Chapter 2 Question 3

After reading the entire chapter 2, I find one concept is interesting and I would like to talk about it in more details---fideism: faith transcends reason. According to the chapter, fideism is the transcendent realm of the divine is revealed through faith and revelation, not reason or empirical evidence. One example from the page states that Mother Teresa did not sense the presence of God for the last fifty years of her life. It shows her great faith to God. However, it will be so “blind” to believe for nothing. From the chapter, one weakness of fideism is that being convinced that something is true does not necessarily make it true. This confuses me at first. After reading that statement over again, I become understanding what it means. “God” can be the subject that we human cannot or have not proven in a scientific method. Meanwhile we all have the freedom to choose to believe or not. Therefore, I do not think there will be any conflicts and resistance between faith and reasoning.

Chapter 2 Question 2

God exists or not? There is never a specific answer for that. In my opinion, I will say evolution and a belief in God are incompatible as Dawkins claims. My reason for that is because I think Dawkins’s argument is valid. After reading the two different perspectives on reason and proofs for the existence of God, I find that Thomas Aquinas claims were not as strong as Dawkins. Most of the points from Aquinas were based on what he called “nature” which was not persuasive enough to catch my attention. On the other hand, Dawkins claims are more scientific and trustable. Since Aquinas is in the thirteenth century, he does not have many proofs to support his claims. Unlike Dawkins, he has more scientific and logical ways to convince me dto agree with his argument. Besides, I think Aquinas has added some of his own opinions in writing the argument by knowing his background as a catholic theologians and philosophers, whereas Dawkins claims are more objective. If Aquinas was still alive today, I think he will rearrange his claims and may change his perspective. 

Chapter 2 Question 1

Identifying our strengths is important in choosing a career. Dr. Grandin states that human have difficulty in visualizing the underlying problems. I agree with what she says and that is the reason why we, people, learn every day and we receive education. In order to have a brighter future in our career, we need to understand ourselves first. Knowing what is our strengths can help a lot in choosing a college major, and even a career. My strength is to simplify the problems. For example in daily college life, I will ask question directly to the professor. Since I am not sure about the answer, and sometimes friends may not know what the professor exactly wants. To make my life easier, I will seek for answer from the professor. That is the most efficient way to solve my problem. Apply back to choosing a career, I will do directly what I need for that particular time to chase for my ideal. I believe this strength can help me not only in choosing a career but my life.

Chapter 7 Question 3

One concept from chapter 7 which impressed me is the evaluating causal arguments. It really reminds me and teaches me a lesson that the conclusion should not go beyond the premises. Whenever we have some information, we should first do some kind of research base on the topic that is about. In order to make sure whether the information is correct or not, fairish research is needed. According to the chapter, causal arguments can never be 100 percent certain like other inductive argument. In this case, it is important that we have to clarify clearly the conclusions we made are not equal to the facts. On the other hand, the term “probably” or “maybe” should be used in the conclusion if the cause stated in the premise is a sufficient cause. Practice makes perfect. We should learn how to recognize and be able to analyze causal relationships. Overall, it is important to do enough research before we make any conclusion.

Chapter 7 Question 2

Inductive argument, once again, it is an argument which the conclusion probably follows from the premises. In the case of Dr. Novello, she put so many efforts on banning cigarette and alcohol through ads. She noted that the number of teens and children who smoked had begun to increase in 1988 when the Joe Camel ads for Camel cigarettes were first introduced. Then she had already concluded that she needed to educte the public about the causes of smoking. At the time when she first tried to change the fact of increasing numbers of teens smoking, she did not know whether she would succee or not. Base on those years in different universities, she has the knowledge to declare that educating the teens and public can help on reducing the number of teens smoking. Fortunately, it is true. On the path of seeking a solution to the problem of smoking among teens, Dr. Novello used her method by educting people to cure and decrease the number of teens smoking. However, the decision of smoke or quit still depends on teens.

Chapter 7 Question 1

From the reading in chapter 7 about the inductive argument, it is an argument that the conclusion probably follows from the premises. Therefore, inductive arguments are only stronger or weaker rather than true or false. There are many examples which are inductive arguments in the past week. One of the examples is that “I will be killed by car accident if I need to drive a long distance on the day I do not have enough sleep”. In another words, I predict that I will die in a car accident when I drive unconsciously. In this case, the premise is “to drive while I do not have enough sleep”, whereas the conclusion will be “it is dangerous to death”. That is an inductive argument because there is not a must to involve in an accident even when I am sleepy. However, I just put myself in a worse situation which did not happened. Overall, an inductive argument is somehow the predictions base on what information we have.

Chapter 8 Question 3

After reading Chapter 8, it teaches me more ways to present a supportive argument. One type of deductive arguments that impressed me is an argument by elimination. It states that an argument by elimination is to reduce different possibilities until there is only one possibility remains. Besides, arguments by elimination are usually easily applied to our daily life. We can always give examples that are using argument by elimination in our lives. People normally used to believe in what they heard even though they do not really have any actual evidences. If we can eliminate all unsupportive possibility, it can also help us to eliminate the possibility to believe the rumors. We are definitely have no harm but only benefits after we learn how to distinguish what is the truth and what is fake. Last but the lease, I think the lesson of arguments by elimination can totally affect our daily life. We should never believe in those news that are without proof.

Chapter 8 Question 2

Sister Helen Prejean maintains that the death penalty is a violation of human dignity and is contrary to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I totally agree with what she said. In my point of view, I am strongly against death penalty. From the idea of Christianity, we should forgive people not only up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. This is said by the Bible. By these words, we can understand as we should always forgive people no matter what they did to you. However, in the United States, people who identify themselves as Christians are more likely to support the death penalty. There is already an inconsistency between ancient Christians and modern Christians. There will be always some difference particularly Christianity covers millions of followers and is passed from long long time ago. If I really need to choose one to believe in, I will go against death penalty. This is because the Bible is a realistic and reliable evidence to support my opinion.

Chapter 8 Question 1

In the story “Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that when it comes to the art of reasoning, many people rely on opinion and unsupported assumptions. From my understanding, I think he means people should not believe whatever others say. That will be stupid and naive to rely on something which is unsupported assumption. Nowadays, people in the country are brainwashing by the environment. No matter what the public news is, people in the country tend to follow like a trend. One example from my personal experience happened after the earthquake in Japan few years ago. I still remember at that period of time, people rumored that salt could prevent the radiation caused by the earthquake. As a result, business people especially those profiteers, they were trying to raise the price of salt rapidly. Since salt is the basic daily necessity, this sudden change of price had direct affected to common people. People should be educated and understand when and what to believe. However, people seem like to follow what majority do. Now is the time to clear our minds and be wise.

Chapter 6 Question 3

After reading chapter 6 ‘Recognizing, Analyzing, & Constructing Arguments’, I found out many points that can catch my attention. One of the most meaningful topic from chapter 6 is from the constructing an argument. According to the steps it talks about, I learned the importance of organizing a persuasive argument. Since the whole chapter 6 has covered quite a lot of information, I can only show one piece of them. It says we better revise the argument before we need to give out any comments and I feel that this is really effective and assures me to continue to practice this skill.

An example from chapter 6 when one of the students from the class expressed his side of the topic that he had no support for made me realize that having a persuasive argument meant that I need supporting facts on the topic. Also, from the example, I learned that having a lot of information on my topic will definitely help me win my argument. This chapter has taught me that critical thinking will benefit my argument in the long run.