrinth through her death whereas Miles escapes his labyrinth through enlightenment.

It is possible that in the moment before her death Alaska saw a way out and took it. We know that Alaska was self-destructive. Alaska’s way through the labyrinth of suffering’ was to drink and smoke herself to death: “Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die” (p.57). According to Zen however everything that comes together

Smells can evoke memories because of experience. At the same time, smells are very much a part of our brain’s “natural” instinct. These two, instinct and experience, when taken together can explain how smells evoke memories.

Every human action is either dictated by instinct or by experience. The senses, therefore, play a vital role in reconciling those two methods. First, the senses themselves are naturally connected to the brain: they communicate in such a way that is spontaneous; we do not need to tell our brain to think about the smell. Our brains will immediately tell us, this is sweet-smelling or this smells awful. On the other hand, our senses are very much regulated, or rather affected, by our experiences: we can take, for example, our sense of touch and its relation to temperature (specifically, heat). We know not to touch something that looks hot because we have probably done it before.

There is some debate as to whether or not experience plays a large or small role in determining how our senses work. In that same example of touch and temperature, we can also say that we know not to touch something that looks hot because it simply looks undesirable to touch. That thought is not dictated by experience. So, what does the evocation of memories through smell have to do with instinct or experience?

Experience, unlike instinct, is very familiar. We remember what happens to us, and that may be part of instinct, but what matters is that, whether the event is good or bad, they remain tucked away in our minds. This is also related to learning. However, smells evoking memories is a difficult matter to assess because each person’s mind categorizes and remembers a smell differently from the next person. So, a person may love the smell of gingerbread because he remembers his grandmother through that smell, but another person may hate gingerbread because of a traumatic experience.

Memories are, therefore, largely affected by the senses. It has been said that man exerts passions (desires) towards his environment and his environment exerts experiences back. This constant interplay of man and his environment ultimately create a mind that is rather dependent on the outside world. Thus, the mind, because of constant stimulation from the outside, creates this inward experiences and stores them away in the form of memories. Smell, unlike touch and taste but very much like sound, is unseen. This invisibility gives it a metaphysical character. However, it’s easier to note that smell is often associated with two extremes (whether the initial whiff of that smell was a good experience or bad experience) and this is how they are translated into memory.

On a physical level, we live because we were born. On a physical level, we will all die at some time. On a metaphysical or spiritual level, we live because we were given life. For all beings and consciousnesses, in every form and every dimension, life is not a choice.

So there are two questions. Why do we live as physical beings? Why do we live as spiritual beings? It is very likely that the answer to those two questions is the same.

From a spiritual or religious point of view, the question is: Why did God or the divine create us? If we know what purpose God had in mind, we will know why we exist. If we know God’s purpose, we will be able to divine our own purpose for being, for living.

Many see God as a being who is complete in himself/herself/itself. Why would such a being need to create other beings? For what purpose did the creator create? My own guess, informed by the wisdom of past teachers, is that God created life in order to experience companionship. God created living beings in order to love and relate to beings outside of itself.

You and I can create fantasy experiences and relate to characters within our fantasy. It is never as satisfying as relating to other human beings who can respond to us in ways that will surprise us, something our fantasy characters cannot do.

I believe that God needed that same kind of experience. God needed to create beings and place them outside of itself in order to relate to them as something other than itself. This is also why we were given free will. If we were just puppets of God, there would be no real relationship. A true relationship can exist only when each individual can choose to relate or not relate.

In order for God to relate to us, we had to have the ability to say “No” to God, to reject God’s love and companionship. On another level, of course, we cannot really separate ourselves from God because the creation and the creator are ultimately one.

Furthermore, we live in order for God to continue to learn, grow, experience, and create. The divine is an unfinished God. God is not perfected but continues to grow, change, experience and create. The creation, including physical beings, is the agent of God’s continued learning and experiencing. God learns through us.

So the goal of both physical and non-physical beings is really the same as God’s goals for itself. We are alive, physical and non-physical, so that we might love, learn, experience, create, and grow. We are here to discover who we really are. We are here to learn that we are cells in the body of God. We are here to open ourselves to the wonders of the fullness of being.

We are enlightened beings trying to recall our initial state of grace. Our great religious leaders come to remind us of who we are, to act as models for our own great unfolding.

