wikipedia_id stringlengths 2 8 | wikipedia_title stringlengths 1 243 | url stringlengths 44 370 | contents stringlengths 53 2.22k | id int64 0 6.14M |
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621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
Cosmos] (1968) and "L'Ordre Vert" [The Green Order] (1969).
The theme was later developed as the Les Chevaliers de Lumière ("The Knights of Light") sub-series.
Guieu was granted his own imprint during 1979. At first, it reprinted rewritten, updated versions of his original novels, then it began publishing a series of "sharecropping" novels, featuring "Gilles Novak", "Blade and Baker", "Jean Kariven," etc., written by other writers, mostly Roland C. Wagner, but also Philippe Randa, Nicolas Gauthier and Laurent Genefort.
During the early 1990s, Jimmy Guieu wrote two docu-dramas, using as plot the Grey aliens / Majestic-12 conspiracy as described by John Lear and Milton William Cooper : the | 13,600 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
series "E.B.E." (for "Extraterrestrial Biological Entity") : "E.B.E. : Alerte rouge" (first part) (1990) and "E.B.E. : L'entité noire d'Andamooka" (second part) (1991).
# Works.
## Documentaries.
- "Les soucoupes volantes viennent d'un autre monde", Fleuve noir, 1954, 254 pages
- "Black-Out sur les soucoupes volantes", Vaugirard, 1956, 392 pages
- "Le Livre du Paranormal", 1992
- "Contacts Ovni Cergy-Pontoise", J. Guieu, F. Fontaine, J.P. Prévost, S. N'diaye, Éditions du Rocher 1980.
- "Le monde étrange des contactés", Éditions Belfond 1986 / Re-published with the title : "Nos « Maîtres » les extraterrestres", Presses de la Cité, 1992, 344 pages.
- "Terre, ta civilisation fout le camp" | 13,601 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
(unpublished, but has been divulgated on the Web), 1998
## Science fiction.
- "Le Pionnier de l'atome" (1952)
- "Au-delà de l'infini" (1952)
- "L'Invasion de la Terre" (1952)
- "Hantise sur le monde" (1953)
- "L'Univers vivant" (1953)
- "La dimension X" (1953)
- "Nous les martiens" (1954)
- "La spirale du temps" (1954)
- "Le monde oublié" (1954)
- "L'homme de l'espace" (1954)
- "Opération Aphrodite" (1955)
- "Commandos de l'espace" (1955)
- "L'agonie du verre" (1955)
- "Univers parallèles" (1955)
- "Nos ancêtres de l'avenir" (1956)
- "Les Monstres du néant" (1956)
- "Prisonniers du passé" (1956)
- "Les êtres de feu" (1956)
- "La mort de la vie" (1957)
- "Le règne des mutants" | 13,602 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
(1957)
- "Créatures des neiges" (1957)
- "Cité Noé 2" (1957)
- "Le rayon du cube" (1958)
- "Convulsions solaires" (1958)
- "Réseau dinosaure" (1958)
- "La force sans visage" (1958)
- "Expédition cosmique" (1959)
- "Les cristaux de Capella" (1959)
- "Piège dans l'espace" (1959)
- "Chasseurs d'hommes" (1960)
- "Les sphères de Rapa-Nui" (1960)
- "L'ère des biocybs" (1960)
- "Expérimental X-35" (1960)
- "Spoutnik VII a disparu" (1960)
- "Planète en péril" (1961)
- "La caverne du futur" (1961)
- "La grande épouvante" (1961)
- "L'invisible alliance" (1961)
- "Trafic interstellaire" (1961)
- "Le secret des Tshengz" (1962)
- "Opération Ozma" (1962)
- "L'âge noir de la Terre" (1962)
- | 13,603 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
"Oniria" (1962)
- "Echec aux Végans" (1962)
- "Mission "T"" (1963)
- "Les forbans de l'espace" (1963)
- "Projet King" (1963)
- "Les destructeurs" (1963)
- "Les portes de Thulé" (1964)
- "Le retour des Dieux" (1967)
- "Les sept sceaux du cosmos" (1968)
- "Joklun-n'ghar la maudite" (1968)
- "La terreur invisible" (1968)
- "Refuge cosmique" (1968)
- "L'ordre vert" (1969)
- "Traquenard sur Kenndor" (1969)
- "Demain l'apocalypse" (1969)
- "L'arche du temps" (1970)
- "Le triangle de la mort" (1970)
- "Plan catapulte" (1970)
- "Les orgues de Satan" (1971)
- "La voix qui venait d'ailleurs" (1971)
- "Le grand mythe" (1971)
- "La charnière du temps" (1971)
- "Enjeu cosmique" (1972)
- | 13,604 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
"Les maîtres de la galaxie" (1972)
- "Les rescapés du néant" (1972)
- "La mission effacée" (1973)
- "Opération Neptune" (1973)
- "Les germes du chaos" (1973)
- "Les veilleurs de Poséïdon" (1974)
- "L'exilé de Xantar" (1974)
- "Le maître du temps" (1974)
- "Manipulations psi" (1974)
- "Les pièges de Koondra" (1975)
- "Les fugitifs de Zwolna" (1975)
- "Les Krolls de Vorlna" (1975)
- "Le bouclier de Boongoha" (1975)
- "La stase achronique" (1976)
- "La colonie perdue" (1976)
- "La lumière de Thot" (1977)
- "Les légions de Bartzouk" (1977)
- "Les yeux de l'épouvante" (1978)
- "Hiéroush, la planète promise" (1979)
- "La clé du mandala" (1980)
- "Les fils du serpent" (1984)
- | 13,605 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
"La force noire" (1987)
- "Le pacte de Kannlor" (1987)
- "La terreur venue du néant" (1987)
- "Narkoum, finances rouges" (1987)
- "Plan d'extermination" (1988)
- "Réseau Alpha" (1988)
- "L'héritage de Noé" (1988)
- "Les sentiers invisibles" (1989)
- "L'empire des ténèbres" (1989)
- "Le piège du val maudit" (1991)
- "Magie rouge" (1992) (Adaptation from a project of TV scenario written in 1969)
- "Psiboy, l'enfant du cosmos" (1996)
- "Un terrestre extra" (1997)
- "E.B.E. 1: Alerte rouge" (1990)
- "E.B.E. 2: L'entité noire d'Andamooka" (1991)
Into the 2000s, the éditions "Rivières blanches" have published some unpublished novels: "Les dossiers du glaive" (2008) and "Psycho-évolution | 13,606 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
Rh" (2010)
