Avoid Online Application Black Hole

-how-to-avoid-the-online-application

Leftist Teacher vs. Latino Student

Leftist vs. Student

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/11/04/video-leftist-teacher-confronts-student-in-political-debate-student-shuts-her-down-with-facts/

Can Evangelicals and Academics Talk?

can-evangelicals-and-academics-talk-to-each-other

The Myth of Social Security

Myth

Tax Plan

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) unveiled the committee’s tax reform legislation. The widely anticipated tax reform bill includes hundreds of structural changes to the tax code, a summary of which is available here. However, some changes are more significant than others. Thus, here are the eight most important provisions in the House Ways and Means Tax Plan in no particular order.

1. The corporate income tax rate would be reduced to 20 percent. The bill would lower the current statutory corporate income tax rate from 35 to 20 percent. This would bring the U.S. in line with the rest of the other 34 industrialized countries in the OECD, which have an average statutory corporate income tax rate of 21.97 percent. For a comparison of corporate income tax rates around the world, click here.
2. Pass-through business income would be taxed at a maximum rate of 25 percent. In the U.S., small companies are generally organized as pass-through businesses. This means that their income is taxed on their owners’ tax returns and not at the business level. While economists widely agree that C Corporations are less tax-advantaged than pass-through businesses under current law, the House Ways and Means Tax Plan attempts to bring both business types closer to rate parity by setting a maximum rate on pass-through business income.
   However, without appropriate anti-abuse rules this could create incentives for individuals to reclassify their personal income as business income to take advantage of the lower rate. Therefore, the plan includes a number of anti-abuse rules, beginning with the assumption that 70 percent of pass-through business income is compensation (subject to ordinary rates) while 30 percent is business income (subject to the lower pass-through rate). Certain specified service industries (including health, law, financial, and professional services) would only be permitted to claim the lower rate to the extent that they can “prove out” the share of income that constitutes business income. Even with these guardrails, the provision is likely to create opportunities for tax arbitrage, and it adds complexity to the tax code. For more on the taxation of pass-through income, click here.
3. Some of the tax code’s disincentives to investment would be rolled back. Specifically, machinery and equipment could be fully expensed (temporarily). Meanwhile, pass-through businesses would be able to take advantage of higher section 179 caps.
   Corporate income taxes are intended to be imposed on net income after expenses, which is why businesses deduct the costs of compensation and most other expenses. Capital expenditures, however, are a special case. When businesses invest in capital expansion, instead of writing down the cost immediately, they must do so across a depreciation schedule that stretches anywhere from three to 39 years. The House Ways and Means Tax Plan would change that—temporarily and in part.
   Under the plan, short-lived capital expenditures (currently subject to “bonus” depreciation) could be fully expensed, though this provision would be slated to sunset in five years. Section 179 expensing for pass-through businesses would increase from $500,000 to $5 million, with a higher phaseout threshold. These provisions would remove some of the tax code’s current bias against investment, though the temporary and limited nature of the provisions may mute the economic impact. For more on the economic and budgetary impacts of temporary expensing and other possible approaches to depreciation, click here.
4. The U.S. would move to a territorial tax system. In much of the industrialized world, domestic corporations are taxed on their domestic income alone (a so-called territorial tax system). In the U.S., by contrast, companies are taxed on their worldwide income, with credits for taxes paid to other countries (a so-called worldwide tax system). If tax liability is lower in another country in which a controlled foreign corporation operates, the residual amount is paid to the United States. This increases overall liability and makes the U.S. comparatively unattractive as a home for multinational corporations. The proposed tax plan would convert the U.S.’s worldwide tax regime into a territorial system, enhancing competitiveness and undercutting the traditional rationales that encouraged corporate inversion and the offshoring of corporate income. For more on territorial taxation, click here.

Many itemized deductions would be eliminated. For individuals, the mortgage interest, and charitable deductions, as well as the property tax portion of the state and local tax deduction (capped at $10,000), would remain, but other itemized deductions would be eliminated. The elimination of many itemized deductions would broaden the individual income tax base as a means to pay for lower overall rates. Their elimination would also be offset by an increase in the standard deduction and a higher child tax credit. For more on itemized deductions, click here. For more on the state and local tax deduction, click here or here.
The estate tax would be repealed. The federal estate tax, which raises very little revenue but encourages significant tax arbitrage and avoidance activity, would be repealed under the plan after six years. The plan immediately increases the exemption to $10 million. Economists tend to see the estate tax as one of the most economically harmful taxes per dollar of revenue raised. For more on the estate tax, click here and here.
The tax treatment of interest would change. The U.S. tax code is intended to include deductions on interest paid while taxing interest received, but in practice, a substantial portion of interest is untaxed. This results in a tax advantage for debt financing over equity financing, providing a subsidy for some investments while distorting business decision-making. The House Ways and Means Tax Plan would limit business net interest deductibility to 30 percent of a business’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) with a five-year carry-forward basis. Businesses with less than $25 million in gross receipts would be exempt from the limitation. For more information on the tax treatment of interest, click here.
Tax expenditures would be curtailed. The plan would eliminate multiple tax expenditures including the section 199 manufacturing deduction, deductions for like-kind exchanges of personal property, and deductions for entertainment. Credits for orphan drugs, private activity bonds, rehabilitation, and contributions to capital would also be eliminated. With lower business income rates and better treatment of capital expenditures, there would be less need to rely on targeted incentives or industry-specific fixes embedded in the tax code.
Overall, the House Ways and Means Tax Plan represents a move in the direction of greater neutrality and global competitiveness. As the bill goes through markup, and as the Senate takes up tax reform legislation, every provision is subject to change. What happens with these eight proposed changes could be a good benchmark for the degree to which any final plan constitutes meaningful tax reform.

