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  Veteran Cameron White Anti War Rally speech at the ANTI WAR AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ WAR - March 20 2010 As far as we are concerned, every single death in the last eight years, and every death in every war that was ever fought represents life needlessly wasted, a mother’s labour spurned -(Betty Williams Nobel Peace Lecture)

I'm starting to get to know my Gohonzon*. This Gohonzon* is a reflection of myself in the way I exist in the spiritual realm. The spiritual realm is a plain where no mind can fathom. This realm is nonspatial and nontemporal, and that is precisely is why it is a realm that could be moved, altered, and adjusted at anytime. The only thing this corporeal world and the spiritual realm have in common, is that they both are in a constant state of change. This is what relates and allows these two plains to function with one another, perhaps, be ultimately integrated into one entity as a whole. The bridge that links these two worlds, one world being abstract  and the other remaining tangible, is the person. That is the reason why humans posses such profound power at times. This congruity, once achieved, realizes an individual in both of these worlds at once. The existence of the person grows bold in the tangible realm of existence, while, awaking the soul in the abstract realm of the spirit...

Philosophy of Religion: Does The Idea of A Good God Exclude Evil? Philosophical Category: Hume is an empiricist, empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge arises from evidence gathered via sense experience. David Hume (1711-1776) Hume argues that a very good, wise, and powerful being, even if not infinite, would not produce a world full of vice, misery, and disorder as our own. These ills are the result of four conditions of humans and nature: The striving for survival and self-preservation The limited powers of all creatures to confront their problems The laws of nature(whose results in general bring about these miseries The aberrant, bizarre events in nature itself that result in disorder. Hume's solution is a skeptical one: that the human mind is incapable of understanding the nature of God. Perhaps God cannot be infinitely perfect, and some of his perfects logically contradict others. If this is...

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists? Philosophical Category: Pragmatic   (the doctrine that the meaning of an idea or a proposition lies in its observable practical consequences) William James (1842-1910) Pragmatist- expresses his sympathy with Pascal's position by a vigorous defense of our right to believe and freedom to do so, regardless of the logical and scientific objections to believing without "sufficient evidence."   Religious belief, for James, while not being simply analogous to a game of chance, relies upon human choice more than human rationality. Free Choice is The Basis of Belief James begins with asking his reader to adopt a believing attitude in religious matters, in spit of the fact that merely logical intellect may not have been coerced. Give the name hypotheses to anything that may be proposed to our belief; and break (Hypotheses) down into two branches: live or dead hypotheses. A Live hypothese...

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists? Philosophical Category: Pragmatic   (Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that impractical ideas are to be rejected.) Blaise Pascal (1623-62) Pascal maintains that no argument for God's existence is satisfactory and belief alone is necessary for religious life. For Pascal, no rational proof for or against God's existence exists. Basically, One chooses to believe or not. Pascal asks us to consider two alternatives: either God exists or He doesn’t exist. If He does not exist, we lose nothing by believing he does exist. If he does exist, however, we lose everything if we choose not to believe. The belief in God, according to Pascal, comes from emotion, not reason. Pascal contends...

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” -Epicurus Greek philosopher, BC 341-270

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists? Philosophical Category: Teleology (argument from design) William Paley (1743-1805) Experience is the order, design, and apparent purposefulness of the physical universe. This argument, usually called the teleological argument, or the argument from design, contends that God's existence is proven from a single experience. Remember that this argument is an argument from analogy and even if the argument is in deductive necessity, it doesn’t follow that it is a sound argument. Argument from analogy could pose possible problems.   The Teleological Argument: Statement of the Argument The analogy of the watch. The point being made that if we were to stumble across a watch, we would know that it was created by a creator. Regardless of the fact that one might have never even met or known of watch makers, we would know that it is created by design to serve a function. He is com...

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists? Philosophical Category: Cosmological St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) St. Anselm's line of argument can be described as nonexperiential, or a priori in character. But many philosophers have claimed that arguments for existence must be "empirical", or based on experience. One of these sorts of arguments that aim to prove God's existence   is called the cosmological   or fist cause argument. This argues that all things in the world must a have had a cause, and since there cannot be an infinity of causes, there must be a first cause, which is God (this is St. Thomas Aquinas' argument) St. Thomas critiques the ontological argument (St. Anselm).   The Cosmological Argument: Whether the Existence of God Is Self-Evident? Objection #1) Anselm's ontological argument :   The existence of God is self-evident because it is naturally imprinted in us; hence the...