Just as I believe that God’s unfolding is never-ending, so I believe that our own unfolding has no end. Long after we are no longer physical, we will continue to explore and expand into greater and greater versions of our potential selves. We live in order to explore life. What we will find, over eons of exploration, is more life, more love, and more divinity.

Plato (428/427 BCE-348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (384 BCE-322 BCE) were Greek philosophers who dwelled into the realms of politics and even though Aristotle was a student of Plato, his view on politics are strikingly different from those of Plato’s. They both belonged to the Greek-City state (poleis) hence their works need to be reflected on in the context of that. The social structure was such that keeping slaves was deemed natural and women were not given the same level of citizenship as men; men were the leader of the households and they gathered at the agora to discuss matters of interest. Plato and Aristotle differ in their philosophy; Plato’s works are more of a metaphysical nature whereas Aristotle tends to be more analytical. Let’s look into their political philosophy individually now.

In The Republic, Plato seeks to explain the notion of justice. For Plato the word of forms is different from the susceptible world of sights and sounds. Forms are objects of knowledge, which are eternal and unchanging. Justice as an ideal, as a concept, is the same in the case of a state or an individual, as the state is bigger than an individual it will be easy for us to look at justice in the context of a state. The allegory of the cave, is a concept which is found much later in the Republic, it holds that people who have lived their entire lives in a cave held to chains and can only look at shadows well think they are real until one of them gets free and is able to look at the true form; look at the sunlight outside the cave. After he has been exposed to the true form it is his job to go back to the cave and enlighten his fellow members. This is exactly the job of a philosopher in a society, as he is the one who has the ability to know true wisdom as he loves the entire thing rather than just a part of it. Hence, Plato comes to the conclusion that philosophers should be kings. Now we shall see how he actually arrives at this conclusion. In a society every person has a specific role to play and he should specialize in that particular field. In the construction of the state the role of the guardians is paramount, it is out of the guardians that a ruler shall be picked and the rest of them will be the auxiliaries, who act as soldiers. The role of the guardian is so important because they will be responsible for protecting the city-state. Great efforts should be put in to make sure the guardians do not go astray as that would lead to the destruction of the city-state,

A wise man once told me there are two things one never brings up during polite dinner conversation: politics and religion. As a liberal living in a very conservative state, I often have to bite my tongue to keep from arguing in public, a futile act I try to avoid because at least one party inevitably ends up offended. At times of weakness, I can easily be baited into a political discussion and, with the right antagonist, even come away having enjoyed myself. Religion, on the other hand, leads to conversations rich with misery, a mine field waiting for a misstep.

Being good and being religious do not necessarily go hand in hand as many people believe. People can be good without being religious, and, conversely, people can be religious without being good. Some of the vilest events in history have been committed by religious people (See: the majority of wars throughout time, The Inquisition, The Crusades, The Holocaust, Priests and child molestation, 9/11, et al.)

Although I’m not ashamed of my views on religion, I do have the tendency to keep them to myself because I know how people will react. Several times I’ve had people say to me, “But you seem so nice!” when I tell them I’m agnostic. My response is always, “What’s that supposed to mean?” It implies that one cannot be nice without also being religious. It is also vaguely insulting when people end these reluctant discussions by letting me know they’ll be praying for me. They wouldn’t like it if I responded, “Thanks, and I’ll be hoping you see the error of your ways, as well!” So instead of being snide, I choose to be kind and keep the last jab to myself.

For one thing, agnostic is not atheist, although it’s often very difficult for people to understand the difference. The Greek word for “not knowing,” agnostic means I don’t believe there is proof that God exists, but that I also don’t believe there is proof that God does not exist. Confused? Metaphysically speaking, one could say I’m sitting on the fence, although that’s not how it feels to me.

I’m a good person because I treat others the way I would want to be treated, purely for the reason that I want to and not because a divine book or holy man reminds me I should so I can get into heaven. I believe the Bible was never meant to be taken literally and was always intended as a sort of moral guidebook to remind people, among other things, “Hey, don’t kill or lie or steal.” Because when all is said and done, the world would be

Related Articles

• cryptogon.com » Britain: Surveillance System Monitors Conversations
• Surveillance that Records Conversations in Prisons … and in Public …
• just another day: Recycling Conversations
• Classical Conversations Foundations Curriculum 3rd edi.
• Conversations From Land's Edge: Land's Edge Contest Winner- Mike …

