Ell's Library

Russian/Mafiya History

2009-01-29T02:17:00.001-05:00

BRIEF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1861-1905

Czar Nicholas II created a parliamentary system in 1905 which would decrease the number of strikes and violent outbursts generating from peasants
This representative assembly (called a duma) was convened a total of 4 times during WWI and gave legitimacy to other political factions within the empire and would hopefully increase civil rights

1917-1924

Russia aided France against Germany in WWI
Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Nikolai Lenin), overthrew the provisional government (that took over czars) and implemented Karl Marx’s theory of communism
Czar family captured and executed
Military leaders: Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin
Lenin died as his policies began to work

1925-1953

Stalin took control and put Trotsky and other opposing council members to exile; he now had full control without any intervention from other liberal or moderate parties. He decided to concentrate on improving military strength and building on improving the Soviet economy, rather than follow Lenin’s revolutionary goal of dominating the world.
Stalin died in 1953

1953-1964

Nikita Khrushchev – improving foreign relations, outer space developments and housing/employment for Soviet economy
Political bureau (Politburo) took out Khrushchev for “extreme radical policies”

1964-1982

Brezhnev in power till death in ’82; he left behind one of the strongest military sectors but weakest population morale with crumbling financial, social and political sectors

THE RED MAFIA
+ Russian mob (Russkaya Mafiya; Red Mafia; Krasnaya Mafiya; or Bratva (Brotherhood)) – appears after 1991?
+ Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Shechens, and Azeri, Belaruse
+ The Organizatsiya

ca. 1991

100000 member owing allegiance to 8000 stratified crime groups
Bosses and main members believed to be X-Soviet Army and X-KGB officers
Has existed in imperial and communist eras as a form of open rebellion
Honour-based
1992-1994: targeted the community centres of power and seized control of nation’s banking system
“Thieves in Law” (Вор в законк (vory v zakone)): skilled worker (particularly a thief) within the Russian Criminal World who satisfies certain requirements of the Russian criminal tradition…
arose in prison camps – extensive tattooing; code of thieves honour and tradition – leaders = vory (вор)
Attempts to expand into US by means of trafficking drugs and weapons
Rivalry/wars with Cosa Nostra and Yakooza
Links to Colombian drug smugglers? And smaller gangs; smuggling illegal workers west to the European Union and Britain?
Home in the US = Brighton Beach (Little Odessa) in NY

Tattoos:

Rose on Chest: grins on those who fail to pay debts in card games
Spade: suite of thieves
Clubs: “criminal” suite
Diamonds: stoolpigeons and informers
Hearts: homosexual/sex object in prison

Argot: secret vocabulary/idioms

KGB:

KGB: Committee for State Security (sword & shield) 1954-1991 (1917 Cheka); Комитет Государтвенной Безопасности (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti)
Similar to CIA, FBI, Secret Service ~ SS –assassins
Disbanded by Yeltsin in 1995
External and counter-espionage; liquidation of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary organisation within the USSR; guarding national borders; guarding the Communist Part and State leaders, critical State property; investigate and prosecute thieves of State and Socialist Party and white-collar criminals

Law and Liberty

2008-10-02T00:04:00.000-04:00

Can we Legislate Morality?
The statement, “You can’t legislate morality,” is a dangerous half-truth and even a lie, because all legislation is concerned with morality. Every law on the statute books of every civil government is either an example of enacted morality or it is procedural thereto. …We may disagree with the morality of a law, but we cannot deny the moral concern of law. Law is concerned with right and wrong; it punishes and restrains evil and protects the good, and this is exactly what morality is about. It is impossible to have law without having morality behind that law, because all law is simply enacted morality.

Now, our increasingly humanistic laws, courts, and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us…that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality but salvation by law… Wherever we look now, whether with respect to poverty, education, civil rights, human rights, peace, and all things else, we see laws passed designed to save man. Supposedly, these laws are going to give us a society free of prejudice, ignorance, disease, poverty, crime, war, and all other things considered to be evil. These legislative programs add up to one thing: salvation by law.

Man cannot be changed by statist legislation; he cannot be legislated into a new character…this is a spiritual matter and a task for religion. …while a man can be restrained by strict law and order, he cannot be changed by law.

Now humanistic law has a different purpose. Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For humanism, salvation is an act of state. … Any who oppose the humanist in his plan of salvation by law, salvation by acts of civil government, is by definition an evil man conspiring against the good of society.

As a result, our basic problem today is that we have two religions in confliction, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality. When the humanist tells us therefore that “You can’t legislate morality,” what he actually means is that we must not legislate Biblical morality, because he means to have humanistic morality legislated. …For humanism is a religion, even though it does not believe in God. It is not necessary for a religion to believe in God to be a religion; as a matter of fact, most of the world’s religions are essentially humanistic and anti-theistic.

…when the function of law is changed from the restraint of evil to the regeneration and reformation of man and society, then law itself begins to break down, because an impossible burden is being placed upon it. Today, because too much is expected from law, we get less and less results from law, because law is put to improper uses.

Liberty: Limited or Unlimited?
Liberty is defined as “The state of being exempt from the domination of others or from restricting circumstances.” But this definition, like all others, presents problems. After all, who is free from the domination of others, and free from restricting circumstances?

…unlimited liberty for man is destructive of liberty itself. Can we give any man the unlimited liberty to do as he pleases? …Man’s total liberty is always anarchy, and anarchy is the death of both law and liberty. Unless every man’s liberty is limited by the law, no liberty is possible for any man. The criminal law and the civil law impose mutual limitations on all of us in order to provide the maximum liberty for all of us.

There are all kinds of legitimate and necessary restrictions on every kind of liberty man has, and these are necessary for the maintenance of liberty, because liberty cannot be equated with anarchy.

One of the basic premises of the American system, and a basic article of Christian faith, is that man’s liberty is under law. The purpose of law in the United States has, historically, been to further liberty by law. Basic to all moral anarchism is the insistence that liberty can be gained only be freedom from law. …this belief in liberty as freedom from law runs deep. To prove that they are free, these immature and perverse minds insist on breaking some laws to demonstrate that they are free men. But moral anarchy is always the prelude to statist tyranny, and this vaunted freedom from law ends always in a freedom from liberty!

Liberty goes hand in hand with responsibility. The laws limiting freedom of speech and freedom of press are laws requiring responsibility. Responsibility and liberty reinforce and strengthen each other.

Law and Authority
…there is no possibility of any thinking without authority. The only question is, which authority? For many of these supposedly anti-authoritarian persons, their basic authority is the individual. In other words, they recognise no God or man as authoritative, and they exalt their own thinking to a position of ultimacey. They become gods in their own eyes. In essence, their faith is that every man should be his own god, but that no man can be free or become his own god unless he agrees with them.

Science is as authoritarian as any religion. Science rests on certain authoritative beliefs that undergird all science. Science holds, for example, to the faith, first, that reality is measurable. In other words, what is real is that which can be measured. Second, science holds that reality has unity, uniformity, so that knowledge of reality is possible because reality does not contradict itself. These and many other axioms or presuppositions of science as basically religious beliefs, and they provide the authority for science.

Most authorities revered by men today are human authorities: the individual, the people, the elite thinkers and planners, science, reason, or the state, these are all humanistic authorities.

Behind every system of law there is a god. To find the god in any system, locate the source of law in that system. If the source of law is the individual, then the individual is the god of that system. If the source of the law is the people, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, then these things are the gods of those systems. If our source of law is a court, then the court is our god. If there is no higher law beyond man, then man is his own god, or else his creatures, the institutions he has made, have become his gods. When you choose your authority, you choose your god, and where you look for your law, there is your god.

Authority is inescapable. The basic question is, which authority, the authority of God or of man? If we choose man, we have no right to complain against the rise of totalitarianism, the rise of tyranny—we have asked for it. If we choose God’s authority, then we must submit to it without reservation; we must accept His infallible word and must in all things acknowledge His sovereignty. On this foundation, we are “founded upon the rock,” Jesus Christ, and we shall not fall (Matt. 7:24-27).

Law and Evolution
Law for the Christian is thus absolute, final, and an aspect of God’s creation and a manifestation of His nature. In terms of this, the Christian can hold that right is right, and wrong is wrong, that good and evil are unchanging moral categories rather than relative terms.

…statistics give us an average and a mean which determine normality, and our ideas of law are governed by what is customary and socially accepted.

As Moses said, “the Lord commanded us to do all these statues…that he might preserve us alive” (Deut. 6:24). Again, “Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live” (Deut. 16:20).

If man is no more than biology (according to Comte), then man’s law is no more than a phase of his social evolution and will change as man changes. There is thus no absolute right or wring in any evolutionary system of law, so that evolution is in essence hostile to the very idea of law. Law implies an unchanging order, a final standard, whereas evolution insists that law is social experience, custom, and mores. As a result, evolutionary thinking is unable to formulate a concept of law; it uses law as an instrument of social change. Evolutionary thinking makes law relative and changing, but the mechanism of change is thereby made absolute.

Evolution thus leads not only to revolution but to totalitarianism. Social evolutionary theory, as it came to focus in Hegel, made the state the new god of being. …The world therefore is committed to revolution because it is committed to evolution. The world is dedicated to change without meaning because it is governed by law without God. Crisis succeeds crisis, because revolutionary change is man’s new idea of health, and, in every change, the state emerges more powerful and more clearly as man’s new god and savior.

Law and Academic Freedom
No institution can be free to maintain its faith and philosophy when the total right of subversion is insisted on by the doctrine of so-called academic freedom. All the rights, all the power, are placed in the hands of subversives by this idea of academic freedom. The right to hold to a particular faith and philosophy, and to maintain a college in loyalty to that position, is specifically denied. The doctrine is called academic freedom, but it is actually academic totalitarianism.
This doctrine insists that freedom belongs only to that which is new and revolutionary, and it denies freedom to that which insists on loyalty to a given faith and philosophy. It is a viciously intolerant doctrine which, be a semantic trick, calls itself freedom when it is actually slavery.

Now humanism has proved itself to be one of history’s most savage and intolerant faiths. The history of humanism is one of terror, slavery, and persecution, but, in its rewriting of history, is accuses all other of these things. …The doctrine of academic freedom is one aspect of this totalitarian humanism. It is a doctrine advocating freedom for humanism only. It offers only destruction to all others, plus the requirement of continuing to support institutions which have betrayed the supporters.
Truly free education mans that colleges must have the freedom to be themselves, to establish colleges based on a particular philosophy and to maintain that position against subversion. Atheistic colleges do not allow orthodox Christianity to be taught by their professors, but they call it a violation of academic freedom if a professor in a Christian college is not allowed to teach atheism. Call this by its right name; it is not a doctrine of freedom but of subversion and totalitarianism. True freedom involves the freedom for a college to be true to its faith. But the champions of this so-called academic freedom are not interested in freedom; they are for slavery, because they themselves are slaves, and their doctrine is one of academic enslavement. Beware of men who defend it.

