Today, people often find it difficult to reconcile religious beliefs with skepticism or even with philosophy in general. Intuitively, one might view skepticism as contradictory to a commitment to particular theological doctrines and therefore as being destructive for belief in general. In this paper, I shed a different light on the matter by investigating the philosophy of al-Ghazālī (c. 1058-1111). First, I will 'set things straight' with respect to the historical conception of...

It could be argued that all modern science has evolved from the basic theories and suggestions of the ancient Greek philosophers. The great philosophers of ancient Greece questioned how and why the world around them was as it was. One of their main goals was to find the origin of their world. "The first philosophy (Metaphysics) is universal and is exclusively concerned with primary substance. .... " (Aristotle Metaphysics, 340BC) . This is almost exactly the same goal as modern day...

I shall do three things in this essay. First, I shall analyze and identify what is distinctive about the relationship between law and ethics in Islam. Second, I shall present and compare other non-Islamic notions of law and morality. Third, in law and ethics, I shall anatomize whether one is more important than the other in our contemporary time. I would like to start my analysis by posing a few questions about this relationship to stimulate our thoughts. Are law and ethics identical or...

In around 300BC the mathematician Euclid developed the first geometry based on postulates, proofs and definitions which were detailed in his Elements, a series of thirteen books. Two thousand years on in the early 19th Century several mathematicians had attempted and failed to prove Euclid's Parallel Postulate and from this non-Euclidean geometry was discovered. Rosenfeld [R1] suspects its discovery was first published by the mathematician NikolaÄ­ Lobachevsky in the paper "On the...

An action, in the theory of utilitarianism, is considered right when in the course of the action it promotes an overall happiness void of pain - defining morality by its decision or action and its probable outcome on those affected - the action is considered 'wrong' if it promotes the opposite. A person's actions are right when the action creates the greatest good for the most amount of people. An example of utilitarianism could be explained within a hostage situation - if twenty people have...

The changing world is due the development of science and science is relentlessly amended itself. [4] Theories of the past are changed today and may change in near future. The changes for the developed theories are due to create latest ideas. Theories are prepared by reduction and emergence. These two approaches are needed to understand the world and one approach has its own traits of good and bad and not appropriate in all aspects. In this essay I first discuss about general concept of...

In its plot, the "Crito" dialogue draws on the continuation of the events discussed in "Apology of Socrates", i.e. it describes Socrates as a prisoner under a court sentence and awaiting death in jail. The dialogue is a conversation between Socrates and his wealthy friend Crito on justice and injustice, as well as the appropriate response to injustice. During the conversation, Crito provides arguments in favor of Socrates' escape from prison. According to Crito, he and his...

In this paper, I wish to explore the concept of happiness as well as Aristotle's take on it. I think for most of us, we rarely stop and think about what happiness is even though we cannot deny that its inevitable existence. For some people, they are indulged in materialism everyday. I dug out a past composition written by one of the primary school students, asking them what is happiness, and the student wrote: "what is happiness? happiness is living with a heart of joyous spirit, happiness...

This paper gives an explanation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. As well, the paper fully gives a description of natural selection in terms of "modern evolutionary synthesis" of the 20th century. The paper also gives application of the principles of natural selection to explain the current problem of antibiotics resistance in bacteria. Finally the paper gives a summary of scientific theories about evolution before Darwin's discovery of natural selection. Generally this is a...

"We see and understand things not as they are but as we are." Discuss this claim in at least two ways of knowing. When the theory of knowledge teacher asked a student in the class to examine and describe a paper flower, he boldly described it as soft, weak and small. I also examined the same paper flower and came up with an understanding that the flower is small, weak and soft. This was because we both were observing the same thing. This observation leads to a hypothesis that the...