Instructions
1. Be sure to place your entire FINAL on your website and when you
are finished send a link of your test to your teacher directly at neuralsurfer@yahoo.com (don't send
it to any other email address, except that)
2. Make sure that it is YOUR OWN work and that if you use other
authors please be sure to quote and/or cite the material appropriately. Plagiarism will not be
tolerated and you will receive an "F" automatically for the examination.
3. The test is due NO LATER than April 19th at midnite.
3a. Each answer should be at least three paragraphs long, if
possible.
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4. What is your real name? Stefanie Dimayuga
5. What is your "user" name? Maverick
6. What is your email address that you use for this class? Supergurl7788@yahoo.com
7. Name and address for your website. http://mavericksphiloblogs.blogspot.com/
8. Have you done all the reading for the entire class? yes
9. Have you watched each of the films that were required? yes
10. What was your midterm grade? Or, if you revised it, your revised c+
midterm grade? Provide a LINK to your midterm. http://mavericksphiloblogs.blogspot.com/2008/07/midterm.html
11. Please place here all of the postings you have done for this
class (you can copy and paste them. ALL SIX WEEKS OF POSTINGS.)
Beyond Belief
They try to correlate science and religion here instead this time is medical science. Like the example that they showed with the lady and the cervical cancer test. The idea that they’re trying to give is that the power of God comes into play because good people are blesses with good things and bad people don’t deserve it. Now in a way this is true, bad people should be punished for the bad that they’ve done in order to teach them a lesson. Although just because bad things happened to people don’t that it is always because they are bad. Bad things happen to everyone it’s just a part of God’s test and trials. So this does not only take effect into medical situations, it takes effect in anything where there would e trials to face.
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Beyond Belief
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philosophy in less than 5 min part 2
The first video was pretty amusing showing the old 1970’s footages of beatniks at the java place dancing just having a good time, because it was “THE” place to be. The video was a little wacky and trippy but it was cool watching it. I like the quote in the beginning of the film by Soren Kierkegaard when he said that “do it or do not you’ll regret both.” Yes it’s a pretty sad and twisted catch 22 kind of idea but it totally makes sense. I mean if you want to do something and do it but it turns out it was a mistake, you’ll regret it. If you don’t do it then you’ll ponder your whole life wondering “what if.” The second video is about Evolution vs fundamentalism. It is basically talking about how fundamentalism is a disease against Evolution/science. I don’t agree with this because fundamentalism is not teaching you to forget about Scientific facts its just teaching the religious part behind the science. This is talking about how truth lies and that non sense actually makes sense since the world is nothing but chaos anyway. This also works for replicating strategies. Voltaire said we basically have to believe in a God whether he’s real or not. After all any meaning is better than no meaning, because we cannot live without purpose. According Darwin there is no such thing as survival of the fittest but survival of the sufficient. This basically talks about how ordinary things in our life actually “edit” the way we are. But this is a course of nature in order to make things sufficient to each other, like a form of balance. The last video was about the importance of consciousness because this goes under self reflective awareness. Consciousness is to be aware and you’re aware by using your eyes to see what to be aware of.
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Fallacies
You don’t really hear the term fallacy used in everyday speech very often, probably only if you are taking an English course but in actuality there are fallacies all around us. Logical fallacies come about quite frequently for instance if you have a friend that went to a party and at that party you know there is someone you don’t like attending, yet you find out that your friend was hanging out and spending time with that person you don’t like. You become very upset at your friend. In his or her defense your friend says something like “oh well they were already there” “I didn’t know they were going to be at that party” “they talked to me instead, I didn’t want to be rude.” Basically you friend will make up all sorts of excuses to cover up for the fact that they know they were caught already. Even though they know their excuse is totally BS they say it anyway because there’s no evidential way of proven them wrong
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Richard Dawkins Evolution
About evolution they talk about what is the point of evolution and that it absolutely does not save the species. This is a rather strange statement because I think otherwise. The species evolves and it needs to evolve for a reason. The reason it needs to evolve is because the species needs to develop and progress in order to expand themselves. This is to better themselves as well, so they could have better education and better living conditions. This contributes to saving a species because if a species did not develop they would not go anywhere, and they would even deteriorate and regress. Along with evolution come something called influence. They say that something with a lot of influence on society is homosexuality. I mean at first it was not accepted by people but as time went on it became more and more accepted, and more people were “coming out.” Now they pass the gay marriage law. They believe that there is a thing as a gay gene which is what makes people gay. Some people think homosexuality is mainly influence like following trends. I believe it is influence in the sense that people are freer with exposing themselves to the world because it’s the way of the norm now. Homosexuality I suppose you can say is like a form of mutation of the brain because it is a different way of thinking other that what is natural (man and woman). Not that I’m against it or anything but I just agree with the fact that it a sort of a mutation just for the fact it is unnatural.
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Intelligent Design
Upon reading just the first paragraph, it made me realize just how much DNA is one of the most primary fibers of our existence. When we wake up every day and go about our daily business we see everything as a whole. We see each other as a whole entire piece of mass. Yet why are we who we are? What make us who we are? We forget that we are composed of little particles the makeup what we are and these particles are called our DNA. This is why if you have good chromosomes or genes in your family the chances are you will get them too. Intelligent design is “an anti-evolution belief asserting that naturalistic explanations of some biological entities are not possible and such entities can only be explained by intelligent causes.” This means that the idea of intelligent design makes room for the idea of God as well as scientific. So from my understanding, they are letting Religion and science coexist. Although they are saying that This ID is a whole hoax, because it was made up by a bunch of Christian apologist. Again its another debate about science and religion. The things religious people are not trying to contradict religion and say it’s not real they’re just trying to say that there is something even grander out there that supports religion.
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James Watson
In this lecture James Watson discusses the structure of DNA and how it functions with the brain. He wrote the Book Double Helix. I found it interesting when he talked about how they found the structure f DNA (Double Helix.) He discovered that DNA had a three dimensional structure. This made him win the Nobel peace prize. I liked the way he spoke, Watson seemed to be a silly friendly old man but then again it is kind of like don’t underestimate his outside exterior because this guy certainly knows his stuff. He was one of those “Speak softly but carry a big stick” type of person (actually more of carry a big brain.) Naturally he says that in order to uncover the causes of brain damage and other types of mental disorders is in our genes. This makes me think of how things are hereditary, (good or bad). Down from hair color, skin tone, height etc. unfortunately for me I got the genetic garbage as far as eye sight is concerned, mean everyone in my family has horrible eye sight I knew one way or another I was doomed…
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beyond belief session 9
In this session the idea of morality was focused on. They mentioned that you don’t need a religion to maintain one’s morality. I mean I can see where he is coming from when he says this because even if a person has no religious back ground that he or she may follow, does not necessarily make them a bad person. What if they were talk right from wrong, and to have a guilty conscience yet they do not answer to a God. In Some scenarios this is true but why do they believe that people with religions have even more morals. Because not only were we taught right from wrong, having a guilty conscience, but also we have a God that we fear. We have the fear that he is watching and will judge us according to our acts of kindness. But then again some might say that, those are not real morals, you’re just doing the right thing because you’re afraid to go to hell. In some situations people are capable of doing this but as long as the idea isn’t abused. I believe that as long as someone has a conscience present that should keep them in track.
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Thursday, July 31, 2008
Beyond Belief session 8
I think that it’s pretty “Ignorant” to say that the “perimeter of Ignorance” is religion. How is it the perimeter of ignorance? Just because it teaches you right from wrong? People are always thinking that religion limits your mind from expanding the way it should where in fact it does not. It prevents you from think of evil or bad things because of the fear of God, and that you are being judge about everything you do but, how does it make a person ignorant? When in any religious teaching did it say that we are not supposed to explore the universe, or learn mathematics, or evolve into a more superior species. Religion promotes education as a matter of fact because one of the rules is to make an honest day’s living, by trying you best to work hard, and sloth (laziness ) is considered a sin. Why is it a sin? Because laziness will prevent you from wanting to achieve anything that you’ll let you’re self and perfect opportunities waste away right in front of you where in fact you cold jump right no the multiple opportunities as hand. But if you are too lazy to pursue an goals, what is the point honestly? Laziness equals ignorance, religion.
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Philosophy in less than 5 min continue
Okay the whole Homosexual thing was about having something of a risqué topic being eventually accepted by society. Back in the day, homosexuality was not accepted unlike the way it is now just like with Galileo and his beliefs, the church did not accept it and when was to be sentenced if he did not go back on his word but now his ideas are accepted. I noticed that the video was trying to really show distinct HOMOSEXUALITY because even though they were showing homosexuality it wasn’t just any type of guys, they showed really muscular, that you would think would represent masculinity but they were talking about homosexuality. They showed this in order to make it clear that it was men for men. The Faqir Chand video was about the power of Gurus and even though what they preach may not be true they have enough followers to believe that make it look believable, it is mostly due to the dedication to spirituality.
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philosophy in 5 minutes
All these videos were pretty interesting. Okay the first video abut Electric surfing was alright. I mean I get the basic gist of it but I kind of lost what the connection was. It was focused on positively charges protons and electrons and how opposites attract as well. I can understand the whole opposites attract thing I mean not just the plain physical concepts but with people as well sometimes people get attracted to their opposites because they like everything they’re not, it’s more interesting and they could learn something new from each other. The crop circles were pretty crazy, I agree that crop circles are made by some random dudes that were bored one day and decided to mess with naive individuals. Not that I doubt the idea of extra terrestrial life forms, but crop circles in particular I think are farce. Yes its crazy like whats was mentioned about how the crop circles are so perfectly geometrically shaped but I don’t think it’s impossible to create. If me and a few people wanted to create crop circles I’d say it’d be pretty accomplishable. It would be like all those nice yard decorations people have in their backyards or hotels, or like at the Disneyland resort where they have shapes of figures in the bushes like of Mickey. Brain Burn was about consciousness. Consciousness is essential to the mind because its helps us operate orderly and correctly just like having rationality and critical thinking.