The Family and Property
…replacing Christian schools with state-controlled and state-supported schools was for Marx a necessary step towards destroying the family and private property.

As against God’s Ten Commandments, Marx, very self-consciously, states his new law in ten points or laws:
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
Except for Marx’s program for a new form of child labour, every one of these points is in operation in part or in whole in our country today, and the Communist Manifesto is a better expression of our social and political goals and direction than anything said by either political party. We are very clearly drifting into communism.

If civil government is given power over property, then that government becomes free from the control of its citizenry and controls them instead.

Marx was right: property is power, and when the state grows in its controls over property, it grows in the same degree towards totalitarian power.

The Function of the Family
The family also has a major economic function. The father provides for his family, not for strangers. Welfare agencies maintained by state and federal agencies have provided some kind of economic existence for as many as fifteen and more millions at one time. But daily, far more than a hundred million persons are supported by the family system. Under statist welfare, there is a disintegration of the individual and of the family and extensive demoralization. Under the family system, untold millions are supported ably and well, with the best of social consequences. Under welfare, education declines; there is less interest in the discipline and results of learning, and les ability to progress as a result. Under the family system, children are not only intellectually motivated for the best educational results, but they are economically financed through grade and high school, college, and sometimes graduate school, so that the most ambitious educational enterprise of history is economically dependent on the educational enterprise of history is economically dependent on the family system.

The Anniversary of Communism
In the same article, Lenin described the necessary ingredients for a revolution. …Notice that Lenin placed moral collapse ahead of political collapse. The moral collapse prepares the way for the political collapse. In order to make this collapse possible, everything was done prior to the Russian Revolution to assault, ridicule and deny the religious and moral foundations of the nation. People will not fight to preserve something which is meaningless to them. Hence, by every means possible, the spiritual, moral, and political heritage of a people must be made meaningless to them. This involves an assault on a people’s religion and education, to make them means of undercutting their intellectual and spiritual roots and reducing them to a position of nihilism. The third necessary ingredient for revolution, Lenin declared, is “great vacillation among all the intermediate elements, i.e., among those who are not fully in favour of the government, although they fully supported it yesterday.” This point is a critical one: “great vacillation,” the inability to make a strong stand. Create revolutionary violence among a people in moral and political collapse, and they will tend increasingly to respond with moral vacillation, unable to make a strong stand. Instead of dealing firmly with violence, they will appease it. Instead of condemning violence, they will excuse it. These morally nerveless and broken men will deny they are for violence and revolution, but they will also refuse to make a clear-cut stand against it. They become thereby a great asset to any revolutionary element and a necessary ingredient for revolution.

Lenin’s analysis is an excellent one. It is hardly necessary to add that we have all three ingredients of revolution in our midst today—the revolutionary activity and violence, the moral and political collapse developing, and the great vacillation and inability to make a clear-cut stand dominating our contemporary world scene, as well as the home front.

Law and Liberty, Rousas John Rushdoony.

Philosophy of Religion, L-Z

2008-09-28T19:18:00.002-04:00

Lessing, Gotthold (1729-1781). German philosopher, literary author and critic who developed a historical conception of religion and religious truth. For Lessing, the great world religions are primarily way stations in the ethical progress of humankind; none is absolutely true. He is famous for his conception of the “ugly, wide ditch” between “eternal truths of reason” and the truths of history. He argued that this logical gap makes it impossible to embrace the historical claims of Christianity with the kind of certainty religion demands.

Levinas, Emmanual (1906-1996). Jewish philosopher who spent his career in France, though born in Lithuania. Levinas is distinguished by his emphasis on ethics as “first philosophy” and by his claim that ethics is grounded in a direct experience of the “gaze of the other” rather than theory. Levinas taught that true religion grows out of this same encounter with the Other, in which we discover a God who cannot be viewed as an object.

Lewis, C.S. (1898-1963). Belfast-born English literary critic, novelist and Christian apologist. The popularity and simplicity of Lewis’s philosophical apologetics belie the intellectual depth of his work. His Mere Christianity is probably the most successful work of Christian apologetics of the twentieth century, and his Narnia books are beloved by children and adults for their wonderful blend of charm, fantasy and theological insight. Lewis grappled with the problem of evil in The Problem of Pain and with supernaturalism in Miracles. The Abolition of Man focuses on the importance of emotion and objective moral truths to our understanding of human nature.

Liberation theology. A theological movement that developed in Latin America in the 1960’s, emphasizing the gospel as a power that liberates oppressed peoples from unjust economic, political and social structures. Liberation theology is rooted in the special concern the bible shows for the poor, but it has created controversy by sometimes relying on Marxist-inspired analyses of the causes of poverty and oppression.

Libertarianism (political). In political philosophy, the view that individual human freedom is a primary value and that government restrictions on that freedom should be limited to what is necessary for the maintenance of a society that is conducive to freedom. Thus libertarianism offers a justification of state power over against anarchism, but it holds that there is moral justification only for a minimal state sufficient to defend citizens against attack and protect against crime.

Luther, Martin (1483-1546). German theologian and father of the Protestant Reformation. The heart of Luther’s understanding of the gospel stressed that salvation was a free work of grace that is grasped through faith. Persons are not saved because of any merits they may possess but because the work of Christ is imputed to them by God.

MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929- ). British-American philosopher best known for his defense of an Aristotelian ethical theory in After Virtue. MacIntyre gives special emphasis to the role of tradition and “practices” in ethics, and he attempts to develop a historical understanding of ethics that is not historicist (in the sense of relativistic ally losing any concern for truth), with special attention paid to adjudicating the claims of rival traditions. After an early flirtation with Marxism, MacIntyre has returned to the Christian faith.

Manichaeism. Religious view developed by Manes (c. 216-276), who saw himself as a prophet succeeding Jesus and Zoroaster. Manichaeism competed with Christianity in the late Roman Empire, and no less a person that St. Augustine went through a Manichaean period on his way to Christianity. Manichaeism is characterized by a dualistic ontology that sees matter and the physical world as bad, in tension with the pure world of spirit and light. The human task is to gain freedom from the physical world through ascetic practices.

Marcel, Gabriel-Honore (1889-1973). French Catholic philosopher and playwright who represented the religious wing of existentialism over against Jean Paul Sartre’s atheism. Marcel emphasized the role of mysteries (which are distinguished from problems) in philosophy. He saw human existence as a journey and said the ambiguities of human life call forth a response from us that reveals our own character. “Creative fidelity” is Marcel’s term for the response that is crucial to understanding other people and God.

Marx, Karl (1818-1883). Revolutionary German thinker, trained as a social philosopher, who spent much of his life in England writing his major work, Capital. Marx was originally a left-wing follower of G. W. F. Hegel but became a materialist following Ludwig Feuerbach and “turned Hegel right side up” by applying Hegel’s dialectic to an analysis of history as the product of economic class struggle. In his early work Marx used religious and philosophical language, but he substituted economic analysis in his later writings. His Communist Manifesto, coauthored with Friedrich Engels, was a seminal document in the development of communism.

Marxism. Revolutionary philosophical movement founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism sees economic factors as determinative in history, with social class struggles shaped by the means of production that characterize a given economic system. Further, Marxism sees capitalism as nearing the end of history, since under capitalism human productivity has increased so much that the elimination of human need is possible for the first time. Marx predicted that capitalism will collapse because it creates an ever-increasing class of property-less workers (the proletariat). As wealth is centred in a small number of capitalists, overproduction, due to the lack of purchasing power by the masses, will become a crisis. Eventually, the workers will overthrow the system, creating a dictatorship of the proletariat that will progressively eliminate the state as social classes disappear. Ironically, the countries where revolutionary movements committed to Marxism have succeeded have been relatively backward countries such as Russia and China. Though communism as a revolutionary movement seems a spent force, Marxism as a philosophical theory is still influential in the academy.

Materialism. The view that only material objects exist. Materialism is sometimes used as a synonym for physicalism, but some thinkers distinguish the two by allowing that physicalism holds that only matter and energy exist. Some materialists define their view in terms of science and claim that ultimate reality consists of whatever particles or entities are discovered by physicists.

Metaphysics. The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of reality. Literally, metaphysics is that which is “beyond” or “after” physics, since it deals with questions such as the following: Are the entities postulated by science real? Does God exist? Do numbers and other mathematical objects exist independently of the human mind? The term is sometimes used pejoratively, the designate an attempt to develop an impossible “super science” that would achieve completeness and certainty. It is also used as a synonym for ontology, the name for the study of being.

Neo-Platonism. One of the schools of Hellenistic philosophy, loosely inspired by Plato. Plotinus (205-270) was the seminal figure and most famous representative of Neo-Platonism. Neo-Platonism emphasizes that all of reality emanates through a hierarchical series from the One, the Form of the Good, and that it is destined to return to the One. This philosophy’s tendencies toward the depreciation of matter and cultivation of ascetic practices made a strong impact on many of the church fathers.

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900). German philosopher whose radical views on human thinking as perspectival and shaped by the “will to power” have had a profound impact on thinkers who came after him. Nietzsche announced the death of God, and as a consequence he affirmed that moralities are human creations. Previous human history has seen the “slave revolt” in morality, in which the “herd morality” of good and evil (Judaism, Christianity, socialism) has overthrown the earlier “master morality” of good and bad (the warrior culture of Homeric Greece that was the work of the natural aristocrats. Nietzsche himself proposed that the “Overman” may now go beyond good and evil and invent a new form of morality. Nietzsche saw the virtues of herd morality as a disguised form of envy, in which the weak express their resentment of the strong by affirming that the poor and the meek are blessed.

Nihilism. The rejection of objective moral values and structures, literally “nothingism.” The nihilist is a skeptic about moral traditions and obligations and does not regard them as binding. A distinction should be made between the attitude of the reluctant or sorrowing nihilist, who finds nihilism terrifying but true, and the celebrative nihilist, who views nihilism as liberation from oppressive rules. Friedrich Nietzsche is often mentioned in discussion of nihilism, partly because of his own ambivalence. Nietzsche sometimes described nihilism as a fate that haunts Western culture. At other times he seems more celebrative in his calls for the construction of a new morality. For those who believe morality requires a transcendent basis, Nietzsche’s philosophy appears nihilistic, but for naturalists who think that humans can themselves provide a basis for morality, Nietzsche is seen as a guide pointing beyond nihilism.

Nominalism. The claim that universal terms such as goodness, justice and fatherhood are merely names and do not denote any objective, universal qualities. Thus the nominalist holds a view opposite to that of the Platonic realist who accepts the independent reality of universals. Nominalism typically holds that universal terms are used to denote a plurality of individuals who are grouped together by the mind because of perceptions of similarity. This requires the claim that two things can be similar without sharing in common some universal property.

