Chapter 2, Question 3

For the last question of this weeks chapter, I wanted to go more in depth about Dawkins vs. Aquinas perspectives on the debate of God vs. Evolution. In one of the arguments brought up by Aquinas, it is concluded that "things in the world look as though they have been designed. Nothing that we know looks designed unless it is designed. Therefore there must have been a designer and we call him God..." Why does there HAVE to be a designer? Why can't things just be the way they are naturally? This is where the theory of evolution comes into play because the theory basically proves that things don't need to be "designed" in the beginning and that organisms adapt to their surroundings to survive. It's a much more logical theory to believe than "God just designed them because there was no reason for living things to appear as advanced as they are."

Chapter 2, Question 2

This question is difficult to answer considering the standpoints you have to take into account. If you take Aquinas' standpoint, evolution wouldn't even be considered an option. Most of his claims are based on an infinite regress. An example of his claims is that everything must have came from something; something cannot exist without the existence of something else. If you were to believe that nothing existed from the beginning, then there would be no way of anything existing now. This proves that God must be real because there must have been something non-physical to bring at least 2 things into existence to make anything exist. The problem with this statement is that the infinite regress doesn't apply to God. Since nothing from the beginning was in existence, there must be a God, who is immune to the regress, that makes things exist, all for the satisfaction of the theory. There isn't a way this can be proven.

Chapter 2, Question 1

Out of the possible reasonings, I personally believe that the strongest reasoning I can use to my advantage and potentially use in a career choice would be logical reasoning. I feel like logical reasoning would generally be the best to associate with most careers. In most situations common sense is used in every basic job, so that would accumulate to an immense amount of occupations. Since common sense is used generally every day, I have to make a conclusion that possessing strength in logical reasoning would make any job easier considering common sense falls under the category of logical reasoning. Not only the fact that common sense is associated with logical reasoning, but because a majority of people don’t use deductive or inductive reasoning or they don’t dissect an argument enough to win. Most arguments are generally based on logical reasoning so you’d be winning a majority of your arguments.

Chapter 7 Question 3

Chapter 7 Question 2

Chapter 7 Question 1

An inductive argument that I experienced last week happened during my job. I was working as the guy who makes sure all the food is stocked up and ready to serve to customers. During my job, the person who was working the grill asked me to fetch him more burger patties, so I did. However, these burger patties need to be refrigerated or kept in some sort of cooling environment to assure quality. Unfortunately, they were left out in room temperature for more than two hours. I told him we needed to throw them out due to the exposure to a high temperature for so long. I know for a fact that if the frozen burgers are left out in the open for that long, they're gonna go bad. He told me they'd be fine, but it was obvious from how they looked that they could potentially make customers ill.

This is an inductive argument because it's a fact that burgers must be kept refrigerated to assure quality and that too much exposure to high temperatures (aside from frying them) will make them go bad.

Chapter 8 Question 3

A concept that was quite interesting to me in chapter 8 were the deductive reasonings and syllogisms. In the chapter, one of the examples of a deductive argument was that "All men are mortal. All fathers are men. Therefore, all fathers are mortal." By using these 2 supporting premises, one can make a conclusion based on deductive reasoning. However, this concept is not always correct. In another example, it was stated that "All men are tall people. Tom Cruise is a man. Therefore, Tom Cruise is tall." The deductive reasoning in this statement is incorrect because one of the premises is incorrect. Obviously, not all men are tall people, and Tom Cruise isn't a tall man. This shows how it is important to make sure your premises are correct in order to make a logically correct deductive argument. Even the smallest of errors in your argument can make your argument invalid.

Chapter 8, Question 2

In this situation, I don't believe a death penalty is completely necessary, but I do believe something more along the lines of total isolation from the outside world (prison, solitary confinement etc.) should be incorporated into the lives of killers.

In Exodus 21:12, it is stated that "Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death." This verse pretty much states that whoever kills a man should be killed. I believe the death penalty is a bit extreme, but if it works, then the law should adopt the death penalty to prevent murder.

In Romans 12:19, it is stated that "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." This excerpt says that God will avenge all who have been murdered and will send all murders to eternity in hell for what he or she has committed. The problem with this scenario is that how will that prevent people from killing once he or she has already murdered? Killing everyone on earth and killing one people would ultimately have the same penalty: An eternal afterlife in hell. This doesn't do a justice to me. Action needs to be taken place throughout the course of a murderer's life in order to stop them from killing more than one person.

Chapter 8, Question 1

I've realized in past experiences that most people who I've argued with try to win the argument without proper sources of information and end up losing the argument because he or she lacks correct information. I've also witnessed situations where someone is trying to win an argument when he or she has no clue what he or she's talking about. I've experienced this situation at my job in the dish room where one of my coworkers was trying to tell me how the machine cleaned the dishes. He was explaining which way was the correct way to put the dishes in and all of his "facts" were going right over my head because one week before the incident, an Ecolab agent (Ecolab is the brand of the dishwasher) was in the dish room telling me, personally, how to correctly put the dishes in. Needless to say, I won the argument. This is just one of many examples of this type of situations I've experienced.