Existence of God Essay -- Literary Analysis, Suma Theologica

In the â€Å"Suma Theologica,† by Saint Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas combines the doctrines of Christianity with Aristotelian philosophy, through the assertion that as a result of observation, utilization of the senses, and an empirical mindset, one can substantiate the existence of God. Aquinas holds the conception that in the quest for God’s existence, philosophy and theology are interwoven together and both play complementary roles. He infuses numerous theological doctrines, mainly from Saint Augustine, alongside Aristotelian ideals such as, the first mover, to corroborate his argument for the existence of God. Instead of basing his argument on human reason and rationality like his predecessor, Saint Anselm of Canterbury, Aquinas holds that it is instead through an empirical mindset that one is able to ascertain and comprehend the existence of God. Aquinas deems that all knowledge acquired originated from the experiences of our senses. He believes that by experiencing eve nts, the human being is aware of the fact that there exists an effect for every action that is undergone. Through this realization, Aquinas recognizes that there must exist a cause that triggered that event into existence, culminating in the conclusion that everything in existence must be characterized by a cause. This argument presented defines the cosmological argument, a belief that there is a first cause, which is God, who is seen as the source of the cosmos that sets in motion a cycle of cause and effect. To prove this argument, Aquinas presents five different variants, each with subtle distinctions that display two reoccurring themes, the importance of sense experience and the notion of causality, to prove the existence of God. In Aquinas’s first argument, he lin... ... cause and effect stopped at the Big Bang, as it does to claim it stopped at God. The Big Bang Theory, which has no previous cause, could have easily prompted the chain of cause and effect. Why must we presume the world to have a beginning and claim that the cosmos could not have been a cause of itself? Since Aquinas, at the time, does not fully understand the workings of the Universe, his claim that the infinite regression arbitrarily stopped at God, is misleading, since the regression could have stopped as the universe itself prompted the chain of cause and effect. I wholeheartedly agree that Aquinas’ cosmological argument proves the existence of an â€Å"uncaused cause,† however I believe that it fails in acknowledging other means of creation and holds no validation that the first cause attributes the characteristics of the God of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Graphics page Essay

Whether they are interested in tennis, if they are a fan and what events or players would they like to visit if possible. (Interests) Whether or not the person is interested in purchasing such a product that I will be making, and if so why not? * Do they have any suggestions or preferences in what they would like to buy or view from this merchandise? Why is this? * Do they appreciate merchandise such as posters and banners to be colourful, jazzy, plain or dark? The person’s coloured and style preferences perhaps. Do they prefer products to have lots of text information or do they not? If yes, what should the content be about? E. g. ) The product or the purpose?   What sort of images and logos would they prefer to view on these pages, and in what background? E. g. ) Artistic, photographic, computerized, etc†¦ what will create the best effects for people to appreciate it and be attracted to what it is aiming to the audience.   What sort of advertisement methods would most attract them to the product either to purchase it or to view it even? Information such as this provided in the questionnaire results will be very important for me to analyse and use when designing and making my merchandise. I will definitely need to consider it, otherwise there is no point in making these products in such ways that will not attract people, please them or catch their interest to follow the purpose of the poster. The reason for making something is for it to appeal to people’s preferences and the purpose of my tennis poster is to attract people to view it and realise the development of the state-of-the-art tennis stadium. The merchandise acts as examples of what they can purchase at this newly proposed stadium and helps to promote generally. Therefore, I will need to consider aspects such as colour, texture, size, special effects aswell as the type of imagery, content and textual styles I should use in order for it to be portrayed as worthwhile. Therefore the research is essential for this practical area of my project to be good and relevant.

