Essay Neil Postman - Responses

owe to prove his thesis about the problems of evil and atheism, Rowe asks three fundamental questions. The first question, “is there an argument for atheism based on the problem of evil that could rationally justify atheism?” Supporting his question, Rowe by uses the idea of human and animal suffering.is it reasonable for omnipotent, omniscient being(s) to permits its creation to suffer by extinguish each other for their own personal benefits. If there is such a thing as an omnibenevolent, omnipotent holy being how come the ultimate and unescapable suffering is this world has no vanish. How good is a god(s) that permits humanity to suffer greatly? In religious Christian Bible study, Jesus, many times referred to as god, vanish evil from

God is our creator, He loves and protect us, He wants us to be safe and happy.

During the time of philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato, “What exactly is the real relationship and purpose of humanity towards the divine?” was the question spreading among the philosophers. When questioned what God is, Aristotle stated in writing, “God is a supreme and eternal living being, so that to God belong life and continuous and eternal duration. For that is what God is.” If we choose to believe Aristotle’s logic then we are left without a reason as to why humanity exists and are left to make assumptions about our existence for the divine power. If God is eternal and has all power then that would mean that our existence is meaningless unless we had a specific purpose to work towards for our Divine.

Knowledge has come about through many different forms throughout history and has constantly changed along with the times. To equate media to epistemology is to say how media relates to how we understand knowledge. In this chapter, Neil Postman discusses how modern media has created an epistemological shift and whether it has affected us for better or for worse. Postman argues that this shift has altered the structure of discourse no differently than how every new medium before it has always done.

Huxley’s Brave New World could be considered almost prophetic by many people today. It is alarmingly obvious how modern society is eerily similar to Huxley’s novel with the constant demand for instant gratification encouraging laziness, greed, and entitlement. Neil Postman, a contemporary social critic, seems to have noticed this similarity, as he has made bold, valid statements regarding the text and its relevance to our world today. This response is strongly in support of those statements and will prove both their accuracy in clarifying Huxley’s intentions and how Postman’s assertions compare to society today.

My Gilman scholarship follow-on project will focus on breaking down the barrier of misunderstanding of Gilman scholarship eligibility between student and introduce more international education opportunity for low-income students. After coming back from Japan I will create a flyer to put in the study abroad office for student take. The flyer will explain Gilman scholarship eligibility specific detail include: an applicant must be a US citizen, Pell grant recipient, studying abroad at least 4 weeks also need to be accepted to a study abroad program. The deadline for submitting the application will be also mentioned in the flyer. In the back of the flyer, I will include a list of resource student can get help from the university. The resource

Throughout the span of the past few weeks I have traversed the globe, visiting several countries and regions, only to realize that although new methods develop, language as a way of expressing ones self has remained the most effective. Despite this fact, language still has its pitfalls. Neil Postman, in his essay “Defending Against the Indefensible,'; outlines seven concepts that can be used to aid a student in better understanding the language as a means of communication. He describes how modern teaching methods leave a student vulnerable to the “prejudices of their elders';, further stating that a good teacher must always be skeptical. He urges teachers of all subjects to break free from traditional teachings as

Throughout history, humans have displayed beliefs in the existence of some sort of higher being. The existence of God gives an explanation of why the world is the way it is and is a reassurance for life after death. However, even believers of a deity find themselves questioning their own god, asking themselves, “If there is so much suffering in the world, how can God exist?” and this is understandable. Suffering is defined as the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. Theorists have attempted to answer this question, some arguing for the existence of God and some arguing against it, but there’s no real way to answer this question. After all, there’s no definite proof of God’s existence in the world. Two dominant arguments for the existence of

William Rowe defines gratuitous evil as an instance of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.(Rowe 335) In a world with so much evil it raises the questions If God is all powerful, all knowing and all good, how can he allow bad things to happen to good people? Can God even exist in a world with so such gratuitous evil? These are questions that has afflicted humanity for a very long time and has been the question to engross theologians for centuries. The existence of evil has been the most influential and powerful reason to disprove the existence of God. It is believed among many theist that God is the creator and caretaker

There are many approaches taken by theologians to answer the problem mentioned above. The free will defense, in particular, is one of the most popular approaches. This approach makes its argument by attacking the purposed idea that an all-loving and all-powerful God cannot exist in a world where evil exists and is in abundance. The argument says that when God created humans, he gave us was the ability to choose our course of actions for ourselves. He did this because He wanted us to have the ability to choose on our own between right and wrong, good and evil, and believing in Him or not. God could not create humans without giving them free will. If He had done so, then humanity's faith in God and their actions of piousness would mean nothing. We would essentially be robots. That is why God gave us free will, despite knowing that it would result in evil, suffering, and the questioning of his existence.

The problem of evil has been around since the beginning. How could God allow such suffering of his “chosen people”? God is supposedly all loving (omni-benevolent) and all powerful (omnipotent) and yet He allows His creations to live in a world of danger and pain. Two philosophers this class has discussed pertaining to this problem is B.C. Johnson and John Hick. Johnson provides the theists’ defense of God and he argues them. These include free will, moral urgency, the laws of nature, and God’s “higher morality”. Hick examines two types of theodicies – the Augustinian position and the Irenaeus position. These positions also deal with free will, virtue (or moral urgency), and the laws of nature. Johnson

Even before reading Paradise Lost, I had always wondered why God allowed evil, and why he allowed death. After a while I had simply accepted that God was God, and what happens, happens. Basically an act of pure faith.

There are several theodicies presented in the textbook all of which attempt to explain why bad things happen if there is a loving God. Gottfried Leibniz argues that God is obligated to create the best possible world. He states “The metaphysically richest world must contain the greatest number and variety of beings” (page 1185 thick book) Leibniz believed for the world to be the best it had to have both good and evil existing in it. According to Leibniz a world without diversity would not be the best possible world. The fact that there is good and evil proves that God made the best possible world, that He is just, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Leibniz is correct in his belief that god is just, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent however God as part of His nature,because He is holy, cannot be the author of evil. Also God was nor is not obligated to create or do anything against His will. Augustinian tradition first states that God did not have to create any world and that His existence alone is the ultimate in excellence. Second

Leon Festinger created the cognitive dissonance theory as an attempt to explain why people desire to have consistency between their behaviors and actions. Cognitive dissonance is the distressing mental state people feel when they find themselves doing things that don’t fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold (Festinger, 1957; as cited in Griffin, 2009). Thus, people are motivated to change either their behavior or their belief when feelings of dissonance arise.

The book of Job offers a possible answer to the problem of evil. The answer found in Job is simply to have faith. “If we have good reasons to believe in God, and reasons to see Him as good, then we can simply trust that God solves the problem of evil” (Wartick). Instead of using human nature and free will or a greater good to justify evil, the answer given to and by Job is that God, being good, has a reason, even if that reason is inscrutable for us. It is a response of faith” (Wartick). So, while the problem of evil challenges our belief systems and forces us to reconsider our thinking about humanity and God, a theodicy attempts to justify or defend God in the face of