## Espionage/detective (co-writing with Georges Pierquin, and under the name Jimmy G. Quint).
- "Habanita n'y est pour rien" (1952)
- "Prisonnières des sadiques" (1954)
- "Destination cataclysme" (1960)
- "Vengez ma trahison" (1961)
- "Pouvoirs spéciaux" (1961)
- "Vipères sous roche" (1962)
- "Alerte zone 54" (1962)
- "Le repaire des maudits" (1965)
- "Une garce nommée Bianca" (1997)
- "Moscou, heure espace" (1965)
- "Traquenard à l'OTAN" (1966)
- "Plan Hérode 65" (1966)
- "Baroud à Bendor" (1966)
- "Terreur à Ouranos" (1967)
- "Les corruptibles" (1967)
- "Rhapsodie en rouge" (1967)
- "Ombres sur l'Ancerville" (1967)
## Erotic stories (under the name Dominique Verseau).
- | 13,607 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
"Yolanda et les voluptés cosmiques" (1971)
- "Yolanda et la planète aux supplices" (1971)
- "Les esclaves de l'espace" (1972)
- "L'univers érotique" (1972)
- "Holocauste pour une momie" (1990)
- "Des nymphes pour le diable" (1991)
## Documentary films.
- "O.V.N.I. - E.B.E. - L'invasion a commencé" (1991)
- "Les vies antérieures - Etapes vers la lumière" (1991)
- "Les Cathares - Le message de Montségur" (1992)
- "Rennes le Château 1 - Le grand mystère" (1992)
- "Les lieux hantés - Au-delà ou autres dimensions ?" (1992)
- "Les gouvernants secrets 1 - Nos visiteurs : les extraterrestres" (1992)
- "Les gouvernants secrets 2 - Nos maîtres : les extraterrestres" (1992)
- "Les gouvernants | 13,608 |
621279 | Henri René Guieu | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henri%20René%20Guieu | Henri René Guieu
gouvernants secrets 2 - Nos maîtres : les extraterrestres" (1992)
- "Les gouvernants secrets 3 - Extraterrestres : les ambassadeurs" (1993)
- "Contacts espace-temps - Jean-Claude Pantel et ses étranges visiteurs" (1993)
- "OVNI - USA - Nouvelles révélations" (1993)
- "Les vortex - Les dimensions cachées" (1993)
- "Rennes le Château 2 - Demain : l'héritage révélé" (1993)
- "Théopolis - La cité oubliée" (1994)
- "OVNI en France - Les vérités cachées" (1994)
# Sources.
Four reference articles on Jimmy Guieu by Richard D. Nolane, written in French, are available at the Le Monde du fleuve (noir) website.
# External links.
- Jimmy Guieu's complete international bibliography (1952–2009) | 13,609 |
621294 | RANDU | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RANDU | RANDU
RANDU
RANDU is a linear congruential pseudorandom number generator (LCG) of the Park–Miller type, which has been used since the 1960s. It is defined by the recurrence:
with the initial seed number, formula_2 as an odd number. It generates pseudorandom integers formula_3 which are uniformly distributed in the interval , but in practical applications are often mapped into pseudorandom rationals formula_4 in the interval , by the formula:
IBM's RANDU is widely considered to be one of the most ill-conceived random number generators ever designed, and was described as "truly horrible" by Donald Knuth. It fails the spectral test badly for dimensions greater than 2, and every integer result is odd. | 13,610 |
621294 | RANDU | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RANDU | RANDU
However, at least eight low-order bits are dropped when converted to single-precision (32 bit, 24 bit mantissa) floating-point.
The reason for choosing these particular values is that with a 32-bit-integer word size, the arithmetic of mod 2 and formula_6 formula_7 calculations could be done quickly, using special features of some computer hardware.
# Problems with multiplier and modulus.
In general, when an LCG with modulus 2 is used to produce points (x, x, x) in 3-dimensional space, the points fall into no more than 2,344 parallel planes, a result which indicates an LCG is unsuitable for Monte Carlo simulation. Choice of multiplier determines the number of planes. To show the problem with | 13,611 |
621294 | RANDU | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RANDU | RANDU
the values of multiplier 65539 and modulus 2 chosen for RANDU, consider the following calculation where every term should be taken mod 2. Start by writing the recursive relation as:
which becomes, after expanding the quadratic factor:
and allows us to show the correlation between three points as:
As a result of this correlation, each point lies in one of a set of parallel planes 2 apart, 15 of which intersect the 2 x 2 x 2 cube containing the points. As a result of the wide use of RANDU in the early 1970s, many results from that time are seen as suspicious.
This misbehavior was already detected in 1963 on a 36-bit computer, and carefully reimplemented on the 32-bit IBM System/360. It was | 13,612 |
621294 | RANDU | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RANDU | RANDU
the quadratic factor:
and allows us to show the correlation between three points as:
As a result of this correlation, each point lies in one of a set of parallel planes 2 apart, 15 of which intersect the 2 x 2 x 2 cube containing the points. As a result of the wide use of RANDU in the early 1970s, many results from that time are seen as suspicious.
This misbehavior was already detected in 1963 on a 36-bit computer, and carefully reimplemented on the 32-bit IBM System/360. It was believed to have been widely purged by the early 1990s but there were still FORTRAN compilers using it as late as 1999.
# Sample output.
The start of the RANDU's output period for the initial seed formula_11 is: | 13,613 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
Hexaplex trunculus
Hexaplex trunculus (also known as Murex trunculus, Phyllonotus trunculus, or the banded dye-murex) is a medium-sized sea snail, a marine gastropod mollusk in the family Muricidae, the murex shells or rock snails.
