scholarly journals Hyper-Past Evils: A Reply to Bogdan V. Faul

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 374-377
Author(s):  
Tyron Goldschmidt ◽  
Samuel Lebens
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past

AbstractA reply to Bogdan V. Faul’s “Can God Promise Us a New Past? A Response to Lebens and Goldschmidt.” In this reply we clarify why it is that we regard a scene-changing theory of time to be an improvement over presentism from a theological point of view. We present two benefits: a scene changing theory allows God (1) to improve the past and it allows him (2) to give free will to human beings whilst ensuring that they hyper-will never have misused it. More generally, the scene-changing theory when compared to presentism has the more compelling account of the badness of past evils.

Drones and Robots

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Statman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Moral Point ◽  
Moral Point Of View ◽  
Defensive Action

The recent development of unmanned technology—drones and robots of various types—is transforming the nature of warfare. Instead of fighting against other human beings, combatants will soon be fighting against machines. At present, these machines are operated by human beings, but they are becoming increasingly autonomous. Some people believe that, from a moral point of view, this development is worrisome, especially insofar as fully autonomous offensive systems (‘killer robots’) are concerned. I claim that the arguments that support this belief are pretty weak. Compared with the grand battles of the past, with their shockingly high toll of casualties, drone-centered campaigns seem much more humane. They also enable a better fit between moral responsibility and vulnerability to defensive action. Drones and robots may well be recorded in the annals of warfare as offering real promise for moral progress.

Billy Graham as American Religious and Cultural Symbol

2015 ◽  
Vol 108 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-481
Author(s):  
Curtis J. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Religious Leader ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Figures ◽  
Billy Graham ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
Moral Choices ◽  
Great Pain

Writing a biography challenges us in fundamental ways as scholars of religion, as historians, and as human beings. We are forced to reckon with the implicit and explicit theological commitments of religious persons, the ways they inhabited the world, the sometimes “strange country” that is the past, and the varied ways in which our subjects took for granted things by which we find ourselves and our age so troubled. While we may eschew “taking sides” in our attempts to be good scholars and under the noble goal of not wanting simplistically and reflexively to impose our contemporary moral judgments upon figures from the past, we cannot avoid discussing the moral choices historical actors made, assessing their prominence in their time, their influence on their broader surroundings, and their legacy beyond their times. All of these factors have great bearing on how we narrate the lives of historical figures and how we represent them in the present. James Baldwin's impassioned claim that it is with “great pain and terror [that] one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one's point of view” might sound a bit overly deterministic, but it is worth remembering when thinking self-consciously about how we critically assess and evaluate those about whom we write. Grant Wacker's new biography of Billy Graham, America's Pastor, invites the reader along to grasp more fully what this looks like as Wacker, a self-described “partisan of the same evangelical tradition Graham represented,” masterfully evokes and unfolds Graham as a shaper of public consciousness and a spokesperson for millions of “ordinary Americans.” This work possesses the virtues of the careful and considered reflections of a seasoned historian's analysis of the life of a famous religious leader who is deeply admired by many Americans. It is about the closest we will get to a full appreciation of Graham the man and Graham the icon.

scholarly journals Influence of Past on Present: A Naturalistic Study of Ghosts

The Batuk ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 55-66
Author(s):  
Arjun Dev Bhatta
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Transformation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
External Environment ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Naturalistic Study ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophy Of Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Life

This article analyzes and evaluates Henrik Ibsen’s most controversial drama “Ghosts” from naturalistic point of view. Naturalism views human life in relation to internal and external environment. It insists on the effect of the past that shapes the present life of human beings. Based on this philosophy of life, this article examines how the life of the leading characters Mrs. Alving and her son Oswald has been influenced. Mrs. Alving’s present values and views on life have a concern with conventional and religious past whereas Oswald’s philosophy of life is guided and governed by his dead father. This article also shows heredity and genetic transformation are biological facts that affect human life. Thus, the object of this article is to explore how human beings are controlled by the inescapable past.