Nazi Party Rises to Power

Ian Kershaw was a medievalist who, nearly 30 years ago, turned his interests to the history of the Third Reich. This is the second volume of his encyclopaedic biography of Hitler, and the best thing in it is his treatment of Hitler's effect on the German people. He intersperses his biography with evidence of German popular sentiment, fragmentary and yet telling. Many Germans (perhaps understandably) have tried to separate the history of Hitler from the history of the German people during the Third Reich, one historian going so far as to declare that there were no National Socialists, there was only Hitler.This is nonsense, and Kershaw knows it very well. The great majority of the Germans followed Hitler until the very end. Kershaw's Hitler is more telling about the Third Reich than about the man himself. The result is a one-dimensional portrait, and not an illuminating one. This is a pity, because we shall see more and more studies of Hitler (including, I fear, more and more cleverly composed and carefully disguised apologies).There is not one trace of defence or apology here, and Kershaw makes the much-needed and persuasive argument that even when no evidence of direct orders exists, there is no reason to think that his minions were committing their brutalities contrary to, or even without, Hitler's wishes. But Kershaw's portrait of Hitler is that of a single-minded fanatic with crazy ideas who was doomed to defeat. It was not as simple as that.Hitler was no fool, and his abilities as statesman and strategist derived from the same talents that had enabled him to become ruler of Germany. These talents were protean – for instance, his uncanny capacity to foretell what his enemies would not do. Kershaw does not see how close Hitler came to winning the war, not only in the summer of 1940 but in 1941. His knowledge does not extend sufficiently to Hitler's adversaries, or to foreign policy. After November-December 1941 Hitler could no longer win the second wo rld war, but he could still prevail by not losing it.Had he driven Stalin beyond the Volga, forcing an armistice of sorts, or thrown the Anglo-American armies into the sea in 1944, he would not have won the war, but one or other of his enemies would have been compelled to make some kind of arrangement with him. He knew that, and in December 1941 his entire strategy changed. He now faced a long war, and believed that sooner or later the uneasy and unnatural coalition of his enemies, capitalists and communists, would break apart. He was right; but, fortunately, too late for him. ) He also knew that this could not be achieved by diplomacy, but by striking a decisive blow against one of his enemies. At the same time he gave the command of German industry to Speer, turning it into an astonishingly successful and productive war economy. There is almost nothing in Kershaw's book about this momentous change in Hitler's strategy. Nor is there anything about Hitler's attempts to divide the Al lies.Kershaw begins the present volume by summing up his first one: in the 1930s Hitler â€Å"was a political outsider with few, if any, special talents beyond undoubted skills as a demagogue and propagandist†. Yet in his foreign policy before 1939 â€Å"his sense of timing ha[d] been excellent, his combination of bluff and blackmail effective, his manipulation of propaganda to back his coups masterly†. Another contradiction, within one page: â€Å"He was certainly alert to the dangers of a collapse in his popularity, and the likely domestic crisis which would then occur. Yet: â€Å"It is, in fact, doubtful whether he would have believed the accounts of poor morale, even if he had read them. † By 1936 Hitler â€Å"had thought himself infallible; his self-image had reached the stage of outright hubris†. Yet in November 1936 Hitler said to Speer, after a long silence: â€Å"If I succeed, I will be one of the greatest men in history – if I fail, I w ill be condemned, rejected, and damned. † This volume is not well written: there are many errors of facts and dates, and strange words such as â€Å"devotalia†, â€Å"actionism†, â€Å"diplomatic outfall†.The other main shortcoming is Kershaw's extensive dependence on Hitler's statements as his primary source. The problem here is not only that Hitler, despite his loquacity, was a very secretive man (as he himself states on occasion); we must also keep in mind that he was a master of the spoken word (again, something which he often emphasised). The great turning point of his life came in 1919: his decision to enter politics was contemporaneous with his discovery that he was a very efficient speaker.Thereafter, he always spoke with the purpose of influencing his hearers, not only in his public speeches but also in table conversations and talks with Goebbels, on whose diaries Kershaw sometimes unduly depends. Did Hitler always believe what he was saying? Kers haw writes as though he did, yet we have evidence to the contrary. This is especially so in the case of Russia. Kershaw writes that in the 1930s Hitler was â€Å"increasingly preoccupied with the looming threat, as he saw it, from Bolshevism†.Not at all: Hitler gave little thought to Soviet Russia until 1939, but he very ably used the threat of Bolshevism to impress conservatives in Germany and Britain. Several times during the war Hitler praised Stalin for having got rid of the influence of Jews. Yet in all his public statements, including the last ones in April 1945, he proclaimed the peril of â€Å"Jewish Bolshevism†. It is the great merit of British writing to have married biography to history. In the 19th century, professional historians tended to eschew biography.The English tradition was an exception, with enduring results during the 20th century, to the extent that the appetite of the public for serious biographies is now larger than ever before, and every seri ous biographer now follows the practices of historical research. Still, biography requires particular talents, including not only a certain degree of empathy with one's subject but an incisive understanding of human nature. Kershaw is a better historian than he is a biographer.

The Wonderful World Of Kemet

The Wonderful World Of Kemet Sailing across the Mediterranean on my way to Sicily, my father‚ ¡Ã‚‚ ¯s crew and I encountered horrendous weather. We run into turbulent waters because of the ferocious storms approaching us, and all of a sudden we find our self in the mist of a horrifying thunderstorm. The wind was howling, the strong air current forced us to switch directions; we were heading towards the land of the African people. We knew about the land but the Greeks have never set forth upon the land of Africa; we knew it was a civilization different from our own much more savage-like and unsophisticated.Days later we wash up on to the shores of Kemet, stunned by what we saw before us. We the people of Greece were thought to be one of the darkest races around because of our olive complexion and dark features; but we stood before a race so rich in color with such distinguished facial characteristics.English: Reconstruction of the proto (primitive) G...