Ockham, William of (c. 1285-1349). English medieval philosopher known as “the subtle doctor.” Ockham was a Franciscan who clashed with the pope and was forced to flee to Pisa and finally Munich because of his criticisms of arbitrary papal power. He is known for his rejection of real universals and is often called the father of nominalism, although many scholars claim that he was really a conceptualist. Ockham is also famous for “Ockham’s razor,” or the principle of parsimony, which says that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Though that phrase is not actually found in Ockham’s writings, it is associated with him because of his characteristic style of philosophizing.

Ontology. The study of being. Ontology is often considered to be equivalent to metaphysics, but some thinkers, such as Martin Heidegger, have viewed ontology as a quest to understand the meaning of being, in contrast to metaphysics as inquiry about specific types of entities.
Pantheism. The belief that God and the world are identical. The most famous Western defender of pantheism is Baruch Spinoza, who claimed that God and Nature are two names for the same reality, which has mind and material extension as two of its attributes. The term is also used to describe the absolute monism of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, which holds that the whole of reality is identical with the one Absolute that is God, and that the distinctions we draw between objects are just part of appearances.

Pascal, Blaise (1623-1662). French philosopher, mathematician and physicist whose writings about Christianity have had a profound influence. In his posthumously published Pensees, Pascal brilliantly analyzed the ambiguities of the human situation and made a case for belief in a world where human reason cannot achieve absolute certainty. One argument must discussed is “Pascal’s wager,” in which he claimed that the eternal good that may be obtained through faith in God makes it prudentially rational to opt for faith even if objective certainty cannot be obtained.

Wager argument. An argument developed by Blaise Pascal that urges an unbeliever to attempt to develop faith in God even if the evidence for God’s existence is not decisive. Pascal compared belief and unbelief in God to a wager and pointed out the potential gains and losses each bet holds. If some bet on God and are wrong, they will lose only the paltry pleasure from some sins in this life that they might have enjoyed. If others bet on God and are right, however, they stand to gain enternal bliss. The potential gains and losses are thus staggeringly disproportionate, and Pascal urged the unbeliever to pray, attend Mass and do whatever else may be necessary to develop faith.

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914). American philosopher generally regarded as the founder of pragmatism and the inventor of semiotics, or the general theory of signs. Pierce viewed beliefs primarily as rules for action and regarded doubt as an unsatisfactory, disturbed state. He thus inverted the priority given by Renee Descartes to doubt by claiming that one needed to a reason to doubt; the mere logical possibility of a mistake is not a sufficient reason. Peirce’s ideas were popularized by William James and John Dewey.

Philosophy. According to William James, philosophy is simply an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly and deeply about fundamental questions. Interestingly, what counts as philosophy is itself under dispute in philosophy. Philosophy can be identified historically in the West as the kind of activity carried on by such people as Plato, Aristotle, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. It can also be identified with reference to its fundamental questions, such as “What is knowledge?” (epistemology), “What is reality?” (metaphysics), and “What is good?” (ethics). Although some would make a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology, there is substantial overlap in the questions each treats. One way to distinguish between the two is in terms of their audiences: A thinker who is speaking to a religious community and can presuppose the authorities recognized by that community is doing theology. The same thinker addressing a broader community may be doing philosophy.

Platinga, Alvin (1932- ). Leading contemporary philosopher of religion and developer of Reformed Epistemology, along with Nicholas Wolterstorff (who taught with Plantinga many years at Calvin College) and William Alston. Plantinga has criticized evidentialism in philosophy of religion by arguing that religious beliefs in some cases may be “properly basic.” This view is supported by an epistemology that sees knowledge as consisting of true beliefs that are the result of properly functioning faculties, operating according to their “design plan” in a way that is directed at truth, in the kind of environment in which they were intended to function.

Plato (c. 427-347 BC). Perhaps the most influential philosopher of the Western world. Plato’s influence is so vast that Alfred North Whitehead claimed that the history of Western philosophy is merely a series of footnotes to Plato. Plato wrote in the form of dialogues, and his thinking seems to have evolved over time. He is best known for his theory of justice, developed in the Republic, for his defense of the immortality of the soul and for his theory of Forms, which posits an ideal world of universals that the material world copies or participates in. Plato also postulated one supreme or absolute Form—the Form of the Good or the One. His thinking has had a profound impact on Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought, especially as developed by Plotinus and other Neo-Platonist philosophers.

Plotinus (205-270). Hellenistic philosopher who developed Plato’s ideas into a philosophical and religious system that profoundly influenced early Christian writers. Plotinus emphasized the One or the Good—the supreme reality from which all else emanates and to which hall will return. The One is beyond human language and incursive thought. Plotinus blended mystical and ascetic tendencies with philosophical thought.

Realism. The belief that there are real entities that exist independently of human knowers. There are many types of realism, depending on the scope of the theory and the contrasting anti-realist position. One type of antirealism is idealism. The antirealist may hold, for example, with George Berkeley that “to be is to be perceived” and thus that physical objects do not eist if they are unperceived. (However, Berkeley can also be understood as a type of realist in that he claimed that God was always present to perceive objects and thus ground the real existence of entities unperceived by humans.) A popular contemporary form of antirealism holds the true propositions about objects in the world depend on the human concepts employed to understand those objects, and thus what is true about the world depends partly on how we humans think about that world. Realism (and its rival antirealism) can also be restricted to particular regions. Thus one can be a realist (or antirealist) about unobservable scientific entities such as quarks or abstract logical entities such as sets and numbers.

Reid, Thomas (1710-1796). Scottish philosopher widely regarded as the founder of the school of Scottish realism, or Common Sense philosophy. Reid interpreted the philosophy of David Hume as the skeptical outcome of the theory of ideas or mental representations begun by Rene Descartes and John Locke. He developed a form of realism in which sensations are not the direct objects of perception but instead are the means whereby we are directly presented with objects. His thought has had a great influence on Reformed Epistemology. Reid stressed the need to begin with an attitude of trust in our human faculties (reason, perception, memory, testimony) without insisting on rational proof of their reliability.

Relativism. The denial of any absolute or objective standards, especially in ethics (objectivity). Ethical relativists can be individual relativists, who hold that what is morally right is relative to the beliefs or emotions of the individual, or they can be cultural relativists, who hold that what is morally right varies with different societies (subjectivism). Analogously, in epistemology relativism holds that what is true is dependent on the individual or the culture.

Rorty, Richard (1931- ). Leading American proponent of postmodern philosophy. Trained in analytic philosophy, Rorty argues that the collapse of foundationalism should lead us to reject traditional philosophical views of truth as accurate representations of reality in favour of the pragmatism of John Dewey. According to Rorty, the philosopher should take an ironical perspective that recognises no foundation for the views defended other than our own linguistic practices and preferences. Philosophy is a persuasive and rhetorical endeavor that cannot be sharply distinguished from literature.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques (1712-1778). French philosopher born in Switzerland whose influence on political theory and theories of education has been enormous. Rousseau saw human individuals as naturally good but corrupted by education and society. His political theory stresses individual freedom but ultimately subordinates the individual to the general will, which is established by a social contract allowing individuals to live together as citizens. Rousseau’s ideas influenced the French Revolution and helped shape the development of Romanticism.

Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970). British logician and advocate of social causes who was one of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy. With Alfred North Whitehead, Russell wrote Principia Mathematica, which attempts to show that the whole of mathematics can be derived from logic. Though Russell frequently changed his philosophical positions, he generally held to some form of realism, regarded science as the paradigm of human knowledge and rejected religion and traditional sexual morality.

Sartre, Jean Paul (1905-1980). French writer and philosopher, most famous for his development of existentialism in the period following World War II. The heart of Sartre’s philosophy is his affirmation of individual freedom and responsibility. Though we do not create our situation, we are always free to negate and interpret our situation and we are ultimately responsible for what we become. Because of his atheism, Sartre insisted that there is no ideal realm of values independent of human choice, but rather we are “forlorn” as we face an “absurd” world.

Skepticism. The denial of genuine human knowledge. Skepticism about particular fields (such as parapsychology)) should be distinguished from general or universal skepticism. In ancient times skepticism (sometimes called Pyrrhonism) was defended by such philosophers as Sextus Empiricus. The ancient skeptics recommended their view as a way of obtaining ataraxia (peace of mind). Skepticism in modern philosophy is sometimes regarded as a methodological tool, as in the philosophy of Rene Descartes. Many attempts have been made by modern philosophers to refute skeptical arguments that imply that it is no possible to know the external world, that other people have minds or that induction can be rationally justified. Some themes in postmodern and antirealist contemporary philosophy are similar to those of skeptics.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1916-2000). One of the preeminent advocates of pluralistic views toward the world religions. Though Smith was a former Christian missionary to India, he opposed attempts to convert adherents of one major religion to another, arguing that all of these religions represent alternative paths to God. Smith did not look on religions as abstract sets of doctrines but as practices that “become true” in the lives of believers.

Socrates (c. 470-399 BC). One of the most important Greek philosophers, executed by the Athenians on the charge of corrupting youth with his philosophy and undermining the religion of the city by refusing to recognise its gods and introducing new ones. Socrates wrote nothing himself, but he has exercised an incalculable influence on the history of philosophy through his depiction by Plato in a series of dialogues. In daily conversation with Athenians, Socrates challenged and questioned prevailing wisdom, holding that he was wiser than his contemporaries only in recognizing that he knew nothing. True wisdom, said Socrates, was a possession of the gods. He regarded his philosophical work as a divine calling and refused to cease his activity even to save his life. The critical Socrates is regarded as a hero by contemporary secular philosophy, but the religious Socrates (who apparently heard voices and was confident that “nothing can harm a good man in life and death” because “the gods are not indifferent to his fortunes”) is not so widely hailed.

Spinoza, Baruch (1632-1677). One of the most important philosophers of the rationalist tradition, Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish synagogue in Amsterdam for his unorthodox views. Spinoza was a monist who held that fundamentally only one substance exists, known through its two attributes of mind and extension and correctly designated as God or Nature. When we understand the nature of God, we understand that all that happens does so with necessity. True happiness consists in the intellectual love of God when we see the world under the aspect of eternity and accept all that happens as ultimately good. Spinoza believed that philosophy should be done in a geometric method involving self-evident postulates and definitions from which theorems can be proved.

Stoicism. An influential philosophy in ancient Greece and in the Roman world that emphasized a person’s control over the emotions. Founded by Zeno of Citium (334-262 BC; not to be confused with Zeno the Eleatic, famous for his paradoxes), Stoicism evolved over time, with three periods usually distinguished: Early Stoicism, Middle Stoicism and Roman Stoicism. Most surviving Stoic writings come from the last period, with the slave Epictetus and the emperor Marcus Aurelius being two of the most famous Stoics. Stoicism was characterized by a conviction that the universe has a rational structure and that whatever happens does so with necessity. True virtue requires an acceptance of external events; the virtuous person lives in accordance with the reason that shapes the universe and gains contentment by an attitude of indifference to the external goods and evils that most people desire and fear.