Pietro Pomponazzi’s De immortalitate and his clandestine De incantationibus

2001 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 87-115
Author(s):  
Paola Zambelli
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Spontaneous Generation ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe

The importance of Aristotelianism during the Renaissance is one of the points most emphasized in the past twenty years by American historians. In the Faculties of Arts, professors were obliged to illustrate Aristotelian texts and commentaries; but, of course, they did not subscribe to all of the original doctrines of Aristotle: so Van Steenberghen, Kristeller and C. B. Schmitt consider most of them, above all Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), as »eclectics«. Having emerged unscathed from the dispute on his treatise »De immortalitate animae« and on its apologies, Pomponazzi circulated two handwritten treatises which were even more subversive of orthodox beliefs on fate and on the natural causes of prodigies and incantations. From a Stoic point of view and thanks to his readings of Bessarion, Ficino and Giovanni Pico, he analyzed the Neoplatonic theses on chance and determinism, astrology and magic, and the position of man in the universe. His late treatises deal with these questions (free will as attributed to the individual by Christian doctrine and by numerous philosophers, or, instead, the conditioning to which man’s body, or his passions, or — according to a more radical thesis — his entire personality is subjected by the influence of the stars; the great conjunctions of the stars and the cyclical nature of history; the spontaneous generation of man; the capacity of the astrologer and the natural magician to produce incantations and prodigies, etc.).

scholarly journals Celebrating ‘Indian's’ in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and The Roots and Shadows

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
K. Maheswari
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Education System ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
Value System ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Education ◽  
The Impact

The aim of this paper is an attempt that Indian cultural values should be revised meticulously and   accurately leaving behind western impact and the paper rides on a new pride, as a revival of inspiration, a recuperation from centuries of British domination of India in which Hindu dignity was systematically undermined through the Macaulay education system and the invasion of Mogul. Values are what human beings live by. The value-system of any given culture determines the sense of fulfillment and degree of happiness of its members. Indian value system had been misinterpreted from the point of view of the west and imposed  on the psyche of Indian women  through new education. The new education has gradually made her conscious of futility or emptiness of the various long-preserved notions and taboos about the woman, and she has started opposing and breaking them. And this crusade at times makes her feel alone  and alienated. Their conscious had been colonized according to the impact of western. Nevertheless, it is high time that contemporary Indian women are in position to realize their roots, meaning of life and great value system of India. Hence, tradition is the best of the past that has been carried forward for the future.

scholarly journals Reestablishing the Analytical Thinking of Students: A Buddhist Solution to Modern Educational Crisis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kustiani
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Maximum Capacity ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
Educational Crisis ◽  
Analytical Thinking ◽  
The Mind

Education is important aspect for human beings. Education can be done formally or informally. In Buddhist point of view, education should be done as long as the life of a person. It is done throughout the samsaric journey until someone becomes an enlightened one, becoming a non learner (asekha). In the modern education, various facilities are provided to produce a very good graduate. However this easy access is challenged by the emergence of bad habit of students i.e. copying and pasting data from internet without doing analysis.The solution to this bad habit has to be found because it will cut off the analytical thinking of students. The lack of analytical skill makes student become unproductive in many aspects. As the result, they are not having the ability to think comprehensively, and not having the ability to raise a new idea or to solve the problem correctly. That is why many students are just keeping silent in the class without able to rise or to answer question Human is a being with a higher mind than animal. Human being is called manussa in Pali term. Literally, manussa means “higher mind”. It means that a human being has special ability to understand matter relating to the past, present and future by comparing and contrasting well. This definition also indicates that the mind of human can be developed until its maximum capacity, intellectually or spiritually. This article try to explore some alternatives ways in managing modern education to obtain maximum intellectual and spiritual goal for millennial generations.

scholarly journals Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, free will and mathematical thought

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOLOMON FEFERMAN
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Computing Machine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Unlimited Time ◽  
Incompleteness Theorems ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Mathematical Mind ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Gödel’S Incompleteness Theorems

The determinism-free will debate is perhaps as old as philosophy itself and has been engaged in from a great variety of points of view including those of scientific, theological, and logical character. This chapter focuses on two arguments from logic. First, there is an argument in support of determinism that dates back to Aristotle, if not farther. It rests on acceptance of the Law of Excluded Middle, according to which every proposition is either true or false, no matter whether the proposition is about the past, present or future. In particular, the argument goes, whatever one does or does not do in the future is determined in the present by the truth or falsity of the corresponding proposition. The second argument coming from logic is much more modern and appeals to Gödel's incompleteness theorems to make the case against determinism and in favour of free will, insofar as that applies to the mathematical potentialities of human beings. The claim more precisely is that as a consequence of the incompleteness theorems, those potentialities cannot be exactly circumscribed by the output of any computing machine even allowing unlimited time and space for its work. The chapter concludes with some new considerations that may be in favour of a partial mechanist account of the mathematical mind.

