In the 1800s, there were many reform movements in the United States. One of the major reform movements was the religious reform movement. One of the major parts of that movement was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormon church. This church was started by Joseph Smith Jr., and is still around and is still a popular religion. This religion attracted […]

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) is a terrorist group that deeply and existentially relies on the far-flung belief in the impending apocalypse to promote and sustain its brutal ideology. The group’s fixation on the apocalypse can be seen to evolve in part from personal and collective trauma, which simultaneously helps the group to attract woefully misguided recruits. […]

For this report, I observed the children in “kids’ zone” at my church. It is a beautiful Sunday morning, just after the parents had dropped the kids off for check-in. The class had about fifteen children, which were of different race and age group. Majority of the kids were about 8 years old. This is a short report of subject A intermingling with adults and […]

Theism is the belief in the existence of the omnipotent, omnipresent and benevolent being. This being’s (debated) existence reveals the difference between religion and philosophy. While religion is based on faith, philosophy is rooted in reason and evidence. Philosophical beliefs are often stronger because where one might lose faith, a good argument persists. These arguments for God’s existence take two forms: deductive and inductive. A […]

The Muslim culture, identity and sense of belonging are founded on Islamic teachings. In the context of Muslim’s, centrality of Islamic faith is the foundation of all cultural diversities. The Islamic culture is a set of beliefs, traditions and customs, which guide Muslim’s in their daily lives as they conform to Quran teachings. Regardless of their originality or language, Muslim share a foundational bonding of […]

How do religious people react to feelings when someone suffers from death or are dissatisfied with life? There may be some people who are really depressed and dissatisfied with the life because of the sufferings that always exist from time to time. In this case, this type of situation is related to Hermann Hesse’s novel, Siddhartha, which relies on how life was like for religious […]

I chose to go to Sutter Middle School in 6th grade even though I only had one friend going, Kaley Poon, my best friend. A week or so passed and then we meet Zoe Maggio. We had an instantaneous spark as if we were destined to meet each other. Together we formed the ultimate trifecta. Even though I chose to go to Sutter, I suspect […]

The absolute paradox is attempting to seek something for which thought is incapable of thinking. Beneath all thinking that transcends him is a passion, but due to the limits in man’s capacities, it is unable to be obtained. Understanding is in constant efforts to seek what is not understood. Socrates asserts that understanding what is not already known is through “recollection, ” where the truth […]

Climacus is not attempting to persuading readers to accept another thought system different from their own, especially one reflecting his beliefs. His goals are for the reader to distance oneself away from the dependency on others’ opinions to allow for a margin of own opinion. Through examining the truth, one can direct own opinions towards faith. In respects to Christian faith, Climacus does so by […]

God being defined as the unknown and absolutely different emphasizes the lack of ability to comprehend Him. God is able to make Himself understood by man through various approaches. The first approach being that He could create a unity through an ascent, where He would draw the learner higher towards himself and let the learner forget their misunderstandings. God can also reveal Himself to the […]