Structuralism. An interdisciplinary movement with its origins in linguistics and French philosophy that emphasizes the way in which the meanings of symbols are determined by their relationships to other symbols in a system. Structuralists see language and other human activities (including religious rituals) as reflecting deep, universal structures often expressed in myth.

Subjectivism. Philosophy or life perspective that attempts to view what is normally thought to be objectively true or false as subjective. In ethics, emotivism, which views ethical judgments as expressions of subjective emotions, is an example of subjectivism. Subjectivism is in effect a type of individual relativism.

Taoism. An ancient philosophical and religious worldview developed in China. The term derives from the Chinese word tao, meaning “the way.” Taoists believe that there is an underlying metaphysical and ethical structure to the cosmos and that humans who understand this can order their lives rightly. However, this structure, or tao, is ineffable, and thus our knowledge of it is not propositional in character. The most famous Taoist philosophers were Chuang-tzu and Lao-tzu.

Theodicy. An answer to the problem of evil that attempts to “justify the ways of God to man” by explaining God’s reasons for allowing evil. Two of the more important theodicies are the “soul-making theodicy,” which argues that God allows evil so as to make it possible for humans to develop certain desirable virtues, and the “free will theodicy,” which argues that God had to allow for the possibility of evil if he wished to give humans (and angelic beings) free will. Theodicies are often distinguished from defenses, which argue that is it reasonable to believe that God has reasons for allowing evil even if we do not know what those reasons are.

Utilitarianism. The ethical theory, held by such thinkers as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, asserting that moral rightness is determined by what leads to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Tradition utilitarians identify the greatest good with happiness and define happiness in terms of pleasure and the absence of pain, while “ideal” utilitarians are willing to include other goods than pleasure in their calculation of benefits. The traditional view is held by many animal rights advocates, who argue that the pleasures and pain of animals have great moral weight (equal to humans, in some cases). Act utilitarians hold that what is morally right is determined by the consequences of particular acts, while rule utilitarians hold that morality is a matter of conforming to rules or principles and that the right set of principles consists of those that would, if followed, lead to the greatest good for the greatest number.

Whitehead, Alfred North (1861-1947). English logician, mathematician and philosopher, whose later metaphysical work provided the inspiration for process theology. Whitehead first achieved fame as the coauthor, with Bertrand Russell, or Principia Mathematica, one of the seminal works of modern symbolic logic. Whitehead’s later metaphysical work attempts to reject the notion of substance as philosophically basic by taking organically related events as basic to ontology. God functions in this system not as a personal agent but more as the ground of possibilities and alluring ideal that leads to their actualization.

Wicca. A religion that centers on witchcraft and the revival of pagan practices. Wiccans deny that their religion involves the worship of Satan and see themselves as fostering a religion that is close to nature and affirmative of such elements of paganism as the worship of “the goddess”—a practice that is linked by Wiccans to radical forms of feminist thought.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951). Austrian-born philosopher who had his greatest impact on Anglo-American philosophy. Early in his career Wittgenstein expounded a picture theory of meaning that regarded complex propositions as functions of “atomic propositions” that pictures “atomic facts.” According to this view, ethical and religious propositions belong to “the mystical,” which cannot be expressed in language. The later Wittgenstein developed a more flexible theory of language that emphasized how meaning is a function of use. Words are used in many different contexts as part of “language games,” and meaning must be situated with reference to that language game and the form of life in which the game has its home. Some of the later Wittgenstein’s thoughts on religion have been developed into Wittgensteinian fideism, which emphasizes the autonomy of the religious language game and denies the need for any justification of religious belief. In the thought of some of its proponents, however, this Wittgensteinian view is linked to religious antirealism, in which religious propositions do not state facts that can be objectively true or false.

Zen Buddhism. A form of Buddhism that originated in China and then spread to Japan. Zen Buddhism is a type of Mahayana Buddhism which holds out the possibility that individuals can attain the status of Buddhahood through following various esoteric teachings and exercises. The teachings of Zen do not lend themselves to straightforward explanation, as its adherents hold that the path to enlightenment cannot be discursively described.

Zoroastrianism. A religion from ancient Persian (Iran) that dominated that region prior to the coming of Islam but is today a small minority faith. Named for the prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), whose dates are unknown, Zoroastrianism became the official religion of Persia from the third century BC until the seventh century AD. It is characterized by a dualism in which Ahura Mazda, the god of light and goodness, struggles to overcome a powerful evil spirit, although contemporary Zoroastrians claim that they are monotheists and do not necessarily see the physical world as bad, as in the ontological dualism of Manichaeism.

Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion, C. Stephen Evans

Philosophy of Religion, A-K

2008-09-28T01:39:00.003-04:00

Antirealism. A philosophical theory that denies the mind-independent existence of some type of being or of being in general. The former type of antirealism may be called regional antirealism; the latter may be called global antirealism. Examples of regional antirealists would be philosophers who reject the independent reality of numbers, abstract entities in general, and unobservable theoretical entities in science. Global antirealists, influenced by Immanuel Kant, typically argue that that humans cannot know reality as it is in itself, independent of our human concepts.

Autonomy. A key concept in the ethical theory of Immanuel Kant, who held that a genuine moral obligation must be seen as legislated by reason and thus that a rational moral agent is himself the source of moral obligations. Kant saw and individual who behaves in accordance with morality out of a fear of punishment or desire for a reward as heteronomous, not autonomous. Some contemporary radical theologians have argued that the very existence of a Creator-God to whom human beings are responsible would be a threat to human moral autonomy, and consequently they have proposed that God be understood as a humanly invented symbol or idealization.

Kant, Immanuel (1724-1804. One of the greatest modern philosophers, whose critical philosophy attempted to synthesize the insights of both rationalism and empiricism. Kant argued in his Critique of Pure Reason that genuine scientific knowledge is possible but that this knowledge is of “phenomenal” reality—that is, reality as it appears to us, rather than reality as it is in itself. Human knowledge is always structured by space and time, which are the “forms of intuition” of the human mind, and by the categories provided by the human understanding such as causality and substance. As Kant saw it, though traditional natural theology is a failure and no theoretical knowledge of God is possible, recognizing the limits of reason allows room for a rational, moral faith. As we strive to live morally in accordance with the categorical imperative, we must rationally presuppose human freedom, the existence of God and immortality.

Aristotle (384-322 BC). One of the most famous philosophers of ancient Greece. Although Aristotle had been a student of Plato, he rejected Plato’s doctrine of transcendent Forms in favour of the claim that universal properties exist immanently in particulars, which he saw as a synthesis of form and matter. Aristotle invented logic as a formal discipline and wrote on a wide range of topics, including metaphysics, ethics and much that would today be classified as natural science, including biology and physics. Aristotle’s followers are sometimes called Peripatetics because of his habit of lecturing as he walked on the grounds of the Lyceum, his philosophical school in Athens.

Arminianism. A system of Christian doctrine inspired by the thought of Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), a Dutch theologian and pastor. Arminius taught that God’s election for salvation was conditional on his foreknowledge of human free choice. Though he thought of himself as a follower of John Calvin, his views were rejected by the Reformed Synod of Dordt. The relations between human free will and divine electing grace is still hotly debated within many Christian denominations, with those who emphasize free will often labeled Armenians.

Empiricism. Type of epistemological theory that, in contract with epistemological rationalism, gives primacy to sense experience in the acquisition of knowledge. There are many types of empiricism. In the ancient world, Aristotle was much more empiricist than was Plato, who emphasized innate ideas. This same difference was reflected in medieval philosophers, some of whom were Platonists, while others, such as Thomas Aquinas, followed Aristotle more closely. In modern philosophy the British philosophers John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume are the most significant empiricists. In the twentieth century logical positivism and its successors represented the empiricist tradition.

Berkeley, George (1685-1753). One of the great trio of British empiricist philosophers, along with John Locke and David Hume. Berkeley, who was an Irish Anglican and became a bishop, is famous for his defense of idealism, holding that only minds and mental events and properties exist. By rejecting the existence of matter and affirming that “to be is to be perceived,” Berkeley hoped to undermine the basis for materialistic atheism.

Hume, David (1711-1776). Scottish philosopher who was one of the preeminent thinkers of the Enlightenment. Hume was an empiricist who claimed that all knowledge of “matters of fact” (any knowledge not grounded in the meanings of terms) is based on sense experience. Hume developed powerful arguments that our knowledge of cause and effect and reliance on inductive reasoning are not in themselves rationally justifiable but are based on “custom.” In philosophy of religion, Hume is famous, first, for his argument that belief in miracles is irrational because the evidence of past experience will always outweigh the testimony in favour of miracles, and second, for a powerful critique of natural theology in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Locke, John (1632-1704). English philosopher who defended empiricism in epistemology and social contract theory of the state. Locke—one of the founders of modern philosophy—put forward and empiricist epistemology partly as a way of trying to resolve and control bloody religious conflicts. He defended an ethic that requires human to inspect their beliefs and try to ensure that they are holding those beliefs with a degree of confidence proportional to the evidence on which they are based. Locke thought that his epistemology could support a reasonable form of Christianity while limiting what he called “enthusiasm.” His political thinking stressed the idea that the state is based on a social contract with the citizens and can therefore lose legitimacy if that contract is undermined. This idea was influential on the founding fathers of the United State.

Buddhism. Religion founded by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, or “enlightened one” (c. 563-483 BC). Buddhism puts heavy emphasis on desire as the source of suffering and identifies the achievement of selflessness as the cure for this situation. Selflessness can be achieved through the Eightfold Path, freeing the individual from the wheel of reincarnation and allowing him or her to achieve nirvana. Buddhism is divided to Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism, the latter putting more emphasis on the role of Buddha himself as a compassionate helper.

Camus, Albert (1913-1960). French existentialist novelist and essayist. Camus is famous for his depiction of the absurd, which he descried as the incongruity between the human self that demands meaning and purpose and an indifferent world that offers none. Camus described an existentialist hero who derives some meaning in this meaningless world by an attitude of revolt. This absurd hero clearly understands the futility of the revolt, but he takes up the burden (like Sisyphus, who rolls a rock up a mountain, even though that rock will inevitably roll down again). Thus he refuses “the leap” which Camus attributes to Soren Kierkegaard.

Confucianism. Chinese school of ethical, political and religious teachings commonly attributed to Confucius (c. 551-479 BC). Confucianism places great weight on the cultivation of ethical virtues such as kingliness, humaneness and gentlemanliness that are cultivated through rituals. Ethical duties within Confucianism depend on one’s social and family position. There is some dispute over the religious character of Confucianism, centering on the nature of tian, or “heaven,” which is in some way the ground of our ethical duties. Some have interpreted this concept as transcendent, metaphysical way, while neo-Confucians tend to think of “heaven” as a metaphorical way of describing the natural ethical order of things.