The Case for Free Banking

Banking

FDR Did Not End the Great Depression

1931 15.82%; 1940 14.45% Department of Labor Unemployment Statistics

Unemployment ranged over 20% during the New Deal but unemployment did remain in double digits during the entire 1930s. World War II, not FDR, ended the Great Depression.

Clarence Thomas on America

America

HUM 112: China’s Drug Revenge

China’s Drug Revenge


.mcclatchydc.com

Libertarian Playlist

Libertarian playlist

Pamela Geller vs. Geraldo

Hannity

Bin Laden Files

analysis-cia-releases-massive-trove-of-osama-bin-ladens-files

Simon Deng: Slave of Islam

Simon Deng: Slave of Islam

Simon Deng

Introduction to Philosophy Part 6 God

Part 6: God

Ernest Nagel addresses one of the classic questions: does God Exist?



Does God Exist? 4 New Arguments, 5:39



Science tells us that the universe came into being via The Big Bang.


But how do you get from energy and matter to a self-aware human being?


That takes three additional Big Bangs that science can't explain. Noted theologian, Frank Pastore, unravels this compelling mystery and, in the process, poses the ultimate question that every thinking person must face.

What are the four big bangs that have to be accounted for?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

How does life come from non-life?

How did evolution begin?

How can a mechanistic animal brain become a self-reflective human mind?

https://youtu.be/gIorXcloIac




Human beings alone are introspective and appreciate art and beauty. We search for meaning, significance, and purpose. We alone search for the true, the good, and the beautiful.

1st Big Bang: the cosmological, 2nd, biological, 3rd, anthropological, and the 4th, psychological.

Does God Exist?

Ernest Nagel

Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Along with Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, and Carl Hempel, he is sometimes seen as one of the major figures of the logical positivist movement.



Logical positivism and logical empiricism, which together formed neopositivism, was a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was verificationism, a theory of knowledge which asserted that only statements verifiable through empirical observation are cognitively meaningful. The movement flourished in the 1920s and 1930s in several European centers.



Efforts to convert philosophy to this new "scientific philosophy", shared with empirical sciences' best examples, such as Einstein's general theory of relativity, sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims.



The Berlin Circle and Vienna Circle—groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians in Berlin and Vienna—propounded logical positivism, starting in the late 1920s.

Why God Allows Evil
Richard Swinburne

Richard G. Swinburne (born 26 December 1934) is a British philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years Swinburne has been an influential proponent of philosophical arguments for the existence of God. His philosophical contributions are primarily in the philosophy of religion and philosophy of science. He aroused much discussion with his early work in the philosophy of religion, a trilogy of books consisting of The Coherence of Theism, The Existence of God, and Faith and Reason.



Swinburne on Natural Evil, 7:41



In this video, I discuss Richard Swinburne's interesting argument from a need for knowledge which claims that the need for knowledge of the consequences of our moral actions necessitates some natural evils.

What is moral evil?

What is natural evil?

How does the theist deal with natural evil?

What are the nine premises of Swinburne's argument?

https://youtu.be/3baSHKTI0Xs



Moral evil: instances of evil caused in whole or in part by moral agents.

Natural evil: instances of evil which result from natural processes not involving the free choices of moral agents in such a way as to render them even partially responsible.

Premise: If an agent acts freely (or responsibly) to bring about a good or evil state of affairs, S must know how to bring about this state of affairs.

2nd: An agent S cannot know how to bring about a good or evil state of affairs without knowing what consequences would follow from her actions.

In order for some person to freely do an act--good or evil--for which they could be properly held morally responsible, we must be able to say that that person knew that their act would likely lead to the good or evil consequences.

Premise 3: The only way for S to know the consequences of her actions is through induction from past experience.

The only way we can know about the relevant causal connections in the world such that we can perform actions with their consequences in mind is through induction.

Premise 4: For any evil one person intentionally inflicts on another (or, more generally, for any token of moral evil), there must have been a first time in history when this was done.

There must have been: ". . . a first murder, a first murder by cyanide poisoning, a first deliberate humiliation and so on . . . "

Premise 5: The person committing the moral evil on that first occasion can only learn about the evil consequences of her intended action by induction from past experience.

Premise 6: However, the acquisition of the requisite knowledge by means of option (a) is not possible, since ex hypothesis the moral evil in question has never been actualized in the past.

Premise 7: Therefore, the only way for the requisite knowledge to be acquired is by means of option (b), that is to day, by observation of some natural evil.

"His knowledge that cyanide poison causes death must come from his having seen or others having told him on other accasions that taking cyanide accidently led to death."

Premise 8: Therefore, an agent S cannot know how to bring about a good or evil state of affairs without the existence of natural evil.

Premise 9: Therefore, the freedom to bring about a good or evil state of affairs cannot be had by an agent unless there exists some natural evil.

The Desires of the Heart
Eleonore Stump

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. She received a B.A. in classical languages from Grinnell College (1969), where she was valedictorian and received the Archibald Prize for scholarship; she has an M.A. in Biblical Studies (New Testament) from Harvard University (1971), and an M.A. and Ph.D in Medieval Studies (Medieval Philosophy) from Cornell University (1975). Before coming to Saint Louis University, she taught at Oberlin College, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and University of Notre Dame. Currently, she also holds secondary or honorary appointments at Wuhan University and Australian Catholic University.



