Vandy Religion Essay Essays - Biblical People In Islam,

Vandy Religion Essay I have been around religion all my life, but only recently has it become important to me. I find this ironic, because I recently transferred to a public DODDS school from a small, private Catholic school. Only after I was removed from the Catholic school environment did I begin to see what religion really is. I came to the Catholic school system in Leavenworth, Kansas in the fifth grade. Before that time, I was na?ve; I barely knew any swear words and all I knew about sex was that I was interested in cute boys. Ironically, it was this time, all through and every year after fifth grade that I was subjected to and learned vulgarity. By the time I was a sophomore, I was so familiar with all of the four-letter words that I swore casually with my friends when we would discuss sex or gossip about other students. I picked up every slang word for every body part and knew every sexual innuendo there was to know, all during the six years I attended Catholic school. Even though we were not very good examples of church-going youngsters, my friends and I regularly went to Youth Group meetings. I never really listened to what the speaker was saying or to what I was singing, I just went to socialize with my friends. When we moved to Okinawa, I immediately wanted to make friends with the popular crowd, but my mother forced me to go to Youth Group. I only knew one person there, but I met another girl, who introduced me to her group of friends, the exact crowd I wanted to meet. We went out a couple of times, but after a few weeks at school, they decided I was not cool enough and dropped me from their group. I was crushed. However, since I was new, I had met other new people, who I brought to the Youth Group so I would not be alone. Soon I met other people at the Youth Group and began to get more involved with that crowd. They did not reject me because of my appearance or because I sometimes said stupid things, but accepted me for who I was and welcomed me into their group. I could not fathom that kind of acceptance at the time. My friends from Catholic school would never let someone else into our group without scrutinizing him/her first. I continued to attend Youth Group every Sunday to see my friends, not to hear about God. I still did not think about what I sang and I simply tuned out the Jesus talks. As the year went on, my friends from the Youth Group began to talk to me about God, mostly saying how he had helped them in their lives, but sometimes directly asking me how I felt about Him. I always hated it when they would start with the Jesus talk, because I was purely scientific. I had chosen to pursue a career in the medical field years before, and ever since, science had been the focus of my life. Also, I had learned from my friends in Catholic school that it was never cool to talk about Jesus. I tolerated the religious part of our friendship because the social part was so good for me. I never smoked or drank, and these people would never pressure me to do anything of the sort, since they were so in tune with the Lord. These were the first people who agreed with me when I would say that a good time can be had w ithout alcohol or cigarettes. Not even my Catholic school friends believed that. I went out every weekend with my friends and had a blast. We would go out Friday, Saturday, and on Sunday would end up back at Youth Group. After a few months of regularly attending Youth Group, I began to listen to what the leaders spoke to us about, but I still did not buy most of it. These people were not Catholic, they were mostly Protestant, Lutheran, Baptist, and other Christian denominations. Ideas such as being saved, and ministering to others seemed radical and unnecessary to me.

The Importance of the Ancient Era of Political Philosophy

The Importance of the Ancient Era of Political Philosophy The Ancient EraThe Ancient Era of Political Philosophy is arguably the most important of the various eras associated with political philosophy. From this era emerged such great minds as Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These men not only questioned authority and challenged the masses to exercise their minds, they also laid the foundation for the concepts of political philosophy, which subsequently has helped shape societies and their governments for more than two thousand years.The first contributors to the legacy of the Ancient Era were the Presocratics who emerged in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The Presocratic thinkers occupied themselves primarily with explaining the origin and regularities of the physical world and the place of the human soul within it. Many of the Presocratics are also labeled Sophists. Sophists taught useful subjects, concentrating heavily on the art of public speaking, in order to prepare young men for the cultivated, competitive, and democra tic Greek society.English: The School of Athens (detail). Fresco, St...Their philosophies reflected numerous political ideals, including relativism, skepticism, and realism. Protagoras, a highly recognized Sophist and relativist, subscribed to the notion that man's concern for transcendent reality is subordinate to his concern for life in the present world. Protagoras also taught that it is possible to argue for or against any proposition equally well. This is a defining principle in modern-American politics; as America has sustained a largely two-party system for the better part of a century, many propositions are often presented in opposing Democratic vs. Republican viewpoints with both sides supporting their opinions equally well. Through their powerful force of reason and argumentation, the Sophist perspective became very popular and useful in the course of Athenian democracy. Eventually, these arguments and persuasive philosophers would prove to be a political catalyst in the l ife of a young Athenian named Plato.In 469 B.C.,