PHILOSOPHY

BEGINNING QUESTIONS

• How was the world created?
• Is there any meaning behind what happens?
• Is there life after death? How can we answer that?
• How ought we live?
• How does the physical world do what it does?

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• Does the world even exist?
• Are we real?
• Can something come from nothing?

WHO IS MAN?

• Genesis 1:27 says "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created We bear the image of God. God cares about us so much that he set mankind apart and put us in his image.
• God loved us so much he sent Christ to save us from our sins by dying on the cross.
• Jesus is returning and saving us so we are rescued.
• Jesus returning and saving us so we are rescued.
• Genesis 1:27, Galatians 3:13-14 , Matthew 26:64

CAN SOMETHING COME FROM NOTHING?

• God is undefined by our realm of living. We cannot see his realm
• Psalm 90:2. God has no beginning or end.
• We cannot understand the unseen, just like God isn't stuck behind the seen. We cannot grasp his realms
• He can make something come from nothing because he is the creator, we just rearrange things.
• Revelations 22: 13

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• Written down by Homer and Hesiod
• Myth: stories about gods which set out to explain why life is how it is

MYTHS WERE USED TO EXPLAIN.....

• the balance of nature.
• Good vs evil
• Sicknesses, fertility, weather, wealth, etc.

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS SAID....

• Myths should not be trusted!
• The gods are too much like mortal men
• They sought to find natural explanations for natural processes
• Myths used super natural explanations
• Myths were trusted because they were handed down by generations

NORDIC MYTHS: THOR.EXPLAINED....

• Thunder: Thor's roar
• His hammer made lightning
• God of fertility
• Gave or held rain

MYTHOLOGICAL GODS.

• People gave them offerings to receive favor
• Zeus & Apollo
• Hera & Athene
• Dionysos & Asclepius
• Heracles & Hephaestos

NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS

THEY BELIEVED

• something had always existed
• Constant state of transformation
• Must be a certain basic substance of all change
• Wanted to understand what was happening, without myths
• Laws of nature

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• Wanted to understand processes by studying nature
• To liberate philosophy from religion
• They took the first step to scientific reasoning
• There had to be something other than myths and Greek gods.

THALES

• Predicted a solar eclipse
• Measured by shadows
• Water is the source of all things
• Everything is full of god

ANAXIMENES

• Our world is one of a myriad of worlds.
• they evolve and dissolve in 'the boundless'

ANAXIMENES

• Source of everything: air
• Air is the origin of fire, water, earth, etc

HERACLITUS

• Change is the most basic characteristic of nature
• Characterized things by using there opposites
• God is reason
• Logos is the source of everything

PARMENIDES

• Everything has always existed
• Change isn't real
• Reason over senses
• Rationalism

EMPEDOCLES

• No single basic substance
• Roots: air, earth, fire, water
• Everything is just various proportions of these things
• Different forces of nature: love and strife
• Substances and forces

ANAXAGORUS

• Nature is built on an infinite number of invisible particles
• Order is a force.(knowledge)
• Loved astronomy
• Found that moon had no light of its own
• Thought there was life on other planets

DEMOCRITUS

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• He gave atoms properties
• Materialist
• No conscious design in the movement of atoms
• The atom theory explains our sense perception
• Everything has a natural cause and happens mechanically

......DEMOCRITUS (SOUL)

• Even the soul is material
• There is no immortal soul, it's connected to the brain
• Everything comes and goes, but atoms and immortal

FATE

FINDING FATE

• People used to go to oracles to learn their fate.
• Now people look for fate through cards, palms, glass balls, stars,etc
• 'Fate' has controlled individual lives and world history
• Fate is used to explain the outcome of wars, illness, etc.
• Greek philosophers looked for natural explanations, instead of fate.

SOCRATES

INFLUENCE

• Founder of philosophical schools of thought
• Sentenced to death because of his philosophical activities
• He never lectured, but asked and discussed questions.
• Anyone can use innate reason to think philosophically
• Forced people to use common sense

SOCRATES....