Eleonore Stump: Our Heart's Desire, 6:57



Eleonore Stump, Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, answers questions during the Kilns College Kickoff Lecture Series 2012.



https://youtu.be/sq9f5K6VXMc

Pascal’s Wager
Simon Blackburn

Simon Blackburn, FBA (born 12 July 1944) is a British academic philosopher known for his work in metaethics, where he defends quasi-realism, and in the philosophy of language; more recently, he has gained a large general audience from his efforts to popularise philosophy. He retired as the professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge in 2011, but remains a distinguished research professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching every fall semester. He is also a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a member of the professoriate of New College of the Humanities. He was previously a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford and has also taught full-time at the University of North Carolina as an Edna J. Koury Professor. He is a former president of the Aristotelian Society, having served the 2009–2010 term. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2002 and a Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.



PHILOSOPHY - Religion: Pascal's Wager, 6:50



In this Wireless Philosophy video, Susanna Rinard (Harvard University) explains Pascal's Wager, Blaise Pascal's famous argument for belief in God. Lifting an approach from the gambling hall, Pascal argued that, given the odds and the potential payoff, belief in God is a really good deal. Even if the chance that God exists is low, rationality, he claimed, compels us to wager for God.



https://youtu.be/2F_LUFIeUk0

Pascal’s Wager: An Assessment
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski

Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski (born 1946) is an American philosopher. She is George Lynn Cross Research Professor, and Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma. She writes in the areas of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory. She was (2015-2016) president of the American Philosophical Association Central Division, and gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Saint Andrews in the fall of 2015. She is past president of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers. She was a 2011-2012 Guggenheim Fellow.



Zagzebski does not directly dispute Pascal's wager in her assessment however we should consider an argument against Pascal as well.



Christopher Hitchens: Pascal's wager = religious hucksterism, 2:54



Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an Anglo-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on politics, literature and religion. A staple of public discourse, his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded intellectual and a controversial public figure. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Weekly Standard, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, Free Inquiry and Vanity Fair.



Having long described himself as a social democrat, a Marxist, and an anti-totalitarian, he began to break with the established political left after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Satanic Verses controversy, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton and the antiwar movement's opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. His support of the Iraq War separated him further. While he came to reject socialism, he still identified as a Marxist and believed in both the dialectic and the materialist conception of history. His writings include critiques of public figures such as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa and Diana, Princess of Wales. He was the elder brother of the conservative journalist and author Peter Hitchens. He advocated the separation of church and state.



As an antitheist he regarded the concept of a god or supreme being as a totalitarian belief that impedes individual freedom. He argued that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of informing ethics and defining codes of conduct for human civilization. The dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" has become known as Hitchens's razor.



Christopher Hitchens discusses Pascal's wager. This is during the LBJ Future Forum on May 14, 2007, at the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin, Texas.



https://youtu.be/X94YffpUryo

The Problem of Hell
Marilyn McCord Adams

Marilyn McCord Adams (October 12, 1943 – March 22, 2017) was an American philosopher and priest of the Episcopal Church. She specialised in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology and medieval philosophy.



Marilyn McCord Adams - What can Christian Theology say to the problem of evil? 5:14



This playlist contains all video interviews with Marilyn McCord Adams which were recorded at Schloss Fürstenried in Munich, June 2014.



https://youtu.be/iwMdWx5yysY

Faith and Reason
Michael Scriven

Michael John Scriven (born 1928) is a British-born Australian polymath and academic philosopher, best known for his contributions to the theory and practice of evaluation.

SAM HARRIS FAITH VS REASON, PAX TV - Full Version Part 1 of 2, 6:49

https://youtu.be/GjGcmfiGjL8

The Hiddenness of God
Robert McKim

Robert McKim (born December 29, 1952) is an American philosopher of religion. He has degrees in philosophy from Trinity College Dublin and from the University of Calgary, and a Ph.D. in religious studies and philosophy from Yale University. He is Professor of Religion and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

McKim has written extensively on the implications of religious diversity. In Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity (Oxford, 2001) McKim appeals to the twin realities of religious ambiguity and religious diversity in making a case for a self-critical, open, and tentative approach to religious belief. In On Religious Diversity (Oxford, 2011) he tackles the controversial issue of how religious traditions, and their members, ought to look on outsiders, their views, and their salvific prospects.

Michael Tooley On The Divine Hiddenness Of God, 3:47

Michael Tooley is an American philosopher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has a BA from the University of Toronto and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton University in 1968. He taught at Stanford University and the Australian National University and, since 1992, at the University of Colorado Boulder.

He has worked on philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, causality and metaphysical naturalism, and has debated the existence of God with William Lane Craig.^[4][5] His paper "Abortion and Infanticide" has elicited much comment.

Informal Statement of the Argument There are many people who don't believe in God but who wish that some sort of a theistic God did exist. Now the Apostle Paul, in Romans 1:19-21, implies that the existence of God is just obvious to everyone, even atheists and agnostics. But just think about that for a second. How do you prove that something is obvious to another person? Lots of nonbelievers claim that the existence of God is not obvious to them. Indeed, many nonbelievers claim that it is just obvious that it is not obvious that theism is true! Why is this evidence for atheism over theism? Because if theism is true, we would expect nonbelief in God to be unreasonable. What possible reason could God, if He existed, have for not revealing Himself? God is not shy, God is not busy, and so forth. But if atheism is true, there is no God and we would expect nonbelief to be reasonable. Therefore, reasonable nonbelief is more likely on atheism than on theism.

An argument from nonbelief is a philosophical argument that asserts an inconsistency between the existence of God and a world in which people fail to recognize him. It is similar to the classic argument from evil in affirming an inconsistency between the world that exists and the world that would exist if God had certain desires combined with the power to see them through.

There are two key varieties of the argument. The argument from reasonable nonbelief (or the argument from divine hiddenness) was first elaborated in J. L. Schellenberg's 1993 book Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. This argument says that if God existed (and was perfectly good and loving) every reasonable person would have been brought to belief in God; however, there are reasonable nonbelievers; therefore, God does not exist.

