Bacon, Bacon

Francis Bacon was still a religious man, but he believed that the Church had completely lost it's way and ultimately, Bacon would take away the Church's power to educate. Bacon wanted to the intellectual transformation of the Church because according to him, the Church had committed idolatry.

Bacon's Four Idols goes something like this:

1. Idols of Tribe: This is the idea that there is a bias of human beings to jump to irrational conclusions based on new or strange things presented rather than to actually look and take the time to understand the inner meaning or truth of it. People are so comfortable with the normal unchanging things that when something new is presented, we fear it and give it a label and conclude that it is wrong or bad. We just have not discovered it or explored it's knowledge yet and therefore it results in a bad conclusion. The Church did not want to accept anything that wasn't theirs. They did not want to because science was new to them and strange so it was immediately labeled bad.

In today's world it still happens. New kids get picked on because they are new. At least that's the stereotypical situation. Just because someone is weird or a loner, they get picked on at school because they are not like everyone else. Thus it is jumping to a conclusion.

2. Idols of the Cave: This is the process of creating individual biases through the educational system. Because of someone's educational status, we create biases that they know what is best or because they are from a specific school, they don't know anything. The Church's educational system was extremely bias where they showed all the good things the Church did but not all the violent things that occurred along with it.

Today, we see it all the time in history text books and how words are twisted depending on the perspective. In U.S textbooks all the wars and battles are twisted to seem like we're the good guys but in reality we aren't all the time. They don't show how many people we have killed but the good stuff like what the U.S gained instead. This shows how there are biases through the educational system and we are taught that the U.S is always good and does justice. What's the real justice of the Iraq war? Is it all the people that have died or what we have gained?

3. Idols of the Market Place: This is the language that is created to share knowledge that gives off a specific connotation to the statement. The way someone words a statement can twist the real meaning. It can soften the way someone reports the news or bring about a harsh perspective to it. Depending on the language and words we use, things can see good or bad. Bacon believed the Church used this method to twist their words because they were more concerned with winning arguments than revealing the truth. As long as things sounded right to them

The way we say things can affect the way someone takes in the information. There's double meanings to words and even today people sugar coat the truth so that its not identifiable.

4. Idols of the Theatre: This is the fact that the Church gave reverence to only a certain amount of Greek scholars but has ignored any other understandings of the world. By taking these Greek scholars as the truth is wrong because without things to argue and question it, the world would not have progressed. We always need to relook at all the things that we have come to see as the truth and find loopholes because if we naturally take everything as being true then the world would not progress. We can't just re;y on some Greek scholars but be open to different ideas to understand the world because every person has a different take on things. Every person has a perspective that someone else does not see.

Father...Daughter...One Book

Galileo's daughter, Maria Celeste was essential to his writings because she was the one that basically kept him alive in his old age. She helped him out a lot when they were living in Florence. She was the one that always had her fathers back when it came down to illnesses or being sick. She watched over him in his old age and was the one who watched out for his health since it was clear he did not watch out for his own health. She told him not to drink to much and was the one that gave him his medication and meals. She basically took care of his health and well being so that he could continue to write. Even during the Bubonic Plague she seemed like she knew enough about science that her and the nuns cleaned themselves with vinegar and washed their clothes in vinegar hoping to not catch the plague and she helped out her father too so that he would not fall ill to the disease.

Maria Celeste also gave her father advice when he had to go upon the Inquisition. She gave him advice for trial and told him to keep his mouth shut and just go along with whatever the church wanted of him to spare his own life. Galileo's daughter was his very own editor as well. She was the one that motivated his writings and they had a good relationship on an intimate working level. She corrected and edited his manuscript, cutting and preparing it in confidence. Without her, Galileo's manuscript would have been extremely unorganized. She was able to edit his work even though she did not have a real former education. She knew the sciences fairly well for a nun. Ultimately without Maria Celeste, Galileo's daughter, Galileo himself would not have been able to write The Dialogo.

St. Thomas Aquinas' and his...Ways...