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Nietzsche
Okay first of I like the whole free spirited concept as much as the next person. You’re not controlled, or programmed like a machine to do what is told you speak and feel your own mind. Great. But what really is the meaning of free spirited? Of course you’d like to think of it as having a positive connotation because what person would not like the freedom to do what they want and think? Once again I disagree with the misconception of religion. In part 3 they mention “Christianity; it is so much closer to the faith of Pascal, which resembles in a gruesome manner a continual suicide of reason—a tough, long-lived, wormlike reason that cannot be killed all at once and with a single stroke. From the start, the Christian faith is a sacrifice: a sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of the spirit; at the same time, enslavement and self-mockery, self-mutilation.” I really don’t like how people are always trying to connote religion as something so horrible. This excerpt mainly talks about being free spirited, and that religion is supposedly the down fall of all things that are free spirited because it is something that controls you. The truth is that religion does not control you it just teaches you right from wrong. It’s as simple as that. I don’t understand why a lot of people do not understand this and instead they just keep thinking that it is something negative and created by man in order to “cushion” people’s way of thinking of the bad aspects of life. What is wrong with being taught right from wrong and having a guilty conscience if someone does wrong? If someone is too free spirited perhaps nothing would prevent them from doing what they want (good or bad.) If you have no conscience telling you right from wrong then what will prevent you from performing bad acts? If there was no law against killing people and you decided to kill whoever you did not like, wouldn’t that lead to chaos?
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008
John Polkinghorne
I found this guy John Polkinghorne very interesting because he was able to let the idea of Religion and science co exist with each other. In most scenarios, people are usually one sided, it’s either all about science or all about religion. He believes that basically there are so many unexplained things about the world that there is no other rational explanation for them except the idea of there being a higher power existing.
He thinks that the trials and tribulations that we encounter here on earth are God’s doing, but he puts them there for certain reasons. These are reason’s we will never really know but we can try our best to read into and interpret them. I agree with the fact that the unexplained things about the universe merit to God because why and how else would things be the way they are? Was everything an accident or something? Even the things that supposedly make sence…like space and time for example, was it all just human ingenuity, or was it that we just unlocked the doors to something that there really has always had an explanation behind it anway? The laws of gravity, waltz of the planets, functioning of the human organs? Are these things just so? Or did something else make things this way?
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Juergensmeyer
This Juergensmeyer lecture made me think about the idea of terrorism all together. What really is the definition of a terrorist? According to Webster it means: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. From my understanding of this, a terrorist is in the eye of the beholder. I mean in our eyes, the Muslim terrorist are seen as the “bad guys” because they are the once who caused the 911 incident first. Although in the eyes of the Muslims all they were doing is following what their supposed God to them to do. Yes even though it was an absolutely horrible thing they did in a sick way you can try to understand them. I mean if it was your religion wouldn’t you have listen to what the teachings were. Especially if you were born into the religion and all the beliefs and customs were what you were raised with and taught.
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Monday, July 28, 2008
Beyond Belief Session 7
The topic of “outside conscious awareness” seemed to arise in this session. Banajai said “mind bugs” when people exhibit the bias and beliefs that they have. I suppose it’s like when a person is being debated about something he or she believes in like religion and they back it up of course because they feel obligated too because they believe in it. I can understand why many people do no believe in the idea of religion, mainly because it is not scientific and more of word of mouth and it’s like what if everyone is believing in this “greater power blindly.”
The speakers give the idea that you don’t need God or a religion to maintain ethics in one’s life, that ethics can be basically be controlled by us individually by will power. I don’t agree with this, now I’m not saying that all people without religions are evil, but I believe that people who believe in at least SOMETHING like agnostics have some sort of direction in their lives. We live the best lives we can so that we can be accepted by God/ higher power after death. That’s why we are called “God Fearing people.” When we are born and raised we are told that God has a plan for each and every one of us, alongside to that he has some rules for us to follow in order to put obstacles in our way for the challenge to see how strong we really are. Now if you don’t believe in anything ,and are not fearing of anything then what is the point of having ethics, morality, and just being plain courteous? If there is no one to tell you what’s right from wrong then would you really be living to the best of your abilities? I don’t think so.
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Saturday, July 26, 2008
Beyond Belief
It opened up with Susan Neiman discussing the philosophical side of religion, and basically not to underestimate it because we still need religion for ethics. Without and Ethics or morals what is the point of living? Do we just go about our daily business in lives aimlessly without any purpose, or should be fearing of a God, because we know there is a higher power watching us and keeping track of all the good and bad things we do in order to judged us as people and come the hour of our death we are officially judged and that judgment will be a determination of whether we go to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory.
In a way I understand why people believe that Religion is there in order to be therapeutic and that it gives us a sense of safety and comfort in our lives. Because it teaches us the moralities of life but I still personally eel that there is more to religion than just this. People who think that religion is just something that was invented to keep people in track and “good” are misinformed and are not seeing the whole picture. Okay I’m not going to go all into detail about my religious back ground but once again I will say I am defending religion again because I myself am a catholic, but regardless if I am catholic or not I still believe that there is a higher power out there.
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Sathya Sai B
Personally If I were to see Sai Bab Performing this trick in front of me I would not have made a huge deal of it. I mean I’ve seen stupid trick like this before in like magic shows. Yes I agree that it is kind of sad to see the expression on the kids faces, you know they are naïve and easy to convince but I think its even sadder with the adults because in general they are supposed to be the stronger willed and stronger minded people. Once again it is showing the power of religious icons and how it influences people.
In my eyes he doesn’t appear as someone convincing but perhaps in the eyes of these other people he does, and like we mentioned before sometimes when you want to believe in something so bad you’ll look past any flaws that you can just to see the good side. Kind of like when you are so in love with someone even though they do the stupidest crap you look past it because you love the person so much.
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Eckankar:
Eckankar was disproved by David because Twitchell plagiarized so many other books in order to fit his own religion. Its funny how they talk about David Lane’s personal description. They call him a “surfer dude” and describe him as somewhat of a Pretty boy figure which and this kind of is like giving the message that his sources may not be that reliable because he’s just some surfer dude but then the irony of it all is that he does know his stuff and he is in fact a genuine myth buster, a man looking for the truth in everything he finds. It goes to show how watchful we must be of our sources these days AND how Gullible people can truly be. People just want so badly for some of these things to be true like palm readings, horoscopes etc that they block out any logical thinking that should come into play
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Thursday, July 24, 2008
Edgar Cayce and the Skeptic
Once more the topic of skepticism arises, Edgar Cayce and Mr. Johnson talk about the ideas of open-mindedness like critical thinking is very much needed in order to get through the day. Even though Edgar Cayce seemed to be kind of like and “adored figure” his psychic practices and abilities were disproved. What K Paul Johnson believed was that Cayce’s psychic abilities were actually caused by the paranormal which is scientifically supported. Its really interesting how this guy still had many followers despite the flaws in his psychic abilities. People followed him mainly for his sincerity, it probably did not matter whether or not the information was valid or not, just the fact that he seemed very dedicated t what his beliefs were was convincing enough. Which explains why many of these psychic are not rich, they are kind of like priest, don’t intend to be right because they’re dedicated to something else.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Intro to critical thinking
Like what was mentioned, critical thinking is a very important aspect of life especially in modern day society. We need to critically think in order to survive in the world because if we did not, we’d fall victim into making numerous mistakes. Unfortunately we people do fall victim to it which is why “shit happens” quite frequently because people are not thinking half the time. Yet it is quite ironic like Donald Norman mentioned "It is strange that we expect students to learn, yet seldom teach them anything about learning." It’s true because teachers basically just teach very VERY basic fundamental things rather than essential knowledge that could actually help people become strong individuals. Now don’t get me wrong, of course regular book smarts will make you a stronger individual but do you really honestly know why and how it applies to life? Sure you can solve a derivative but do you know why you need to know how? You could have all the book smarts in the world but if you have no common sense then what does it matter? Teachers have a set program of what exactly to teach the students, they teach them WHAT to think rather than HOW to think. If teachers are ONLY teaching students what to think then knowledge would not expand and we would be limited to the information we know because that would be the only thing we were trained to know.
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Monday, July 21, 2008
"Why I am not a Christian" By Bertrand Russell
“Why I am not a Christian”
This guy could believe what he wants but this is his opinion just like many of the other scientist/researchers that are skeptics about religion. Russell has all these disbeliefs in religion because of the lack or sources, potential contradictory in the stories etc etc. And what is the explanation for this? SCIENCE of course proves everything right? Yes true science proves everything but are there not flaws in science as well? Don’t things contradict each other all the time? If science proved everything we’d have a cure all medicine for everyone by now. Not to mention that science and religion can actually be coexisting with each other. So instead of people trying to find something wrong with either one I think people should actually sit back and think logically for once. Science as well is also not perfect either because lets face it both Science and religion are interpretations made by men meaning there is room for flaws on both sides but I think there is no right or wrong answer with science and religion they are both right!
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Faquir Chand
Understand the basic idea of this video. They are once again disproving religion because according to them we make our own religion. Our religion is a reflection of who we really are. I don’t know if it was just me but I was a little disturbed by the scene when they kept showing photographs o all these religious figures and saying that they weren’t real..It just kind of got to me because it’s like they’re trying to give you the idea again that religion brainwashes you where in fact it seems like to give the idea of disproving religion seems to be brainwashing.
As far as religious aspects are concerned with gurus and such I’m not surprised that Faquir Chand did not know all the answers to everything. I found it kind of interesting how he was willing to admit it as to other people that would keep acting like they did. I mean he is just an ordinary man, no “higher power” or anything. I’m not the least bit surprised he didn’t have all the answers. I understand what he means when he says that we need something to believe in something in order to basically keep our sanity, because if no one believed in anything then what do we have to look forward to? There would be nothing to keep us in line and make us want to better ourselves. What are we living for? There has to be a purpose, explained or unexplained there is definitely a purpose to why we exist.
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Pretext context, text 2
Once again I believe this is all a discussion about comprehension, because it talks about consciousness and in order to be conscious you have to comprehend the situation you’re in. The context would also be our ability to ingest the experiences we have lived through as well and understanding and learning from them. Consciousness does not come from only the brain but from the body as well. The brain needs the body to function and vice versa. The text and context are similar because they complement each other. You need to comprehend the text physically and mentally in order to understand the context. Although understanding the pretext of a brain can actually alter the way the mind functions.