Darwinism. The theory of the development of biological life originated by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), which holds that the mechanism for evolutionary development is made up of chance variations and natural selection involving competition for survival and reproduction. Darwinism sharply reduced the popularity of the argument from design in England and North America. Many religious thinkers regard Darwinism as compatible with the view that God is the Creator of the universe, seeing natural selection as a means employed by God. Nevertheless, atheists often regard Darwinism as strongly supporting their worldview. That opinion is shared by many advocates of “creation science,” who advocate non-Darwinian accounts of the origin of species. Darwinian thought is influential today in such fields as psychology and sociology. Advocates of Darwinian approaches view many aspects of human culture, even such things as ethics and religion, with respect to presumed reproductive advantages they provide.

Derrida, Jacques (1930- ). French philosopher who is regarded as the founder of deconstructionism, an important stream in what is often called postmodernism or poststructuralism. Derrida criticizes modernity for it commitment to “the metaphysics of presence” and what Martin Heidegger termed “onto-theology.” Deconstruction itself fosters a way of thinking that looks for contradictions between the ideals of modernism and its realities. It also promotes a way of reading that looks for contradictions between what a writer intends to say and what the text actually says.

Descartes, Rene (1596-1650). French philosopher and mathematician, generally regarded as the father of modern philosophy. Descartes was a rationalist who is well known for his attempt to gain certainty through a process of universal, methodical doubt in which he posed the possibility that his waking experience was indistinguishable from a dream world as well as the possibility that he was being deceived by an all-powerful evil genius. After establishing clear and distinct ideas as his standard for truth, Descartes defended soul-body (or mind-body) dualism and gave a number of proofs for the existence of God.

Pragmaticism. Philosophical movement that views ideas and beliefs in relation to their implications for action. A pragmatic theory of meaning should be distinguished from a pragmatic theory of truth that rejects the idea of truth as correspondence to reality. Pragmatism was developed in America by Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and John Dewey. Pragmatism is a form of empiricism but one that views experience as a form of dynamic interaction between the self and the environment, rather than consisting of sensations. The movement has recently been revived and interpreted in a postmodern manner by Richard Rory.

Dewey, John (1859-1952). One of the leaders of American pragmatism and an advocate of democratic liberalism and educational reform. Dewey was committed to philosophical naturalism and, unlike his fellow pragmatist William James, had little interest in religious experience of the possibility of an afterlife. In A Common Faith he attempted to develop a version of religious faith (or perhaps a successor to such faith) that involved the veneration of the natural order, human potential and the ideals of democracy.

James, William (1842-1910). American philosopher and psychologist and one of the originators of pragmatism. In philosophy of religion James is known for his argument in “The Will to Believe” that faith can be reasonable even if it is not supported by the preponderance of evidence. He is known as well for his astute descriptions of the religious life in The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Dualism. Any philosophical theory that posits two distinct primary substances or that is built around a fundamental distinction between two elements. The term is used in a variety of contexts to designate entirely different kinds of theories. For example, ancient Manichaeism was a form of dualism postulating two equal but opposing divine realities, a good power of light and an evil power of darkness. Theism has a dualistic dimension in that it makes a clear distinction between God and the created order, between the infinite and finite. Theories positing that the mind (or soul) and the body are distinct substances are also referred to as dualisms, though there are important differences among Platonic, Thomistic and Cartesian forms of mind-body dualism.

Edwards, Jonathan (1703-1758). American philosopher and theologian who synthesized Enlightenment scientific and philosophical ideas with historic Calvinism. Edwards’s thought is distinguished by commitments to George Berkeley’s idealism, to compatibilism with respect to freedom and determinism, and to an interesting view of God’s holiness as “the disinterest love of being” that constitutes “true beauty.” Edwards believed that a person must have a love for beauty in this form in order to acquire religious truth, and thus he devoted much attention to the development of religious affections, or emotions. Edwards is also important as one of the founders of revivalism in North America.

Epistemology. The branch of philosophy concerned with questions about knowledge and belief and related issues such as justification and truth. Some conceive of epistemology as an attempt to refute skepticism, the denial that knowledge is possible. One of the major debates in epistemology is that of internalism versus externalism: Must the basis or ground that warrants a belief be internally accessible to consciousness? Another major debate is foundationalism versus coherentism: Are some beliefs “properly basic,” or are all beliefs based on other beliefs in an interconnected web? Some philosophers of religion have argued that critiques of religious belief as unreasonable are grounded in faulty epistemologies, theories of knowledge that if applied to fields other than religion would make knowledge impossible in those other fields as well.

Existentialism. Cluster of philosophies popular after World War II that stressed that human existence is constituted by the choices people make. Existentialists have no agreed-upon body of beliefs but tended to stress the freedom, precariousness and even absurdity of the human situation, along with the responsibility of the individual to define himself through action. Though existentialism was inspired by nineteenth-century thinkers Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, neither of these philosophers would have endorsed much of was passed as existentialism. There were both atheistic (Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus) and religious (Martin Buber and Gabrial-Honore Marcel) versions, but in the popular mind existentialism is seen as atheistic.

Feuerbach, Ludwig (1804-1872). German philosopher who developed the projection theory of religion in which God is understood as a projection of unfulfilled human potential. Thus, according to this theory, religion is really anthropology. Feuerbach was a materialist who had a strong influence on Karl Marx. Feuerbach held that human progress demands a demystification of the religious consciousness and a return to concrete problems of human existence.

Foundationalism. Type of epistemology holding that though many beliefs are based on other beliefs, some beliefs must be held in a basic or foundational manner in order to avoid an infinite regress of beliefs. Classical foundationalism held that basic beliefs must be highly certain (self-evident or experientially certain) to be properly held, while some contemporary foundationalists, such as advocates of Reformed Epistemology, accept the fallibility of basic beliefs.

Freud, Sigmund (1856-1939). Austrian physician and psychological theorizer, founder of psychoanalysis. In philosophy of religion, Freud is known for his theory that belief in God is an illusion that arises out of the Oedipal complex, in which a child has a relation to what appears to the child to be an all-powerful father, on whom the child is dependent and whose good will the child desires. Freud does not appear to have noticed that his psychological theory, which holds that the child also resents and envies the powerful father, could provide an equally reductionistic explanation of antireligious beliefs. Nor did he consider the possibility that the child’s relation to the parents, rather than being a mechanism for the formation of an illusion, could be divinely ordained model whereby God provides a conception of himself.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900-). German philosopher who developed a philosophical hermeneutic that sees interpretation as a fundamental dimension to human existence. Gadamer, who was a student of Martin Heidegger, criticizes the Enlightenment for its “Prejudice against prejudices” and argues that understanding requires us to grasp a text against a “horizon of meaning” provided by a tradition. The interpreter brings to the encounter his own horizon of meaning, and genuine understanding occurs when there is a “fusion of horizons.”

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Italian astronomer and physicist and one of the great early modern scientists. Galileo invented the modern science of mechanics and defended Copernicus’ theory that the sun in the centre of the solar system. He was called before the Inquisition and forced to recant his views. This episode is often cited as evidence of the conflict between religion and science. However, it is noteworthy that Galileo was himself deeply religious and even gave theological justifications for his approach to science.

Gnosticism. A religious movement popular in the second and third centuries of the Christian church. Gnosticism’s influence can be seen in various Christian heresies and in Christian polemics against the movement’s tendencies. Gnostics believed in the possibility of a higher level of spiritual knowledge, or gnosis, and recommended various means of achieving this higher spiritual state. Gnostics tended to depreciate the material world in favour of the higher spiritual world. The term is more often used more loosely to refer to religious movements of any time period that emphasize esoteric spiritual knowledge.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770-1831). German philosopher who developed a philosophical system called Absolute Idealism. In this system the whole of reality is seen as the progressive unfolding of an Absolute Mind (identified with God), achieved through a dialectical process in which Geist (Spirit or Mind) repeatedly becomes alienated from itself and then overcomes that negation in a higher unity. Hegel saw human history as the place where the Absolute becomes self-conscious, and he saw the modern liberal state as the highest form of Spirit, an ethical community in which art, religion and philosophy—the three forms of Absolute Spirit—can flourish. Both Karl Marx and Soren Kierkegaard reacted critically against Hegel while at the same time being influence by him in many ways.

Heidegger, Martin (1889-1976). German philosopher whose life’s work centred on the question of the meaning of being. After early training in theology, Heidegger switched to philosophy to study with phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. His famous early work Being and Time attempted to discern the meaning of being by looking at human being (dasein)—that being whose very being involves the question of being and who must resolutely face up to the temporality implied by a person’s own death. In his later writings, Heidegger changed his focus toward a mode philosophizing in which the “call of Being” that has been repressed by technology and instrumental thinking can perhaps be discerned in the poet and the world of art. Heidegger had a great influence on existentialism, though he repudiated the uses of existentialists made of his work. His embrace of National Socialism has made him a controversial figure, though he remains influential, especially for postmodern philosophers.

Hinduism. The dominant religious respective of India, which is defined by the authority of the religious writings called the Vedas and Upanishads. Hinduism is more a group of religious traditions than a single religious faith, since within Hinduism one can find both theistic and monistic views of God and profound disagreements about such things as the nature of personal identity. Generally, Hinduism is characterized by an acceptance of the doctrine of reincarnation, or transmigration of the soul, and the goal of the religious devotee is seen as the deliverance of the soul from the cycle of reincarnation.

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679). English philosopher best known for his political thought, though he also developed a mechanistic, deterministic, materialistic metaphysic and an empiricist epistemology. In his Leviathan Hobbes developed a form of social contract theory, in which humans give up the rights they have in the state of nature, where life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” And create a commonwealth by assigning those rights to a sovereign. The sovereign determines what is just and unjust, and thus the sovereign itself (a person or group) cannot be unjust.

Humanism. A view that assigns a special place and value to human beings and their activities and achievements. Originally, the term was used to denote a movement associated with the development and flourishing of the humanities—those disciplines that deal with human nature and human achievements, such as literature, philosophy and the arts. In the nineteenth century, however, the term was co-opted by August Comte for his “religion of humanity,” which he developed a secular replacement for traditional religious faith. The term continues to be used in this way, as in the Humanist Manifesto. However, there is also a rich tradition of Christian humanism. Many Christian humanists are convinced that only in a religious worldview is the value of human life really understood and safeguarded.

