Blog Post 5

Megan Gill

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English

23 July 2013

Hidden in the Rabbit's Fur

The philosopher's belief system that I mostly thought was accurate was Plato's. The way that he put everything just made sense inside of my head. I am a Christian and Plato's thoughts were a lot like the Christian belief's. The two had a lot of similarities and even when his teachings were not exactly like that in the bible I could most definitely see why he would think that. The teachings of Aristotle were the ones that I did not agree with. Only a few things that he said did not make sense but for the most part I could see where he was coming from.

Aristotle said that everything came from a few different elements and also says that “nothing exists in consciousness that has not been experienced by the senses”. Neither of these do I agree with. I know that all humans are made up of cells and that these cells have also been inside most everything else on the earth at one time or another. This does not mean that I am made up of dirt and other such substances. Everything can break down after enough time but does that mean that it was made out of whatever it breaks down to be?

Also, if someone across the world is living but I do not know them nor have I seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted them does that mean that they do not exist to me? Of course these people must be alive although I do not know who they are. They are in existence. They live and breathe, they get sick and die. Just because I do not know them and have not seen them does not mean that they are not there, living, on the other side of the world.

If I were to choose where in the rabbit's fur that I resided I would choose somewhere in the middle. I have my views on life and I am sticking with them, but I am always willing to learn about

different belief systems and take them in as well. No one person should be too stubborn not to learn what others believe. You cannot say that you believe one thing over another without knowing why other people believe the way that they do.

I will always be somewhere in the middle of the rabbit's fur. I am hard headed and I most likely will never believe in anything other than what I have been raised believing. I love to learn about what other people believe and I think that philosophy for the most part is really intriguing. Everyone on this earth has had to create a hypothesis before for a science class. This is how I think about philosophy. Everyone has the right to their own opinions. They can choose to believe whatever they want. They can sit and ponder how the world came about and make their own philosophies based on research or just thoughts that came across their minds.

It is always nice to hear what other people think. I am open to other people's thoughts and I actually like to hear about them. Although it is not what I believe it still gets my brain going and then I start to create my own what if's. Like what if the sun was heaven or what if we are all fake and just figments of someone's imagination. Who knows because we can never be for sure. The universe is a big place and there is so much out there that we do not understand. No one should every be completely hidden in the rabbit's fur. There is so much out there that people should be open to learning about.

Blog Post 4

Megan Gill

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English

25 July 2013

Kant and The Red Tinted Glasses

The red-tinted glasses experiment in the Kant chapter was to see how a person's perspective can change based off of little things. Sophie saw the world around her in numerous colors until she put the glasses on. Then everything she saw was a shade of red. This changed how she saw the world around her. She no longer saw green leaves and blue skies. Everything was red or pink.

This shows that just by changing one little thing, the way a person sees the world around them can change completely. This applies to my life in a lot of different ways. I have always lived in a nice big house with a lot of open space. When I was younger I lived in Oakland City in an A frame house with three floors. One floor had the living room, kitchen, dining room, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The basement was where the adults spent a lot of their time around a pool table and the huge television that was downstairs. The last floor was the top floor that only had one large bedroom and a bathroom that was all mine.

I had that room and bathroom all to myself from the time I turned five until the day m y family decided to move to Evansville, Indiana. When we moved, we moved into a bigger house, but my room was smaller and I had to try and share a bathroom with my younger brother. I was upset for a while about not having my own bathroom and having a room that was not built for five people to live in, but then I gained a friend who's family was not as wealthy as mine was. I realized that not everyone even had their own room let alone a gigantic room all to themselves and a bathroom to call their own.

From then on I began to love my room and decorate it how I wanted. I was no longer upset about it. I realize this is not that big of a deal, but that, as well, is all based off of someone's

perspective. Based on how a person was raised their perspective's can also be changed. I have never broken a bone or been in the hospital for something even slightly serious other than the time I fell down the stairs and broke my tailbone. So, I have never really had anything big to worry about. My little problems seem just as big to me as someone else's problems that they feel are bigger.