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Pretext, text, context
This was a little confusing for me bust I generally got the gist of it. Pretext like it was mention is the alphabet. It also all goes under to reasoning and rational thinking. Pretext in my opinion is before the story like a prologue of a story and the text is the actual story itself, (rise and falling action) and context is the actual understanding of the story. I could totally be rambling on here but this is all my understanding and a different analogy I can make as to other people’s understanding of this excerpt.
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Sunday, July 20, 2008
Dyson
What I like about Dyson is that he is not down talking religion like many other scientist he is actually mentioning that religion and science cannot always fight with each other because they are actually compatible with one another. I can see why he thinks this way, because after all, is not science mostly theoretical? Meaning that a lot of these ideas are THEORIES.
I know there is a difference between a hypothesis and a theory but never the less they are still forms of assumptions. Having assumptions present create a leeway for some facts to be questionable and not actually plain evidently true. A lot of these deductions are made by mathematical computations, what if they are not all accurate? So in a way religion and science lie on the same plane that they both have their side of the story that is not seen clearly by the public or understood yet
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Beyond Belief
Beyond Belief-
The discussion or shall I say debate between the truth of science and religion has been going on for ages. The opposing sides each find separate facts for their perspective side in order to deliver more supporting evidence. Everyone at the conference was generally in disbelief of the idea of religion and was trying to defend science in return. The reason it is always such a touchy subject to mix religion and science is that science in a way could beat the idea of religion because science could present theories and proof of something existing, where are religion people have to believe without seeing. This is also known as having faith.
People with religious backgrounds are fearful of the idea that “there may not be a God” with the evidence of science which is why they tend to avoid the topic. This is why a lot of non religious people see us religious people as foolish and naïve because we are supposedly believing in something that may or may not exist, which is why they see us to be sort of brain washed and that your “own religion” is entirely up to you not what a “higher power tells you to do. If it doesn’t, then what are we praying for? What are we living for? As a catholic I believe that you can combine religion and science. People talk about the beginning of time and the big bang. Well how did that happen? Do you think we seriously magically appeared here one day without the help of a higher force?
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The Himalayan connection
The Himalayan connection discusses the issues of possibilities of U.F.Os existing. Now just like many other topics people are skeptical about, this is one of them. I understand how convincing the human mind can be or more of how scattered as well. There are so many incidents when someone is in a deep sleep and they truly believed that what they were dreaming was real, because it felt so real. This is why people sometime people cry when they wake up or sometimes people even die in their sleep because they are so scared. Although with U.F.O’s that people claim to witness, are these really hallucinations? Maybe so..but what if they are not? I mean the universe is such a huge place for JUST us humans to live in ALL BY OURSELVES? After all we have only been able to probe around our own solar system barely the entire galaxy let alone other outer reaches of space, so we don’t really know what’s out there. Anything that would have to do with aliens/ U.F.Os would be another theoretical aspect of science.
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A Field Guide to Critical Thinking
This whole excerpt goes under thinking logically, and realistically. After all isn’t a great deal of science about rationality? Lett believes that most of his younger college students are the ones that fall victim into not being able to think logically. This would be due to a lack of maturity, and experience etc which is why he mentioned that all they’ve learned was from high school, and what do you think of when you think high school? Don’t you think something to the degree of s like “typical stupid teenager?” Naivety would definitely lead to this.
Here he talks about several different things referring to critical thinking. There’s Falsifiability, logic, comprehensiveness, honesty, replicability, and lastly sufficiency. All six of these are the basic guidelines to what it takes to be a good critical thinker. Falseifability would let you see that something is truly false especially when it is not conceivable for example flying pigs. Logic is definitely essential because logic would determine the rationality of the situation. It simply lets someone deduce whether something makes sense or not for example and young boy does not turn in his home work from yesterday and the teacher asks him why. The boy says that his dog ate it, although the teacher recalls over hearing the boy talking to a friend of his the other day that he was going to come over his friends house and play video games all day. Coincidentally the boy’s homework is not done (surprise surprise) What could have happened? Obviously the boy was lying about the dog eating his homework. Comprehensiveness, would mean that you have to understand what you’re deducing. Honesty has to come into play because logical thinking would mean realistically which would mean truthfully. Replicability would leave room for the idea that there are possibilities of error present and sufficiency would support that the claim is adequate.
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Should skeptical inquiry be applied to religion?
Once again the topic of Science vs Religion stirs up. For years people have been researching the truth behind religion and science. The idea of skepticism was presented more as form of scientific research, idea, or hypothesis. Yes I know it is more sensible to be skeptical about religion because like people say religion is believing without seeing, and there is still the possibility of “what if I am believing something blindly?” but there are still many things in science that have not been explained.
So in the long run people should still give religion more credit than it’s usually given because even though some things about religion have not be really proven as fact, there are alos things that have not been proven totally false as well. Those shows on like the History Chanel would not feature topics like “The Story of Jesus Christ” if there was absolutely no truth behind it at all. I mean it IS the HISTORY channel.
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The Physics behind four amazing demonstrations
The Physics behind four amazing demonstrations
Wow I would definitely love having a professor like this guy. When he says “get your attention he really means GET YOUR ATTENTION.” Seriously, I have a weak tolerance for looking at these sorts of crazy /painful looking “demonstrations” how much better can it get to show a physics demonstration by actually acting it out yourself. I mean just looking at the little pictures on the right makes me cringe, but since he knew exactly what he was doing then by all means more power to him haha. Everything that was demonstrated really reminded me of something you see on Ripley’s believe it or not or Guinness book of world records.
The walking on broken glass is a simple act of demonstrating weight distribution. Obviously he did his research and clearly knew what he was doing. The Nails on the bed were like what those guys do in India I figured if those magicians knew how to do it then what more a physicist. All Ii could say is it definitely got my attention.
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Friday, July 18, 2008
Intelligent Design
The Intelligent design is basically a religious theory. I found this Ken Miller guy rather interesting because he held a prayer right before the whole thing. Unlike many other people, even though he was a believer in science and evolution, Miller talked about how science is not always 100% correct. For once someone actually was talking about science and how these are all theories which leaves room for misconceptions and inaccuracies in the world of scientific deductions.
I liked the fact that he was able to find flaws in science, this goes to show that he is actually trying to seriously see things from both perspectives even though he has his own thoughts. Another thing is that he was okay with religion and that he was not totally bagging on it. Even though I’m a religious person and I support it, I still think its not a good thing to remove the Theory of evolution in schools in Kansas. Even though it conflicts with religion evolution is still a part of science and science is a required subject for schools especially lower grades.
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Thursday, July 17, 2008
John Maynard smith
Here John Maynard talked about evolution which applied the theory of Darwin. This is the Game theory that involves rational living and thinking. Smith believed that mathematics had a large role in evolution rather than having religious possibilities. Smith believed that religion had been burdensome to him in the sense that he was not able to follow his thoughts to the very end because of lingering doubts.
Even as a Catholic I suppose I could see what he means when he says that he was not able to follow his thoughts to the very end because when you carry a religion you are trained to think a certain way and do certain things to keep a person in good order. Although, even though he claims himself as an atheist he generally would think of himself s agnostic because there’s still that bit of question of what if there really is a God, and he is actually wrong.
Maverick0 comments
Beyond Belief Continue
Beyond Belief-
The discussion or shall I say debate between the truth of science and religion has been going on for ages. The opposing sides each find separate facts for their perspective side in order to deliver more supporting evidence. Everyone at the conference was generally in disbelief of the idea of religion and was trying to defend science in return. The reason it is always such a touchy subject to mix religion and science is that science in a way could beat the idea of religion because science could present theories and proof of something existing, where are religion people have to believe without seeing. This is also known as having faith.
People with religious backgrounds are fearful of the idea that “there may not be a God” with the evidence of science which is why they tend to avoid the topic. This is why a lot of non religious people see us religious people as foolish and naïve because we are supposedly believing in something that may or may not exist, which is why they see us to be sort of brain washed and that your “own religion” is entirely up to you not what a “higher power tells you to do. If it doesn’t, then what are we praying for? What are we living for? As a catholic I believe that you can combine religion and science. People talk about the beginning of time and the big bang. Well how did that happen? Do you think we seriously magically appeared here one day without the help of a higher force?
Maverick0 comments
Beyond Belief
Beyond belief
Wow I was reading through a lot of the other post responding to “Beyond Belief” and man do a lot of people agree with Richard….This is a very sensitive topic for someone like myself because I am a born catholic, and to try to find flaws in the logic of religious points of view is something that I find hard to do. To me religion is to each is own like everything else. Its not like we people who have religions are brainwashed or anything, we just have beliefs in a high power. Believing in a high power keeps us in line in life and it makes us want to do better to please God.
And yes I agree with Joan, when science cannot prove something the idea’s of a higher pwer come into play. Why else is it like that? Why are we here? How did we get here? Did we just form from the dirt on the ground like plants? Or did like Aliens make us? I really highly doubt that. Look I’m not trying to be preachy here and force people to believe in what I believe in, like I said to each is own, but I’m just trying to get my point across about the religious aspects of things and that it isn’t all bullshit like what a lot of people are saying. I know it is still difficult up until today to cross religion with science, (ala evolution) but if you really scrutinize it, you can. Now Im not going to go in detail but I know you can.
Maverick0 comments
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Midterm
Midterm-
MIDTERM EXAMINATION:
MIDTERM EXAMINATION: SUMMER 2008, Critical Thinking
Professor David C. Lane, Ph.D.
Instructions
1. Be sure to place your entire midterm on your website and when you
are finished send a link of your test to your teacher directly at neuralsurfer@yahoo.com
2. Make sure that it is YOUR OWN work and that if you use other
authors please be sure to quote and/or cite the material appropriately. Plagiarism will not be
tolerated and you will receive an "F" automatically for the examination.