Husserl, Edmund (1859-1938). German philosopher who was the found of phenomenology and a teacher of Martin Heidegger. Phenomenology is the attempt to develop a philosophy that describes experience as it is lived, prior to any scientific theorizing that grows out of that experience. Husserl taught that consciousness is “intentional” and that it can be described both with respect to its subjective act and with respect to the object of its intention, both of which are present in a unified way in experience. There is an irony present in Husserl’s project: whereas his major passion was to make philosophy a rigorous science that would allow it to become a foundational discipline for all the other sciences, his major influence has been on existentialist and poststructuralist philosophers who reject that ideal and think of philosophy as hermeneutical.

Islam. Monotheistic religion that originated in what is today Saudi Arabia in the seventh century as a result of the prophetic teachings of Muhammad, recorded in the Qur’an. Islam emphasizes submission to Allah (God) and accepts Judaism and Christianity as partially true, grounded in earlier revelations from God. In the medieval period Islam provided a congenial environment for the philosophy of religion. The intellectual product of Islamic thinkers such as al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, who creatively synthesized the monotheistic faith of the Qur’an with the Greek philosophical thought of Plato and Aristotle in the early Middle Ages. These thinkers grappled with such questions as the nature of creation and the relation of God to the world and the compatibility of human freedom and divine sovereignty.

Kierkegaard, Soren (1813-1855). Danish Christian philosopher and theologian, whose writings contain a stinging critique of G. W. F. Hegel and idealism, liberal theology, and the whole culture of Christendom, which assumes that we are all Christina by virtue of being Danes, Americans, or whatever. Kierkegaard considered himself to be a missionary whose vocation was the reintroduce Christianity into Christendom. His philosophical work focuses on the nature of human existence, since he thought that Christianity must first be understood as a way of existing but that people have forgotten what it means to exist as a human being. Kierkegaard rejected apologetic attempts to make Christianity appear reasonable, holding that New Testament Christianity must always appear foolish to the worldly mind and that genuine proclamation of the Gospel always maintains the possibility of offense. He stressed the qualitative difference between God and the human beings and viewed the incarnation as an absolute paradox that human reason cannot understand but can only believe in faith.

Pocket Dictionary of Apologetics & Philosophy of Religion, C. Stephen Evans

story formula I

2008-04-01T02:29:00.003-04:00

Key:
MC :: main character/protagonist
FS :: foreshadowing
BS :: backstory (narrative past)
FB :: flackback (direct cut to past)
character(s) :: characters as a group
antagonist(s) :: bad guys, but not as bad or life-threatening as the BBV
BBV :: big bad villain - the ultimate bad guy

1. Introduction – action

-meet the MC

-short term FS of a significant secondary character (if applicable)

-first impressions of static and types characters in book

2. Plot Introduction – long

-story world introduction (if fantasy/sci-fi)

-meet another character (opt.)

-short FB

-action sequence; FB; more action

-cliffhanger ending

3. Character Introduction – long

-meet another character (opt.)

-introduce subplot 1 (to add tension)

-BS introduction between characters

-introduce subplot 2 (romance, jealousy, etc.: something to add tension between characters)

-action sequence, solve a puzzle

-cliffhanger about main plot and antagonist(s)

-introduce antagonists (if applicable/omniscient viewpoint)

4. Up the Ante

-current goals are thwarted

-mission is readjusted around something else

-death of extremely minor character by antagonist(s) (if applicable/action story) to begin to reveal the capacity of the antagonist(s)

-action sequence, defeat, leading to a stronger resolve to win

-FB, FS

-BS of new adjusted goals

5. The Rain Before the Sunshine

-enter into enemy territory/new tense situation

-introduce new subplot 3 (to build up the main plot)

-meet another character (opt.)

-character(s) reflect on situation; experience temporary defeat

-twist of events, action sequence, character(s) begin to complain

-main plot adjusted for a bigger, badder threat/villain

6. Calm, Resolutions and Changes

-temporary calm, exploration, getting to know the world/characters better

-long FB + BS

-main plans adjusted with new information from FB/BS and set in stone, character(s) continue on (now more personal) journey

-new bigger badder villain (BBV)’s capacity shown (only a small portion for now)

-MC begins questioning himself and goals

-new hints/info about BBV

-change of events for the antagonist(s) (could be comic relief here)

7. Entertainment, then Fear

-really bad things happen – BBV’s capacity for evil is expanded upon

-more questions raised, some answered to move plot/journey

-info fulfilled for subplot 3 (but not completed)

-temporary relief/comic relief and relaxation for character(s)

-meet another character (opt.)

-bad fortune/turn of events for character(s)

8. Character Development

-short subplot about MC or secondary character

-quick action (escape, etc.)

-introduce new subplot 4 (for character development)

-travel, new places

-new info for main plot, new world info (for fantasy/sci-fi)

-meet new character (opt.)

9. Information Section

-slow movement, explanation/in-depth analysis of world/situation/history by outside source

-secondary character(s) goals/justification for goals are adjusted

-character development

10. Short and Tearful Action

-action/events that draw upon the reader’s emotional well

-character development

11. Questions and Meeting the Villain

-surprises of past surface, character(s) reach some sort of emotional dead-end

-new information obtained for main plot and/or BBV

-meet new character (opt.)

-new BS/FS

-meet the BBV face to face (if haven’t already) that lead to new realizations for MC

-new questions about the BBV

12. Antagonist(s) Development

-meet new character (opt.)

-new info for subplot(s)/antagonist(s)

-confrontation with antagonist(s)

-disaster/crash lead to new beginnings/fresh start/goal adjustment

-new info for main plot/key items obtained

-new info for BBV which raise the stakes

13. Betrayal

-reminiscing, character development

-romance scene

-character(s) betrays friends/morals (leads to remorse and/or forgiveness?)

-reach enlightening place/situation

-BBV endangers character(s)

-discovery of BBV’s full intent/plot

14. Revelations

-BBV raises the stakes for character(s)

-BBV defeats character(s), gets away and the chase resumes

-MC goes through breakdown (possibly from betrayal) and betrays friends again (emotional, physically, etc.)

15. Separation and Tragedy

-secondary character(s) forgive MC but MC cannot forgive himself

-a love interest goes sour, MC/character pursues lost love interest

-love interest is no more

-character(s) undergo horrible tragedy (illness, death, etc.) because of BBV/antagonist(s)

16. Vengeful Thoughts

-MC’s resolve is stronger (revenge)

-new BS/insight to subplot(s) and antagonist(s)

-subplot action and some comic relief

-new info for history/world (for fantasy/sci-fi) and/or FS

-new obstacles of main plot

-subplot(s) look bleak for character(s)

-antagonist(s) and/or BBV advance/move forward with plans

17. Failure

-meet the BBV again and manipulates the MC

-MC begins to “accept” his flaws

-BBV gets personal with other character(s), can show human quality traits but has to retain evil traits

18. Turn of Events

-bigger problems/obstacles arise for main plot

-MC gives up on self and succumbs to the BBV/antagonist(s)

-secondary character(s) development/teamwork

-character(s) overtaken by antagonist(s)

19. Bleak

-character(s) almost dies, saved by twist of events (inadvertent, luck, FS)

-action sequence

-character(s) bummed out about MC’s surrender

-MC not really present/has retracted into himself and his low self-esteem/self-worth

-character(s) want to save/help MC

20. Searching

-amazing stroke of luck/turn of events/etc. for character(s)

-situation worsens for larger audience/world

-subplot(s) advance

-character(s) arrive at a dead-end

21. Changes

-spy/once-bad character helps them

-new info leads to new drive against antagonist(s)

-new temporary subplot (give other character(s) something to do without MC)

-subplot(s) advance/shift/merge into main plot

-character development without MC

-action sequence

-romance subplot advances (opt.)

22. Unraveling and Discovery of Self

-MC discovers himself with help from other character(s); figures out the past

-resolution is rethought and made solid

-reunion with other character(s) (apologies, need trust, taken for granted, etc.)

23. Doubt, Moving On

-need to finish temporary subplot, now with MC, to stop antagonist(s)

-action sequence

-new info for main plot, show full capacity of antagonist(s)/BBV

-new exciting experiences for character(s)

-plans fail again because of lack of info/antagonist(s) change goals, need to rethink goals

-subplot solved

-character(s) second-guess their goals and doubt themselves and their strength

-character(s) rejuvenate themselves with nature/friends/family/etc.

-character(s) find their reasons to continue their goals and discover the key to defeating the bad guy, focus on BBV

-BS shared, memories of loved one(s)

-need outside source to help goal/find key/lockbox

24. Sources

-info is attained, keys used and new info is unlocked

-antagonist(s) interrupt, complicate things and provide temporary distraction against BBV

-twist of events: antagonist(s) and character(s) share same bad guy: BBV

25. The Beginning of the End

-subplot resolved

-eliminate an antagonist

-stakes are raised

-new info attained about BBV (insert last-minute sympathy/second-guessing about BBV?)

-subplot resolved

-antagonist(s) taken care of/eliminated

-stakes are raised and the clock begins to tick

-character(s) refresh themselves one last time before climax

26. Final Moments

-MC’s romance subplot fulfilled (opt.)

-character(s) connect, final pieces put together

-action (climax) begins

-climax

-MC victorious over BBV, now MC’s life is in danger

27. Resolutions

-MC is saved from death

-character(s) watch the result of their actions (doesn’t seem hopeful, then things turn for the better, but not without consequences for all)

Or, the character could be un-victorious and lose out to his lack of faith/self-destructive ways. Depends on what kind of effect you want to get.

by the way, can you figure out where I stole this story model from?? Probably one of the greatest story ever told.