This species is a group of opportunist predatory snails that are known to attack their prey in groups. What is peculiar about this specific species is that they show no preference for the size of their prey, regardless of their hunger levels.
The snail appears in fossil records dating between the Pliocene and Quaternary periods (between 3.6 and 0.012 million years ago). Fossilized shells have been found in Morocco, Italy, and Spain.
This sea snail is historically | 13,614 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
important because its hypobranchial gland secretes a mucus used to create a distinctive purple-blue indigo dye. Ancient Mediterranean cultures, including the Minoans, Canaanites/Phoenicians, Hebrews, and classical Greeks created dyes from the snails. One of the dye's main chemical ingredients is red dibromo-indigotin, the main component of tyrian purple. The dye will turn indigo blue, similar to the color of blue jeans, if exposed to sunlight before the dye sets. Indigo dye produced in this manner is known as Tekhelet.
# Distribution.
This species lives in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic coasts of Europe and Africa, specifically Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Canary Islands, Azores.
This | 13,615 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
murex occurs in shallow, sublittoral waters.
# Shell description.
"Hexaplex trunculus" has a broadly conical shell about 4 to 10 cm long. It has a rather high spire with seven angulated whorls, and the shell is formed similar to the shape of a fish. The shell is variable in sculpture and coloring with dark banding, in four varieties. The ribs sometimes develop thickenings or spines and give the shell a rough appearance. The shell is often covered in algae, which camouflages it, making it appear very similar to the seabed.
# Human use.
Snail secretions were used as dye in ancient times. People still eat the snail in Portugal.
## As ancient dye.
The purple dye originated in Phoenician colonies. | 13,616 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
The Phoenician port cities on the coast of current-day Lebanon, exported the dye across the Mediterranean.
The ancient method for mass-producing purple-blue dye from "Hexaplex trunculus" has not been successfully reproduced; the purplish hue quickly degrades, resulting in blue only. Nonetheless, archeologists have confirmed Hexaplex trunculus as the species used to create the purple-blue dye; large numbers of shells were recovered from inside ancient live-storage chambers that were used for harvesting. Apparently, 10- to 12,000 murex yielded only one gram of dye. Because of this, the dye was highly prized. Also known as "Royal Purple", it was prohibitively expensive and was only used by the | 13,617 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
highest ranking aristocracy.
A similar dye, "Tyrian purple", which is purple-red in color, was made from a related species of marine snail, "Murex brandaris". This dye (alternatively known as "imperial purple", see purple) was also prohibitively expensive.
Jews may have used the pigment from the shells to create a sky-blue, "tekhelet", dye to put on the fringes that the Torah specifies for the corner of the prayer shawl. This blue dye would have been made by taking the yellow dye solution and letting it sit in the sunlight, and then dipping the wool in it. This dye was lost to history until it was rediscovered by Professor Otto Elsner of the Shenkar College of Fibers in Haifa. Since then, | 13,618 |
621288 | Hexaplex trunculus | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hexaplex%20trunculus | Hexaplex trunculus
en dipping the wool in it. This dye was lost to history until it was rediscovered by Professor Otto Elsner of the Shenkar College of Fibers in Haifa. Since then, it has been re-introduced as the authentic "tekhelet" and has once again been reenstated to the Jewish garment although only with limited acceptance.
# References.
- Ruppert, E.E., R.S. Fox and R.D. Barnes 2004 "Invertebrate Zoology. A functional evolutionary approach". 7th Ed. Brooks/Cole, Thomson Learning learning, Inc. 990 p.
- Templado, J. and R. Villanueva 2010 "Checklist of Phylum Mollusca." pp. 148-198 In Coll, M., et al., 2010. The biodiversity of the Mediterranean Sea: estimates, patterns, and threats. PLoS ONE 5(8):36pp | 13,619 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
Crediton
Crediton is a town and civil parish in the Mid Devon district of Devon in England. It stands on the A377 Exeter to Barnstaple road at the junction with the A3072 road to Tiverton, about north west of Exeter. It has a population of 6,837, increasing to 7,835 at the 2011 Census. Crediton has two electoral wards (Boniface and Lawrence). The combined population of these wards at the 2011 Census was 7,600.
The town is situated in the narrow vale of the River Creedy, between two steep hills and is divided into two parts, the north or old town (Peoples park, QECC etc.) and the south and east or new town. (QECC Barnfield, Saxon Close etc.)
# History.
The first indication of settlement at | 13,620 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
Crediton is the claim that Winfrith or Saint Boniface was born here in c. 672.
He propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century and is the patron saint of both Germany and the Netherlands. In 909 a see was established here with Edwulf as the first bishop. Nine more bishops ruled here until 1050, when Leofric obtained papal permission from Pope Leo IX to transfer the seat to Exeter, a more culturally aware, larger and walled town. Since 1897 Crediton has been the seat of a suffragan bishopric in the Diocese of Exeter; from 2004 until 2012 this was Robert Evens, and since 2012 it has been Nick McKinnel.
At the Domesday survey (1086) much of the land was still uncultivated, | 13,621 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
but its prosperity increased, and in 1269 each of the twelve prebends of the collegiate church had a house and farmland within the parish. The bishops, to whom the manor belonged until the Reformation, had difficulty in enforcing their warren and other rights; in 1351 Bishop Grandisson obtained an exemplification of judgments of 1282 declaring that he had pleas of withernam, view of frankpledge, the gallows and assize of bread and ale. Two years later there was a serious riot against the increase of copyhold.
The jury of the borough are mentioned in 1275, and Crediton returned two members to parliament during the reign of Edward I, in 1306-07, though it was never afterwards represented again. | 13,622 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
A borough seal dated 1469 is extant, but the corporation is not mentioned in the grant made by Edward VI of the church to twelve principal inhabitants. The borough and manor were granted by Elizabeth I to William Killigrew in 1595, but there is no indication of town organization then or in 1630, and in the 18th century Crediton was governed by commissioners.
