Earlier in the week, I introduced a story -- A story about how my life has been radically changed through a series of intense events that prompted me with the need to find meaning and purpose in life.  Through those events, I was led to make some tough decisions that combined to build the foundation of who I am today, and how I live my life. 

This video is an attempt to express that same message in a different and unique way.  My hope is that this visual aid proves to be an avenue of communication that somehow surpasses the words that I have written, and that it embodies who I am and how I have changed in a practical way...

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 Click here to read Part 1 of this essay.

In the above argument as detailed by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, only three of God’s characteristics are highlighted: omnipotence, omniscience, and his moral perfection. This is an overly simplistic view of God. People who make these arguments based on this portrayal of his attributes are attempting to put God in a box and confine him to their strict limitations and their personal ideas of who they think he is or who they think he should be. Based on what the Bible says, God is the exact opposite of a being that can be summed up in three short statements. God is infinite, and therefore he is infinitely complex and multifaceted, and he probably has an infinite number of characteristics. Whenever we think about God, we must try our best to consider all of the different aspects of his character. The index of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology lists at least 44 different attributes--and that is still just a partial list (1278). For instance, consider God’s justice. The Bible clearly states that the evil in this world is a result of the fall of man, due to man’s free will. Adam and Eve sinned, and through them all mankind has sinned (Geisler 390). In Romans 5:12 we read, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Holy Bible 1059). Since God is a just god, man is receiving and will receive his just recourse for sin: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) (Holy Bible 1060). As a result of man’s sin, the formerly perfect creation has been indelibly marred. It is no longer the perfect Eden that God first created.

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The problem of evil: it is a topic that has haunted theologians and bolstered the faith of atheists for centuries.

In his introduction to “Nonmoral Nature,” Stephen Jay Gould references this exact problem. For his purposes, he puts a naturalistic spin on it. Gould writes, “If God is benevolent and the Creation displays his ‘power, wisdom, and goodness,’ then why are we surrounded with pain, suffering, and apparently senseless cruelty in the animal world?” (638) Gould then proceeds to defuse “the problem” by arguing that nature is actually “nonmoral.”

As a result, the problem of evil does not apply to nature. In this paper I am going to tackle a grander sense of “the problem of evil.” I will address it primarily as it relates to human pain and suffering in this world.

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The following was written as a short assignment in my Advanced Composition course.

Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave” is a pivotal philosophic text for many reasons. One of the primary reasons that it is so monumental is that Plato addresses so many different areas of philosophy in this one piece: epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and more. Despite the fact that this piece has had a massive impact down to our present day, it is by no means free from weaknesses. In this short essay I will discuss the many strengths and some of the serious weakness of “The Cave.”

The following is the final segment of an essay that I wrote for my 4000 level Topics in Philosophy class: "Happiness and Suffering."

Click here to read part 3. 

Since I think that this pursuit and use of spiritual gifts does justice to the philosophers that I have been examining in this paper, specifically Aquinas and Haybron, I will spend the remainder of the paper discussing spiritual gifting and some of its applications to happiness. This will in no way be an exhaustive treatment of spiritual gifts. Instead, it will be a cursory introduction. As I mentioned above, a belief in our own inability to reconcile ourselves to God and an acceptance of Jesus’s blood and his work on the cross in order to reconcile us to God is a prerequisite for an understanding of spiritual gifts. In this way, my view is completely in line with Aquinas’s view.

My school, North Georgia College and State University, is in the process of merging with another nearby school, Gainesville State College. While everyone else is boo-hooing the entire process, I decided to write an editorial for my college newspaper arguing the other way.

The following is an essay that I wrote for my 4000 level Topics in Philosophy class: "Happiness and Suffering." I have split it up into several pieces and will be publishing it here on Cranial Collision over the next week or two.

Click here to read part 2. 

