Abstract
This paper examines the arguments for and against the various philosophical understandings of the composition of human beings and whether or not consciousness exists. It looks at how the question of how to consolidate an understanding of our (physical self) body with our (immaterial self) soul is not a new discussion and how an understanding of how these aspects of our humanity interact fuels our belief system and our worldview, about subjects as diverse as life after death, stem cell research, the value of therapy for the brain injured and whether or not to pull the plug on an individual in a coma.

From the Paper
"The study of consciousness has become more popular recently. Its interdisciplinary focus further highlights the problem of definitions since, for example, a psychologist, a physicist and a philosopher would not use the word in the same way. Beichler defines consciousness as the "growing 'entanglement' or awareness of 'life,' 'mind' and the interconnections of all things in the universe via the fifth dimension" (p. 110). Physicists would argue that for consciousness to exist something must be alive, meaning that it is first necessary to determine whether something is alive or not. It is also important to consider whether this living thing has "self-motivation". I agree with Beichler when he suggests that while we detect our world in three or four dimensions there could in fact be more, within which an understanding of consciousness and intuition could be found. "

Tags:self, belief, system, life

Abstract
This paper describes the prominent and significant role that religion plays in Tibet. The paper first describes the basic beliefs held by Tibetan Buddhists as well as the four major sects that make up Tibetan Buddhism. Next, the role of the lama or spiritual teacher is described and a brief history of Tibet and the role that Buddhism has played in the country is presented. The paper concludes that religion plays an integral role in Tibetan daily life, uniting its people through peace while providing guidance and a means to endure through hardship.

From the Paper
"Although Buddhism plays a large role in Tibetan daily life, the Islamic religion and the Tibetan Muslims serve an essential role to the continuing survival of the Tibetan people. Because Tibet is a mainly pastoralist society, slaughtering animals is sometimes necessary in order for the people to survive and it is the Muslims who carry out that role. Tibetan Buddhists are forbidden from killing unless it is necessary for the survival of the family, and will only do so under dire circumstances. Meat is an important part of the Tibetan diet because vegetables do not grow in the dry, cold climate and the animals provide the fat intake required to survive the extreme cold and strenuous manual work of their daily lives. The Muslims essentially allow the Buddhists to follow their faith by indirectly giving them the needs to survive in Tibet's harsh climate."

Tags:Tibetan, tradition, unity, religious, practice

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyze articles 2 and 3 of question 2 of the first part (I, 2, 2-3) of "Summa Theologiae". The passage that is analyzed focuses on the question of the existence of God - in article 3, Thomas Aquinas expounds his famous five proofs for the existence of God. The paper attempts to understand Aquinas's own perspective of the text through a cohesive analysis. Both articles 2 and 3 are analyzed by identifying the question/problem that they are addressing, situating their historical and textual context, demonstrating the relevance of the question through historical content/Aquinas's work's inner logic/logic proper to the topic. The paper also delineates the conceptual tools Aquinas' worked with, to provide the essential content of the answer (summary) that inevitably includes and is intertwined with the logical structure that ultimately reveals the inner coherence of Aquinas' framework.

Outline:
Introduction
Question/Problem
Historical Context
Textual Context
Conceptual Tools Available
Summary of Solution & Aquinas's Logical Structure
Conclusion
Bibliography

From the Paper
"The second article under the second question (ST, I, 2, 2) The Existence of God, deals specifically with the question: whether it can be demonstrated that God exists? Aquinas raises three major objections when answering the affirmative to the question. The first objection deals with the issue of faith versus scientific knowledge (reason). The objection proposes that God's existence is solely a matter of faith that cannot be demonstrated through scientific knowledge. The second objection deals with the essence of God. This objection suggests that one cannot demonstrate the consistency of God's essence but rather all one can demonstrate is what God's essence does not consist of. The third and final objection of article three supposes that if God does indeed exist, one can only demonstrate His existence through His effects. Moreover, since God's effects are finite and are not proportional to God's infinitude then God's existence cannot be demonstrated through God's effects. "

Tags:logic, faith, scientific, knowledge

Abstract
This paper provides an overview and discussion of Charles Taylor's argument in "Malaise of Modernity." The writer discusses the context of Taylor's argument, the problem Taylor addresses, its relation to the Rawls-Habermas debate, Taylor's method, key elements of his argument and its importance for theological ethics. Taylor identifies three different types of malaises in modern society, and individualism as the chief of these three. The writer then explains the differences and similarities between Taylor's approach and that of Rawls and Habermas, and that Taylor's insights and arguments demonstrate a method in which all traditions can utilize something inherent within themselves that in turn points beyond themselves to come to consensus. This will aid all humans to understand others of differing traditions better and live harmoniously with one another.