3. The test is due NO LATER than JULY 12TH at midnite.
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4. What is your real name? Stefanie Dimayuga
5. What is your "user" name? Supergurl7788
6. What is your email address that you use for this class? Supergurl7788@yahoo.com
7. Name and address for your website. http://mavericksphiloblogs.blogspot.com/
8. Have you done all the reading for the first three weeks? I’m currently in the process of finishing up
9. Have you watched each of the films that were required? In process, finishing up
10. Please place here all of the postings you have done for this
class (you can copy and paste them)
Richard Feynman The Pleasure of Finding Things Out involves the discussion of a closer look on and interesting point of view of the world of science today. As a physicist, Feynman, seemed to make some sorts of reasoning or mathematical, scientific deduction to everything that was happening around him. He seemed to be an ambitious man yet humble at the same time, because he was not in favor of elitism. His views on life were very general and simple nature to it but it all made perfect sense, even something as simple as teaching his son humbleness with the people bowing to the pope. It delivers a sense of respect and even gratitude towards the person you are honoring.
What I found interesting was his analogy of building card houses to concentration and putting things in the right place. It’s like if you have a set goal to “build” or construct something whatever it maybe, your full effort and focus must be on whatever this goal is otherwise you could mess things up, like when he mentioned forgetting a card while building the house could destroy the entire house and have the whole thing fall apart, very similar to real life scenarios. Also if one is to “mess things up” one must be able to accept the consequences that are ahead. I believe he says this because when there are flaws in a person’s plans it is their responsibility to take care of the problem at hand because they should’ve been careful enough to detect if there were going to be any flaws in it at all.
Bertrand Russell Thinking clearly
Clear thinking for most people is something that is actually one of the most challenging obstacles in life that we must overcome. There are so many cases in life in which we as imperfect human beings do not think “clearly” because there is a separate instinct in us all that would tell us otherwise, where as clear thinking would be a more sensible thing to do. Why do people fall victim to either embarrassing or horrible predicaments from time to time? It is because we do what we “hope” is the right thing, even though we know that deep down it really is not the right way out. We want to believe so badly that it is the right choice so we make excuses for ourselves.
For example if there are two best friends, but unfortunately they are interested in the same guy. Friend A knew that Friend B was interested in the guy first. Yet the guy is interested in friend A. What should friend A do? Walk away because she knew from the beginning that her friend was interested in the guy first? Or should she risk hurting her friend’s feelings and start dating the guy because after all they are the one that are into each other? If friend A is to be thinking clearly here in this situation, she would walk away, but in most cases because people tend to side with how THEY personally feel, they make the decision that is supposedly the “best” at the moment regardless of how nonsensical or irrational it may be.
This is where the usage of “excuses” comes into play, in order for the person to no feel so bad about what he/she did.
CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
In this excerpt, Feynman discusses the issues of people in society being somewhat brainwashed by their surroundings or their occupations therefore leading us all to be lying to ourselves. His friend that was going to go on the radio to talk about Cosmology and astronomy and what the applications are to real life, was presented to be deceiving himself because of what he had be taught and what his beliefs were where in fact his knowledge was a set of things to remember in a particular sequence that was enough to make him adamantly believe in his own teachings.
Feynman believes that people like this are being dishonest. He said “If you're
representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to
the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you
under those circumstances, then that's their decision.” Its like Feyman is trying to say, in order truly good scientist, one must be proven wrong and accept the fact that they are wrong instead of trying to fight it and keep finding the logic behind things even though there may not even be any real logic behind it. In reality several types of results must be published. If only one type of result is published then it makes the argument look “good” so that there is no other conflicting evidence.
Critical Thinking in an Online World
In the society we live in today, our information sources are more convenient to us because of the internet. The Internet is a very popular source of information to people because you can do just about anything you want on the internet, jobs, marketing, chatting, play games, banking and even go to school. Although, could habitual usage of the internet be the down fall of people’s “critical thinking” skills? It may, because the information is so easy to search for. Information t is practically handed to you. To be cliché’ anybody even a monkey could google lets say astrophysics and get results. Sometimes it’s not always the best choice to rely on the internet as your number one source of sufficient and accurate information.
Unlike back then when people used to only have one source which was the Library. With the library you’re almost sure to have 100% accurate information. This is most likely because the info that was documented in these books were from scholars, and educated people with degrees that are professionals at knowing their stuff. Whereas nowadays things like “Wikipedia” is not recommended by many teachers/professors because it is not an “official” source. These sources are just documented by regular people like you and me. On the other hand some of these internet sources that were written by ordinary people could have a possibility of being even more reliable because these facts may have been written from firsthand experience which is something to take into consideration. For example I look up certain guitars, what if the person who documented this information on Wikipedia was a guitar specialist? In the case I would definitely trust that source of info.
Cold reading
This particular excerpt caught my eye because it reminded me of a few things I’ve seen or read about. First of all, it made me think of the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopie Goldberg, In the movie Whoopie Goldberg’s character was a phony, swindling medium that discovers in actuality, she really is gifted. There are so many people in the world that are like Whoopie’s character. There is a scene where they first introduce her character and she is holding a séance with an elderly woman for her late husband. Whoopie stirs up the whole know it all act and then mentions that there is a supposed presence of the womans husband in the room. She starts to say really generic things like “he’s wearing a suit” or “he’s smiling.” Then she mentions names of supposed people that might have had a connection with the woman’s husband. Upon noticing that the woman was of a Latin race, whoopie started relaying a bunch of Latin sounding names to the woman until there was one she was familiar with. She knew that eventually one would work.
These cold readings can be quite easy to do especially if the person you are reading believes in it. Even something as simple as fortune cookies, or astrological signs, people tend to believe these things because instinctually they want to believe it, regardless if it makes any sense or not. If you’re an Sagittarius and your horoscope says, “you are the perfect lover, sometimes stubborn but you are also very adventurous.” Everyone will believe that particular horoscope was made especially for them, because they will find supposed things in the fortune that matches their personality like “oh I am stubborn.” People tend to forget that A LOT of people are! And there is nothing special about these supposed horoscopes. Whoever wrote the horoscope just made up the most generic information, and personality traits that a majority of people have, thus making them believe that it is really for them.
Viruses of the Mind
This all goes into the idea of influential surroundings over all leading to brainwashing. As we know it, who we are is a great reflection of the environment we grew up in. Who our parents are, is who we come to be. It may sound stereo typical but it is very common in many cases. Like if a child comes from a broken home then he/she might live a life dwelling on problems. If a child grows up in a basically decent home then he/she would most likely grow up to be a decent person. It starts when a person is at a very young age because this is when you believe anything someone tells you. Dawkins mentions a little girl that is being trained to believe all these things that her father tells her in order to bring her up as the best possible person she could be. As a person gets older he/she makes friends and the friends influence them as well. As a matter of fact a majority of a person’s influences come from friends especially at young ages like, fads, trends, peer pressure etc. One must conform in order to be accepted by a certain group, so they do whatever it takes to be accepted.
I sort of see the analogy of the computer virus but I’m still not exactly clear on it. Perhaps because they are both things that are implanted into a system whether you are willing or not.
Karma
I am a true believer in the concept of Karma. They could say that it’s a bunch of superstitious non sense but I believe that it does have to do with a lot of physical concepts of the world. It all makes perfect sense if you apply Newton’s third Law for any action there is an EQUAL or OPPOSITE reaction. This means generally whatever action you perform, the same action will be applied to you as well. If you are nice to someone they will be nice to you. If do something to hurt someone, either they might hurt you back or you will be hurt in another way. It always come back to “bite you in the ass.”
Karma is also there to either reward us or teach us a lesson. Someone in one of the discussion said that they don’t see the connection of the video and Karma, they just see the consequences of our actions when we do something…but that is the exact point! Karma IS the consequence! Karma comes to get us in order to prevent us from performing a bad action again. In the video the guy got shot at, if he didn’t hit the girl then maybe he wouldn’t have got shot at.
Beyond belief
Wow I was reading through a lot of the other post responding to “Beyond Belief” and man do a lot of people agree with Richard….This is a very sensitive topic for someone like myself because I am a born catholic, and to try to find flaws in the logic of religious points of view is something that I find hard to do. To me religion is to each is own like everything else. Its not like we people who have religions are brainwashed or anything, we just have beliefs in a high power. Believing in a high power keeps us in line in life and it makes us want to do better to please God.
And yes I agree with Joan, when science cannot prove something the idea’s of a higher pwer come into play. Why else is it like that? Why are we here? How did we get here? Did we just form from the dirt on the ground like plants? Or did like Aliens make us? I really highly doubt that. Look I’m not trying to be preachy here and force people to believe in what I believe in, like I said to each is own, but I’m just trying to get my point across about the religious aspects of things and that it isn’t all bullshit like what a lot of people are saying. I know it is still difficult up until today to cross religion with science, (ala evolution) but if you really scrutinize it, you can. Now Im not going to go in detail but I know you can.
Beyond Belief continue
Beyond Belief-
The discussion or shall I say debate between the truth of science and religion has been going on for ages. The opposing sides each find separate facts for their perspective side in order to deliver more supporting evidence. Everyone at the conference was generally in disbelief of the idea of religion and was trying to defend science in return. The reason it is always such a touchy subject to mix religion and science is that science in a way could beat the idea of religion because science could present theories and proof of something existing, where are religion people have to believe without seeing. This is also known as having faith.
People with religious backgrounds are fearful of the idea that “there may not be a God” with the evidence of science which is why they tend to avoid the topic. This is why a lot of non religious people see us religious people as foolish and naïve because we are supposedly believing in something that may or may not exist, which is why they see us to be sort of brain washed and that your “own religion” is entirely up to you not what a “higher power tells you to do. If it doesn’t, then what are we praying for? What are we living for? As a catholic I believe that you can combine religion and science. People talk about the beginning of time and the big bang. Well how did that happen? Do you think we seriously magically appeared here one day without the help of a higher force?
John Maynard-
Here John Maynard talked about evolution which applied the theory of Darwin. This is the Game theory that involves rational living and thinking. Smith believed that mathematics had a large role in evolution rather than having religious possibilities. Smith believed that religion had been burdensome to him in the sense that he was not able to follow his thoughts to the very end because of lingering doubts.