The wool trade was established by 1249, and the manufacture and trading of woollen cloth, especially serge, peaked in the 16th century when the town reached the height of its prosperity. In 1630 the market for kerseys was mentioned in conjunction with a saying "as fine as Kirton spinning". The woollen textile trade declined after the mid | 13,623 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
18th century.
During the English Civil War the Earl of Essex passed through the town on 20 July 1644 on his way towards Cornwall, and evidently left the town and surrounding countryside in some disarray. He was closely followed by Charles I who arrived in the town on 27 July to review the army gathered there by his nephew, Prince Maurice, before returning to Exeter for a council of war. The following Sunday, the King spent the night at Crediton and then began his expedition of "Essex-catching".
In late 1645 and early 1646 the town was used as a base by Thomas Fairfax and the New Model Army from where they marched on the Royalist forces gathering in North Devon, and to where they returned on | 13,624 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
29 March 1646 after success both at the Battle of Torrington and in overturning the siege of Plymouth.
On Sunday 14 August 1743, a great fire started, completely destroying High Street and buildings in the "West Town". At that period of time it was the second largest fire in the country, second only to the Great Fire of London. Sixteen people lost their lives, with over 2,000 made homeless and 450 houses destroyed. Other large fires occurred in 1766, 1769 and 1772.
The town is twinned with Avranches, France.
# Geography.
## Climate.
Crediton has an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfb").
# Economy.
In the early 20th century shoe-making, tanning, agricultural trade, tin-plating | 13,625 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
and the manufacture of confectionery and cider had superseded the former large woollen and serge industries.
The creamery and dairy in Crediton has always been located next to the church, but to enable its product to be distributed further, the company ran a transport depot that was located in the goods yard of the railway station. Every day, a train of three or more Milk Tank Wagons would be filled from lorries, and then taken to London by either the Great Western Railway or the Southern Railway. Express Dairies sold the creamery and a similar unit in Kirkcudbright, Scotland in July 2002 to Milk Link, which both by that time produced UHT milk.
Today, the town has two industrial parks at Lords | 13,626 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
Meadow and Fordton, a dairy and a small collection of units at Westward Business Park. It is the centre for shopping and business for the surrounding area, and has industries such as graphics and pharmaceuticals.
Bristow's of Devon, founded in 1932 was one of the town's main employers but was closed in 2011 after owner New McCowan's went into administration. The factory, on Lords Meadow Industrial Estate, was reopened by Crediton Confectionery which has taken over the Bristow's brand.
In 2001 the Crediton area was given priority status with regard to the government's Market and Coastal Towns Initiative, following the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. By 2006, of 45 projects in the plan, | 13,627 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
18 had been completed, resolved, or begun.
Pubs include the "Crediton Inn" on Mill Street, the "General Sir Redvers Buller" (a Wetherspoon's), the "Three Little Pigs", "The Ship", the "White Swan" on High Street, the "Plymouth Inn" on Dean Street and "The Mitre" on High Street.
# Sport and leisure.
Crediton has a Rugby Club (affiliated to the RFU) which has three senior teams, one colts team and a strong girls and Junior section.
Crediton has a running club Crediton Running Network which meets at the Lords Meadow Leisure Centre
# Transport.
Crediton railway station was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and was opened by the Exeter and Crediton Railway on 12 May 1851. The line to was | 13,628 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
then opened by the North Devon Railway on 1 August 1854. After 1 November 1865 additional London and South Western Railway trains ran through the station going towards Okehampton. It is the currently junction of the Tarka and Dartmoor lines, though the two lines run parallel until Coleford Junction. Crediton is served by all trains on the Barnstaple to service. They connect with main line services at .
The Exeter to Plymouth railway of the LSWR needs to be reopened to connect Cornwall and Plymouth to the section of line from Okehampton via Crediton and Exeter with the rest of the UK railway system on an all weather basis. There are proposals to reopen the line from Tavistock to Bere Alston | 13,629 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
for a through service to Plymouth.
On the night of 4 February 2014, amid high winds and extremely rough seas, part of the sea wall at Dawlish was breached washing away around of the wall and the ballast under the railway immediately behind. The line was closed. Network Rail began repair work and the line reopened on 4 April 2014. In the wake of widespread disruption caused by damage to the mainline track at Dawlish by coastal storms in February 2014, Network Rail are considering reopening the Tavistock to Okehampton and Exeter section of the line as an alternative to the coastal route.
The nearest airport is at Exeter International.
# Education.
Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, founded | 13,630 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
by Edward VI and refounded by Elizabeth I, is today a state run, part boarding school, and an academy, named for Queen Elizabeth I which gets good GCSE and A level results. There are two primary schools: Hayward's Primary School and Landscore Primary School. Nearby in the village of the same name is Sandford School and ten other partner primaries.
# Landmarks.
- The Anglican Crediton Parish Church, formerly collegiate, is a Perpendicular building with Early English and other early portions, and a central tower.
- Southeast of the town, on a ridge overlooking the river, is the country house, Downes, built about 1692 and remodelled in the 18th century. It was the birthplace of Sir Redvers Buller | 13,631 |
621234 | Crediton | https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crediton | Crediton
whose family were lords of the manor of Crediton.
- The northwest side of the town had a great wall built in 1276 and it is still partly remaining today, although now it looks no different from a normal garden wall.
# Cultural references.
Bernard Cornwell mentions Crediton as "Cridianton" in his books "The Pale Horseman" and "The Last Kingdom". Both books are set during the reign of Alfred the Great.
Michael Jecks' "Knights Templar Mysteries" are set in and around Crediton.
# See also.
- Crediton railway station
# References.
- (Some text may have been edited).
# Further reading.
- Reuter, Timothy (ed.) (1980). "The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton". | 13,632 |
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anor of Crediton.
- The northwest side of the town had a great wall built in 1276 and it is still partly remaining today, although now it looks no different from a normal garden wall.
# Cultural references.
Bernard Cornwell mentions Crediton as "Cridianton" in his books "The Pale Horseman" and "The Last Kingdom". Both books are set during the reign of Alfred the Great.