• Old Retired Petty Officer: News Item from Wichita
• Get Florida Info » Kitchen Inquisition: Chef Norman Van Aken
• twitter myspace facebook » Blog Archive » The Early Church …
• Religion (or lack thereof) and Autism/Asperger's? – General Autism …
• Ouch: Ancient Torture Devices – Road Tickle

• Jab we met movie – Aasera Iris's blog
• Pehla sex with samne wali ladki se | FUN81.COM
• 35 saal ki mausi ki chudai | FUN81.COM
• Mami ko jamkar choda | FUN81.COM
• MAKAN MALIK KI BETI KO CHODA | FUN81.COM

Proof of man’s existence seems to have lagged after Descartes claimed, “I think, therefore I am.” This statement, though bold and often interpreted in numerous ways, is as simple as any explanation can get. But, there appears to be some inconsistency in this statement. If, then, this infamous quote does not provide any consolation for our quest of proof, what does?

Many thinkers and philosophers have sought to ask themselves what separates man from other beasts, but none have ventured far enough to give very definitive answers to knowing that we exist. Some explain their “answers” in terms of dimensions, some in terms of comparison, and yet others with simple answers such as, “Because I’m here, right?” But to others, those responses are just not enough.

If we do not simply exist because we say we do, and if we do not exist because we simply think, then what proof is there that we do exist at all? There are two answers to this question: the easy one and the hard one.

Let’s start with the easy one. I can definitely say that you, I, and everything around us exist because of my senses. I can touch you, I can see you, I can smell you, I can hear you, and I might be able to taste you. These, when compared to something that does not exist (such as an invisible object with no proof of existence, whatever that may be), exist because of these physical properties. And, I can say that theories and thoughts and ideas exist, because I can think of them and they apply to something that I know about. Let’s take, for instance, love. The term itself has no physical existence, yet it does exist in some form of action or thought or feeling. It exists because we gave “a feeling” the name of love. These examples are examples of the easy answer because they do not involve any “plus”-philosophical inquiry. We’re not asking, “But if love exists because we gave a certain feeling a name, does that mean something doesn’t exist because it doesn’t have a name? Who are we to ‘create’ things, i.e. making them exist, by giving them names?”

The difficult answer, of course, lies in the fact that when people ask this philosophical question, there are too many answers, and some of them are more satisfying than others. When Descartes remarked, “I think, therefore I am,” he made some complicated relationship to himself and God; it is this spiritual and metaphysical connection that does not translate into modern society’s conception of proof of our existence. But, I think the best way to start answering this question, in the difficult manner of course, is to begin looking at the way we act and think. And, if we apply the emergence of theories to our own existence, we can see a few similarities that will help pinpoint a satisfying answer.

Personal identity is probably the most important psychological, spiritual, and philosophical concept in any individual’s life. Our image of the self, our image of others, and our image of the world all lead to both our experience of the world and our behavior within it.

Nevertheless, our understanding of personal identity, or the personality, is more controversial today than ever. Every discipline will argue for a definition of personal identity within its own framework.

Biologists give primacy to biological explanations for behavior. They come down firmly on the “nature’ side of the “nature/nurture” controversy. Our genes largely govern personal identity. Anthropologists consider biology but also look at our history, our evolution. Anthropologists take into account the behavior of our nearest relatives, apes and monkeys, in order to shed light on human behavior.

Sociologists and psychologists come down more on the side of “nurture.” Psychology studies the influences on the psyche from birth forward. Our earliest years are considered formative and parental and family influence are a big key. Sociologists recognize the importance of individual experiences but also believe that the environment, both social and physical, plays a very important role in human development.

Finally, we have the religious-spiritual-metaphysic al concepts of personal identity. If you believe in some kind of Supreme Being who is interested in your life, it has an impact on your personal identity. It also has an impact on the kind of identity you aspire to. A religious or spiritual person believes that they are capable of improving themselves and they have certain ideals, fostered by their spiritual leaders, which they try to fulfill.

In certain religions, as well as metaphysical traditions, things like reincarnation come into play when forming a sense of personal identity. The current individual is influenced by actions and experiences in past lives. This takes personal identity beyond the current life nature-nurture framework and complicates personality even further.

Whatever leanings you may have personally, I think it is safe to say that nearly all of these frameworks may contribute, to a greater or lesser degree, to your personal identity. We are born in a certain society in a certain country. We are of a certain race, sex, and possibly religion. We are born into a socioeconomic class. We have parents (or a parent) and possibly siblings. We may have an extended family.

All