Theodore Drange subsequently developed the argument from nonbelief, based on the mere existence of nonbelief in God. Drange considers the distinction between reasonable (by which Schellenberg means inculpable) and unreasonable (culpable) nonbelief to be irrelevant and confusing. Nevertheless, most academic discussion is concerned with Schellenberg's formulation.



https://youtu.be/jzygUxnGkEc

God and Forgiveness
Anne C. Minas

An animation story about GOD Forgiveness, 1:50

https://youtu.be/WXwQ0RTszBg

God and Morality
Steven M. Cahn

PHILOSOPHY - Religion: God and Morality, Part 1, 4:41

Part 1 of a pair. Stephen Darwall (Yale University) considers the relationship between morality and God. Specifically, he asks: is morality the same thing as the commands of God? Is there no morality if there is no God? Ultimately, Stephen will argue that morality and God's commands are distinct, even if there is a God and she commands moral things. However, in this first video, Steve considers why you might like the view that morality just is God's commands.

https://youtu.be/lmhiibdwznQ

The Ontological Argument
Anselm and Gaunilo

An ontological argument is a philosophical argument for the existence of God that uses ontology. Many arguments fall under the category of the ontological, and they tend to involve arguments about the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments tend to start with an a priori theory about the organization of the universe. If that organizational structure is true, the argument will provide reasons why God must exist.

The first ontological argument in the Western Christian tradition was proposed by Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work Proslogion. Anselm defined God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person who denies the existence of God. He suggested that, if the greatest possible being exists in the mind, it must also exist in reality. If it only exists in the mind, then an even greater being must be possible—one which exists both in the mind and in reality. Therefore, this greatest possible being must exist in reality. Seventeenth century French philosopher René Descartes deployed a similar argument. Descartes published several variations of his argument, each of which centred on the idea that God's existence is immediately inferable from a "clear and distinct" idea of a supremely perfect being. In the early eighteenth century, Gottfried Leibniz augmented Descartes' ideas in an attempt to prove that a "supremely perfect" being is a coherent concept. A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Norman Malcolm revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic. Attempts have also been made to validate Anselm's proof using an automated theorem prover. Other arguments have been categorised as ontological, including those made by Islamic philosophers Mulla Sadra and Allama Tabatabai.

Since its proposal, few philosophical ideas have generated as much interest and discussion as the ontological argument. Nearly all of the great minds of Western philosophy have found the argument worthy of their attention, and a number of criticisms and objections have been mounted. The first critic of the ontological argument was Anselm's contemporary, Gaunilo of Marmoutiers. He used the analogy of a perfect island, suggesting that the ontological argument could be used to prove the existence of anything. This was the first of many parodies, all of which attempted to show that the argument has absurd consequences. Later, Thomas Aquinas rejected the argument on the basis that humans cannot know God's nature. Also, David Hume offered an empirical objection, criticising its lack of evidential reasoning and rejecting the idea that anything can exist necessarily. Immanuel Kant's critique was based on what he saw as the false premise that existence is a predicate. He argued that "existing" adds nothing (including perfection) to the essence of a being, and thus a "supremely perfect" being can be conceived not to exist. Finally, philosophers including C. D. Broad dismissed the coherence of a maximally great being, proposing that some attributes of greatness are incompatible with others, rendering "maximally great being" incoherent.

2 The Ontological Argument. Criticisms from Gaunilo, 3:42

https://youtu.be/ihj_-zCxekk

Summa Theologiae
Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas OP (Italian: Tommaso d'Aquino, lit. 'Thomas of Aquino'; 1225 – 7 March 1274) was an Italian[4][5] Dominican friar, Catholic priest, and Doctor of the Church. He was an immensely influential philosopher, theologian, and jurist in the tradition of scholasticism, within which he is also known as the Doctor Angelicus and the Doctor Communis. The name Aquinas identifies his ancestral origins in the county of Aquino in present-day Lazio.


He was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology and the father of Thomism; of which he argued that reason is found in God. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy developed or opposed his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory. Unlike many currents in the Church of the time, Thomas embraced several ideas put forward by Aristotle—whom he called "the Philosopher"—and attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity. His best-known works are the Summa Theologiae and the Summa contra Gentiles. His commentaries on Scripture and on Aristotle also form an important part of his body of work. Furthermore, Thomas is distinguished for his eucharistic hymns, which form a part of the Church's liturgy.


The Catholic Church honors Thomas Aquinas as a saint and regards him as the model teacher for those studying for the priesthood, and indeed the highest expression of both natural reason and speculative theology. In modern times, under papal directives, the study of his works was long used as a core of the required program of study for those seeking ordination as priests or deacons, as well as for those in religious formation and for other students of the sacred disciplines (philosophy, Catholic theology, church history, liturgy, and canon law).


Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the Catholic Church's greatest theologians and philosophers. Pope Benedict XV declared: "This (Dominican) Order ... acquired new luster when the Church declared the teaching of Thomas to be her own and that Doctor, honored with the special praises of the Pontiffs, the master and patron of Catholic schools." The English philosopher Anthony Kenny considers Thomas to be 'one of the dozen greatest philosophers of the western world'.

S.T.

The Summa Theologiæ (written 1265–1274 and also known as the Summa Theologica or simply the Summa) is the best-known work of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). Although unfinished, the Summa is "one of the classics of the history of philosophy and one of the most influential works of Western literature." It was intended as an instructional guide for theology students, including seminarians and the literate laity. It was a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church. It presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West. The Summa's topics follow a cycle: the existence of God; Creation, Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the Sacraments; and back to God.