Before I address the issues with Haybron’s concept of self-fulfillment, I do want to acknowledge the fact that his move from Aristotle’s broad nature-fulfillment to a narrower self-fulfillment was a wise one. Haybron spends the entirety of chapter 8 in his book The Pursuit of Unhappiness developing this transition, but I think there are a few critical points which he makes that can illuminate the transition for us in a few short sentences. On page 157 he writes, “. . .what counts toward my well-being must not depend on what any other individual, or group or class of individuals—actual or hypothetical—is like.” Later on 168 he adds, “The perfectionist’s fundamental mistake lies in not recognizing that well-being is what we might call a success value: it concerns the success of an organism in achieving its goals.” By perfection, Haybron is of course referring to Aristotle’s nature-fulfillment: becoming the perfect example of the human race.

The following is an essay that I wrote for my 4000 level Topics in Philosophy class: "Happiness and Suffering." I have split it up into several pieces and will be publishing it here on Cranial Collision over the next week or two.

Click here to read part 1.
 
Aquinas goes on to set up a distinction between “imperfect happiness” and “perfect happiness.” He says that imperfect happiness is the kind achievable in this world, and that perfect happiness is the kind that is only achievable by being with God and knowing him in the afterlife (81). “Aquinas argues” that “perfect happiness, or ultimate felicity, cannot consist in moral actions,” because “actions cannot be properly attributed to God, whereas happiness can,” among other reasons (80-81). Only “knowledge of that which is above the human intellect can perfect it directly, not through participation in something higher, and here then must lie man’s ultimate felicity” (81).

The following is an essay that I wrote for my 4000 level Topics in Philosophy class: "Happiness and Suffering." I have split it up into several pieces and will be publishing it here on Cranial Collision over the next week or two.

The Pursuit of Imperfect Happiness

Throughout the course of his book titled The Pursuit of Unhappiness, Daniel M. Haybron makes numerous distinctions and delineations between different aspects of happiness, and he attempts to define the relationships between these aspects in clear, distinct ways. On the whole, Haybron does an excellent job of explaining and supporting the arguments in his book, especially in relation to his emotional state theory of happiness and psychic affirmation.

It's been too long since we've done a "Resource Roundup," so here are a few interesting posts that I've read recently that I think you might enjoy as well:

What Are the Odds?
This is a great post about the logic of playing the lottery, despite the fact that the math of his final conclusion is incorrect.

I found out that my philosophy proffessor, George Wrisley, Ph.D., has a philosophy blog. Being a blogger myself, I was pretty excited! He's written some very interesting essays, so I encourage you to check his site out.

I decided to respond in length to one of the posts that I've read so far (entitled "A Difficult Dilemma: Deny that Humanity is Fallen, or Deny Evolution?"), and I thought I'd republish my comment here for you all to read:

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The following is a post that I wrote a week ago for my Rhetorical Theory class. It wasn't intended to fully address the question of "Does language create reality?" but it does touch on that topic:

"I think that Gorgias was right on when he said that "the effect of speech upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of speeches, some distress, others delight, some cause fear, others make the hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil persuasion." I don't think this was exceedingly dramatic, but I do think that most of the time, language is just a communicator of a greater reality. IE, I don't think it is reasonable to believe that language creates reality.

Let me use an example to clarify:

The following is a short assignment that I wrote for my "Rhetorical Theory" class:

"I agree with Isocrates' claim that education does not directly result in moral improvement.

I initially wrote the following essay for a "letter to the editor" assignment in my creative nonfiction composition class. It's in response to an article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution about the reduction in Georgia's HOPE scholarship. I don't enjoy getting this political, as naturally anything you try to write is stricken with controversy. But for this assignment, I didn't have much of a choice.

Protesters at the Capital Creative Commons Photo Credit

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the article “Less HOPE becomes a fact” published in the March 11th issue of your newspaper, as well as most of the other letters that have been sent in on the same issue since that time. While your article did try to present both sides of the issue, I got the impression that you think there are many more negative aspects to this change than there are positives. At least, the vast majority of the Georgians that have since voiced their opinions on the changes are saying exactly that.

With the ever increasing demand for organs such as kidneys, livers, eyes, and skin, some people are of the opinion that healthy, responsible adults should be able to sell their organs to the highest bidder. I agree that people should have the right to do with their bodies what they please. The federal government, in prohibiting the sale of organs, is violating the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence. The Preamble to the Declaration reads: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The government is violating all three of these basic human rights by not allowing organ sales to be legalized.