Thomas Aquinas Doctrine of the Act of Being
© Tatiana Velitchkov

Thomas Aquinas was a priest in the early Roman Catholic Church; he was a very influential person when it came to philosophy and theology.’ Aquinas’ referred to his residence, a name that he was given by the church. Aquinas of the act of doctrine started his early education at the age of five and he went to the Monte Cassino School. Aquinas furthered his studies at the university and that is when Aquinas came across Aristotle who came a long way in influencing his theology and philosophy. In his time at the university in Naples, Aquinas went under the authority of John St. Julian. St Julian was a Dominican preacher of the Roman Catholic Church in Naples and was one of those who used to conscript followers.

Aquinas’s family did not like his choice of been a Dominican and ones he had made an attempt to go to Rome he was stopped and urged to renounce that desire. Aquinas treasured theology and to him it was like a sacred doctrine. Theology consisted study of the scripture and norm of the Catholic Church. Theology and the scriptures came from the history of olden day’s revelation of God to people or even one certain individual. Aquinas had a firm conviction that reason and faith had to go together though distinct he believed both of them were required in order to truly understand God. Aquinas used the Greek philosophy alongside with the Christian doctrine and explained that the learning of some aspects from nature was a way to understand and appreciate God. By studying nature Aquinas found out that God could at times use nature as a way of revealing himself. Aquinas study of theology was to discover and gain salvation by using the truth and facts.

Aquinas stated that God was father, Son and the Holy Spirit and all this were the reasons that made man have a relationship with God. The holy trinity is even used and believed in by Roman Catholic Church and in Christianity as a whole. Aquinas loved practicality and that is why he commenced his teachings by using the Adam and Eve story. He described where sin came from. Christ rose from the dead to save people from their sins a thing that no mankind could ever do. In his time there were various theologists who had different opinions and believe. Aquinas argued that Jesus the son of God was not only human but also divine. Aquinas studies and ethics have largely been recognized in today’s times especially by the catholic church. Most of the Aquinas ethics have been influential. The fellowship of God was the ultimate goal of life as said by Aquinas. He continued to say that those who loved God had to do what God loves.

Father Barron commenting on Thomas the Aquinas – youtube video

Understanding Human Happiness
© Tatiana Velitchkov

“A saint that is sad, is a sad saint”, Saint Thomas de Aquino. Happy is an ancient word, this word was used to refer to Fortune, Destiny, and Luck. Happiness is not a product of chemical reactions that take place in the brain. Happiness is not a result of performing good actions. Happiness is not a smile, nor is it pleasure – happiness is destiny. Happiness is understanding.

Happy is an ancient word that was used in the past to refer to Destiny. Destiny in ancient times was also called Fortune, but fortune in those days was termed the road of life. As time moved on slowly, as the ages past, as generations came and left, the meaning of words changed, however the true essence remains. In modern days Fortune means wealth, and destiny means predestination. In modern days, free humans claim, they make their own destiny, they defy ancient rulings and decide to make their own Happiness, in simple words they make their own destiny.

The realization of a desire, which is an inner thought, is also referred in this “modern” times as happiness. If someone desires something and obtains it then he is happy. This identical match between the inner worlds of thought of an individual and the world is the definition of truth. So, happiness is the truth.

Beyond this happiness is a vase, and this vase can be filled by each individual with water drink that pleases him. The word is an empty glass, the word is happiness, the word can be love, the word can be money the glass may be filled with meanings, but the glass is made of happiness. Happiness is an individual private election, happiness is to fill that glass, to the top, to the tears, to the gold, or to the sea. Happiness is whatever you want it to be.

Happiness is a word that when created inferred the meaning of luck. To understand happiness is to understand human nature, and happiness can be many things. Happiness therefore presents itself to the society as a white page to be filled with words of luck. Luck is random, luck is the dice on that number, as I choose 5 you may choose 3 and while you may be happy only when your number strikes, others are just happy to see the dice roll.

Understanding Happiness is something I could very well do, but as understanding happiness could be used for negative ends, so, I will avoid to do it. I do however challenge the reader to understand happiness themselves. To fill the blank pages. For if happiness is a blank page, then true happiness is not to read but to fill it with words.

A discussion of Aristotle’s understanding of happiness – YouTube video

The problem of Perception
© Tatiana Velitchkov

There is only one true perception, this is the existence of self. Through the perception of the existence of self it is possible to perceive the world. The perception of the world is only possible through our existence. All perceptions lead to the perception of self, while we nourish on impressions, sounds, visual stimulus, and other information gathered by the senses, we do so subjectively.