I believe Aquinas' argument of the Fourth Way in which he states there must be a standard perfection in the world to measure certain qualities as the best of his arguments and I agree on it. I agree with this because in order for us even to compare objects, we must have some type of perfection of what that quality is before we even decide. Some may argue that this is prettier than this other one because we are comparing two things and without one or the other there would be nothing. Still, in order for us to compare these things we have a set perfection of what beauty is already even though beauty comes differently for all people and perspectives, there is some type of ideal beauty in order for us to categorize something as beautiful. Beauty has its common aspects and ideal perfection in order for us to consider what is pretty or not. The same goes for being good or bad. Someone is considered good because there is an ideal perfection of what good deeds are and what bad deeds are. Who is to say what is good or bad except for these perfections that are already placed in our minds. We might not know it's there but it is. God could have possibly put these imperfections and perfections on earth and so there are perfections that we look towards. Why is it that people strive to get good grades instead of bad grades. Why is it that people want to be rich? There's an ideal perfection of what happiness is but there are different perspectives as well. There is an ideal happiness for everyone though and once someone gets it, they know, because they have something to compare it to and something to measure it by.

But, there are some things that I do not agree on with Aquinas and that's his second argument that God is the cause for existence for all things. Not necessarily is this true. How would we know anyway because we can't trace that far back into time when he did create it. We can say someone else created it but who would know except for God if he really did create the world. I agree that there is a cause and effect for everything but if there is a cause and effect for everything then who created God? There needs to be an endless chain of cause and effects because the question still stands: Who created God if God "created" the world and humans? Sometimes we name the things that occur in the universe as a work of God only because we cannot explain it through any other means. We give things a certain magical twist or unexplainable allusion that some higher being is acting on earth but only because there's not logical reason to go against it. Motion, force, and mass can be personified to be seen as God, but that's only a name. Who is God exactly? These natural things that occur on earth can just be blamed on science or just happens because that's how the world is. There does not have to be something that creates something else. Things in nature can happen on its own and there is not external force creating things. We call the force of the universe God, but it could not be God. It doesn't have to be God but that's the name we give it.

St. Augustine, Gothic Architecture

St. Augustine believed that one must remove the faulty impressions of the sensory knowledge to attain a divine wisdom. He believed that only God's grace allowed us to access the good. We have to look inward and then upward for grace and then we can achieve salvation and happiness. Only God can give you this opportunity. He believed science and philosophy were not done in the service of theology. St, Augustine had adopted ideas from a man named Plotinus who believed the body is both the agent and prison of the soul. Each of us has a piece of divinity within us but God is the one that decides whether we can access it. We cannot access the spark without God and so we can't make it to the light or heaven alone. St. Augustine's perspective on heaven is similar to that explained in the Allegory of the Cave. People were held against their will and chained up and given false ideas and only if you surpassed all this and walked the walk out of the cave into the light, then you would know the truth. In the same sense Augustine believed people were trapped in a sinful body and one needed to get in touch with the light and inner soul to be able to reach heaven and happiness.

Similarly, Gothic Cathedrals are designed like oneself. Outside these Gothic Cathedrals it is plain and simple, but once someone steps inside, they are blown away by the complexity and beautiful art. The good within each of us is what we all possess inside the carrier or body. Inside these cathedrals are stained glass windows that allows light to shine through at all angles. They are beautiful lights and once someone steps inside they are suppose to be blinded by them and finally know the truth like in the Allegory of the Cave. One should see the Bible stories that are depicted, coming from the stained glasses, and learn from this. They learn about Jesus and his life. For those who are illiterate, this was the way that they learned. They used images and art to understand the truths. For priests and people of the Church, they could simply read the Bible to understand the truths. Overall there is a significant similarity between Gothic Cathedrals and St. Augustine's philosophy. The world outside the Cathedral was seen has the body, dirty and sinful, while inside was the truth, the soul, the good.

Adolf is loads of Bologna!

"Thus men without exception wander about in the garden of Nature; they imagine that they know practically everything and yet with few exceptions pass blindly by one of the most patent principles of Nature's rule: the inner segregation of the species of all living beings on this earth.
Even the most superficial observation shows that Nature's restricted form of propagation and increase is an almost rigid basic law of all the innumerable forms of expression of her vital urge. Every animal mates only with a member of the same species. The titmouse seeks the titmouse, the finch the finch, the stork the stork, the field mouse the field mouse, the dormouse the dormouse, the wolf the she-wolf, etc.
Only unusual circumstances can change this, primarily the compulsion of captivity or any other cause that makes it impossible to mate within the same species. But then Nature begins to resist this with all possible means, and her most visible protest consists either in refusing further capacity for propagation to bastards or in limiting the fertility of later offspring; in most cases, however, she takes away the power of resistance to disease or hostile attacks.
This is only too natural." -Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