A lot of people live life with no worries. They are care free because nothing bad has every happened to them. The other day before I was going to the fair, a story about a young girl that went to Central was released. She was on her way to the fair to feed her horse when she veered into another lane of traffic, got hit head on, and died. This hit me hard because I just got my license and that could have just as well been me veering on accident because I looked down at my phone or went to change the radio station.

It changed my whole perspective on life. It is not as long as everyone thinks it is. It feels like just the other day I was living alone upstairs in that A framed house. Now I am 16 with my license. I choose now to live life carefully. I choose to never break the law and ruin my life because of peer pressure around me to do drugs or drink alcohol. Laws were made to keep this country safe. I choose to keep myself safe.

Blog Post 3

Megan Gill

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English

1 July 2013

Philosophy and Christianity

As Christianity began to grow as a religion in the Middle Ages philosophy was beginning to be put in the front of everyone's minds. How could someone who was said to be Christian believe in the teachings of Plato or Aristotle if they were contradicting their Faith. Christianity was beginning to move everywhere throughout Europe, so new philosophers were being forced to think the old philosophies of Aristotle and Plato through again. This is when Aquinas and Augustine being to break down Plato and Aristotle's beliefs and see how they fit into the teachings of Christianity.

St. Augustine was, at this time, a Christian believer. He had gone through numerous religions before settling down with Christianity. Augustine was in love with Plato's ideas of philosophy and found them to be extremely similar to the teachings inside of the bible. He referred to the Old Testament when speaking of Plato's knowledge. He found them so similar that he thought that Plato had gotten all of his ideas straight from the Old Testament.

This is when St. Augustine started to put the two separate ideas together. This influenced many schools that had once been strictly christian schools and helped bring into them the teachings of philosophy. If it were not for this, philosophy would have gotten less and less known around the world and most likely would have been lost forever. Then not too far after the teachings of Plato were saved, the people in Europe began to wonder about Aristotle's beliefs as well.

The next philosopher to try and tie both Christianity and philosophy together was St. Thomas Aquinas. He then started to tie Aristotle's beliefs with the Christian beliefs which also helped to save Philosophy. After seeing two different philosophers bring Christianity and philosophy together the people no longer questioned philosophical beliefs but instead began to tie them in with Christianity on their own. This in a way not only saved Philosophy but it saved Christianity as well. In doing this many schools were built up that taught both subjects and that helped spread both of the ideas world wide.

If it were not for Aquinas and Augustine, the world would not be the way that it is today. We could have lost Philosophy, Christianity, or both. The two sides of the believers would have fought for their side, either philosophy or Christianity, until there was nothing left to fight for. So really in all what followed the bringing together of the two was, the making of new schools that taught both philosophy and Christianity and it also helped make both stronger and help more and more people believe in both.

Blog Post 2

Megan Gill

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP language

1 July 2013

Men versus Women

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions of women and men. This does not mean that they are always correct and it does not mean that they are always incorrect. I was not extremely effected by Aristotle's view on women. He lived in a different time when most everyone thought in this way. It will never really effect me if someone were to say that a whole gender is less than another gender. This does not mean that I do not care that he thought this way. I will never like that anyone thinks less of women than men because we are just as smart and powerful. It is only one man's opinion and I will not let that bring me down or make me feel like I am worth less than a man. I know I am strong and I know that I am smart and that is all that truly matters. No woman should think less of themselves because a man told them they were.

Aristotle was seen as being a strong figure during this time. He was smart and used his brain to the best of its ability. It is a shame that he thought so lowly of one specific gender. How could someone that was so very smart be so naïve and think so little. If he would have believed differently maybe after that it could have been different for the women of that time. Aristotle could have influenced the world at that time. He was a strong educator that could have persuaded the people he was teaching to think differently. Instead he chose to think little of women and influence the world negatively. It must have been hard for the women of that time.