Michael Jecks' "Knights Templar Mysteries" are set in and around Crediton.
# See also.
- Crediton railway station
# References.
- (Some text may have been edited).
# Further reading.
- Reuter, Timothy (ed.) (1980). "The Greatest Englishman: Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton". Exeter: Paternoster Press. | 13,633 |
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Existence of God
The existence of God is a subject of debate in the philosophy of religion and popular culture.
A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God involves the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include "perfection").
The Western tradition of philosophical discussion of the existence of God began with Plato and Aristotle, who made arguments that would now be categorized as cosmological. | 13,634 |
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Other arguments for the existence of God have been proposed by St. Anselm, who formulated the first ontological argument; Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas, who presented their own versions of the cosmological argument (the "kalam" argument and the first way, respectively); René Descartes, who said that the existence of a benevolent God is logically necessary for the evidence of the senses to be meaningful. John Calvin argued for a "sensus divinitatis", which gives each human a knowledge of God's existence.
Philosophers who have provided arguments against the existence of God include Friedrich Nietzsche and Bertrand Russell. In modern culture, the question of God's existence has been | 13,635 |
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discussed by scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Francis Collins, Lawrence M. Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, John Lennox and Sam Harris, as well as philosophers including Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, A. C. Grayling, Daniel Dennett, Edward Feser and David Bentley Hart.
Scientists follow the scientific method, within which theories must be verifiable by physical experiment. The majority of prominent conceptions of God explicitly or effectively posit a being whose existence is not testable either by proof or disproof. Therefore the question of God's existence may lie outside the purview of modern science by definition. The | 13,636 |
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Catholic Church maintains that knowledge of the existence of God is the "natural light of human reason". Fideists maintain that belief in God's existence may not be amenable to demonstration or refutation, but rests on faith alone.
Atheists view arguments for the existence of God as insufficient, mistaken or outweighed by arguments against it, whereas some religions, such as Buddhism, are not concerned with the existence of gods at all and other religions, such as Jainism, reject the possibility of a creator deity.
# History.
A common misconception is that theism is ancient while atheism is modern, but mankind has been making the same arguments for and against the existence of deities—including, | 13,637 |
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with the rise of monotheism, God—since the dawn of human history. Bronze Age texts such as the Vedas present various arguments against the deities, such as the problem of evil and the Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit, as well as arguments for the deities, such as argument from morality and Pascal's wager, without explaining the arguments themselves, implying that readers are familiar with them and that the arguments themselves were old by the Bronze Age. From the ancient Greeks to the medieval Japanese people to the Native Americans, the same arguments for and against deities have been found. Some atheists and theists see the antiquity of their beliefs as reinforcing them, while others believe arguing | 13,638 |
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about God is trite and pointless.
# Positions.
Positions on the existence of God can be divided along numerous axes, producing a variety of orthogonal classifications. Theism and atheism are positions of belief (or lack of it), while gnosticism and agnosticism are positions of knowledge (or the lack of it). Ignosticism concerns belief about God's conceptual coherence. Apatheism concerns belief about the practical importance of whether God exists.
For the purposes of discussion, Richard Dawkins described seven "milestones" on his spectrum of theistic probability:
- 1. Strong theist. 100% probability that God exists. In the words of C.G. Jung: "I do not believe, I know."
- 2. "De facto" theist. | 13,639 |
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Very high probability but short of 100%. "I don't know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there."
- 3. Leaning towards theism. Higher than 50% but not very high. "I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God."
- 4. Completely impartial. Exactly 50%. "God's existence and nonexistence are exactly equiprobable."
- 5. Leaning towards atheism. Lower than 50% but not very low. "I do not know whether God exists but I'm inclined to be skeptical."
- 6. "De facto" atheist. Very low probability, but short of zero. "I don't know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there."
- | 13,640 |
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7. Strong atheist. "I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung knows there is one."
## Theism.
The Catholic Church, following the teachings of Paul the Apostle, Thomas Aquinas, and the First Vatican Council, affirms that God's existence "can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason".
#### personal, omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent.
In classical theism, God is characterized as the metaphysically ultimate being (the first, timeless, absolutely simple and sovereign being, who is devoid of any anthropomorphic qualities), in distinction to other conceptions such as theistic personalism, open theism, and process theism. Classical theists | 13,641 |
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do not believe that God can be completely defined. They believe it would contradict the transcendent nature of God for mere humans to define him. Robert Barron explains by analogy that it seems impossible for a two-dimensional object to conceive of three-dimensional humans.
In modern Western societies, the concepts of God typically entail a monotheistic, supreme, ultimate, and personal being, as found in the Christian, Islamic and Jewish traditions. In monotheistic religions outside the Abrahamic traditions, the existence of God is discussed in similar terms. In these traditions, God is also identified as the author (either directly or by inspiration) of certain texts, or that certain texts | 13,642 |
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describe specific historical events caused by the God in question or communications from God (whether in direct speech or via dreams or omens). Some traditions also believe that God is the entity which is currently answering prayers for intervention or information or opinions.
Many Islamic scholars have used philosophical and rational arguments to prove the existence of God. For example, Ibn Rushd, a 12th-century Islamic scholar, philosopher, and physician, states there are only two arguments worthy of adherence, both of which are found in what he calls the "Precious Book" (The Qur'an). Rushd cites “providence” and “invention” in using the Qur'an's parables to claim the existence of God. Rushd | 13,643 |
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argues that the Earth's weather patterns are conditioned to support human life; thus, if the planet is so finely-tuned to maintain life, then it suggests a fine tuner - God. The Sun and the Moon are not just random objects floating in the Milky Way, rather they serve us day and night, and the way nature works and how life is formed, humankind benefits from it. Rushd essentially comes to a conclusion that there has to be a higher being who has made everything perfectly to serve the needs of human beings.