The Summa is Aquinas' "most perfect work, the fruit of his mature years, in which the thought of his whole life is condensed". Among non-scholars, the Summa is perhaps most famous for its five arguments for the existence of God, which are known as the "five ways" (Latin: quinque viae). The five ways, however, occupy under two pages of the Summa's approximately 3,500 pages.


Throughout the Summa, Aquinas cites Christian, Muslim, Hebrew, and Pagan sources including but not limited to Christian Sacred Scripture, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Boethius, John of Damascus, Paul the Apostle, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maimonides, Anselm, Plato, Cicero, and Eriugena.


The Summa is a more structured and expanded version of Aquinas's earlier Summa contra Gentiles, though these works were written for different purposes, the Summa Theologiae to explain the Christian faith to beginning theology students, and the Summa contra Gentiles to explain the Christian faith and defend it in hostile situations, with arguments adapted to the intended circumstances of its use, each article refuting a certain belief or a specific heresy.


Aquinas conceived the Summa specifically as a work suited to beginning students: "Because a doctor of catholic truth ought not only to teach the proficient, but to him pertains also to instruct beginners. As the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 3: 1–2, as to infants in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat, our proposed intention in this work is to convey those things that pertain to the Christian religion, in a way that is fitting to the instruction of beginners."


It was while teaching at the Santa Sabina studium provinciale, the forerunner of the Santa Maria sopra Minerva studium generale and College of Saint Thomas, which in the 20th century would become the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum, that Aquinas began to compose the Summa. He completed the Prima Pars (first part) in its entirety and circulated it in Italy before departing to take up his second regency as professor at the University of Paris (1269–1272).


Even today, both in Western and Eastern Catholic Churches, Orthodoxy, and the mainstream original Protestant denominations (Anglicanism and Episcopalianism, Lutheranism, Methodism, and Presbyterianism), it is very common for the Summa Theologica to be required or strongly urged reading, in whole or in part, for all those seeking ordination to the diaconate or priesthood, or to professed male or female religious life, or for laypersons studying philosophy and theology at the collegiate level.

PHILOSOPHY - Thomas Aquinas, 6:15

Thomas Aquinas deserves to be remembered for reconciling faith with reason, thereby saving Western civilisation from turning its back on science and Greek and Roman wisdom.

https://youtu.be/GJvoFf2wCBU

Natural Theology
William Paley

William Paley (July 1743 – 25 May 1805) was an English clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.

The Watch Argument (Deductive Teleological Arguments), 5:34

An explication of the deductive teleological argument for the existence of God featuring William Paley's famous Watch analogy. Information for this series obtained from the SEP http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/tel....

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more! Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!

https://youtu.be/arWyrC-FIgE

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
David Hume

David Hume (born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, who is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, skepticism, and naturalism.

Hume Dialogues 1, 4:57

https://youtu.be/RW2lwvk4Kdw

The Wager
Blaise Pascal

1. You should believe in God.



2. The chance that God exists is positive and finite.



3. If you believe in God and he exists, you’ll get an infinite reward. If you believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll have only a finite loss.



4. Believing in God has an infinite expected utility.



5. If you don’t believe in God and he exists, you’ll either win nothing or else you’ll lose something. If you don’t believe in God and he doesn’t exist, you’ll win only a finite gain.



6. Not believing in God has a finite gain or negative expected utility.



7. Believing in God has a much higher expected utility than not believing in God.



8. You should do that which has the higher expected utility.

The Will to Believe
William James

Introductory comments. James indicates the situation in his university --namely, that free-thinking students do not believe one should have religious faith since it cannot be rationally demonstrated. James believes differently, namely that faith is sensible, though not rationally demanded. He indicates his hope that the Brown and Yale students will be more open than his Harvard students.Introductory comments.



Definitions. James will talk about a "genuine" choice. Any choice which merits this name for James must meet three criteria:
be live
be forced
be momentuous



He defines a live choice in opposition to a dead choice.
A live choice has some emotive appeal to the chooser. This is an internal and subjective appeal, not a rational or forced appeal.
A dead option or choice is one which has no appeal to the chooser in question.



He defines an option as forced or non-forced.
An option is forced when there is an either or situation. Nearly all such options are of the sort: Either do this or do not do this.
An avoidable option is when we ask you to choose A or B. You can evade the issue by not choosing at all, or choosing C or D.
He defines an option as momentuous or trivial.
An option is momentuous when it is a matter of some import, life and death, or an important once in a life time situation.
Opposed to this are trivial options--options which don't really make much difference in the world, or ones where you have the option all over again in the near future.
Note that there is great ambiguity here as to who and hope one defines what is momentuous and what is trivial.



Can one choose to believe some claim? James argues that one does not choose one's beliefs, but one just has them.

He defends this claim with a series of examples, focussing on how we could not choose to believe things which we know to be false, such as that Abraham Lincoln did not live or that you are not sick when you are.



James claims that we look to leaders and authority figures, and model our beliefs after theirs. We believe and don't know why; we accept what we've been told.

He discusses the value of free will, but he isn't too clear on this point.

The thesis of this section is that pure logic doesn't dictate our beliefs. There are passional tendencies and volitions which can come before and or after belief.



Thesis: When we have a genuine option that cannot be decided solely on intellectual grounds, our passional nature must be allowed to rule.



Empiricists don't know when they have found truth while the absolutist do.



Although we're born with absolutist attitudes, we should overcome this weakness and strive for the empiricist attitude of continually searching for the truth.



You have more to lose by fearing error in the matter of genuine option than you have to gain.



Our will is bound to play a part in the formation of our opinions.



Moral opinions are based on a personal proof of what one wants to believe, and not necessarily willed.



