‘By Definition a miracle can never happen.’ Discuss. Clearly the answer to this question depends on your definition of a miracle. The traditional understanding of a miracle involves the interruption of a Law of Nature, usually bearing deeper religious significance. ‘A transgression of a Law of Nature’ to quote Hume, suggests to many an impossible event and it is therefore immediately obvious why many agree that, ‘by definition, a miracle can never happen.’ However, it is interesting to note that Hume, in his famous argument against miracles, at no point implies that a miracle, by definition, can never happen. The basis of Hume’s attack is that there will never be sufficient empirical evidence to justify believing in a miracle.
McCarthy uses religous rhetoric in Bells descriptions of Chigure. By calling him a ‘prohphet of destruction’ it is Bells way of articulating something that he can not understand. Throughout the novel we come to realise that Bell infact has no religious faith. Therefore Chigurh is not a transendent force of evil, he is human and in control of his own choices. What is really being articulated is that ‘we are living in a time of change’ modern society is a society based on the freedom to choose our actions as they are no longer ordaned by a religon.
The main point that Jung makes in relation to communism by actually getting people to literally having self-knowledge, connecting this to religious experience that becomes the only counter-balance to a human being and society, it is the unconscious areas of ourselves that we have absolutely no knowledge about whatsoever, as our only conception for gaining the experience. Jung is stating these kinds of experiences can’t be found plainly, an individual must self-explore create his own weltanschauung. A human being knows and understands his distinction from animals and wild beasts by anatomical and physiological differences, but as an aware and conscious being, lacks all the requirement for his own self-judgement. Humanity does not have another self-aware being to compare to, therefore consciousness will remain an unsolvable puzzle. Without consciousness there would be no world, because we wouldn’t be aware of it “for the world exists for [all of] us in so far a it is consciously reflected by a psyche “Consciousness is a precondition of
Human beings write history and no matter who they are they cannot be fully objective. Trained historians try and bring as much objectivity as they can into their work but nobody can remove all amounts of bias from his or her work. (270) - How does Henry Kissinger define history? What is Howard Zinn’s approach to history, and how does his differ from the description of Kissinger’s type? Be Specific!
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Analysis Inside every person holds a mystery amongst its own. As Elie Wiesel states it beautifully “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” This imagery invokes tales of self-discovery, human importance and equal opportunities. In the novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, we are not meet with these images. The true story of a woman, who unknowingly changed the world of science, is outlined with the misery of a family left behind in her death.
What can the gray zone tell us on these grounds? Levi is not a historian and is not obliged to settle the conflict between judgment about identity and judgment about behaviors. However, he writes: “Each individual is so complex that there is no point in trying to foresee his behavior… nor is it possible to foresee one’s own behavior.”59 He also demonstrates that even in extreme situations an analysis of actions and practices is the best way to reach a credible approximation of reality. Even though various people as individuals or as groups appear in the gray zone, Levi describes the gray zone mostly in terms of functions, practices, and states of mind, weaknesses and/or resistance. This is true even in the case of Rumkowski, who
Determinism is deeply connected with our understanding of the physical sciences and their explanatory ambitions as well as free will. I can most certainly say that I am my own individual person. I make my own actions, my own choices, and my own decisions; however, if I wanted to perform some sort of action differently, then I most certainly could have. I mean in all seriousness, I don’t have the ability to physically change the laws of nature, nor do I have the ability to change the past or the future. With this thought in mind, how could I possibly acclaim the idea of freedom of choice to myself?
According to hard determinism we are not free in the sense required for moral responsibility, and therefore, what happens cannot be affected by choices that are free in the sense. But what happens may nevertheless be caused by the decisions we chose and the choices we make. A reaction to hard determinism is that if it were true, we would have no reason to attempt to accomplish anything, to try and improve our lives because our decisions and choices would make no difference. If everything we do is pre determined then why try hard to achieve anything, if you are meant to do a certain something, it will happen, it is already determined for you, so the hard determinist would say. In the hard determinist’s judgement, this feeling of freedom is an illusion.
There Are No Such Things as Miracles The subject about miracles is strongly opinionated, there are a lot of assumptions, theories and happenings that can lead a person to believing whether miracles do or don’t happen. It all relies on the person’s belief and what they follow. A miracle is usually defined by ‘unexplainable events that break the laws of nature’. There are different types of miracles that most of us have probably heard about, for example, miracles of healing, exorcism, resurrection and nature. The belief in a miracle can come from either experiencing them or religious reasons and explanations.
To determine what our true reality is creates more questions than answers, reality can be distorted in many ways, but our true reality will never be know to us, we can only find the illusion that is our reality, it can change, be manipulated and guide us through the word we live in today. Our reality will never be proven to be true nor will it ever be proven to be false as our reality is what we make of it. We all have our own small illusions to escape from the true reality that follows us, creates us and guides us throughout our life, these being television, games, sports ext. All of which are illusions which we fall into because we feel safe, secure where outside our small illusions lies a reality which we can not bare to face alone as we have more questions than answers, we don't know the possibilities as said “Knowledge is power” - Francis Bacon we seek knowledge and to do so we must face our reality. As shown throughout “Inception” we see how an illusion can easily become somebodies reality as shown when Mal commits suicide because in her reality she believes they are still dreaming and in order to 'wake up' she needs to commit suicide.