Moses ben Maimon, widely known as Maimonides, was a Jewish scholar who tried to logically prove the existence of God. Maimonides offered proofs for the existence of God, but he did not begin | 13,644 |
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with defining God first, like many others do. Rather, he used the description of the earth and the universe to prove the existence of God. He talked about the Heavenly bodies and how they are committed to eternal motion. Maimonides argued that because every physical object is finite, it can only contain a finite amount of power. If everything in the universe, which includes all the planets and the stars, is finite, then there has to be an infinite power to push forth the motion of everything in the universe. Narrowing down to an infinite being, the only thing that can explain the motion is an infinite being (meaning God) which is neither a body nor a force in the body. Maimonides believed that | 13,645 |
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this argument gives us a ground to believe that God is, not an idea of what God is. He believed that God cannot be understood or be compared.
### Non-personal definitions of God.
In pantheism, God and the universe are considered to be the same thing. In this view, the natural sciences are essentially studying the nature of God. This definition of God creates the philosophical problem that a universe with God and one without God are the same, other than the words used to describe it.
Deism and panentheism assert that there is a God distinct from, or which extends beyond (either in time or in space or in some other way) the universe. These positions deny that God intervenes in the operation | 13,646 |
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of the universe, including communicating with humans personally. The notion that God never intervenes or communicates with the universe, or may have evolved into the universe (as in pandeism), makes it difficult, if not by definition impossible, to distinguish between a universe with God and one without.
### Debate about how theism should be argued.
In Christian faith, theologians and philosophers make a distinction between: (a) preambles of faith and (b) articles of faith. The preambles include alleged truths contained in revelation which are nevertheless demonstrable by reason, e.g., the immortality of the soul, the existence of God. The articles of faith, on the other hand, contain truths | 13,647 |
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that cannot be proven or reached by reason alone and presuppose the truths of the preambles, e.g., the Holy Trinity, is not demonstrable and presupposes the existence of God.
The argument that the existence of God can be known to all, even prior to exposure to any divine revelation, predates Christianity. Paul the Apostle made this argument when he said that pagans were without excuse because "since the creation of the world God's invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made". In this, Paul alludes to the proofs for a creator, later enunciated by Thomas Aquinas and others, but that had also been explored by the Greek philosophers.
Another | 13,648 |
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apologetical school of thought, including Dutch and American Reformed thinkers (such as Abraham Kuyper, Benjamin Warfield, Herman Dooyeweerd), emerged in the late 1920s. This school was instituted by Cornelius Van Til, and came to be popularly called presuppositional apologetics (though Van Til himself felt "transcendental" would be a more accurate title). The main distinction between this approach and the more classical evidentialist approach is that the presuppositionalist denies any common ground between the believer and the non-believer, except that which the non-believer denies, namely, the assumption of the truth of the theistic worldview. In other words, presuppositionalists do not believe | 13,649 |
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that the existence of God can be proven by appeal to raw, uninterpreted, or "brute" facts, which have the same (theoretical) meaning to people with fundamentally different worldviews, because they deny that such a condition is even possible. They claim that the only possible proof for the existence of God is that the very same belief is the necessary condition to the intelligibility of all other human experience and action. They attempt to prove the existence of God by means of appeal to the transcendental necessity of the belief—indirectly (by appeal to the unavowed presuppositions of the non-believer's worldview) rather than directly (by appeal to some form of common factuality). In practice | 13,650 |
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this school utilizes what have come to be known as transcendental arguments. In these arguments they claim to demonstrate that all human experience and action (even the condition of unbelief, itself) is a proof for the existence of God, because God's existence is the necessary condition of their intelligibility.
Alvin Plantinga presents an argument for the existence of God using modal logic. Others have said that the logical and philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God miss the point. The word "God" has a meaning in human culture and history that does not correspond to the beings whose existence is supported by such arguments, assuming they are valid. The real question is | 13,651 |
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not whether a "most perfect being" or an "uncaused first cause" exist. The real question is whether Jehovah, Zeus, Ra, Krishna, or any gods of any religion exist, and if so, which gods? On the other hand, many theists equate all monotheistic or henotheistic "most perfect Beings", no matter what name is assigned to them/him, as the one monotheistic God (one example would be understanding the Muslim Allah, Christian YHWH, and Chinese Shangdi as different names for the same Being). Most of these arguments do not resolve the issue of which of these figures is more likely to exist. These arguments fail to make the distinction between immanent gods and a Transcendent God.
Some Christians note that | 13,652 |
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the Christian faith teaches "salvation is by faith", and that faith is reliance upon the faithfulness of God. The most extreme example of this position is called fideism, which holds that faith is simply the will to believe, and argues that if God's existence were rationally demonstrable, faith in its existence would become superfluous. Søren Kierkegaard argued that objective knowledge, such as 1+1=2, is unimportant to existence. If God could rationally be proven, his existence would be unimportant to humans. It is because God cannot rationally be proven that his existence is important to us. In "The Justification of Knowledge", the Calvinist theologian Robert L. Reymond argues that believers | 13,653 |
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should not attempt to prove the existence of God. Since he believes all such proofs are fundamentally unsound, believers should not place their confidence in them, much less resort to them in discussions with non-believers; rather, they should accept the content of revelation by faith. Reymond's position is similar to that of his mentor Gordon Clark, which holds that all worldviews are based on certain unprovable first premises (or, axioms), and therefore are ultimately unprovable. The Christian theist therefore must simply choose to start with Christianity rather than anything else, by a "leap of faith". This position is also sometimes called presuppositional apologetics, but should not be | 13,654 |
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confused with the Van Tillian variety.
## Atheism.
The atheistic conclusion is that the arguments and evidence both indicate there is insufficient reason to believe that any gods exist, and that personal subjective religious experiences say something about the human experience rather than the nature of reality itself; therefore, one has no reason to believe that a god exists.
### Positive atheism.
Positive atheism (also called "strong atheism" and "hard atheism") is a form of atheism that asserts that no deities exist. The strong atheist explicitly asserts the non-existence of gods.
### Negative atheism.
Negative atheism (also called "weak atheism" and "soft atheism") is any type of atheism | 13,655 |
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other than positive, wherein a person does not believe in the existence of any deities, but does not explicitly assert there to be none.
## Agnosticism.
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable. Agnosticism does not define one's belief or disbelief in gods; agnostics may still identify themselves as theists or atheists.