James is asking what we mean by religious hypotheses. He supports one choosing religious hypotheses and gives reasons.



Scepticism, he argues, is not an avoidance of an option. It is an option of a certain particular kind of option.



James does not believe that agnosticism works either. He says they would not be able to consider other truths, which would make the position irrational.



James proposes an abstract and concrete manner of thinking.



Abstract: We have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.



Concrete: The freedom to believe can only cover living options which the intellect cannot by itself resolve; and living options never seem absurdities to him who has them to consider.



Conclusion.



James concludes that whether we choose to believe or not to believe, or wait to believe, we choose our own peril, our own fate.


PHILOSOPHY - Epistemology: The Will to Believe [HD], 6:39


Thomas Donaldson (Stanford University) asks whether it is moral to believe something even when you have no evidence that it is true. He discusses a classic debate on that subject, between philosophers William James and William Clifford.

https://youtu.be/uzmLXIuAspQ

Pamela Geller vs. Geraldo

Islamist New York

Islam and Slavery

Islam and Slavery

What Does Islam Teach About... Slavery Does Islam condone slavery? Does Islamic teaching allow Muslim men to keep women as sex slaves?  Islam neither ignores nor condemns slavery. In fact, a large part of the Sharia is dedicated to the practice. Muslims are encouraged to live in the way of Muhammad, who was a slave owner and trader. He captured slaves in battle; he had sex with his slaves; and he instructed his men to do the same. The Quran actually devotes more verses to making sure that Muslim men know they can keep women as sex slaves (4) than it does to telling them to pray five times a day (zero). Quran Quran (33:50) - "O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee" This is one of several personal-sounding verses "from Allah" narrated by Muhammad - in this case allowing a virtually unlimited supply of sex partners. Other Muslims are restricted to four wives, but they may also have sex with any number of slaves, following the example of their prophet. Quran (23:5-6) - "..who abstain from sex, except with those joined to them in the marriage bond, or (the captives) whom their right hands possess..." This verse permits the slave-owner to have sex with his slaves. See also Quran (70:29-30). The Quran is a small book, so if Allah used valuable space to repeat the same point four times, sex slavery must be very important to him. He was relatively reticent on matters of human compassion and love. Quran (4:24) - "And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess." Even sex with married slaves is permissible. Quran (8:69) - "But (now) enjoy what ye took in war, lawful and good" A reference to war booty, of which slaves were a part. The Muslim slave master may enjoy his "catch" because (according to verse 71) "Allah gave you mastery over them." Quran (24:32) - "And marry those among you who are single and those who are fit among your male slaves and your female slaves..." Breeding slaves based on fitness. Quran (2:178) - "O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered; the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female." The message of this verse, which prescribes the rules of retaliation for murder, is that all humans are not created equal. The human value of a slave is less than that of a free person (and a woman's worth is also distinguished from that of a man). Quran (16:75) - "Allah sets forth the Parable (of two men: one) a slave under the dominion of another; He has no power of any sort; and (the other) a man on whom We have bestowed goodly favours from Ourselves, and he spends thereof (freely), privately and publicly: are the two equal? (By no means;) praise be to Allah.' Yet another confirmation that the slave is is not equal to the master. In this case, it is plain that the slave owes his status to Allah's will. (According to 16:71, the owner should be careful about insulting Allah by bestowing Allah's gifts on slaves - those whom the god of Islam has not favored). Hadith and Sira Bukhari (80:753) - "The Prophet said, 'The freed slave belongs to the people who have freed him.'"  Bukhari (52:255) - The slave who accepts Islam and continues serving his Muslim master will receive a double reward in heaven. Bukhari (41.598) - Slaves are property. They cannot be freed if an owner has outstanding debt, but they can be used to pay off the debt. Bukhari (62:137) - An account of women taken as slaves in battle by Muhammad's men after their husbands and fathers were killed. The woman were raped with Muhammad's approval. Bukhari (34:432) - Another account of females taken captive and raped with Muhammad's approval. In this case it is evident that the Muslims intend on selling the women after raping them because they are concerned about devaluing their price by impregnating them. Muhammad is asked about coitus interruptus. Bukhari (47.765) - A woman is rebuked by Muhammad for freeing a slave girl. The prophet tells her that she would have gotten a greater heavenly reward by giving her to a relative (as a slave). Bukhari (34:351) - Muhammad sells a slave for money. He was thus a slave trader. Bukhari (72:734) - Some contemporary Muslims in the West (where slavery is believed to be a horrible crime) are reluctant to believe that Muhammad owned slaves. This is just one of many places in the Hadith where a reference is made to a human being owned by Muhammad. In this case, the slave is of African descent. Muslim 3901 - Muhammad trades away two black slaves for one Muslim slave. Muslim 4345 - Narration of a military raid against a hapless tribe trying to reach their water hole. During the slaughter, the women and children attempt to flee, but are cut off and captured by the Muslims. This story refutes any misconception that Muhammad's sex slaves were taken by their own volition. Muslim 4112 - A man freed six slaves on the event of his death, but Muhammad reversed the emancipation and kept four in slavery to himself. He cast lots to determine which two to free. Bukhari (47:743) - Muhammad's own pulpit - from which he preached Islam - was built with slave labor on his command. Bukhari (59:637) - "The Prophet sent Ali to Khalid to bring the Khumus (of the booty) and I hated Ali, and Ali had taken a bath (after a sexual act with a slave-girl from the Khumus). I said to Khalid, 'Don't you see this (i.e. Ali)?' When we reached the Prophet I mentioned that to him. He said, 'O Buraida! Do you hate Ali?