Even as a Catholic I suppose I could see what he means when he says that he was not able to follow his thoughts to the very end because when you carry a religion you are trained to think a certain way and do certain things to keep a person in good order. Although, even though he claims himself as an atheist he generally would think of himself s agnostic because there’s still that bit of question of what if there really is a God, and he is actually wrong.
Intelligent design
The Intelligent design is basically a religious theory. I found this Ken Miller guy rather interesting because he held a prayer right before the whole thing. Unlike many other people, even though he was a believer in science and evolution, Miller talked about how science is not always 100% correct. For once someone actually was talking about science and how these are all theories which leaves room for misconceptions and inaccuracies in the world of scientific deductions.
I liked the fact that he was able to find flaws in science, this goes to show that he is actually trying to seriously see things from both perspectives even though he has his own thoughts. Another thing is that he was okay with religion and that he was not totally bagging on it. Even though I’m a religious person and I support it, I still think its not a good thing to remove the Theory of evolution in schools in Kansas. Even though it conflicts with religion evolution is still a part of science and science is a required subject for schools especially lower grades.
The Physics behind four amazing demonstrations
Wow I would definitely love having a professor like this guy. When he says “get your attention he really means GET YOUR ATTENTION.” Seriously, I have a weak tolerance for looking at these sorts of crazy /painful looking “demonstrations” how much better can it get to show a physics demonstration by actually acting it out yourself. I mean just looking at the little pictures on the right makes me cringe, but since he knew exactly what he was doing then by all means more power to him haha. Everything that was demonstrated really reminded me of something you see on Ripley’s believe it or not or Guinness book of world records.
The walking on broken glass is a simple act of demonstrating weight distribution. Obviously he did his research and clearly knew what he was doing. The Nails on the bed were like what those guys do in India I figured if those magicians knew how to do it then what more a physicist. All Ii could say is it definitely got my attention.
Should skeptical inquiry be applied to religion?
Once again the topic of Science vs Religion stirs up. For years people have been researching the truth behind religion and science. The idea of skepticism was presented more as form of scientific research, idea, or hypothesis. Yes I know it is more sensible to be skeptical about religion because like people say religion is believing without seeing, and there is still the possibility of “what if I am believing something blindly?” but there are still many things in science that have not been explained.
So in the long run people should still give religion more credit than it’s usually given because even though some things about religion have not be really proven as fact, there are alos things that have not been proven totally false as well. Those shows on like the History Chanel would not feature topics like “The Story of Jesus Christ” if there was absolutely no truth behind it at all. I mean it IS the HISTORY channel.
A Field Guide to Critical Thinking
This whole excerpt goes under thinking logically, and realistically. After all isn’t a great deal of science about rationality? Lett believes that most of his younger college students are the ones that fall victim into not being able to think logically. This would be due to a lack of maturity, and experience etc which is why he mentioned that all they’ve learned was from high school, and what do you think of when you think high school? Don’t you think something to the degree of s like “typical stupid teenager?” Naivety would definitely lead to this.
Here he talks about several different things referring to critical thinking. There’s Falsifiability, logic, comprehensiveness, honesty, replicability, and lastly sufficiency. All six of these are the basic guidelines to what it takes to be a good critical thinker. Falseifability would let you see that something is truly false especially when it is not conceivable for example flying pigs. Logic is definitely essential because logic would determine the rationality of the situation. It simply lets someone deduce whether something makes sense or not for example and young boy does not turn in his home work from yesterday and the teacher asks him why. The boy says that his dog ate it, although the teacher recalls over hearing the boy talking to a friend of his the other day that he was going to come over his friends house and play video games all day. Coincidentally the boy’s homework is not done (surprise surprise) What could have happened? Obviously the boy was lying about the dog eating his homework. Comprehensiveness, would mean that you have to understand what you’re deducing. Honesty has to come into play because logical thinking would mean realistically which would mean truthfully. Replicability would leave room for the idea that there are possibilities of error present and sufficiency would support that the claim is adequate.
The Himalayan connection
The Himalayan connection discusses the issues of possibilities of U.F.Os existing. Now just like many other topics people are skeptical about, this is one of them. I understand how convincing the human mind can be or more of how scattered as well. There are so many incidents when someone is in a deep sleep and they truly believed that what they were dreaming was real, because it felt so real. This is why people sometime people cry when they wake up or sometimes people even die in their sleep because they are so scared. Although with U.F.O’s that people claim to witness, are these really hallucinations? Maybe so..but what if they are not? I mean the universe is such a huge place for JUST us humans to live in ALL BY OURSELVES? After all we have only been able to probe around our own solar system barely the entire galaxy let alone other outer reaches of space, so we don’t really know what’s out there. Anything that would have to do with aliens/ U.F.Os would be another theoretical aspect of science.
Beyond Belief-
The discussion or shall I say debate between the truth of science and religion has been going on for ages. The opposing sides each find separate facts for their perspective side in order to deliver more supporting evidence. Everyone at the conference was generally in disbelief of the idea of religion and was trying to defend science in return. The reason it is always such a touchy subject to mix religion and science is that science in a way could beat the idea of religion because science could present theories and proof of something existing, where are religion people have to believe without seeing. This is also known as having faith.
People with religious backgrounds are fearful of the idea that “there may not be a God” with the evidence of science which is why they tend to avoid the topic. This is why a lot of non religious people see us religious people as foolish and naïve because we are supposedly believing in something that may or may not exist, which is why they see us to be sort of brain washed and that your “own religion” is entirely up to you not what a “higher power tells you to do. If it doesn’t, then what are we praying for? What are we living for? As a catholic I believe that you can combine religion and science. People talk about the beginning of time and the big bang. Well how did that happen? Do you think we seriously magically appeared here one day without the help of a higher force?
Week 3
Dyson
What I like about Dyson is that he is not down talking religion like many other scientist he is actually mentioning that religion and science cannot always fight with each other because they are actually compatible with one another. I can see why he thinks this way, because after all, is not science mostly theoretical? Meaning that a lot of these ideas are THEORIES.
I know there is a difference between a hypothesis and a theory but never the less they are still forms of assumptions. Having assumptions present create a leeway for some facts to be questionable and not actually plain evidently true. A lot of these deductions are made by mathematical computations, what if they are not all accurate? So in a way religion and science lie on the same plane that they both have their side of the story that is not seen clearly by the public or understood yet.
Pretext, text, context
This was a little confusing for me bust I generally got the gist of it. Pretext like it was mention is the alphabet. It also all goes under to reasoning and rational thinking. Pretext in my opinion is before the story like a prologue of a story and the text is the actual story itself, (rise and falling action) and context is the actual understanding of the story. I could totally be rambling on here but this is all my understanding and a different analogy I can make as to other people’s understanding of this excerpt.
Pretext,text context 2
Once again I believe this is all a discussion about comprehension, because it talks about consciousness and in order to be conscious you have to comprehend the situation you’re in. The context would also be our ability to ingest the experiences we have lived through as well and understanding and learning from them. Consciousness does not come from only the brain but from the body as well. The brain needs the body to function and vice versa. The text and context are similar because they complement each other. You need to comprehend the text physically and mentally in order to understand the context. Although understanding the pretext of a brain can actually alter the way the mind functions.
Faquir chand
Understand the basic idea of this video. They are once again disproving religion because according to them we make our own religion. Our religion is a reflection of who we really are. I don’t know if it was just me but I was a little disturbed by the scene when they kept showing photographs o all these religious figures and saying that they weren’t real..It just kind of got to me because it’s like they’re trying to give you the idea again that religion brainwashes you where in fact it seems like to give the idea of disproving religion seems to be brainwashing.
As far as religious aspects are concerned with gurus and such I’m not surprised that Faquir Chand did not know all the answers to everything. I found it kind of interesting how he was willing to admit it as to other people that would keep acting like they did. I mean he is just an ordinary man, no “higher power” or anything. I’m not the least bit surprised he didn’t have all the answers. I understand what he means when he says that we need something to believe in something in order to basically keep our sanity, because if no one believed in anything then what do we have to look forward to? There would be nothing to keep us in line and make us want to better ourselves. What are we living for? There has to be a purpose, explained or unexplained there is definitely a purpose to why we exist.
“Why I am not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell
This guy could believe what he wants but this is his opinion just like many of the other scientist/researchers that are skeptics about religion. Russell has all these disbeliefs in religion because of the lack or sources, potential contradictory in the stories etc etc. And what is the explanation for this? SCIENCE of course proves everything right? Yes true science proves everything but are there not flaws in science as well? Don’t things contradict each other all the time? If science proved everything we’d have a cure all medicine for everyone by now. Not to mention that science and religion can actually be coexisting with each other. So instead of people trying to find something wrong with either one I think people should actually sit back and think logically for once. Science as well is also not perfect either because lets face it both Science and religion are interpretations made by men meaning there is room for flaws on both sides but I think there is no right or wrong answer with science and religion they are both right!
11. Why does Richard Dawkins consider religion a "virus" of the
mind? Do you agree or disagree? I disagree, because like I discussed before religion is to each is own. It is the person’s choice whether to follow the religion or not. First of all the term “virus” has a negative connotation to it. If we are talking about generic religions like Buddhism, Christianity etc (nothing out of the ordinary like Oprah’s religion or David Koresh). One is to believe that they are practicing the religion for the purpose of being a good wholesome person. People practice religions because they believe there is a higher force out there that controls us all and he wants us to operate our lives in the best way possible. This is why we make, sacraments, pray, go to masses or seminars and try our best to be kind to one another. If we do not follow these rules we believe that will be punished for the bad that we have done. This leads people to be God fearing. And on the other hand if we do good in life we are rewarded with a happy after life (whatever the religion’s interpretation of that may be). So why should we refer to religion as a “virus” is a virus is a bad thing and religions help inspire us to want to be good?
Substantiate your view.