### Strong agnosticism.
Strong agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for humans to know whether or not any deities exist.
### Weak agnosticism.
Weak agnosticism is the belief that the existence or nonexistence of deities | 13,656 |
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is unknown but not necessarily unknowable.
### Agnostic theism.
Agnostic theism is the philosophical view that encompasses both theism and agnosticism. An agnostic theist believes in the existence of a god or God, but regards the basis of this proposition as "unknown or inherently unknowable". Agnostic theists may also insist on ignorance regarding the properties of the gods they believe in.
### Agnostic atheism.
Agnostic atheism is a philosophical position that encompasses both atheism and agnosticism. Agnostic atheists are atheistic because they do not hold a belief in the existence of any deity and agnostic because they claim that the existence of a deity is either unknowable in principle | 13,657 |
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or currently unknown in fact.
The theologian Robert Flint explains:
## Apatheism.
An apatheist is someone who is not interested in accepting or denying any claims that gods exist or do not exist. An apatheist lives as if there are no gods and explains natural phenomena without reference to any deities. The existence of gods is not rejected, but may be designated unnecessary or useless; gods neither provide purpose to life, nor influence everyday life, according to this view.
## Ignosticism.
The ignostic (or igtheist) usually concludes that the question of God's existence or nonexistence is usually not worth discussing because concepts like "God" are usually not sufficiently or clearly defined. | 13,658 |
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Ignosticism or igtheism is the theological position that every other theological position (including agnosticism and atheism) assumes too much about the concept of God and many other theological concepts. It can be defined as encompassing two related views about the existence of God. The view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed. Furthermore, if that definition is unfalsifiable, the ignostic takes the theological noncognitivist position that the question of the existence of God (per that definition) is meaningless. In this case, the concept of God is not considered meaningless; the term "God" is considered | 13,659 |
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meaningless. The second view is synonymous with theological noncognitivism, and skips the step of first asking "What is meant by 'God'?" before proclaiming the original question "Does God exist?" as meaningless.
Some philosophers have seen ignosticism as a variation of agnosticism or atheism, while others have considered it to be distinct. An ignostic maintains that he cannot even say whether he is a theist or an atheist until a sufficient definition of theism is put forth.
The term "ignosticism" was coined in the 1960s by Sherwin Wine, a rabbi and a founding figure of Humanistic Judaism. The term "igtheism" was coined by the secular humanist Paul Kurtz in his 1992 book "The New Skepticism".
# | 13,660 |
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Philosophical issues.
## The problem of the supernatural.
One problem posed by the question of the existence of God is that traditional beliefs usually ascribe to God various supernatural powers. Supernatural beings may be able to conceal and reveal themselves for their own purposes, as for example in the tale of Baucis and Philemon. In addition, according to concepts of God, God is not part of the natural order, but the ultimate creator of nature and of the scientific laws. Thus in Aristotelian philosophy, God is viewed as part of the explanatory structure needed to support scientific conclusions and any powers God possesses are—strictly speaking—of the natural order that is derived from | 13,661 |
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God's place as originator of nature (see also Monadology).
In Karl Popper's philosophy of science, belief in a supernatural God is outside the natural domain of scientific investigation because all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable in the natural world. The non-overlapping magisteria view proposed by Stephen Jay Gould also holds that the existence (or otherwise) of God is irrelevant to and beyond the domain of science.
Logical positivists such as Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer viewed any talk of gods as literal nonsense. For the logical positivists and adherents of similar schools of thought, statements about religious or other transcendent experiences can not have a truth value, and | 13,662 |
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are deemed to be without meaning, because such statements do not have any clear verification criteria. As the Christian biologist Scott C. Todd put it "Even if all the data pointed to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic." This argument limits the domain of science to the empirically observable and limits the domain of God to the unprovable.
## Nature of relevant proofs and arguments.
John Polkinghorne suggests that the nearest analogy to the existence of God in physics is the ideas of quantum mechanics which are seemingly paradoxical but make sense of a great deal of disparate data.
Alvin Plantinga compares the question of the | 13,663 |
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existence of God to the question of the existence of other minds, claiming both are notoriously impossible to "prove" against a determined skeptic.
One approach, suggested by writers such as Stephen D. Unwin, is to treat (particular versions of) theism and naturalism as though they were two hypotheses in the Bayesian sense, to list certain data (or alleged data), about the world, and to suggest that the likelihoods of these data are significantly higher under one hypothesis than the other. Most of the arguments for, or against, the existence of God can be seen as pointing to particular aspects of the universe in this way. In almost all cases it is not seriously suggested by proponents of the | 13,664 |
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arguments that they are irrefutable, merely that they make one worldview seem significantly more likely than the other. However, since an assessment of the weight of evidence depends on the prior probability that is assigned to each worldview, arguments that a theist finds convincing may seem thin to an atheist and vice versa.
Philosophers, such as Wittgenstein, take a view that is considered anti-realist and oppose philosophical arguments related to God's existence. For instance, Charles Taylor contends that the real is whatever will not go away. If we cannot reduce talk about God to anything else, or replace it, or prove it false, then perhaps God is as real as anything else.
In George Berkeley's | 13,665 |
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"A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge" of 1710, he argued that a "naked thought" cannot exist, and that a perception is a thought; therefore only minds can be proven to exist, since all else is merely an idea conveyed by a perception. From this Berkeley argued that the universe is based upon observation and is non-objective. However, he noted that the universe includes "ideas" not perceptible to humankind, and that there must, therefore, exist an omniscient superobserver, which perceives such things. Berkeley considered this proof of the existence of the Christian god.
C.S. Lewis, in "Mere Christianity" and elsewhere, raised the argument from desire. He posed that all natural | 13,666 |
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desires have a natural object. One thirsts, and there exists water to quench this thirst; One hungers, and there exists food to satisfy this hunger. He then argued that the human desire for perfect justice, perfect peace, perfect happiness, and other intangibles strongly implies the existence of such things, though they seem unobtainable on earth. He further posed that the unquenchable desires of this life strongly imply that we are intended for a different life, necessarily governed by a God who can provide the desired intangibles.