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'Do you hate him, for he deserves more than that from the Khumlus.'" Muhammad approved of his men having sex with slaves, as this episode involving his son-in-law, Ali, clearly proves. This hadith refutes the modern apologists who pretend that slaves were really "wives." This is because Muhammad had forbidden Ali from marrying another woman as long as Fatima (his favorite daughter) was living. Abu Dawud (2150) - "The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent a military expedition to Awtas on the occasion of the battle of Hunain. They met their enemy and fought with them. They defeated them and took them captives. Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers. So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse: (Quran 4:24) 'And all married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.'" This is the background for verse 4:24 of the Quran. Not only does Allah give permission for women to be captured and raped, but allows it to even be done in front of their husbands. (See also Muslim 3432 & Ibn Kathir/Abdul Rahman Part 5 Page 14) Abu Dawud (1814) - "...[Abu Bakr] He then began to beat [his slave] him while the Apostle of Allah (pbuh) was smiling and saying: Look at this man who is in the sacred state (putting on ihram), what is he doing?" The future first caliph of Islam is beating his slave for losing a camel while Muhammad looks on in apparent amusement.  Ibn Ishaq (734) - A slave girl is given a "violent beating" by Ali in the presence of Muhammad, who does nothing about it. Abu Dawud 38:4458 - Narrated Ali ibn AbuTalib: “A slave-girl belonging to the house of the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) committed fornication. He (the Prophet) said: Rush up, Ali, and inflict the prescribed punishment on her. I then hurried up, and saw that blood was flowing from her, and did not stop. So I came to him and he said: Have you finished inflicting (punishment on her)? I said: I went to her while her blood was flowing. He said: Leave her alone till her bleeding stops; then inflict the prescribed punishment on her. And inflict the prescribed punishment on those whom your right hands possess (i.e. slaves)”. A slave girl is ordered by Muhammad to be beaten until she bleeds, and then beaten again after the bleeding stops. He indicates that this is prescribed treatment for slaves ("those whom your right hand possesses"). Ibn Ishaq (693) - "Then the apostle sent Sa-d b. Zayd al-Ansari, brother of Abdu'l-Ashal with some of the captive women of Banu Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons." Muhammad trades away women captured from the Banu Qurayza tribe to non-Muslim slave traders for property. (Their men had been executed after surrendering peacefully without a fight).  Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller) (o9.13) - According to Sharia, when a child or woman is taken captive by Muslims, they become slaves by the mere fact of their capture. A captured woman's previous marriage is immediately annulled. This would not be necessary if she were widowed by battle, which is an imaginary stipulation that modern apologists sometimes pose. Notes Slavery is deeply embedded in Islamic law and tradition. Although a slave-owner is cautioned against treating slaves harshly, basic human rights are not obliged. The very fact that only non-Muslims may be taken as slaves is evidence of Islam's supremacist doctrine.  Of the five references to freeing a slave in the Quran, three are prescribed as punitive measures against the slaveholder for unrelated sin. They limit the emancipation to just a single slave. Another (24:33) appears to allow a slave to buy their own freedom if they are "good." This is in keeping with the traditional Islamic practice of wealth-building through taking and ransoming hostages, which began under Muhammad. A tiny verse in one of the earliest chapters, 90:13, does say that freeing a slave is good, however, this was "revealed" at a time when the Muslim community was miniscule and several of their new and potential recruits were either actual slaves or newly freed slaves. Many of these same people, and Muhammad himself, later went on to become owners and traders of slaves, both male and female, as they acquired the power to do so (there is no record of Muhammad owning slaves prior to starting Islam). The language of the Quran changed to accommodate slavery, which is why this early verse has had negligible impact on slavery in the Islamic world. The taking of women and children as slaves, particularly during the conquests outside Arabia, belies the notion that Jihad was being waged in self-defense, since the enemy's families reside neither with the Muslims nor (generally) on the battlefield. These were innocent people captured from their homes and pressed into slavery by Muhammad's companions and successors. Contrary to popular belief, converting to Islam does not automatically earn a slave his freedom, although freeing a believing slave is said to increase the master's heavenly reward (Muslim slaves are implied in Quran (4:92)). As far as the Islamic courts are concerned, a master may treat his slaves however he chooses without fear of punishment. By contrast, Christianity was a major impetus in the abolishment of slavery. Abolition had to be imposed on the Islamic world by the European West.  Given that there have never been abolitionary movement within the Islamic world, it is astonishing to see contemporary Muslims write their religion into the history of abolition. It is a lie.  There was no William Wilberforce or Bartoleme de las Casas in Islam. As mentioned, Muhammad, the most revered figure in the religion, practiced and approved of slavery. Even his own pulpit was built with slave labor. Caliphs since have had harems of hundreds, sometimes thousands of young girls and women brought from Christian, Hindu and African lands to serve Islam's religious equivalent of the pope in the most demeaning fashion. One of Muhammad's closest companions was Umar, who became the 2nd caliph only two years after the prophet of Islam died. It is fair to say that he would have known Islam better than any contemporary apologist - those who say that slaves can only be captured in war and wars can only be waged in self-defense. He obviously did not agree with this. Under Umar's authority, Arab armies in Egypt invaded Black Africa to the south and attempted to conquer the Christian Makurians who were living there peacefully. Although the Muslims were held off, the Makurians had to sign a treaty to prevent recurring invasions. The terms of the Baqt included an annual payment of 360 "high quality" African slaves. The treaty stood for 700 years with no mention of the slightest opposition from generations of Muslim clerics and scholars. Umar himself was stabbed to death by a slave whose liberty he refused to grant. In this case, the slave was captured during the campaign against a Persia, one of many offensive wars waged by the Muslims against people who were not attacking them. Modern day apologists trying to defend slavery under Islam generally ignore the basic fact that reducing people to property is dehumanizing. They distract from this by comparing the theoretical treatment of slaves under Sharia with the worst examples of abuse from the era of European slavery.  ("Fatwa 64 from ISIS instructs slave owners to "show compassion" and "kindness" to the women they rape.) The first problem with this is that the actual practice of Muslim slavery was often remarkably at odds with the relatively humane treatment prescribed by Sharia. For example, according to the Ghanan scholar John Azumah, nearly three times as many captured Africans died in harsh circumstances related to their transport to Muslim lands than were ever even enslaved by Europeans. A more insurmountable problem for the Muslim apologist who insists that slavery is "different" under Islam are the many examples in which Muhammad and his companions sold captured slaves to non-Muslim traders for material goods. The welfare of the slave was obviously of no consequence. Some contemporary apologists interpret sex slavery as a favor done to the subject - a way in which women and children are taken care of in exchange for their sexual availability to the pious Muslim male.  Although morally repugnant in its own right, this is easily belied by the fact that slavery would be unnecessary if the arrangement were of benefit to the slave. Another myth about Islamic slavery is that it was not race-based. It was. Muhammad's father-in-law, Umar, in his aforementioned role as caliph, declared that Arabs could not be taken as slaves and even had all Arab slaves freed on his deathbed. This helped propel the vast Islamic campaign to capture slaves in Africa, Europe and Asia for import into the Middle East. The greatest slave rebellion in human history took place in Basra, Iraq beginning in 869. A half-million African slaves staged a courageous uprising against their Arab-Islamic masters that lasted fifteen years before being brutally suppressed. (See Zanj Rebellion) Literally millions of Christians were captured into slavery during the many centuries of Jihad. So pervasive were the incursions by the Turks into Eastern Europe, that the English word for slave is based on Slav.  Muslim slave raiders operated as far north as England. In 1631, a French cleric in Algiers observed the sale of nearly 300 men, women and children, taken from a peaceful English fishing village: "It was a pitiful sight to see them exposed in the market…Women were separated from their husbands and the children from their fathers…on one side a husband was sold; on the other his wife; and her daughter was torn from her arms without the hope that they’d ever see each other again." (from the book, White Gold, which also details the story of English slave, Thomas Pellow, who was beaten, starved and tortured into embracing Islam). The Indian and Persian people suffered greatly as well - as did Africans. At least 17 million slaves (mostly black women and children) were brought out of Africa by Islamic traders - far more than the 11 million that were taken by the Europeans. However, these were only the survivors. As many as 85 million other Africans are thought to have died en route. Most telling, perhaps, is that slavery is still practiced in the Sudan, Niger, Mauritania and a few other corners of the Muslim world - and you won't see any of those Muslim apologists (who shamelessly repeat the lie that Islam abolished slavery) doing or saying anything about it!  In fact, a fatwa was recently issued by a mainstream Islamic source reminding Muslim males of their divine right to rape female slaves and "discipline" resisters in "whatever manner he thinks is appropriate".  Not one peep of protest from Islamic apologists was recorded.  In 2013, the same site prominently proclaimed that "there is no dispute (among the scholars) that it is permissible to take concubines and to have intercourse with one's slave woman, because Allah says so." In 2011, what passes for a women's rights activist in Kuwait suggested that Russian women be taken captive in battle and turned into sex slaves in order to keep Muslim husbands from committing adultery. (Other calls for turning non-Muslim women into sex slaves can be found here). After the Islamic State kidnapped and pressed into slavery thousands of Yazidi women and children in 2014, the caliphate issued an FAQ of sorts on slavery, which included rules on sexually molesting children: "It is permissible to have intercourse with the female slave who hasn’t reached puberty if she is fit for intercourse; however, if she is not fit for intercourse, then it is enough to enjoy her without intercourse." The best that "mainstream" apologists could muster in response was a letter appealing to "the reality of contemporary times", meaning that Islam has no fixed moral position on the rape of woman and children. In 2016, a scholar at Egypt's al-Azhar, the most prestigious Islamic school in the Sunni world, stated that non-Muslim women could be captured in a time of war become "property" and can be raped "in order to humiliate them." A 12-year-old girl taken captive by the Islamic State explained that her 'master' would pray before he raped her: "He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to Allah." Other sex slaves have been forced to pray before the rape or recite passages from the Quran during. When a Yazidi woman begged a caliphate member not to rape a little girl, he responded, "She's a slave... and having sex with her pleases God." A Quran memorization competition in 2015 offered slave girls as the top three prizes. Again, there were no voices of Muslim protest from elsewhere. As Uzy Bulut keenly observed, "A religion that encourages destructive rioting and killing over cartoons, but shows no sign of sorrow as little girls are sold and raped, does not have much to contribute to advancing civilization." Since Muhammad was a slave owner and slavery is permitted by the Quran, the Muslim world has never apologized for this dehumanizing practice. Even Muslims in the West will often try to justify slavery under Islam, since it is a part of the Quran. See also:  Islamic Slavery and Denial Answering-Islam: Slavery Myth: Muhammad was an Abolitionist Video of Islamic State members at one of the caliphate's sex slave markets in November, 2014. A price list was released setting the rate Yazidi and Christian girls between ages 10 and 20 at $130. Women between the ages of 20 and 30 were being sold for $86; a 30 to 40 year was being sold for $75 and 40 to 50 year old women were listed for sale at a price of $43. The price list began with these words: "In the name of Allah, most gracious and merciful. We have received news that the demand in women and cattle markets has sharply decreased and that will affected Islamic State revenues as well as the funding of the Mujaheddin in the battlefield. We have made some changes. Below are the prices of Yazidi and Christian women."

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