Pay it Down

2008-01-27T00:59:00.000-05:00

Pay it Down by Jean Chatzky

Cost of a $20,000 Loan

Score	Interest Rate	Monthly Payment	Total Interest Paid over 30 Y.
720-850	4.931%	$460	$2078
700-719	5.659%	$467	$2396
675-699	7.894%	$487	#3389
620-674	10.808%	$515	$4722
560-619	15.126%	$558	$6779
500-559	18.530%	$593	$8467

How your Credite Score is Computed
35% of your score is based upon how well you pay your bills (on time)
30% is a measure of how much credit you have available to you and how much of that credite you're using. Why? Think of the percentage of credit you're using now--your credit utilization--as a fraction. See below.
-cancelling cards will have a negative impact on your score. E.G.:

Credit you're using
---------------------- = Credit Utilization
Credite avail. to you

--You have 10 cards and each of those has a $1,000 limit. You have $10,000 in revolving credit available to you. Now suppose you're only using five of your cards and that those five cards are all maxed out. You're using half of the credit available to you, which puts your credit utilization at 50%:
$5,000
---------- = 50%
$10,000

--If you decide you dont' need all of those cards, you dramatically reduce the credit you have available to you. Now your'e using all of the credit you have available, which puts your credit utilization at 100%
$5,000
---------- = 100%
$5,000

--This level of utilization could send your score down by 100 points.
10% is based on your search for new credit--how recently you have opened (or inquired about opening) new accounts.
10% is the financial composition of your file: what percentage is back-card debt and what percentage is installment debt?
15% is a measure of the length of your credit relationships: how long have you had the cards in your wallet? (longer=better)

How Long Negative Info Stays on your Record
-Late Payments :: 7 years
-Debt management plan (through credit counselor) :: 7 years
-Chapter 13 Bankruptcy :: 7 years
-Chapter 7 Bankruptcy :: 10 years

-Where to find good balance transfer offers: bankrate.com & cardweb.com

-Check the Schumer Box to compare credit card offers and compare the following:
-the APR after the teaser period
-the formula for computing a variable APR
-the length of the grace period (look for 25+ days)
-the annual fee
-the minimum finance charge
-the transaction fees (for cash advances, balance transfers, etc.)
-late/over fees
-the moethod used for computing your balance (from best to should-be-avoided: adjusted balance; average daily balance; two-cycle balance)

Debt Collectors are NOT Allowed to:
-call you before 8am and after 8pm
-use deceptive, unfair or abusive practices when trying to collect their debts
-threaten litigation if they don't have the right to sue you (creditors have the right to sue, collectors don't)
-lie to you if they're trying to collect a debt by telling you they're going to throw you in jail or contact your boss
-call you on the job if they know (b/c you're a teacher, for example) that it's not possible for you to take these calls at work
-call you on the job if they know your employer has prohibited it
-threaten to garnish your wages (they can't do that unless they have a judgment)

Address, Phone No. & Web Sites of the Three Major Credit Bureaus
Equifax in the South and Southeast; TransUnion in the North and Northeast and Experian in the West.

TransUnion
P.O. Box 390
Springfield, PA 10964-0390
800-916-8800
www.tuc.com

Equifax
P.O. Box 740241
Atlanta, GA 30374-0241
www.equifax.com

Experian
P.O. Box 949
Allen, TX 75013
www.experian.com

38 Common Mistakes

2007-12-01T21:06:00.000-05:00

38 Common Mistakes of Writers

1. Don't make excuses when you can avoid procrastination and delays with these ideas to get your project started.

2. Don't consider yourself too smart when you can bring your writing down to earth--where your readers are.

3. Don't show off when you write when you can give your writing power by putting complete ideas into simple language.

4. Don't expect miracles when you can achieve your writing goals through hard work, patience and perseverance.

5. Don't warm up your engines when you can write a captivating story from the very start.

6. Don't describe sunsets when you can keep your story moving by avoiding flowery descriptions.

7. Don't use real people in your story when you can create vivid, compelling characters through exaggeration.

8. Don't write about wimps when you can build strong, active characters by employing "story goals"

9. Don't duck trouble when you can fill your writing with true conflict.

10. Don't have things happen for no reason when you can use background and motivation to instill logic and credibility in your fiction.

11. Don't forget stimulus and response when you can strengthen your writing through cause and effect.

12. Don't forget whose story it is when you can avoid confusion by using the viewpoint character's thoughts and perceptions to dominate the story.

13. Don't fail to make the viewpoint clear when you can keep your readers riveted on a single character and his problem.

14. Don't lecture your read when you can convey story information through more innovative and creative means.

15. Don't let characters lecture, either when you can keep your dialogue from stumbling over clumsy research and background information.

16. Don't let them be windbags when you can keep characters' dialogue sleek and direct by creating a conversational goal.

17. Don't mangle characters' speech when you can write realistic dialogue without using dialect, slang, colloquialisms and foul language.

18. Don't forget sense impressions when you can create understanding for characters by fully using thought, feelings and the senses.

19. Don't be afraid to say 'said' when you can keep your dialogue strong by avoiding these examples of distracting synonyms.

20. Don't assume you know; look it up because one tiny error can rob you of your reader's credibility.

21. Don't ever stop observing and making notes when you can hone your description skills by constantly practicing on the world around you.

22. Don't ignore scene structure when you can use these seven steps to create an exciting scene that will build tension.

23. Don't drop alligators through the transom when you can create interesting complications directly related to the story.

24. Don't forget to let your characters think when you can employ the power of 'emotion-thought-decision' to fulfill story goals.

25. Don't wander around in a fog when you can define your story's direction, and stick to it.

26. Don't worry about being obvious when you can be confident your writing is clear and powerful enough to keep readers out of the dark.

27. Don't criticize yourself to death when you should just let your creative juices flow.

28. Don't worry what mother will think when you can write freely, without outside burdens.

29. Don't hide from your feelings when you can fill your writing with the passion and emotion that readers crave.

30. Don't take it to the club meeting when you can avoid the sting of unnecessary, incorrect and irrelevant advice.

31. Don't ignore professional advice when you can benefit from the experience of a published writer.

32. Don't chase the market when you can write solid, publishable fiction without getting hung up on 'sure thing' trends.

33. Don't pose and posture when you can remove plot-stopping pretensions and cynicism from your writing.

34. Don't waste your plot ideas when you can use these idea-sparkersto make them work for you over and over again.

35. Don't stop too soon when you can hold a truly finished project in your hands after completing this twelve-step revision plan.

36. Don't prejudice your editor when you can use these eight tips for putting together a manuscript package.

37. Don't give up when you can remain optimistic and persistent in your career as a fiction writer.

38. Don't just site there when you could start writing and keep writing -- successfully.

Disclaimer

2007-11-06T00:39:00.001-05:00

Any and All material in this blog are copyright to their subject owner and author, recorded in the Credits section, link located on left. Some entries are paraphrased, while others are written word for word.

Blog design credits to Damien Lockheart, original images have been replaced; background image credits to stormlor stock.

Credits

2007-11-06T00:37:00.001-05:00

Barrett, David V. “The Predictions Library: Graphology”, A Dorling Kindersley Book, 1995

Schmidt, Stanley, “Aliens and Alien Societies” Writer’s Digest Books, 1995

Aliens and Alien Societies

2007-11-06T00:27:00.000-05:00

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy:: Fantasy’s events are pretend and happen only in the story; Science Fiction tryies to create worlds/futures that could exist
-both deal with the impossible
-sci-fi seems far out but is based on real principles
-if it can’t be proved 100% impossible, then it could be used for sci-fi

ASTRONOMY
Scientific Notation: 10^4 = 1 with 4 zeros after it
Wavelengths - (especially those seen in infrared, visible light, ultraviolet and x-rays) are expressed in Angstrom units (1A = 10^-8 = 10^-10m)
AU (astronomical unit) - distances within in the solar system (1AU = the mean radius of the Earth’s orbit)
Light Year (c) - 186,000 mi/sec = 9.46x10^15m = 5.87x10^12 miles
Parsec (pc) - parallax second = simplest method for measuring distances. 1pc = 3.26 LY
0 Kelvin - absolute zero, water freezes at 273K = 0C
Star Brightness is measured in magnitudes (lower number = brighter)
-A Difference of 1 magnitude is equivalent to a brightness ratio of 2.512 (5th Root of 100) e.g. 1.3 magnitude = 2.512x brighter as 2.3 magnitude and 100x brighter than 6.3 magnitude
--Negative Magnitude is brighter;: 100x brighter than 1.3= -3.7 (1.3-5)
--Apparent Magnitude (seeable by human eyes) = Negative number +6 (depends on distance)

Spectroscope - tells you how much light the source is producing at each wavelength (frequenies)
Wavelength - a “continuous spectrum”

Heat (from cold to hot):: None---Red---Yellow---White---none---bluish
-Light is absorbed (absorption spectrum) only at certain wavelengths, determined by its atomic/molecular structure
Dopplar Effect - apparent change in frequency and wavelength caused by motion of the source toward or away from the observer i.e. a galaxy (farther away=moving faster)= Hubble’s Law

F=GMm/r^2 - gravitational force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square distance between them, where:
G - Universal gravitational constant
M&m - Masses
R - radius

- intergalactic > interstellar
- our nearest “neighbor” galaxies are the Magellic Clouds, more than 100,000 light years away; similar galaxies like ours are a couple million light years away

Star Type Temperature (K) Colour Luminosity Time on M. Sequence (star life span)
O 25k+ blue >30k <8x10^6
B 10-25k blue 100-300k 8x10^6 -- 4x10^8
A 8-10k blue 5-100 4x10^8 -- 4x10^9
F 6-8k blue-white 1.2-4.8 4x10^9 -- 1x10^10
G 5-6k yellow-white 0.4-1.2 1.1x10^10 -- 42.7x10^9
K 3.7-5k orange-red <0.1-3.5 2.8x10^10-~4x10^11
M <3,700 red <0.1 >10^11

-A star goes down to red then can recharge, OR, neutrons condense, spin, turn into a Neuron Star, turn into a Pulsar (because of rapid spinning, OR, (black hole) collapse to such a high density that light cannot escape
-Old stars eject outter layers into space
Supernova - extremely violent explosion that ends a star…temporarily becomes brighter than the galaxy

Superjovian - 10-15x larger than Jupiter, tighter atmosphere, spins faster
Jovian - Jupiter-Saturn size, thick atmostphere
Subjovian - Uranus-Neptune size, smaller mass, higher density, not much hydrogen, helium, higher concentration of heavier elements
Super Terrestrial - 8x Earth’s mass, 2x surface gravity, denser atmosphere
Terrestrial - Earth--Venus size, 100x Earth’s surface pressure -- varies
Sub Terrestrial - Mercury-Mars-Moon size, rocky, little or no atmosphere

For a planet to habitable, its star (eg our sun) must be F5-K5

Graphology - DV Barrett

2007-11-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

-Graphology cannot identify gender, age or profession
-the analysis process is more accurate if the test is conducted spontaneously and written with a fountain pen on unlined paper
Steps:: I. First take in the first impression (is it neat/messy? Large/small? Strong/light pressure? Etc.)
II. Check the margins, slope, rhythm/speed/flow, pressure and spacing
III. Check the individual letters

MARGINS
-Even margins = orderly mind and takes care with presentation
* Wide Left Margin = extroverted
* Narrow Left Margin = introverted
*Wide Right Margin = self-conscious, timid (of future)
* Irregular Right Margin = versatile/unconventional mind, poor self-discipline, tendency to be unreliable/unstable
* Wide Top Margin = cautious/hesitant, OR generous nature
* Narrow Top Margin = impatience with others’ restrictions, OR dislikes any form of procrastination

*Left margin starts close to edge of paper, then widens as it goes down = need for more space and independence
*Left margins starts far away from edge of paper, then gradually closes in on the left margin = loss of self-confidence, poor planning

* Top of paper is densely filled and lines get farther apart toward end/vice versa = lack of aesthetic awareness, lack of planning and forethought
* Paper is tightly filled, narrow line spacing = powerful urge to communicate OR could show a disorderly mind, poor planning and lack of respect for reader

SLOPE
-indicates optimism/pessimism

-Entire line gradually slants up or down, it could just be indicative of the angle the paper was held at while writing.
-Upward slant usually indicates optimism, Downward slant usually indicates pessimism, depression or poor health.