• He believed he had a 'divine force' inside of him. Also known as his conscience.
• More concerned with man and his role in the world than the forces of nature
• He understood that there was a lot he did not understand.

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PLATO

• Concerned with the relationship between what is eternal and immutable and what just flowed
• Everything tangible "flows"; no substances don't dissolve
• There must be a reality behind the material world
• Forms exist in a different reality than spiritual reality
• We can only have true knowledge of things that can be understood with reason

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• Human body consists of three parts: head, chest, and the abdomen. They all have different souls
• Rationalism
• His thoughts are still discussed
• Four roots of humans: body, soul, virtue, state
• Had a positive view on women

ARISTOTLE

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• Preoccupied with the changes of nature
• Used senses over reason
• Distinguished things by their characteristics
• What we price with our senses is the highest degree of reality
• Things that are in the human soul are reflections do natural things

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• Nothing exists in consciousness that hasn't been experienced by the senses.
• Reason is mans most distinguishable characteristic.
• Remarkable view of causality in nature.
• He founded the science of logic.
• He breaks everything up into categories and sub categories

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• Only living things have the potential for change
• Man can only achieve happiness by using all his abilities and capabilities
• Man is by nature a political animal
• Women are incomplete

HELLENISM

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• the borders between the various countries and culture became erased
• Different cultures merged, having the same religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas
• Syncretism: fusion of creeds.
• As the borders erased, people began to experience doubt about their philosophy of life
• Many taught that mankind could attain salvation from death.

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• Philosophy was also moving toward salvation and serenity
• The boundaries between philosophy and religion were eliminated
• Hellenistic philosophy worked with the problems raised by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
• They were concerned with ethics
• Emphasized on finding out what true happiness was and how it could be achieved

THE CYNICS

• True happiness cannot be found in good health, material things, independence, or power.
• Anyone could attain it and once attained it couldn't be lost
• Are very insensitive to other people's sufferings
• Everything is all good

THE STOICS

• Everyone is apart of the same common sense
• Everything follows the laws of nature
• Deny the difference between individual and universe
• Deny the difference between spirit and matter
• Involved with the society, culture, and politics

EPICUREANS

• A pleasurable result in the short term must be weighed against the possibility of a greater pleasure in the long term
• Pleasurable results of an action must be weighed against possible side effects
• Desire must be curbed, and serenity will help us endure pain
• Protection and happiness in the garden of Epicurus. Live in total seclusion.
• 'Death does not concern us'. Good is easy to attain.

NEOPLATONISM

• Inspired by Plato's philosophy
• Man became a dual creature:
• Our body consisted of earth and dust like everything in the sensory world
• Our soul became immortal

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• Darkness doesn't exist
• All that exists is God
• The soul is illuminated by the light of the One
• Divine mystery in everything that exists
• Mystical experience: fusion of soul with God

MYSTICISM

• Merging with God. There is a greater 'I'. Everyone is one.
• "When I was God, God was not. When God is, I am no more."
• You gain more than what you lose.
• Mystics have to seek the path of purification and enlightenment
• Meditation techniques and simple lives. Exclaim that I am God.

TWO CULTURES....

INDO- EUROPEANS

• Very spread out
• Influenced by their faith in many gods.
• Believed in different types of gods and used them for explanations
• Clear similarities in modes of thought across the Indo-European cultures
• Greek philosophy originated in the Indo- European sphere of culture

. . . . .

• Sought insight into the history of the world
• Sight was their most important sense.
• Believed that history repeats itself, in circles.
• Hinduism and Buddhism came from this
• Pantheism and transmigration of the soul

THE SEMITES

• Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a Semitic background.
• Monotheistic
• History is an ongoing line. God intervenes in history.it exists for God's will
• Hearing is the most important sense.
• Never made sculptures of God

. . . . . .

• People should never compete with God
• Distance between God and His creation
• Purpose is to be redeemed from sin and blame
• Religious life is characterized by: prayer, sermons, etc.ø
• Israel, Jesus, Paul- major events in the Bible

THE END!