“The world is so, because we say it is.” While we submerge a pencil into a glass filled with water, we observe that the pencil is bent by the optical illusion of light and water. In this energy and light dance, the pencil is bent, however we know for a fact that the pencil is neither bent nor broken. The subjective construction of reality through our senses is not only limited to perception, but the pencil in the water is a clear example of just how distorted senses can be. This is often called the line between perception and reality, or illusion and hallucination.

The point of perception is the junction where we set our consciousness, in modern days the social masses have set their perception points in modern reason. Reason while magical in its functions, has its flaw, for a fact that reason, science, economies, capitalism, socialism and any other movement created from the point of perception of reason is only a fabrication that does not stand against nature and its reality.

The point of perception of the human spirit can be moved, this is how artists can create, or how do dreams, or fantastic worlds, and religious movements rise – they rise from a different point of perception, while familiar to reason they move their perception of the world into new dimensions. For example a Priest, a Monk, a scientist, an economist, and a politician all perceive the world in different ways, they set their point of perception in different locations of the “consciousness“.

As a child is born and then grows into society, his perception is fixed by his elders and by the surroundings. The child is taught to perceive the world in a specific way. There is a construction of perception and this occurs to withhold the powerful forces that rise in form of questions. Why are we born if we will die? What is life? What is to be? These questions are solved by the problem of perception, we form and shape our world with an inner dialogue. It is our inner dialogue that shapes our perception, “the pencil is not bent, nor broken”, our inner voice says, “it is only submerged in water”.

The problem of perception is the problem of our inner dialogue. The problem of perception is an opportunity of information.

A quick intro to the Objectivist ‘view’ on the subject of perception – YouTube video

By Donald Swarbrick.

Gravity is one of the biggest problems we have when trying to understand the way the universe works, because we still are trying to figure out how it works, and the importance of its function.
We know it is essential to the way the universe is held together, but if we cannot understand it, then we cannot progress with our understanding of the universe as a whole, and some theories will remain theories.

It is my conjecture that gravity was needed to create the Big Bang, as I explained in earlier chapters of “unfeatheredangels” by gasses contorting as they met, which eventually resulted in the first spinning effect as they reacted with each other.
This in turn created a giant vortex, the suction to draw everything from the atmosphere within billions of light years in circumference into its center, which would include the ingredients that made up the universe.

All the ingredients were around, they only needed the reaction to bring them together, and this massive vortex was the answer.
Everything was mixed up and spat out by the chemical reaction created inside the vortex, by all the ingredients interacting to create the Big Bang, which sent solids, liquids, and gasses, spinning out into the space we are still careering through.

We are still being carried by the blast, that is why the planets are moving further apart, and the galaxies still stretching out through space.

Gravity was started by the spinning motion, and it is simply the orbs that make up the galaxies that are punching their way through space, while spinning and clearing air from their path, both on their outward journey away from the blast, plus the air they are clearing during their rotation on their axes, creating a vortex around them. The suction is in the lower layer, and the surge in the upper layer of the draft, which creates GRAVITY as we know it.

It is more the air or the atmosphere they are clearing during their rotation on their axes, that causes gravity as we know it, pulling objects down towards them that are a certain distance away from them,or inside the bubble created by the rotation, while bouncing others back off into space if they hit the bubble.

Draft is gravity, just like the draft you get when you slam a door, but the displacement of air is the cause of the gravity around the planets of the universe, because they are spinning.

If you are standing on one side of the door the displacement will push you, but if you are standing on the other side you will feel suction or drag, but because the door is only opening and shutting, and not spinning, you won’t create gravity.

A sphere on the other hand creates both suction, and the surge of air ahead of it, and as it is spinning the suction, and surge combine to create gravity. The pull downwards, and the bounce outwards, is the suction, and the surge reacting with the spinning motion as they fight with each other.
If it was a rectangle shape, or a square, the punching motion would always be at the front of the object heading through space, and the suction always at the rear, but with the spherical shape none of them has the upper hand, but both are present.
Its simple aerodynamics, if you were at the front of the rectangle, under the air rushing past you would be forced down onto the surface, but if you were at the back you would be brushed off by the air disturbance rushing past taking you away from the object, like a comet shedding particals constantly, as it moves through space.

Gravity can have an effect further away from the sphere than we have calculated, because it could be displacing the atmosphere miles further out from the gravitational pull we know of, and that is what holds smaller planets and Moons in their grasp.

