Anthropocentrism

Jared Diamond spends the prologue of his novel, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”, explores the demise of communities throughout history and how such a thing could occur. He believes, as can be inferred from the title of the book, that societies primarily fail as a result of the decisions they make in response to other issues. In the prologue, “A Tale of Two Farms”, Diamond presents his definition of a collapse, his framework for analyzing a collapse, and how he compares the…

Christianity is referred to as a belief and reverence of God, Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit lined to a set of dogmas, sacraments and moral principles as captured in the stories of the Bible. Within Biblical gospels, one find descriptions of the many miracles Jesus Christ bestowed upon mankind, stories of which have become foundational to Christian belief, where the faithful profess their genuine nature and factual truths. For Christian’s miracles, expressions of divine intervention and the…

present in recent times. Daniel Quinn proposes that these key ideas need to be altered for Man to survive further along with the world. “The world was made for Man, and Man was made to conquer and rule it” (Ishmael). This identifies the topic of anthropocentrism…

The way we live our lives and the responses we have to issues we hear about is all grounded in ethics. Before taking this philosophy course, I had morals and an idea of what is right or wrong but didn’t know about the ethical lenses. I chose to do my dialogue with Nicole Tomasello, one of my roommates. It took place at the dormitories before spring break. Her point of view was of interest to me because we are from different backgrounds and have been raised in a different environment. In general,…

Christian religious tradition (or Christianity) has long been thought of as a set of dogmas, sacraments and moral attitudes linked with a belief and reverence in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit as captured in the stores of the Bible. Within Biblical gospels one find descriptions of the many miracles Jesus Christ bestowed upon mankind, stories that became fundamental to Christian belief, where the faithful profess to the genuine nature of these stories as factual truths. Given the…

I am swimming to catch my brother, diving as much as we can, a thousand feet to be exact. We’re swimming at a speed of twenty-five miles per hour. Looking left, looking right, our mother is right behind us. Our pod has stopped to catch some food. With the two stomachs we have it 's hard to not be hungry. I sometimes wonder why we have so many teeth if we don’t use them? We swallow our food whole. I can recognize almost every dolphin because our fins are very unique. It helps us identify each…

we shouldn’t eat other animals. Why eat another living being knowing you will cause him suffering? Why are they always slaughtered in an inhumane way? We can answer these two questions with one simple concept: Anthropocentrism, Humans over everything else. We can also consider the fact that lobster is an ugly sea animal, is that still a valid reason to kill it and eat it? Jonathan Safran Foer in chapter 2 of his book Eating…

Schleiermacher’s Understanding of Prayer To understand the mind of Friedrich Schleiermacher and his thought on prayer we must first understand his background. Schleiermacher is an interesting figure mainly because he embraces many aspects of the enlightenment. Yet, there is also a side of him that rejects many aspects of it as well. His relationship to the enlightenment is dialectical in that he raises some ideas of the enlightenment through different concedes that he has. Schleiermacher…

The Starry Witness The ancients that came before us lived most of their lives looking up. They looked to the sky to tell time, to determine what the weather will be like, and to seek the face of their God. Scripture is filled with examples in which God speaks to humanity through the wonders displayed in the heavens. Psalm 19:1 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God, that the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands. Job learned this lesson directly from God in the midst of the most…

Aristarchus of Samos was not only an astronomer but also a mathematician. He lived between 310–230 B.C. and belonged to the Pythagorean School of Thought (Heath). His mathematical knowledge helped him to discover great advances in the world of astronomy. His writing The Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon is his only surviving text (Aristarchus ‘16). Aristarchus’ description of the solar system was similar to our modern one and this was about 1500 years before Copernicus made his geocentric…