The Discovery of Fire in the Early Stone Age

The Discovery of Fire in the Early Stone Age The discovery of fire, or, more precisely, the controlled use of fire, was one of mankinds first great innovations. Fire allows us to produce light and heat, to cook plants and animals, to clear forests for planting, to heat-treat stone for making stone tools, to keep predator animals away, and to burn clay for ceramic objects. It has social purposes as well. Fires serve as gathering places, as beacons for those away from camp, and as spaces for special activities. The Progress of Fire Control The human control of fire likely required the cognitive ability to conceptualize the idea of fire, which itself has been recognized in chimpanzees; great apes have been known to prefer their foods cooked. The fact that experimentation with fire occurred during the early days of humanity should come as no surprise. Archaeologist J.A.J. Gowlett offers this general outline for the development of fire use:  opportunistic use of fire from natural occurrences (lightning strikes, meteor impacts, etc);  limited conservation of fires lit by natural occurrences; use of animal dung or other slow-burning substances to maintain fires in wet or cold seasons; and finally,  kindled fire. Early Evidence The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest evidence of fire associated with humans  comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence of fire control. The Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya (about 1.4 million years old) also contained burned clay clasts  in small areas. Other Lower Paleolithic sites in Africa that contain possible evidence of fire include Gadeb in Ethiopia (burned rock), and Swartkrans (burned bones) and Wonderwerk Cave (burned ash and bone fragments), both in South Africa. The earliest evidence for controlled use of fire outside of Africa is at the Lower Paleolithic site of Gesher Benot Yaaqov in Israel, where charred wood and seeds were recovered from a site dated 790,000 years old. Other evidence has been found at Zhoukoudian, a Lower Paleolithic site in China, Beeches Pit in the U.K., and Qesem Cave in Israel. An Ongoing Discussion Archaeologists examined the available data for European sites and concluded that habitual use of fire wasnt part of the suite of human behaviors until about 300,000 to 400,000 years ago. They believe that the earlier sites are representative of the  opportunistic use of natural fires. Terrence Twomey published a comprehensive discussion of the early evidence for the  human control of fire at 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. Twomey believes that there is no direct evidence for domestic fires between 400,000 and 700,000 years ago, but he believes that other, indirect evidence supports the notion of the controlled use of fire. Indirect Evidence Twomeys argument is based on several lines of indirect evidence. First, he cites the metabolic demands of relatively big-brained Middle Pleistocene hunter-gatherers  and suggests that brain evolution required cooked food. Further, he argues that our distinctive sleep patterns (staying up after dark) are deeply rooted and that hominids began staying in seasonally or permanently cool places by 800,000 years ago. All of this, says Twomey, implies effective control of fire. Gowlett and Richard Wrangham argue that another piece of indirect evidence for the early use of fire is that our ancestors Homo  erectus evolved smaller mouths, teeth, and digestive systems, in striking contrast to earlier hominids. The benefits of having a smaller gut could not be realized until high-quality foods were available all year long. The adoption of cooking, which softens food and makes it easier to digest, could have led to these changes. Hearth Fire Construction A hearth is a deliberately constructed fireplace. The earliest examples were made by collecting stones to contain the fires, or simply by reusing the same location again and again and allowing the ash from previous fires to accumulate. Hearths from the Middle Paleolithic period (about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago) have been found at sites such as the Klasies River Caves in South Africa, Tabun Cave in Israel, and Bolomor Cave in Spain. Earth ovens, on the other hand, are hearths with banked and sometimes domed structures built of clay. These types of hearths were first used during the Upper Paleolithic period for cooking and heating and sometimes for burning clay figurines. The Gravettian Dolni Vestonice site in the modern Czech Republic has evidence of kiln construction, although construction details did not survive. The best information on Upper Paleolithic kilns is from the Aurignacian deposits of Klisoura Cave  in Greece. Fuels Relict wood was likely the fuel used for the earliest fires. Purposeful selection of wood came later: hardwood such as oak burns differently than softwood such as pine, since the moisture content and density of a wood all affect how hot or long it will burn. In places where wood was not available, alternative fuels such as peat, cut turf, animal dung, animal bone, seaweed, and straw were used to build fires. Animal dung was likely not consistently used until after animal domestication  led to the keeping of livestock, about 10,000 years ago. Sources Attwell L., Kovarovic K., and Kendal J.R. Fire in the Plio-Pleistocene: The Functions of Hominin Fire Use, and the Mechanistic, Developmental and Evolutionary Consequences. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 2015.Bentsen S.E. Using Pyrotechnology: Fire-Related Features and Activities With a Focus on the African Middle Stone Age. Journal of Archaeological Research, 2014.Gowlett J.A.J. The Discovery of Fire by Humans: A Long and Convoluted Process. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016.Gowlett J.A.J., and Wrangham R.W. Earliest Fire in Africa: Towards the Convergence of Archaeological Evidence and the Cooking Hypothesis. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 2013.Stahlschmidt M.C., Miller C.E., Ligouis B., Hambach U., Goldberg P., Berna F., Richter D., Urban B., Serangeli J., and Conard N.J. On the Evidence for Human Use and Control of Fire at Schà ¶ningen. Journal of Human Evolution, 2015.Twomey T. The Cognitive Implications of Controlled Fire Use by Early Humans. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2013.