12. Give an example of a "cargo cult" belief and critically analyze
it from a scientific perspective? Hint:
think of something that people believe in that lacks overwhelming evidence to support it. Something that would be an example of a “cargo cult” is people believing that the world is going to end between the year 2010 and 2012. A lot of people these days are talking about Armageddon approaching us slowly, but how do we know for sure that the worl id going to end on this exact date? First off the are contradicting years some say 2010 some say 2012. Even in the Bible it does not give a precise date. All it says is what going to happen when the end is here but not necessarily the date and time. Some believe it because it is what the Mayan calander predicted, but how did the Mayans magically know this information? Did God himself tell them? Who knows? It could all be a bunch of guesses and word of mouth that got out of hand.As A catholic I heard about what the Fatimas people are saying what the Virgin Mary told us about the world ending. At first they said The virgin mary did not say the exact date no they are sayin gthat she did in full detail. You can’t tell if a person just made this all up or not but some of it appear like a man nmde up this evidence because we have no real proof. In the long run we really wont ever know at least until it happens
13. How does one do "science" according to Richard Feynman. Why is
this form of science so important to
human beings? How can such a view of science help enrich one's
appreciation for beauty? Be sure to give
YOUR own example of Feynman's point (no "flowers" allowed).
Like any scientist or genral educated person would think, Richard Feynman believes that in order to do science you must go through steps. This is probably why there are systems such as Scientific method which teaches you how to concuct and experiment using the hypothetical process. This process is important for us people because it give us an organized stricter of how to figure things out and solve problems. If ther were not steps t follow then what kind of guideline would be use as a gage? A person’s view of science could help enright one’s appreciation for beauty by being able to see details of how something is formally constructed do matter what it is. There is a start and find and a foundation to where a plan comes from, and the beauty is knowing what the main support is.
14. Give your interpretation of the movie "Karma." My interpretation of the movie Karma is that in the long run everything comes back to “bite you in the ass.” If you want to make a physics analogy you can say that it goes under Newtons 3rd law of “for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. Basically whatever you do comes back to you, whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. In the Video, the Karma is teaching the people a lesson, like the guy who hit the girl. After hitting her he got shot. So after hurting her he got hurt to but ten times more. This video was to teach us about the consequences or rewards for our actons
15. Explain, in brief, Darwinian evolution and why John Maynard
Smith's contribution is important in
thinking differently about survival of the fittest. John Maybard smith’s interperetation of “survival of the fittest” was not necessarily “different” but it gave a clearer ecplanation to the meaning because he discussed the idea that survival of the fittest did not mean to bring each other down. Although I am a little baffled in a way because I never thought of survival of the fittest to be destroy each other, like an actual completion. He makes it sound like the idea of survival of the fittest is misinterpreted by many people as some sort of competition among a species but I never got this persuasion. As far I’ve known to believe, survival of the fittest insinuates the concept of “everyman for himself” and that we look out for ourselves because we have to in order to survive and only the strong survive.
16. What are Freeman Dyson's views on the "design" of the universe
or the purpose of humankind? Out of all the philosophical ideas of these great minds I think Freeman Dyson’s is my favorite. His idea of how the universe came to be, or is the way it is today is not just scientific, but is also supported by God. He belives that the universe is designed in such away that it was formed by science, but in the end it all leads up to God’s doing. In other words, God created such a thing as science to give explanations to what his miraculous works are. Even though he is an agnostic, I respect the fact that he is defending the idea that a God really does exist.
17. What IS the "secret" that Faqir Chand discovered about religion
and its founders? The idea Faqir Chand delivers is that people are entitled to their own opinions of religion. People are responsible for what they think is right or wrong and that we are not controlled by and “higher power” or God and that it may just be an excuse. It is you’re initiative to decide whether you think something is right or wrong. Even though he is not preaching and saying that what he is saying is gospel truth he is just trying to prove a point that people need to learn how to believe in themselves instead of always depending on a higher power to hold them by the hand.
18. Explain the movie Eleven and what is YOUR interpretation of it?
In other words, what is the underlying message that the
director is trying to convey? In this film, a very disturbing an ironic message is being delivered. In a nutshell without rationality and proper control over your “rage” one would find themselves falling deeper and deeper into a calamity that they did not intend to embark on. In the story, the gang Eleven went out for revenge in favor of the 911 incident. Okay, heroic? Maybe…but then the vengeance and emotions got out of control, up until the point that an innocent person was killed. Why? Just because he wore a turban? If Samaya was more in control of his emotions then he could have settled his issues much better. He didn’t have to take the life of an innocent by stander.
19. Why is distinguishing the message from the medium so important?
Use the Da Free John article as your context. It is important because you must not underestimate things or judge something just because of its outside exterior. A lot of times people tend to under or overestimate things. For example, you have a heroic “cool guy” character in a movie played by a very popular actor that is loved and adored by many people for his role on television, where in actuality this actor could be the complete opposite of what he plays on T.V. John Lennon of the Beatles was adored by many people because of his beautiful music, yet at times he was not the nicest person. He made rude remarks, some were racial, and one of the biggest ones was blasphemous. So yes, just because a person’s work may be wonderful does not mean that the person themselves is really the epitome of perfection because otherwise, your name would be Jesus Christ now wouldn’t it?
20. What are Bertrand Russell's reasons for NOT being a Christian?
Do you agree or disagree with him? GIVE RATIONAL
ARGUMENTS FOR your position (pro or con). Russell’s ideas for NOT being a Christian is that it’s hard to believe religion because it’s hard to determine whether the stories really were completely accurate or not. This may be because there are certain things in religion that contradict each other therefore leaving things unclear of what is should actually be scientifically proven. I highly disagree with Russell because, the reason that scientific reasoning DOES exist is because of God aka he “higher power.” Many people would say, PROVE IT! I don’t exactly know how but think about how things operate in the world, why they are the way they are. You can’t tell me that humans organized everything on this planet let alone the universe? Now maybe I’m just disagreeing because I have to be biased for the fact that I am catholic. It may or may not make sence to some but that’s just what I believe. Russell is a brilliant man and has a lot of good points but still not convincing enough to me ;D
21. Give a summary of Jim Lett's field guide to critcal thinking (in
your own "300" words, no more). Don't use quotes but write it like a
letter
to a friend explain how to think critically in light of Lett's
numerous points.
Dear friend,
I’ am going to tell you about the six reasons on how you can consider things to be true, known facts, a guide to critical thinking by Jim Lett. Reason number one is Falsifiability . This is important in order to determine that facts are right and right facts are wrong. Of course in order to live a decent successful life you must know both right and wrong in order to avoid he wrong with would be something that I completely farce. Reason number two is logic. In this world we need a great deal of logic in order to help guide us into thinking rationally and clearly. Without logic nothing would make sense in the world, there would be no order. Thirdly, you have comprehensiveness which plays a very important role as well, because in life we people need to understand why things are going on. Comprehensiveness reflects on knowledge. Fourth is honesty, which is naturally good practice to most people so that they could feel relieved of what the truth is. Replicability is also important it mostly has to do with coincidences and miraculous things happening and the 6th reasoning is sufficiency, and extent every person in the world should have a sense of sufficiency from time to time to build confidence.
22. Why does Kurtz believe that skepticism should be applied to
religion? Do you agree or disagree? Kurtz believes that skepticism should be applied to religion in the same manner that a lot of other skeptics believe. I believe that to an extent skeptism should be accepted but not question everything that is to be done in life. It is understandable why there are so many skeptical views of religion because there is not too much evidential proof floating around in the world. There are many things that still cannot be explained but we just believe in it because of having a strong faith. Faith by definition mea believing without seeing.
23. Why is pretext, text, and context important in analyzing a book
or an argument. Provide your own example. Those three things are very important because the pretext would give you a guide of what contents to be looking for. The actual text would be most important because this is the main source of information you’re looking for. Context is important because you have to know what the frame work is behind everything.
24. What is a "transformative" UFO encounter and does the author of
the Himalayan Connection really believe in UFOs as genuine
extraterrestrials? He does not believe that the UFO’s are real but that the concept is all in our mind’s and the power of the human brain is very strong and influential because if it wants you so strongly to believe something, the chances are you will due to influence.
25. How does one think more critically when using online sources?
(hint: think of one of the required articles). Substantiate your
views. Its is hard to think critically when dealing with the internet sometime because the information is all spoon-fed to you first of all, and most people are lazy to go anywhere like travel to the own library so they decide to believe whatever source they looked up online cuz it sound “reasonable” plus where is the evidential proof that online sources are bullshit and fatly?
26. What are Steven Weinberg's views on religion? Do you agree or
disagree?
27. Why is Sam Harris an atheist? Explain his reasons. Can you argue
against his views? If so, how? The reason Sam harris is an atheist is because he finds a lot of contradictions and flaws w within the facts and stories of religions. His Idea is the same as any other doubting scientist out there. I would have to disagree with him first off because I am a catholic and plus he gives the persuasion that science is the answer to everything. Well let me ask you this Sam Harris…who invented the idea of science anyway? You couldn’t tell me that as people we are that perfect that we invented science in it’ entirety. I think not…plus the way everything the world works in a and orderly fashion
28. Of the first five installments of BEYOND BELIEF which speaker
did you find most persuasive? Explain why. I believe that Steven was the most persuasive of all the speakers because how people want to solve the problem by recognizing different insights for science and religion. The fact of the matter is that this religious/scientific debate will never come to an end unless like God himself come down to earth and tells us “Hey look it’s me I’m real” the that case most people should believe in God, and EVEN in that scenario there will STILL be doubters for some odd reason.
29. Ken Miller argues against Michael Behe's notion of irreducible
complexity and the notion of intelligent design in biology. Is he
right? If so, explain. If not, give your reasons why not.
30. In the conference BEYOND BELIEF, which speaker did you find to
be the weakest in terms of substance? Explain. I think the lady Joan was the weakest speaker of all of them because some of the things she was saying did not make sense and some of it contradicted what her main point was. She herself seemed to be unsure of what she was talking about.
31. What constitutes a scientific education according to Huxley? I believe that Huxley is trying to say that we humans learned as much as we can so far about science and that repetitious practice is what keeps us learning more, because with successes and mistakes we learn from them all together because they are all experiences and many of these experiences are repeats of one another.
32. Why is the book BELIEVER-SKEPTIC so critical of Ken Wilber and this thinking? Be specific in your answers
This is touching upon a very sensitive topic yet again because it is discussing the truth behind religion and that people tend to easily follow the ideas and beliefs of religions. Even people that are strong believers in their religion, sometimes they too have moment when they question certain things or have certain doubts. A person born into a religion always has the fear of one day being proven wrong that what he or she has been believing in all their lives was not “true.”