From the Paper
"The main difficulty with individualism is that it is being lived out in western society in the form of a "soft" relativism that in fact does not recognize any sort of moral ideal and thereby complete ignores or fails to recognize the moral ideal of authenticity. Relativism itself does have a moral ideal but any discussion of a moral is prevented by appealing to relativism. This appeal to relativism trivializes everyone's positions and renders them all effete and meaningless. To take such a position is to invalidate your own position and to hold the concept of relativism up as the moral ideal. When this is lived out in a liberal society all traditions are viewed as neutral with respect to the public sphere and this in turn relegates any discussion of moral ideals to the private domain."

Tags:enlightenment, authenticity, dialogical, resolution, reason, perspective, Augustine, critique

Abstract
This paper examines Heidegger's description of factical life experience as attitudinal, in that it indifferently asserts relational meanings as significance. In comparison, it takes a look at his examination of how the Christian life experience stands indifferently towards such indifference. The paper points out that, in factical life, the surrounding world tends to dictate in its immediacy an attitude of the significance of objects that presupposes experience, whereas the Christian life experience of 'having become' inhabits a futurity that exists in both time and history in a manner that factical life cannot. The paper maintains that the primordial Christian lives both time and history in a manner which reduces the significances of factical life to incidental temporality. The paper concludes that this attitude engenders a sense of anguish in its oppositions, which reinforces itself as the 'how', or manner in which Dasein embraces being at the phenomenological point of experience.

From the Paper
"Factical life experience is attitudinal in that its Dasein, or being-in-the-world, is determined by a relationship with experience that is presupposed by a web of significances, which refer solely to the surrounding material world. "'Attitude' is a relation to objects in which the conduct is absorbed in the material complex". There exists only an interest in the content, the matter that exists as the material component of experience, which draws the focus away from the experiential self. Attitude is as much a cognitive position toward the world as objects, as it is a dictation of the relationship to the material complex, not as self, but as an object dictated by the significances of the surrounding world. The 'how' of factical life is 'fallen' into because it 'worlds'; the attitude of significance it is not generated from Dasein, rather, it is a living in history. The attitude of significance subsumes the 'how' and hides the historicity of the material complex. History, as enacted by science, forms an objective material complex that factical life experience takes up as 'what actually happened'; a structure of attitudinal foreconceptions of objects which hold significance only with regard to the axiomatic foundations of science as enacted through history. Relational meaning and their enactment are directed by the surrounding world, instead of either being self-generated through Dasein or by the experience itself. Factical Dasein is inserted into factical life to secure itself either against, with, or for history, reducing both Dasein and history to the status of objects in service to factical life's attitudinal relationship to experience. "The concerned Dasein is only an object-segment from a great whole object (from the entire objective historical happening)". Living-in-the-world is constructed objectively in a historical context that is re-interpreted by the tendency of life to 'fall away' attitudinally into preconceptions of objects as significance."

Tags:phenomenology, religion, philosophy, Dasein

Abstract
This paper attempts to answer the unanswered question of all time, the existence of God. It attempts to explain the different ?proofs? and theories presented by both sides, the theists and the atheists. It examines theories such as the Cosmological argument that there is a concept of a beginning, the starting point of all events (contingent beings) and Vacuum Genesis, a theory based on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for mass and time. It also looks at the creeds of philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and Saint Anselm of Canterbury.

From the Paper
"St. Thomas Aquinas addressed this predicament in his "Five Ways" to God, in his published works entitled Summa Theologica. Aquinas's first proof for God concerns motion; everything around us is in a process of motion. That which moves is moved by another, and that by another, and so forth. Following this path in regression, we must come to the first cause of motion, which in itself is not moving - thus the unmoved mover. Aquinas's second way to God is analogous to the first, except it concerns efficient cause; nothing in nature is the cause of itself, for that would mean it preceded itself, which is impossible, so an effect must always have a cause, regressing backward in time; we must end at the first cause, the cause for everything - God."

Tags:theism, atheism, teleology

From the Paper
"Throughout history, one of the most pondered questions is "what is the meaning of life?" Some religions use the notion of an afterlife as a means to obtaining some higher meaning of life. Whether or not this afterlife exists has also been a topic of debate and ponderance for centuries. Some have believed that religion is the opiate of the masses, "created" solely to keep hope that the post-mortem experience is more fulfilling than earthly existence. It is generally regarded that in order to survive death one must remain them self, in other words, they must retain their identity. But what dictates your identity? Is it your soul? Is it your psychology? Could it be the continued existence of your body? All three of these accounts of identity are popular and offer different explanations for the continuation of self after death. "

Tags:death, heaven, identity, immortality, life, personal

Abstract
This paper examines how on the topic of religion and the psychological undertones of such related experiences, Sigmund Freud and William James could not have had more differing opinions. It explores the theories of these great thinkers not with the intention of proving one correct and the other false, but so as to gain an appreciation and understanding of the ideas put forth by each man.