Philosophy of Religion: Can We Prove That God Exists? Philosophical Category: Ontology St. Anselm (1033-1109) St. Anselm of Canterbury is associated with the ontological argument for God's existence, which holds that the idea of God in one's mind is evidence of a genuinely existing being. Both religion and philosophy seem to share the aim of searching for the key to living well. On the other hand, many have argued that philosophy has no need of a special revelation, or even of the concept of a supreme being, whereas religion seems to require both. Philosophers have always thought they could add something more to the concept of religion, mainly: A consideration of arguments for God's existence, The other is a treatment of the definition or nature of God (this is because it concerns the problems of human evil and suffering. St. Anselm's ontological   argument claims to address the understandin...

"I dreamt of a world without sorrow/ and I dreamt of a world without hate./ I dreamt of a world of rejoicing/ and woke o find Christ at my gate. "I dreamt of a world without hunger/ and I dreamt of a world without war./ I dreamt of a world full of loving/ and woke to find Allah at my door . "I dreamt of a world without anger/ and I dreamt of a world without pride./ I dreamt of a world of compassion/ and woke to find Buddha at my side . "I dreamt of a world of tomorrow/ and I dreamt of a world set apart./ I dreamt of a world full of glory/ and I woke to find the creator in my heart ." -Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Laureate (1976)

Wisdom is invisible. It can only be gauged by a person's actual conduct and behavior. -Dr. Daisaku Ikeda Buddhist Philosopher, S.G.I, President

{Exam II Study Guide} Hey guys, from what i understand, thus far we have covered these Major categories of Philosophy (make sure you know these): Epistemology:   or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions: What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? What do people know? How do we know what we know? Ontology: is the philosophical study of the nature of being , existence, or reality in general. This category is an extension of Metaphysics. Principal questions of ontology are:   "What can be said to exist?", "Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things?", "What are the meanings of being?", "What are the various modes of being of entities?" Webster defines Ontology as: 1 : a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being 2 : a particular theory about the nature of being or the k...

Robert Kane (1938-)   Indeterminism: true free choice must escape the determinist net and require a self-originative choice not reducible to factors over which we have no control.   Kane, in this essay, directly contradicts the central premise of determinist that all human actions are determined by internal or external factors beyond our power to change.   Moreover, Kane develops an explicitly libertarian alternative to determinism, arguing that at least some human actions emerge from a power to be the ultimate source of one's purpose, he calls this a "deeper freedom". Humans Are Free FREE WILL: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR AN ANCIENT PROBLEM FREEDOM Surface Freedom: Everyday freedoms. We can freely choose what movie to see, where to shop, what music to listen to, and etc. This sort of freedom would subject us to manipulation of desires and wants. Desires and senses are subject to covert control. RESPO...

Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789)   Determinism: is the belief that all acts are caused by past events, and given enough knowledge, one could predict what a person will do. Humans Are Determined Man's life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. Man is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control. Society rejects the idea that all of the actions of humans are necessary, because if all the actions of man were to be contemplated as necessary, the right of punishing those who injure their associates would no longer exist. The will is a modification of the brain, by which it is disposed to action, or prepared to give play to the organs. In consequence, he acts necessarily, his action is the result of the impulse he receives   either from the motive, fro...

Plato (427 B.C.-347 B.C.)   Plato, is a realist concerning universals (the view that to be real is to exist apart from perception).   Plato believes that such universals exist eternally in a non-temporal, non-spatial realm independent of our space-time world.   Plato's epistemological system is divided into four types: conjecture, practical belief, reasoning, and dialect. This system corresponds to four degrees of reality: images, physical objects, mathematical objects, and the Forms. Universals are Real     The Object of Knowledge The many things, we say, can be seen, are not objects of rational thought; where as Forms are objects of thought, but invisible. The Sun is not vision, but it is cause of vision and also is seen by the vision it causes (here we are getting into the explanation of the relation between the Sun and Goodness; it's an allegory, see the diagram on page 330; the explanat...