The Hotel Human Resource Department Research Paper

The Hotel Human Resource Department - Research Paper Example From this research it is clear that labor costs need to be matched with production and individual employee output by maintaining efficiency among employees and the value they add to the organizations. The department responsible for managing the human resource therefore needs to ensure that it streamlines labor costs and output. Human resources managers have the mandate of controlling service provision to customers, as well as the whole feeling of an entire hotel through its labor force. Labor costs in the hotel industry have been significantly high, considering the fluctuations in customer needs. The human resource functions seek to develop effective and appropriate measures to control labor costs through gathering the necessary information. Human resource decision-making therefore relies on the reporting and accumulation of relevant information about labor costs, which are necessary for productivity. However, assessment of labor costs and productivity need to include both qualitativ e and quantitative information. With regards to quantitative terms such as customer to labor ratios, the human resource managers may have an insight of lower payroll overheads in case the number of customers served per unit labor is increasing. Higher customer per labor ratio may be an indication that more labor is essential if service provision efficiencies are to be provided. Quantitative aspects are critical in assisting human resource managers to strike a balance and even an improvement between labor costs incurred and output. However, qualitative measures are also equally important and need to place much emphasis, since this may negate the quantitative benefits. Quantitative insights of labor costs and their output can be generally arrived at by using common sense, observing employee customer relations, and asking questions to customers. Poor quality services from the labor force are equally harmful to an organization’s profitability, where the organization loses clients to its competitors due to customers’ dissatisfaction from poor quality services. It is important to note that customer dissatisfaction may not only arise from employee job dissatisfaction and turnover, but also from more complex points of view that includes needs, fears, and feelings of employees. Hotels often place much emphasis on retention of employees to solve quantitative problems. The needs of employees need to be given much appreciation and respect, if customer satisfaction is to be achieved, rather than just retaining employees who are unable to keep up with qualitative considerations. Managerial staff should seek to establish effective and efficient communication to subordinates through the human resource department, which best understands the complexities involved between employees and their work performance. Employees should be well conversant with organization’

Is there a necessary connection between a philosopher's politics Essay

Is there a necessary connection between a philosopher's politics and their philosophy - Essay Example It should be noted that Heidegger was forced into the sidelines within only months of joining the party and despite the claims that his philosophy is compatible to Nazism, it actually went in the opposite direction. Heidegger’s philosophy was based on an attempt to understand Being, and to address it as a problem that philosophers throughout history had failed to address. He believed that an understanding of being was necessary to ensure that human beings were not only able to understand themselves, but the world around them as well.2 This is in complete contrast with Hitler’s and Nazi policies, which often concentrated on the promotion of the Aryan race as well as the development of social programs designed to destroy rather than to develop and understand. When compared to Heidegger’s philosophy, which advocated for the universality of the human race, the basis of the social programs promoted by the Nazi regime was to ensure that racial purity for the Aryan race was maintained at all costs. This is because it was believed that the German nation had become weak and would not be able to continue retaining its superior status if undesirable individuals were allowed to survive .3 One of the cruellest of these social policies was that of the forced sterilization of those individuals who were believed to be from lesser races and who carried any form of genetic weakness. In order to make this policy effective, laws were put in place to ensure that doctors provided all the information concerning their patients to the state so that the latter could be able to determine those individuals who had the desirable characteristics to ensure the creation of the German master race. A process where individuals could report others who they suspected of being genetically weak was made possible and this ensured that the Nazi government was able to get to as many people