Our Sun’s gravitational pull holds all the planets that we have discovered in our solar system and keeps them together to make up the solar system we know of, and the same thing is happening in other parts of the universe, making up galaxies, which in turn affects all other objects hurtling out in the blast created by the Big Bang.

Therefore the gravity created by the spinning motion of all the objects in the universe, reaches out further away from the objects than we first thought and creates the bases that holds the universe together in the form we know, plus the fact that all these objects are still hurtling away from the original blast.

When our spaceships force there way through earth’s gravitational pull, they enter into what appears to us as space and weightlessness, but the thin atmosphere they enter into could also be moving around along with the pull of the Sun, and although it has not been measured or noticed by us, this movement could still have a significant effect on the rest of the objects spinning around in the universe.

The newly discovered ring around Saturn is evidence that this is probable, as the dust particles making up the ring are eight million miles away from the planet.
Therefore the gravitational pull of Saturn has at least a radius of eight million miles, probably more.

Also every other object that spins around in the universe could have an effect on every other piece of Big Bang debris, if the atmosphere that surrounds each object blasting away from the original explosion, carries its thin atmosphere around with it.
There are particals in the space between planets,and stars,it is not a vacuum, or heat would not travel through it.

This unmeasured action of movement of thinning atmospheres that surrounds all the spheres could be the reason the universe does not collapse or collide, during its ever outward journey away from the core of the blast, as it acts like a cushion holding everything in its place, or in other words, holding the universe together.
The very answer to the question mentioned at the beginning of this post, the question that we need to answer before we can progress.

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Can We Survive Our Own Death
© Tatiana Velitchkov

Death is a natural phenomenon that is inevitable, and as a living thing, we must die. No living thing lives forever. The question is what happens when we die? Is it that when we die we cease to exist or is there an afterlife? Or, when we die is there something somehow about us that survives which makes us live on in another life and not really cease to exist? Anthony Flew addressed these questions from a philosophical angle which is accepted by some people, but some are still doubting his view.

As previously said by Flew, to think of what happens after we die is strange when you think about it. Why is this so? We look at it this way because there are so many inconsistencies on that topic- when somebody die we can at the same time say that the person lives on, or that he lives. Death should be death, it is either you die and cease to exist, or you are injured and not dead. These phenomena are true if you use the normal language.

”For when, after some disaster, the ‘dead’ and the ’survivors’ have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category?” These show us that there is a big difference between death and life.

This objection is brought up to explain the claim by those who argue that there is an afterlife, in a more familiar form. The claimants claim that we do not really die, what dies is our body and we as humans should not be recognized with the body. Instead, according to them – there is an inner mind which is immaterial, or soul which is actually our source of experience and life.

According to critics like Flew, it is very wrong to look at it that way, as mind is an abstract thing which cannot be touched or felt. Saying that it is like they are saying a person’s ‘temper’ is also a substance, which when lost it can be left behind if you change your environment. Such theory is difficult to agree with for some, and for them, the theory is not just wrong but not making sense also.

These same assumptions can be seen among people who are trying to analyze what exactly the ’substance’ of a ‘mind’ is made up of. Identifying a ‘mind’ will not be difficult when it is simply a process or a disposition, but when considered as a ’substance’ problems begin to arise. Commonly used amongst us is to explain what a mind is by simply saying it’s one’s ’spiritual activity’

Unfortunately, the right explanation of the mind cannot be seen from the perception of facts of events which has to be explained – otherwise we translate those facts and events and nothing new is gained. A right explanation should go above what we already know. However explaining mind as substance does not do this.
Are we Merely Mortal? Can You Survive Your Own Death?

Those who look at ‘mind’ as ’substance’ are unaware of anything concerning it beyond what they know now, which they are still trying to explain. They are ignorant of it, how it operates, where it comes from or how it achieves its effects, etc. It therefore astonishes how they say ‘mind’ is ’substance’ when they find it difficult to back up their theory.

Flew also addresses issue trying to back up the claim that there is some sort of ’soul’ which makes us have an afterlife when we die. He also addressed earlier day’s arguments by Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes and not just the present day proofs of existence after death. He also treated the assumptions of “mind as substance” in the modern days as parapsychology.

In summary, these arguments of life after death, mind as substance, is quit complex and even Flews analysis can also be complex. Having some knowledge of philosophy makes it a bit easier to understand.

Anthony Flew on the afterlife – youtube video