And so
When Adolf compares, us humans to a species of animals it's completely out of context since one may think they can compare us but in reality it's completely wrong and idiotic and what was Adolf thinking?
This is an example of a false analogy fallacy. Adolf is trying to compare a species of animals to humans. Someone simply may glimpse his writings and think of it as true, but that's only because Adolf obviously was a good writer or speaker seeing as how far he had gone in killing people...well, at least we know that nothing he speaks is of truth but the false analogy is not proof of the connection between humans and species of animals. The same things just do not apply. There is not subhumans but only humans. Dogs only mate with dogs and cats only mate with cats does not apply because they are ALL animals but we are also ALL humans and there are no subhumans. Race is not a subhuman. Hitler can't blame his actions on nature because he's not comparing the right things in the first place. Nature of intermingling species does not apply to humans in this case. He can't prove himself with this "fact." Hitler is trying to prove why he did his actions and he's blaming it on nature and that nature called upon this with species of animals, but the context that this applies is not relevant to humans at all because there is no comparison to make. Nothing is natural and so his false analogy cannot apply and we cannot take his words as being serious since he has proven he is a psychopath.

It all comes down to Intelligent Design...or does it?

And so the question still stands: Evolution or Creationism?

Personally I think both sides can argue pretty effectively. I believe intelligent design could be behind the world's existence. Who is to say that it could be wrong unless something else is proven 100% correct? I'm not christian or religious in any sort of way but I believe there could be some supernatural all powerful being that created the world. Evolution has argued this for many years and that's what we have come to learn when it comes to science class. We don't question it but it's simply given to us by our science teachers and we read it in science books...so it must be right? Wrong. The classroom has never explored intelligent design because there is no real "evidence" behind it. 2/3 Americans believe that humans were directly created by God. Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" seems to be the answer for scientists, but only 22% of humans believe they evolved from species.

Everything needs to be doubted because not everything is correct from the get-go. We are constantly changing and evolving and what if evolution was not the truth but we were so accustomed to the idea of it that it became the truth? Everything in our bodies operate at the same time and there is a sense of order in our bodies and the world. We are all born as perfect humans: innocent, not corrupted, everything working perfectly. There's a sense of going from order to disorder. In the end we all die. Is this how someone designed the world to be? We all go into disorder unless energy is applied. Unless we work. The cells in our body eventually degrade overtime and stop working. The body is like a machine and if we can make watches now, who's to say someone else did not make us? It's no simple natural selection in which we are randomly chosen whether to die or live, isn't there a possibility that everything runs so smoothly because someone made it this way? If you think about it evolution is devolving and humans are getting worse and worse as time goes by. People are becoming over weight. People are dying from world hunger and killing themselves with anorexia, things that were not even possible before. We are devolving and doesn't that show order to disorder? That someone, Intelligent Design, is controlling everything and maybe we're not thinking outside of the box but we're trapped inside it?

Accepted or Rejected?

Continuing the debate that was left unfinished in class, I believe that just because we have a black president now, Barak Obama, that should not change how things have been for the minorities attempting to get into college. Colleges should continue to let a certain amount of minorities into college. Obviously it's the best students of those minorities but I believe that letting a certain amount in levels the educational field. A lot of minorities come from bad neighborhoods and do not have the same advantages as some white or upper class people. Money plays a huge factor in college and if you grew up in a shitty school and wasn't given the best of learning environments, its unfair for the white people being accepted because they were given all those advantages. I feel like this is leveling the playing field so that at least minorities have a chance at college for those that choose to go. Some may argue that it should be based only on the educational level but it's unfair because some people are more educated because of their background: if they're rich or if they come from a good school. Colleges want to make things equal and if it was souly up to grades, minorities would not have a chance up against people that can afford tutors, and have cars to drive home instead of taking the metro.

People say life is unfair but for college at least they're attempting to have equality and balance out the races and cultures at a college. Most minorities are blacks, and Latinos and so race does play the card for colleges. That doesn't mean all blacks and Latinos are minorities. We can see what one black president can do for our country! Barak Obama has gone long and far. Still it's reasonable for colleges to accept a certain amount of minorities because everyone deserves an equal chance to get into college and minorities cannot compete against those that have advantages of going to a good school and growing up in a home with two parents.

All in all, a certain amount of minorities should still be accepted by colleges because it's at least giving them a chance at something. Race does play the card for colleges because the majority of minorities are from specific races and not whites. The whites dominated this country for so long and having Barak Obama as the first black president brings a lot of black pride to African Americans because "yes", most people would have the typical stereotype that blacks are not as smart as a white student for example.

Yay! Feel free to leave any comments or counter arguments