* Lines are parallel with top/bottom of margins = stable person, conformist or indicates emotional coldness
-- individual words rise at end = someone who tries but lacks the strength/endurance
-- individual words consistently fall at end = could indicate exhaustion or anger
* Concave lines (line dips down in middle) = someone who is fighting depression
* Convex lines (line bumps up in middle) = lack of strength or will to maintain improvement
* Irregularity/Not straight = instability OR intuition and creativity
* Writing stays exactly on baseline = consistency and strength of will
* Words meander on baseline = instability, lack of self-confidence &/or sincerity OR highly versatile mind

SLANT
-indicates emotional stability

* Straight = consistent person with sound judgment
* Left = defensive attitude and unwillingness/instability to reveal/express emotions
* Right = sociable/friendly who finds it easy to communicate
** Excessive Right = lack of self-discipline, tendency to over exaggerate
* Irregular = could indicate versatility and imagination, but more likely indicative of indecision, confusion or aggression
* No slant/variety = attitude is too fixed and rigid; inadaptable

SIZE
* Small (1/16 inch or less) = low self-esteem, unusually modest/tendency for perfection, OR great attention to detail and patient
* Normal (1/16 - 1/8 inch) = sensitivity or diplomacy; self-confidence drains quickly
* Large (around 1/8 inch) = extroverted, generous, enthusiastic, independence OR vanity and domineering
* Extra Large (more than 1/8 inch) = very negative

* Words/lines become larger = shows naivete, lack of social judgment/balance, OR someone who often exaggerates OR eagerness/enthusiasm
* Tall and Thin Writing = shows caution/restraint OR meanness OR self-control
* Short and Wide Writing = willingness for self-expression and eagerness to communicate

RHYTHM SPEED & FLOW
-indicates inner balance, liveliness of thinking

* Rhythmic (smooth flow or consistent irregularities) = isn’t self-conscious of perfection, indicates balance of body, mind and emotions
* Slow (less than 100 words per minute) = careful attention to detail, or thoughtful/reflective courtesy for reader
* Fast (more than 200 words per minute) = lack of care, quick-thinking, enthusiastic, mind ahead of hand

WEIGHT & PRESSURE
* Heavy = firmness of intent OR bullying/domineering character OR sensual/materialistic
* Light = weak-willed
** Well-formed Light = creativity, adaptability, sensuous
** Not well-formed Light = weakness of body/will or impartibility

* Thick but no form = warm, sensual, artistic OR self-indulgent
* Even pressure = dullness, resignation
** Simple/not intense Even Pressure = “unformed” personality

- End Stroke Pressure indicates aggression level
* Sharp ends = nervous tension, impatience, irritability OR incisive mind
* Thick/blunt ends = brusqueness, strong emotion, misdirected energy

SPACING
-indicates distance from people
- Normal Spacing = width of ‘n’ or ‘m’

* Wider than ‘m’ = keep people at distance (but must judge this from other signs in writing)
* Irregular = someone who fluctuates

Line Spacing::
* Narrow = narrow-minded, closed-in
* Wide = isolated person who has difficulty coping with world
* Irregular = disorderly mind, lacks judgment or control

CONNECTIONS
* 2-3 continuous connections = thoughtful/aware person
* No connections = disorganized mind OR extreme care and precision

*Angular Connection (diagonal lines connect letters) = straightforward/firmness/decisiveness; prefers logic and facts to intuition
* Arcade Connection (connecting lines on top of letters) = consciousness of appearance OR artistic temperament
* Thread Connection (loose connectors, sometimes looks like extra ‘m’s’ or ‘n’s’) = creativity/versatility OR laziness, impatience, minor illness
* Garland Connection (concave lines connect letters (on top or bottom)) = highly sociable, earthy more than spiritual

MIDDLE ZONE
-indicates perception or self and your value to others
-the middle zone indicates yoru hopes, dreams, ambition, emotions and desires

* Not Well-developed Top or Bottom = lack of stability, coherence, practicality
* Erratic Mid-Zone = not comfortable with self
* Mid Zone is bigger/taller than rest of zones = high self-esteem/social self-Assurant &/OR vanity/arrogance
* Small Mid Zone = Lack of self-esteem OR intellectual and independent
* Wide Mid Zone = self-confident in skills &/OR self-indulgent

UPPER ZONE
-indicates abstract ideas

* Small = lack of zest for life, passive, practical, down-to-earth OR unrealistic aspirations; single-minded
* Choppy = denies reaching upward/outward
* Tall = striving for something more; idealistic
* Thin = has difficulty relating to the abstract
* Full & Wide = expresses abstractly, artist, musician; liar (habitual or skillful)
* Irregular = dreams aren’t practical

LOWER ZONE
-indicates drives, passions, sensuality

* Small = the physical is unimportant, weak; out of touch/hesitant/timid/sexual inhibition
* Large = More concerned with the tangible/practical; follows instincts
* Extra Large = Ruled by instincts, overdoer OR enthusiastic
* Constricted = denial of physical expression; conservative
* Irregular = highly sensual but repressed sexual feelings; health problems

ASCENDING/DESCENDING LOOPS
-indicates emotions/desires

Ascending Loops
* Flies out and Back (to left) = imaginative/mental agility OR selfish, vain
* Triangular = dominate desire, imposing
* Wide = emotions important, open mind
* Thin = emotionally repressed
* Very High Loops = could indicate vanity

Descending Loops
* Wide = uninhibited enjoyment/sexually open
* Excessively Wide = unrestrained
* Tight = self-control, attempt to restrain/constrict emotion
* To Left, no Loop = desire to return to past
* Opposite turn = need for independence
* Entangled with other Lines = lack of concentration, anxiety or agitation
* Unnecessary Loops = selfish

I’S & T’S
-state of mind, attention to detail

I’s::
* Not all I’s are dotted = common
* All I’s are dotted = attention to detail
* No I’s are dotted = lazy, not detail-oriented

*Dot is close to mid-zone = care and precision
* Dot to the Right, flies or streaks = fast writing
* Dot links to the Next Letter = intelligent and logical mind
* Dot is left of I = lack of care/caution
* Dot is a circle = immature/untrustworthiness

T’s::
* Consistent and Precise = attention to detail
* Low crossbar = feeling of inferiority
* High crossbar = good imagination and ambition
* Short crossbar = cautious
* Long crossbar = good amount of energy
* Upward stroke = enthusiastic
* Downward stroke = unhappy, weariness
* Wavy stroke = good-natured, light-hearted OR escapist

Crossbar…
* Links with next letter = adaptable, logical mind
* Links by a triangle = stubborn, purposeful, dominant
* Various links = versatility, creativity OR disorganized mind
* Not connected to letter, lies on Right = eager but unrealistic
* Not connected to letter, lies on Left = slow-thinking
* Not connected to letter, lies above it = imagination is beyond reality

SIGNATURE
* Much larger than usual handwriting = arrogant, over-compensation for acknowledgement, introspective
* Much smaller than usual handwriting = low self-esteem
* Illegible - modesty, de-valuing self; arrogant
* Underlined = firmness and confidence (with more lines, more confidence)
* Wavy Lines = likes to create effect
* Line through signature = deep personal satisfaction
* Part/Whole is Encircled = protection and defense of self

EMBELLISHMENTS
-indicate insincerity, narcissism, and demanding attention

* Arabesque curves = patronizing attitude
* Extra loops = selfish
* Childish/Teenage handwriting = stuck in teen persona: projecting a false image

Astrology Lexicon

2007-11-04T21:55:00.000-05:00

Affinity – a mutual attraction between signs
Angles – the four cardinal points in a horoscope that mark the horizon and the meridian. The four angles are the Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven (Medium Coeli) and Nadir (Imum Coeli).
Angular Houses – the four houses in a horoscope that immediately follow the four angles. (I, IV, VII, & X House)
Ascendant – (Rising Sign) the sign of the zodiac that was rising on the eastern horizon at the time of birth; the point in a birth chart that marks the cusp of the First House.
Aspect – the geometrical relationship between planets in a birth chart which indicates areas of harmony, challenges, strain, ease, and/or power. Major aspects: Conjunction, Trine, Sextile, Opposition, and Square. Minor aspects: Quincunx, Semisquare, Sesquisquare, and Semisextile.
Cadent Houses – the four houses in a horoscope that immediately follow Succedent Houses. (III, VI, IX, & XII House)
Cardinal – Aries, Cancer, Libra & Capricorn (action, initiative, leadership and outgoing activity)
Conjunction – When two or more planet are in or within 10 degrees of each other
Cusp – People born in a “cusp” indicates they were born at the beginning or end of a sign; these people usually display aspects of their sun sign and preceding/following sign.
Decanate – 10 degree subdivision of the zodiac that divides each sign into three sections. Each section refines and emphasizes certain qualities and traits pertaining to the overall sign.
Descendant – marks the cusp of the Seventh House and is directly opposite of the Ascendant. Partnerships or relationships with a Descendant may produce good effects.
Duality – masculine or feminine classifications of signs; masculine signs are outer-directed, energetic, and strong through action. Feminine signs are receptive, magnetic, and strong through inner resources.
Elements – fire (energetic and enthusiastic), earth (practical and stable), air (communicative and intellectual) & water (emotional and imaginative)
Fixed – Taurus, Leo, Scorpio & Aquarius (persistence, singlemindedness, determination and resourcefulness)
Grand Trine – an unusual aspect-pattern when 3 planets are all 120 degrees distant from one another
Luminaries – the sun and moon
Lunar Mansions – the division of the zodiac into 28 (sometimes 27) parts, based on the moon’s 28-day cycle.
Lunation – the new moon; can also mean the period between one new moon and the next
Meridian – the line that intersects the circle from north to south
Midheaven – marks the cusp of the Tenth House; represents ambition, ideals and public image
Mutable – Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius & Pisces (adaptability, versatility, openness to change and flexibility)
Nadir – marks the cusp of the Fourth House; represents a person’s beginnings and psychological roots; the unconscious motivation
Opposition – when two or more planets are 180 degrees apart; indicates a challenge for growth and achievement because of inner conflicts
Polarity – two signs opposite of each other (6 signs apart; i.e. Cancer & Capricorn)
Qualities – the three kinds of energy (cardinal, fixed & mutable) the signs of the zodiac are classified in
Quincunx – 150 degrees apart
Ruler – the planet that has dominion over a particular astrological sign (i.e. Virgo ruled by Mercury)
Semisextile – 30 degrees apart
Semisquare – 45 degrees apart
Sesquisquare – 135 degrees apart
Sextile – 60 degrees apart
Solar Chart – when the sun sign is used as the Rising Sign
Square – 90 degrees apart
Succedent – II, V, VIII & XI House
Triplicity – three signs in the four elements