The only philosopher to think that men and women were more equal was Plato. Therefor, I feel that he provided the best answers to questions about gender. In my mind women can work just as well, if not better, than men. In our world today, women are hired just as often as men and hold the same jobs. Women think well and perform even better. This is why car insurance is less for women than it is for men. We are careful and tend to take our jobs more seriously than the opposite sex. I am not saying that women are better, because we are not. Men and women were made equal in the eyes of God, and that is exactly how Plato thought. Men and women, in my eyes, are equal. If a woman wants to do something then she should try to the best of her ability to do so. No woman should hold back because they are in fact a female.

It does not bother me that most of the authorities in this book were men. Again, this was in another time period. Women were not seen as authoritative individuals. If Aristotle would have thought differently maybe he could have encouraged more females to become philosophers and they could have taught other women this. But he did not think this way and nothing was changed for the better, if anything, it changed for the worst because Aristotle was seen as such a strong figure. Women were forced to stay out of the light, they were not equals back then. As time went on more and more women were introduced into the world as authorities and now, today, we are seen more as equal. I am just thankful that I did not have to live during such a hard time for women.

The battle of the sexes has been going on for hundreds of years and I do not think that it will ever quite go away completely. Men will always have their jokes about women needing to make them a sandwich or stay in the kitchen. More and more women are being seen as strong and powerful individuals. Maybe in the future the majority of the people on the planet will begin to believe that we are all equal and that women can do just as well as men at anything they do. We will just have to wait and see.

Blog Post 1

Megan Gill

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP language

1 July 2013

Thinking

If I were to be asked the those two questions, at first I would respond in a way that most people would. Who am I? When being asked this question I would say, “I am Megan Elizabeth Gill. I live in Evansville, Indiana and I do not play any sports but I am in North's Concert Choir. I enjoy being around people so I work at Roca Bar North as a host. My parents are Dana and Jacob Gill and I have a younger brother named Nathaniel, we are all firm believers in the Lord.” That leads me into the second question. Where does the world come from? I would answer, “I believe that the world was created by the one true God just as it states in Genesis in the Bible. God created the Earth in 6 days and on the 7^th day he chose to rest.”

The way I answered both of those questions is me trying to take the easy way out. That is the way I would respond if a teacher were to ask me those questions. Depending on who is asking my answers to these questions could change. No one would tell their life story to a stranger that they just met on the street, and no one would tell their best friends everything that they already knew.

Who are you? When asked this question during an interview the interviewer would like to know how well you work with others and if you will put everything you have into your job before hiring you. You would respond in a way that would help you obtain the job that you are seeking. When asked this question by a police officer they are going to want to know your name and address. Obviously you are going to give them what they need to try your best to stay out of trouble. When asked by a friend who already knows all of that, you are forced to look deeper inside of yourself. Tell them what they really want to know and not what they already know.

So, if a friend were to ask me this question they would already know about my family and where I live. This would make me think and respond differently. Instead of telling them the basics I would dig deep inside of myself and I would have to think harder and say, “I am Megan. I am nice, funny, and smart. I love my family with everything that I have, although, we fight constantly. I am an open book. I believe in the Lord completely but I have my questions just as any other Christian does at any point in their lives. I am happy most of the time but my emotions fluctuate easily. Sometimes I speak without thinking and end up hurting the ones I love the most. It isn't intentional and I am always sorry after it happens.” If they were to ask me the next question, where does the world come from, I would then begin saying, “I believe that the world was created by God. He is all powerful, but the universe is so big. I have my doubts sometimes but they are really just questions that are hard to answer. Did He, God, create all of the universe? Where did God come from? How did He come about at all, what created Him? Was He just something that appeared or has He always been here? Science, to me, proves nothing. If scientists believe that the world came from something, then tell me, where did they come from and how did they come into existence? How can something come from nothing? In the end, I do believe in God and I choose faith over anything else.”

Both questions seem easy at a first look, but digging deeper inside of ones self a person then realizes how hard the two questions really are to answer. Depending on who is asking the questions a persons response differs. I am Megan Elizabeth Gill from Evansville Indiana, and I believe the Lord our God created Earth.