Admittedly as a catholic sometimes this does cross my mind, and I can’t help it being human. I mean I’ve seen those documentaries about the Indian elephant statue “drinking milk” though it’s snout, where in fact it was just all a process of evaporation. It made me think of the people that believed in this, it must have crushed them deeply. I now it would crush me if I were them.
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Friday, July 11, 2008
Karma
Karma
I am a true believer in the concept of Karma. They could say that it’s a bunch of superstitious non sense but I believe that it does have to do with a lot of physical concepts of the world. It all makes perfect sense if you apply Newton’s third Law for any action there is an EQUAL or OPPOSITE reaction. This means generally whatever action you perform, the same action will be applied to you as well. If you are nice to someone they will be nice to you. If do something to hurt someone, either they might hurt you back or you will be hurt in another way. It always come back to “bite you in the ass.”
Karma is also there to either reward us or teach us a lesson. Someone in one of the discussion said that they don’t see the connection of the video and Karma, they just see the consequences of our actions when we do something…but that is the exact point! Karma IS the consequence! Karma comes to get us in order to prevent us from performing a bad action again. In the video the guy got shot at, if he didn’t hit the girl then maybe he wouldn’t have got shot at.
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Viruses Of The Mind
Viruses of the Mind
This all goes into the idea of influential surroundings over all leading to brainwashing. As we know it, who we are is a great reflection of the environment we grew up in. Who our parents are, is who we come to be. It may sound stereo typical but it is very common in many cases. Like if a child comes from a broken home then he/she might live a life dwelling on problems. If a child grows up in a basically decent home then he/she would most likely grow up to be a decent person. It starts when a person is at a very young age because this is when you believe anything someone tells you. Dawkins mentions a little girl that is being trained to believe all these things that her father tells her in order to bring her up as the best possible person she could be. As a person gets older he/she makes friends and the friends influence them as well. As a matter of fact a majority of a person’s influences come from friends especially at young ages like, fads, trends, peer pressure etc. One must conform in order to be accepted by a certain group, so they do whatever it takes to be accepted.
I sort of see the analogy of the computer virus but I’m still not exactly clear on it. Perhaps because they are both things that are implanted into a system whether you are willing or not.
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cold reading
This particular excerpt caught my eye because it reminded me of a few things I’ve seen or read about. First of all, it made me think of the movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopie Goldberg, In the movie Whoopie Goldberg’s character was a phony, swindling medium that discovers in actuality, she really is gifted. There are so many people in the world that are like Whoopie’s character. There is a scene where they first introduce her character and she is holding a séance with an elderly woman for her late husband. Whoopie stirs up the whole know it all act and then mentions that there is a supposed presence of the womans husband in the room. She starts to say really generic things like “he’s wearing a suit” or “he’s smiling.” Then she mentions names of supposed people that might have had a connection with the woman’s husband. Upon noticing that the woman was of a Latin race, whoopie started relaying a bunch of Latin sounding names to the woman until there was one she was familiar with. She knew that eventually one would work.
These cold readings can be quite easy to do especially if the person you are reading believes in it. Even something as simple as fortune cookies, or astrological signs, people tend to believe these things because instinctually they want to believe it, regardless if it makes any sense or not. If you’re an Sagittarius and your horoscope says, “you are the perfect lover, sometimes stubborn but you are also very adventurous.” Everyone will believe that particular horoscope was made especially for them, because they will find supposed things in the fortune that matches their personality like “oh I am stubborn.” People tend to forget that A LOT of people are! And there is nothing special about these supposed horoscopes. Whoever wrote the horoscope just made up the most generic information, and personality traits that a majority of people have, thus making them believe that it is really for them.
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Critical thinking in an online world
In the society we live in today, our information sources are more convenient to us because of the internet. The Internet is a very popular source of information to people because you can do just about anything you want on the internet, jobs, marketing, chatting, play games, banking and even go to school. Although, could habitual usage of the internet be the down fall of people’s “critical thinking” skills? It may, because the information is so easy to search for. Information t is practically handed to you. To be cliché’ anybody even a monkey could google lets say astrophysics and get results. Sometimes it’s not always the best choice to rely on the internet as your number one source of sufficient and accurate information.
Unlike back then when people used to only have one source which was the Library. With the library you’re almost sure to have 100% accurate information. This is most likely because the info that was documented in these books were from scholars, and educated people with degrees that are professionals at knowing their stuff. Whereas nowadays things like “Wikipedia” is not recommended by many teachers/professors because it is not an “official” source. These sources are just documented by regular people like you and me. On the other hand some of these internet sources that were written by ordinary people could have a possibility of being even more reliable because these facts may have been written from firsthand experience which is something to take into consideration. For example I look up certain guitars, what if the person who documented this information on Wikipedia was a guitar specialist? In the case I would definitely trust that source of info.
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CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman
In this excerpt, Feynman discusses the issues of people in society being somewhat brainwashed by their surroundings or their occupations therefore leading us all to be lying to ourselves. His friend that was going to go on the radio to talk about Cosmology and astronomy and what the applications are to real life, was presented to be deceiving himself because of what he had be taught and what his beliefs were where in fact his knowledge was a set of things to remember in a particular sequence that was enough to make him adamantly believe in his own teachings.
Feynman believes that people like this are being dishonest. He said “If you'rerepresenting yourself as a scientist, then you should explain tothe layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support youunder those circumstances, then that's their decision.” Its like Feyman is trying to say, in order truly good scientist, one must be proven wrong and accept the fact that they are wrong instead of trying to fight it and keep finding the logic behind things even though there may not even be any real logic behind it. In reality several types of results must be published. If only one type of result is published then it makes the argument look “good” so that there is no other conflicting evidence. Maverick0 comments
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Thinking clearly
Clear thinking for most people is something that is actually one of
the most challenging obstacles in life that we must overcome. There
are so many cases in life in which we as imperfect human beings do not
think "clearly" because there is a separate instinct in us all that
would tell us otherwise, where as clear thinking would be a more
sensible thing to do. Why do people fall victim to either
embarrassing or horrible predicaments from time to time? It is because
we do what we "hope" is the right thing, even though we know that deep
down it really is not the right way out. We want to believe so badly
that it is the right choice so we make excuses for ourselves.
For example if there are two best friends, but unfortunately they are
interested in the same guy. Friend A knew that Friend B was interested
in the guy first. Yet the guy is interested in friend A. What should
friend A do? Walk away because she knew from the beginning that her
friend was interested in the guy first? Or should she risk hurting her
friend's feelings and start dating the guy because after all they are
the one that are into each other? If friend A is to be thinking
clearly here in this situation, she would walk away, but in most cases
because people tend to side with how THEY personally feel, they make
the decision that is supposedly the "best" at the moment regardless of
how nonsensical or irrational it may be.
This is where the usage of "excuses" comes into play, in order for the
person to no feel so bad about what he/she did.
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Friday, July 4, 2008
The pleasure of finding things out
Richard Feynman The Pleasure of Finding Things Out involves the discussion of a closer look on and interesting point of view of the world of science today. As a physicist, Feynman, seemed to make some sorts of reasoning or mathematical, scientific deduction to everything that was happening around him. He seemed to be an ambitious man yet humble at the same time, because he was not in favor of elitism. His views on life were very general and simple nature to it but it all made perfect sense, even something as simple as teaching his son humbleness with the people bowing to the pope. It delivers a sense of respect and even gratitude towards the person you are honoring.
What I found interesting was his analogy of building card houses to concentration and putting things in the right place. It’s like if you have a set goal to “build” or construct something whatever it maybe, your full effort and focus must be on whatever this goal is otherwise you could mess things up, like when he mentioned forgetting a card while building the house could destroy the entire house and have the whole thing fall apart, very similar to real life scenarios. Also if one is to “mess things up” one must be able to accept the consequences that are ahead. I believe he says this because when there are flaws in a person’s plans it is their responsibility to take care of the problem at hand because they should’ve been careful enough to detect if there were going to be any flaws in it at all.
12. Why are certain religious zealots prone to use terrorism,
according to Professor Mark Juergensmsyer? What does Juergensmeyer
believe we should do in the future to mitigate such attacks?
Religious zealots are prone to terrorism because they are involved with rebellions. Jurgensmeyer believes that we can alleviate future terrorist attacks is to understand the “enemy” because that is what the United States does, they try to understand their enemies. Maybe like keeping your friends close but your enemies closer. But in a way who really are the terrorist? In our eyes they are the terrorist in their eyes we are.
Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder. These terrorist are just trying to go by what they believe. Even if it means killing innocent people. When we retaliate and send out men on them they see us as the terrorist in a sick way. Maybe due to ignorance and lack of education in a thirdworld country? Who knows?
13. Is there sufficient evidence to support the claim that Edgar
Cayce was psychic? Use your critical thinking field guide to
substantiate your answer.
Edgar Cayce was not really psychic because his supposed reading have no scientific NOR spiritual evidence. The guy is all talk and puts on a good show but he does not have and special psychic abilities. Like what K Paul Johnson believed was that Cayce’s psychic abilities were actually caused by the paranormal which is scientifically supported.
Another thing that supported this guy is that he had a large audience that were belivers in him. With a power like that you could get away with being the real deal. It didn’t matter if his information and preaching’s were true or not, the fact is he was convincing enough to make these people believe in him because of the aura of spirituality he presented.
If a person wants to believe in sometime so bad even though there is a possibility that the idea may be farce. The person would believe it anyways and eventually really honestly believe it because the will is strong. It’s kind of like therapeutically brainwashing themselves. If a child wants to believe in Santa coming to his or her house every Christmas rather than mother and father buying the presents, they would be able to convince themselves if the will is strong enough.
14. Why is your professor so critical of cults? It is because he basically believes that cults control you and that they lie about certain things. A cult takes over a person’s mind because it tells you what to think not how. Cults come from a community that seems to provide help to those who are in need especially. In this situation he cult teachings we plagiarized from other sources and religions so this screws over any bit of support or supposed truth that the cult might have had anyways.