From the Paper
"The religious experiences which James studied, although often difficult for the subject to put into words, provided them with insight into the truth of reality and created a feeling of connection with divine. Although fleeting, these experiences often had profound effects on people and could convert atheists into believers. Generally, however, results were less extreme but still notable. Most people reported experiencing a lingering feeling of joy and freedom, as well as being more loving and harmonious. Overall, there was a shedding of the more negative character traits and a subsequent adoption of more positive ones."

Tags:psychoanalysis, psychology, religious

Abstract
This paper compares and contrasts the idea of God posited by Benedict Spinoza with that posited by Gottfried Leibniz. The paper points out that, according to Spinoza, God exists necessarily from its divine nature, inhabiting the world as the world inhabits it. It claims that Leibniz saw the elegance of this utterly rational God, though he also espied a threat that he attempted to displace by defending the traditional anthropomorphic idea of God. Spinoza's God is beyond human, to which the human notions of 'good' and 'evil' do not apply. Leibniz saw in this God no freedom, no agency, and no morality by which man could live. The paper concludes that these two philosophers, arguably the most significant of their day, differed drastically in their views of God's role with regard to the world. While Spinoza's view of a non-human God appeals to humanity to find a liberal and democratic method by which to exist in the world, Leibniz's more traditional view of God involves the reliance upon faith and provides a perfect example upon which humanity must model itself.

From the Paper
"While this eminently rational idea of God possesses an almost geometric elegance, the implications of such a view would greatly disturb Spinoza's contemporaries, Leibniz among them. Since all things follow necessarily from God's nature as substance, determined solely through itself, it follows that things could not be any other way than they are. "Things could not have been produced by God in any manner or in any order different from that which exists." This is an utter rejection of the supreme anthropomorphic father figure, who chooses between right and wrong and lays down laws by which humanity is judged. Good and bad are reduced to human notions relative to our limited experience of the world, completely irrelevant to a universe that functions from the necessary. Morality is seemingly abolished, and God seems too powerless to ever have created anything at all. In fact, freedom to Spinoza is the ability to be determined by nothing other than one's nature, which entails that only God is completely free as the one substance, and to choose to be anything but what he is would be absurd, as what he is, is perfection. "...God alone is a free cause. For God alone exists only from the necessity of his nature and acts from the necessity of his nature." The threat to the theocratic order is explicit here, for while Spinoza's God is necessarily perfect, he is not necessarily good. Following from necessity, what we term 'evil' is as much in God as what we call 'good'. This God is not based on relative human notions or longings: it follows purely from the necessity of reason. Spinoza maintains that he sees God as surely as he can see the truth of a geometric proof: "I know it in the same way that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles." The rejection of ultimate reward and punishment places the onus for morality squarely upon human shoulders; a yoke religion explicitly labors to remove because it is too heavy for most humans to bear and would lead to social chaos. Perhaps Spinoza had such in mind when he penned the last line of his Ethics: "...all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."

Tags:morality, ethics, philosophy, existence, faith, logic, metaphysics, rational

Abstract
An intricate discussion of philosopher George Berkeley's concept of immaterialism and his subsequent argument for the necessary existence of a Supreme Being, or God. The author outlines and analyzes Berkeley's two major philosophical treatises, and the main arguments found in each are clearly defined and presented in a succinct, yet detailed manner. Philosophical ideas/concepts discussed include the "Likeness Principle" and the variability of sensory experience. The paper then presents Berkeley's argument for the existence of God, which builds upon the already established theory of immaterialism by discussing the distinction between absolute and relative existence.

From the Paper
"Immaterialism, as defined by Berkeley, is the idea that it is impossible for any sensible qualities whatsoever to exist independent of a mind (Berkeley 1965, 5-6). This argument is brought forth succinctly and clearly in the Dialogues, in which Berkeley presents his case through the character of Philonous, and defends it against criticism by the character of Hylas. Although there are many aspects in both Principles and the Dialogues that contribute to the overall argument for immaterialism, for the purpose of this essay, only two of the strongest points will be discussed- the argument from variability and the likeness principle.

One of the key features of Berkeley's argument for immaterialism centers on the variability of one's sensory experiences in comparison to another's. He notes that each individual perceives the world differently, whether in terms of smell, taste, sight, or touch. One of the ways in which this variability of sensory experiences is presented by Philonous to Hylas is during a discussion between the two concerning taste. Philonous points out that although a certain food may taste pleasant to one person, that same food may taste awful to another. "How could this be?, Philonous asks Hylas, "if taste was something really inherent in the food?" (Berkeley 1998, [180]) There is only apparent taste, and this requires dependence on a mind. The same argument is also applied to smell, touch, sight, extension, motion, and solidity, and is reasoned to be just as effective. Perceptual variability occurs with these senses/qualities as well, and none of the apparent smells or colors seem to be any more real than any other ([68-78])."

Tags:berkeley, dialogues, existence, experience, god, higher, immaterialism, likeness, metaphysics, philosophy, power, principle, religion, sensory, supreme