After reading about Thomas Aquinas and talking about the floating man with no senses in class and got to thinking about somthing. Each person believes in the idea of "god" or no "god" differently. I, for example, am a christian and have always been one because I grew up with it in my family. For most people their beliefs and view coincide with what they've been taught and what they've experienced.
My Question is - If we all grew up with no experiences or beliefs and we were given equal knowledge of how the earth might have developed - what would we believe?
Are some people more apt to believe in god then another?
Are some going to rely on a more logical explanation rather then supernatural explanation of things?
I truthfully don't know what I would believe - I'm a christian now because I grew up that way, and I will probably never stop believing in god because of my experience with the religon. But at the same time, our culture has been given this horrible stereotype of what religon is - theirs so many stereotypes of christians, catholics, jews, buddists, athiests - whatever, their all so stupid.

What it really comes down to is that you believe in an all powerful god or not - yes its much more complex then this depending on the religon but a lot of the rest just has to do with culture and how god was interpreted throughout history.

What many philosophers agree with is one argument - Their may or may not be a higher being that created what we live on today. whether you believe is is up to you.
let's try and think about that without the ideas of what religon is today.

For me, I'm completely respectful for what others might believe, but what I think is that their are way to many "coincidences" in our world for their not to be some sort of higher being.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was a philosopher who talked about faith and reason. He believed it was good to be logical and rational in our world - which was called the order of natural knowlege and then their was the supernatural order - things that could not be explained and exceded our knowledge in which we have to use faith (divine truth under god)

Aquinas states that faith is a neccessary part of life because their are things that will always be left with no logical answer - with this he came up with five proofs:
the mover argument - somthing is only set in motion because of somthing else moving - their had to be a first "mover" for anything else to move
the second is the creator- created theory - "did the chicken or the egg come first" aquinas believed that god created one of them first and this created the process
the third - contigency - the idea that what we observe isn't neccesary but if somthing wasn't neccesary why would it excist? - so god is why its all necessary
4- in order to see somthing as good or bad we must have somthing better to compare it to and that would be god
5 - the idea of us working towards a goal and somthing has to direct the entire thing and that would be god

The thoughts of Aquinas are obviously argued with non believers and other philosophers but I have to say that I completely agree with all of aquinas's arguments - they make complete sense - Aquinas was crowned a saint because of his ability to create religon as a science and as logical thinking.

Philosophy and Science

Even though reading Avicenna’s “On Nature” and understanding his ideas toward light was like eating raw meat to me, I found it interesting because he tried to apply his philosophical thoughts to science. Then, here comes the question. Can we say that science is a philosophy? According to the basic concept of philosophy that we have learned in class, philosophers tend to talk about wisdom while scientists handle knowledge. Although it is hard to say wisdom and knowledge are the same, it is true that they are closely related to each other. An American philosopher Will Durant once said, “The sciences are the windows which philosophy views the world.” In other words, philosophy handles the bigger topic but scientific methods can help it reach the ultimate goal, which is to understand the world. So, what’s the relationship between science and philosophy? In my opinion, they are like a married couple, though philosophy is currently having an affair with religion.

Learning from life, St.Augustine

The experience that impacted how I think about life is when my Grandmother was diagnosed with, and battled breast cancer. My family calls my Grandmother, “Bubbie” and she is incredibly supportive to me and my entire family. Bubbie loved taking me to movies, plays and museums throughout my childhood to help me experience life in general throughout my childhood. We have always been very close, as we talk about school, friends and things we deal with each day in life. Overall, Bubbie is a powerful role model and helped shape me into the person that I have become.

13 years ago my entire family was shocked to find out that Bubbie was diagnosed with breast cancer. We gave her a set of toy army men because she kept telling us that she is ready to fight the battle, beat cancer and learn from this experience. I suddenly stepped back from my Friday night dinners and going to events with Bubbie and realized just how previous life is, each and every day. Bubbie had such a positive attitude, a calmness about her situation and she researched breast cancer so that she was prepared to maximize her medical care. This experience changed my perspective about life. I was a happy kid taking on what life dealt me in a happy, go lucky mind set. Bubbie’s positive mental attitude and warmth inside of her really showed me what life is all about. I learned to cherish every day of my life. Enjoy and appreciate experiences with my family and friends. Above all, be responsible in taking on the challenges that life brings my way and be positive and learn from these challenges. My Bubbie has been free from cancer for 12 years now and she continues to support me and my entire family every single day. I now realize just what a powerful and incredible woman she is in my life, and I have learned to be prepared to overcome all challenges, learn from them and become a better person.

I love Ibn Sina's and Aristotle's ideas and thoughts toward light and illumination. It's amazing how much information they were able to get with so little technology and available knowledge.

The idea of extramission and intromission are both great theorys for vision although the idea of extramission has been much more popular in history.
Plato describes color to be the mixing in air of two beams of fire, one from the the eyes and one form the object being viewed. Aristotle, like many of Plato's theorys, disagreed and thought that color was carried in only one direction - light reflecting off of objects.

The idea of sight and color and how we're able to see things has always and always will be a huge discussion in history.

what a sight.

I find it rather spectacular that, without much of the technology we use today to understand the complexity of vision and how light and color play fundamental parts in the process, Avicenna was able to logically describe his discoveries on vision.

As artists I feel that this sort of scientific process to philosophy plays a big role in how we deal with the problems we engage in with our art. More specific to Avicenna's first discoveries on vision and all that we know about it now, the majority of us consider ourselves artist that deal majorly in vision and how our work is taken in optically.

Thoughts on Sin

sinnoun1 a sin in the eyes of God: immoral act, wrong, wrongdoing, act of evil/wickedness, transgression, crime, offense, misdeed, misdemeanor;archaic trespass.
After our discussion in class concerning the ideas of sin I decided to combine it with my favorite meditation.
"No Matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, No matter what anyone says or does my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished."
-Marcus Aurelius
So first i'd like to take a moment to explain what I observed and the relation of our opinions on 'sin'. We all had very similar views on the subject wether we considered ourselves to believe in Religion or not. We all understood that sin was indeed some kind of wrong against something or someone. It's an action done and as a repercussion has and effect on those around us. It is something that causes harm or makes the mind feel a certain kind of weight. I think most of what we believe to be wrong is developed by those around us, in the society that we are apart of. The influence of others and what we observe on a daily basis. Therefore since our opinions were very similar I can't help but believe that has to do with the chunk of land that we've landed on. I looked up the word sin and after finding that the definition of sin was a combination of both Godly law and man made law i've decided to rest on this theory as one that works for me and for others.
I believe in sin, I believe in the repercussions of sin. I've seen bad decisions change lives including my own. This is were the Marcus's meditation comes in. They idea of striving and longing to live a virtues life is the way I want to live my life.