If you’re going to go on and create a cult or religion of some sort at least get your sources and facts right. Cover your grounds for goodness sake. That’s just plain wrong which makes it illegal as well. Professor Lane is here to help people see the truth behind cults that some of these weirdoes’ try to start so that we are not fooled in the future.
15. What do the films reveal about Sai Baba's claim for paranormal
powers? The film was showing that Sai Baba was trying to prove to people that he could perform these crazy tricks. He tried to make people believe that he had special powers by producing a necklace for a young boy although in the video it is clearly obvious that he is hiding his “props” because he has an envelope in his hand.
Apparently the audience didn’t pick up on it and instead people began to think he was miracle working where in fact he’s performing an even lamer trick than any old Las Vegas Magician. He had many follower, but like I’ve mentioned in the past people will believe what they want to believe. If they wish so badly that something is real, they will keep thinking that and eventually actually believe it. People blind themselves of any flaws and ignore the skepticism.
These followers find themselves surrendering to Sai baba perhaps also because they do not wan to offend him as well. I mean if one of them showed any for of doubt or disbelief Sai baba would become offended and the other followers would become offended too, so maybe some of them are just trying to avoid the embarrassment, where in fact the real embarrassment is looking like you believe in Sai Baba’s crap.
16. Why did Thakar Singh believe in blindfolding children? Why do
some religious followers lack critical thinking skills?
Okay once again another weird guy. Thankar Singh was a Guru that believed in blindfolding young children, from the time that they are born until they are five years old. This is Thankar Singh’s twisted way of thinking that the child will get in touch with his or her spiritual side? Okay…first of all I think the process of this might actually blind the poor child because for the first 5 years of their lives their eyes will be closed to the world, which means that they would not be functioning properly like the way they should, the eye muscles might shrivel up or the eyes themselves might if there are not put to use then they wont be able to use their eyes in the future.
Okay I’m no medical doctor but what I think makes sense, like someone who were to lay down in bed for even just a year. His or her muscles would become atrophied and they wouldn’t be able to move or walk. Some of these followers of religions with bizarre practices lack in critical thinking skills mainly because they don’t think period! I mean what kind of parent would honestly blindfold their child for couple of years? I really don’t want to be discriminating but you only hear weird stuff like this in third world countries where they don’t have a good enough education system, and they are way afraid to think for themselves.
17. JOHN POLKINGHORNE believes both in religion and science. Why?
Oh yeah I remember I liked this Polkinghorne guy because of his ideas of letting science and religion co exist. Now this was my kind of guy. The reason he believed in the two co existing is because t basically there are so many unexplained things about the world that there is no other rational explanation for them except the idea of there being a higher power existing.
I mean call me crazy, but to me it makes sense but maybe I just agree because I’m catholic? But In general it makes sense to me even lets pretend I had not particular religion and I was unaware of religion but polkinghorne was trying to convince me with his ideas as to the other skeptical physicist, I would believe Polkinghorne because many of these things on earth that are unexplained confuse us everyday yet there is still some form of order to it that we have to accept as people.
For example The human body, why is it that when we chew and swallow our food most of the time our body understand and knows where the masticated food will go to, even though there are two tube in our throat, one for swallowing and one for breathing, yet it almost always knows how to separate them. Or the motions of the planets, how cme they don’t just fall on to each other? Yes you can say conservation of angular momentum, but where does that come from? And why?
18. How does Nietzsche critique religion? What are his main
arguments against a belief in God?
Oh okay unlike polkinghorne I hated this one. They tried to make religion and fundamentalism appear as if it were something totally negative. Because it supposedly controls people with how they think, and the idea of the whole excerpt was that people should be free spirited” rather than be religious, which “apparently “ is the destruction of all that is free spirited.
They said that a religion will control you as an individual and they are afraid of this because they think it will limit yourself to explore life as a human being. They basically are saying you’re sacrificing everything that means for you to have an open mind because religion will close the doors for you. Where in fact this is wrong, I don’t understand why they believe that religion will screw you over like this. All it does is teaches you right from wrong. What’s the harm in that? (at least with normal religions) its not like they are leaving subliminal messages for people to kill their children or anything! Seriously! Religion protects people, a gives people a conscience in order sway them into doing the right thing.
19. Why does James Watson believe that genetics holds the secret for
understanding human behavior? Why do some people resist believing that we are just bundles of DNA? He believes that genetics holds the secret for human behavior because genetics is the general make up, composition of who we are, down from out body cells to our brain cells. Genetics come as a package in anything, good or bad, eye color, height, health conditions etc. and of course environment you were raised in is a reflection of your personality as well too.
Genetics make us who we are because they are composed of two different types of genes, your mother’s and your father. These two specific and distinct genes are who you are therefore you take qualities and traits of your parents. To be strictly blunt if you grew up in good environment and come from a family with good genes (healthy and what not) the child has a good chance of becoming like that as well, and If you come from a broken home and the family has bad genes (un healthy, obese, ugly) then the child might come out this way too)
20. Why is intelligent design regarded as "junk" science by most
evolutionary biologists?
They consider it “junk” because they believe that t is all about fundamentalism, religion etc. these guys are all hard core scientist that believe that anything having to do with religion is non sense, the whole idea of intelligent design is that it is an anti-evolution belief asserting that naturalistic explanations of some biological entities are not possible and such entities can only be explained by intelligent causes.”I’m assuming that this angered all the evolutionary biologist because this goes against everything they stand for.
21. What is the underlying theme behind the movie the ZAHIR? It was one of those bizarre films. Zahir was a twenty cent worth coin that some guy received when he was not happy. The man knew nothing of Zahirs strange and mystical powers and effect on others. This whole thing was about the power of the unknown being powerful enough to have am impact on you even though you don’t know exactly what it is. I suppose it could be like a higher power and religion/fundamentalism. We religious people believe in God even though we d not exactly know him personally, but we believe in him anyway, why? It is because we have faith. In some scenarios I can see how this could be a little freaky and may back first on you because you’re putting you’re faith in something you know nothing about, so you’re going out there blindly in a way.
22. How can little things that jiggle reveal the universe around us
(hint: think of the movie of the same title).
Little things thar jiggle reveal the universe around us because the little things are a composition f what we are and who we become. This means that the idea of intelligent design makes room for the idea of God as well as scientific. So from my understanding, they are letting Religion and science coexist. Although they are saying that This ID is a whole hoax, because it was made up by a bunch of Christian apologist. Again its another debate about science and religion. The things religious people are not trying to contradict religion and say it’s not real they’re just trying to say that there is something even grander out there that supports religion. These little things are the proves that
23. Why is fundamentalism a mental disease, according to the movie
of the same title? It’s a supposed mental disease because it sways you from believing other wise. Like other physicist said it prevents you from opening your mind where in fact it is just teaching you right from wrong. Just like how we have the law here on earth with policemen and everything. If you break the law you get punished and go to jail.
24. Name eight common fallacies when arguing for a position. Be sure
to give examples, perhaps drawn from your own life, for each of them. Eight examples of fallacies would be like Most American pets are domesticated animals.1.) Bill the dog is an American pet.2.) Conclusion: Bill is domestic animal. 3.)Another one would be Jamaica is the capital of California. 4.)Humans live on earth. George is a human therefore then he lives on earth.5.) I went to buy some milk from the store. Everything in the store was half off. The milk was half off 6.)Keanu reeves is a good Actor 7.)I knew everyone in my graduating class. Susie Banks was from my graduating class. Therefore I knew Susie.8.) I went to china and saw a Koala
25. Provide your own critical analysis (using the terminology
learned in this class, etc.) of the current "war on terrorism" as
waged by the USA. Your argument can be either pro or con or both,
provided that you substantiate your reasoning. As far as terrorism is concerned I say kill the jerks if they come to harm us. I know we talked about the whole thing to understand your enemies and who is really the bad guy in the situation. In their eyes we are the terrorist become we are going to kill them. But we are only retaliating for what they did to us. We shouldn’t perform any form g cruel and unusual punishment like torture per say otherwise we’d be stooping to their level, but all I say is self defense here. They hurt us we hurt back. I know we should try to be a little more understanding because that is what their beliefs are but if it means endangering the lives of people in our country screw that! Of course we could always try to reason with them and make a truce but will they really go through with it? And if they do could we trust them for long? Or will the pull a Trojan horse on us?
26 (very important question, don't skip it): In the Beyond Belief
conference there was much heated discussion about religion and its
place. Provide a 750 word or more review of the entire series. Whose
arguments were most persuasive? Whose arguments were less so? BE
SPECIFIC. In Beyond Belief I believe that the most convincing speaker was Mahzarin Bianji who talked about "unconscious awareness" which is how humans do things without actually knowing. The whole ideas of “bugs” were about inactions of the mind or being brainwashed. This gives you the idea of actually how powerful the human brain really is, that it is able to convince you to believe in something whether or not its true, it can convince you to believe whatever you want if you have a strong enough will. So like in a sick way the brain is tricking itself. If you really think about it how on earth does that happen? Its like a therapeutic way of trying to convince ourselves into some form of reality that may or may not be real. Its almost like you hypnotize yourself.
27. How does the book, Darwin's DNA, explain the evolution of consciousness? It talked about how consciousness was essential in life and that consciousness lead to self awareness. In order to be conscious you must be aware f your personal surrounding as much as everything else. This would go under rationality as well, because you need to be continuous to think rationally, and even though think correctly in order to comprehend what exactly is around you. And your eyes play a huge role because they are the organs that guide to see what your surroundings are.
29. What was the favorite thing you learned this semester? Basically what my favorite thing about this class was that I got a better concept on how to analyze things I life, stories, real life situations and even stupid movies. It gave me a wakeup call on what the truth really is and if we can really handle the real truth. I realized that us humans are sometimes a bunch of liars like for sure, if not intentionally but instinctually. Because we have this urge to always want to be right and we can’t accept the fact that we can be wrong so even times when we are wrong we Lie and say we are right. Or we need to lie in order to sugar coat things where in fact people would be better off knowing the truth to things. If we didn’t know the truth it’d be like walking down a long hallway blindfolded for all eternity, eventually we’re going to wind up crashing into something right? And we wouldn’t want that. So this class has taught me a lot.
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