School of lateral thinking

what if you reward students with good grades, by sending them on school trips.

what if you make your selection of your school sport teams on the student behaviour in class.

what if you allow students with good grades to take a day off.

deductive or inductive

I think that when Aristotle said: “contemplation is the greatest good”, he was just praising himself. We all know that Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, during the flourishment of the Greek empire. During this period the Greek philosophers saw themselves as superior people. Look for instance at the book of Plato, another Greek philosopher Therefore I think that Aristotle meant that people first have to think, before they say something. What he as a philosopher did of course. However he was probably, in his eyes, the minority. Most people just act on intuition. This event is still going on, despite the effort of our teachers and parents, who teach you when start having your first proper conversation that you have to think before you say something. I agree with his statement that contemplation is a great good, however I do not see a correlation between the statement of Aristotle and “cogitio ergo sum” the statement of Descartes. Cogito ergo sum is Latin for: “I think therefore I exist”. By this sentence you can conclude that Descartes was sure that he exists, because he thinks. Aristotle agrees with him that thinking is a very important skill, however not until the same extend of Descartes. As far as I know Aristotle ones said: “the only thing that I know is that I know nothing”. This sentence tells me that Aristotle would not have agreed with the fact that when you think you live.

enemie of reason

After watching the videos on Richard Dawkins (including the one with Bill O'Reilly), can you say that reason has enemies? Can atheists be angry like religious fundamentalists? What is wrong with believing in a God, in the stars, in pseudo-science, in superstition, in magic, etc.? Whether all of these things are wrong or right is beside the point. Can they really be harmful to man-kind?

In my eyes there is no religion which is harmful for society. They only negative side effect that can occur is that people take the text literally. These people have to understand that these texts are more than a thousands year old. The purpose of religions and also the purpose of Darwinism are to solve one of the most interesting questions available. Because these books are so old the still try to answer a question, which we can now answer easily. However another aim of religions was to keep order in society. However the world has changed completely, therefore the laws that are imposed by these religious books are out dated now. However the people who do not read the religious books between the lines can be harmful to society. However the same problem can arise among Darwinist. Once I had a conversation with a Darwinist. Probably you already figured out that I am a Darwinist myself. However my point of view during that discussion was a Christian point of view. During that discussion the Darwinist became quite aggressive, because I was not easily willing to agree with her. Therefore I think that anyway of thinking is not directly harmful to society. It becomes harmful when a person is not open for other ideas, and only believes that he is right.

syllogism

Piet, you as an Ado support have no right to say that football violence should be punished because that would be hypocrite, because you ado supporters are the biggest hooligans in Holland.

In the above example the syllogism is:

Piet is an Ado Den Haag supporter.
Ado Den Haag supporters are hooligans.
Therefore Piet is a hypocrite if he complains about football violence.

The argument is wrong, because not all Ado Den Haag supporters are hooligans.