One Point of View: Crisis in Arithmetic Teaching—the Future Is Here

1984 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-3
Author(s):  
Carol Altizer-Tuning
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Work Patterns ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Arithmetic Teaching ◽  
Over Time

New gadgets beckon to the imagination, and robots work in our factories and homes. We are facing a society that is increasingly automated, one that is going to change fundamentally the nature of the work expected of human beings. Such a change has occurred once before in history. During the Industrial Revolution, steam engines and other devices began to do the physical work of human beings. Today, computerization is changing familiar work patterns. Computers are taking over much of the mental labor we do routinely and repetitively. They free our minds to engage in more creative endeavors. People must be equipped for such changes. They must be prepared for the nonroutine, the unforeseen, the unfamiliar, and the uncertain. The standards of the past are inadequate for the present and future. It is important to recognize that not only do problems change over time but also do the methods, the tools, and the knowledge required for their solutions.

An alterantive Free Will Defence

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ackermann
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Rational Reflection ◽  
Definite Proof

Many philosophers have written in the past as though it were nearly obvious to rational reflection that the existence of evil in this world is incompatible with the presumed properties of the Christian God, and they have assumed a proof of incompatibility to be easy to construct. An informal underpinning for this line of thought is easy to develop. Surely God in his benevolence finds evil to be evil, and hence has both the desire and the means, provided by his omnipotence and omniscience, to eradicate it. But it remains a brute fact that evil exists. While this seems plausible enough at first glance, and seems damaging to the rationality of Christian belief, attempts to pin down a definite proof of incompatibility have encountered difficulties. The root difficulty is perhaps that the surface plausibility of incompatibility is ultimately mistaken. In what he calls a Free Will Defence against natural atheology, Alvin Plantinga has presented what seems a definitive proof, on rather modest assumptions, of the logical compatibility of God's nature and the existence of evil. Logic alone can neither prove nor disprove God's existence, since the defence rests on the empirical assumption that evil exists in this world. What Plantinga shows, put very simply, is that God may have created a world as good as any that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being might have created given that human beings must exist in that world. Whether Christianity ought to court logical rationality may seem highly dubious, but on the supposition that it does, Plantinga's proof that the existence of God is logically compatible with the existence of evil seems to me to (provisionally) settle the issue of whether Christianity is a possible object of rational belief, at least insofar as the problem of evil is considered the major obstacle to rationality of belief. Perhaps it is now clear that I do not intend here to attack the validity or the significance of Plantinga's proof. At the same time, I think it possible to argue for Plantinga's conclusion on other grounds, grounds that seem to me philosophically more appealing, and grounds that are manifestly compatible with the Biblical record. After briefly summarizing Plantinga's argument, I shall propose an alternative free will defence that circumvents some of the presuppositions of his arguments, an alternative that may be attractive to philosophers who are not interested in an ontology involving Plantinga's conception of possible worlds.

The Development of Archaeology in Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nonofho Mathibidi Ndobochani
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Historical Ecology ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Cradle Of Humankind ◽  
Work Done

Africa is the cradle of humankind, with the origin, evolution, and dispersal of hominids understood from this continent. It was not left out in the quest for knowledge on how human beings lived in the past, where they lived, what they used and ate, as well as changes that occurred through time. The development of archaeology in Africa, as elsewhere, had two aspects to it—the volume and inclination of work done as evidenced by extensive fieldwork and publications, and the change in approach that saw a shift toward philosophical and methodological concerns. Terminology broadened as there was a shift from merely establishing evidence of occupation and the presence of material culture, to studying the subtleties and processes underlying the material culture. The human mind is complex; it generated a dynamic material culture temporally and spatially, and notwithstanding the environmental impact on past cultures, humanity also colonized landscapes. Appreciation of an interchange between humanity and the environment became necessary to sync and contextualize the development of ideas, concepts, and worldviews, and whether they emerged from within societies or were externally influenced, they were shared across time and space—necessitating multidisciplinary approaches to studying the past. To an archaeological scholar in Africa, the problem is compounded. The study of the past has always been from an observer’s point of view, resulting in the call to “decolonize archaeology”—Africans were alienated in studying the past and the tendency was to have them not see this past as their heritage. Archaeology must be relevant to Africa’s issues of environmental management, food security, and socioeconomic challenges such as youth and women’s empowerment. What can the discipline offer? Is the archaeology of Africa accessible to its population, and do we see possibilities for an intergenerational beneficiation of Africa’s past? Most importantly, Africa still has a wealth of knowledge to offer in the study of the paleoenvironment, human evolution, food production and processing, historical ecology, multidisciplinary approaches, and computer technology. Their contribution to a better understanding of the rich, complex, and dynamic African past is of utmost importance.

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