## Outside of Western thought.
Existence in absolute truth is central to Vedanta epistemology. Traditional sense perception based approaches were put into question | 13,667 |
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as possibly misleading due to preconceived or superimposed ideas. But though all object-cognition can be doubted, the existence of the doubter remains a fact even in "nastika" traditions of "mayavada" schools following Adi Shankara. The five eternal principles to be discussed under ontology, beginning with God or Isvara, the Ultimate Reality cannot be established by the means of logic alone, and often require superior proof.
In Vaisnavism Vishnu, or his intimate ontological form of Krishna, is equated to personal absolute God of the Western traditions. Aspects of Krishna as "svayam bhagavan" in original Absolute Truth, "sat chit ananda", are understood originating from three essential attributes | 13,668 |
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of Krishna's form, i.e., "eternal existence" or "", related to the "brahman" aspect; "knowledge" or chit, to the "paramatman"; and "bliss" or "ananda" in Sanskrit, to "bhagavan".
# Arguments for the existence of God.
## Empirical arguments.
### Argument from beauty.
One form of the argument from beauty is that the elegance of the laws of physics, which have been empirically discovered, or the elegant laws of mathematics, which are abstract but which have empirically proven to be useful, is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be beautiful and not ugly.
### Argument from consciousness.
The argument from consciousness claims that human consciousness cannot be explained | 13,669 |
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by the physical mechanisms of the human body and brain, therefore, asserting that there must be non-physical aspects to human consciousness. This is held as indirect evidence of God, given that notions about souls and the afterlife in Christianity and Islam would be consistent with such a claim. Critics point out that non-physical aspects of consciousness could exist in a universe without any gods; for example, some religions that believe in reincarnation are compatible with atheism, monotheism, and polytheism.
The notion of the soul was created before modern understanding of neural networks and the physiology of the brain. Decades of experimentation lead cognitive science to consider thought | 13,670 |
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and emotion as physical processes although the experience of consciousness still remains poorly understood. The hard problem of consciousness remains as to whether different people subjectively experience the world in the same way — for example, that the color blue looks the same inside the minds of different people, though this is a philosophical problem with both physical and non-physical explanations.
### Argument from design.
The teleological argument, or the argument from design, asserts that certain features of the universe and of living things must be the product of an intelligent cause. Its proponents are mainly Christians.
### Rational warrant.
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin is notable | 13,671 |
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for his work in the history of ideas that features the (rational) warrant: a statement that connects the premises to a conclusion.
Joseph Hinman applied Toulmin's approach in his argument for the existence of God, particularly in his book "The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief". Instead of attempting to prove the existence of God, Hinman argues you can "demonstrate the rationally-warranted nature of belief".
Hinman uses a wide range of studies, including ones by Robert Wuthnow, Andrew Greeley, Mathes and Kathleen Nobel to establish that mystical experiences are life-transformative in a way that is significant, positive and lasting. He draws on additional work to add several additional | 13,672 |
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major points to his argument. First, the people who have these experiences not only do not exhibit traditional signs of mental illness but, often, are in better mental and physical health than the general population due to the experience. Second, the experiences work. In other words, they provide a framework for navigating life that is useful and effective. All of the evidence of the positive effects of the experience upon people's lives he, adapting a term from Derrida, terms "the trace of God": the footprints left behind that point to the impact.
Finally, he discusses how both religious experience and belief in God is, and has always been, normative among humans: people do not need to prove | 13,673 |
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the existence of God. If there is no need to prove, Hinman argues, and the Trace of God (for instance, the impact of mystical experiences on them), belief in God is rationally warranted.
### Inductive arguments.
Some have put forward arguments for the existence of God based on inductive reasoning. For example, one class of philosophers asserts that the proofs for the existence of God present a fairly large probability though not absolute certainty. A number of obscure points, they say, always remain; an act of faith is required to dismiss these difficulties. This view is maintained, among others, by the Scottish statesman Arthur Balfour in his book "The Foundations of Belief" (1895). The opinions | 13,674 |
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set forth in this work were adopted in France by Ferdinand Brunetière, the editor of the "Revue des deux Mondes". Many orthodox Protestants express themselves in the same manner, as, for instance, Dr. E. Dennert, President of the Kepler Society, in his work "Ist Gott tot?"
## Logical arguments.
### Aquinas' Five Ways.
In article 3, question 2, first part of his "Summa Theologica", Thomas Aquinas developed his five arguments for God's existence. These arguments are grounded in an Aristotelian ontology and make use of the infinite regression argument. Aquinas did not intend to fully prove the existence of God as he is orthodoxly conceived (with all of his traditional attributes), but proposed | 13,675 |
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his Five Ways as a first stage, which he built upon later in his work. Aquinas' Five Ways argued from the unmoved mover, first cause, necessary being, argument from degree, and the .
- The unmoved mover argument asserts that, from our experience of motion in the universe (motion being the transition from potentiality to actuality) we can see that there must have been an initial mover. Aquinas argued that whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another thing, so there must be an unmoved mover.
- Aquinas' argument from first cause started with the premise that it is impossible for a being to cause itself (because it would have to exist before it caused itself) and that it is impossible | 13,676 |
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for there to be an infinite chain of causes, which would result in infinite regress. Therefore, there must be a first cause, itself uncaused.
- The argument from necessary being asserts that all beings are contingent, meaning that it is possible for them not to exist. Aquinas argued that if everything can possibly not exist, there must have been a time when nothing existed; as things exist now, there must exist a being with necessary existence, regarded as God.
- Aquinas argued from degree, considering the occurrence of degrees of goodness. He believed that things which are called good, must be called good in relation to a standard of good—a maximum. There must be a maximum goodness that which | 13,677 |
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causes all goodness.
- The argument from final cause asserts the view that non-intelligent objects are ordered towards a purpose. Aquinas argued that these objects cannot be ordered unless they are done so by an intelligent being, which means that there must be an intelligent being to move objects to their ends: God.
### Cosmological argument.
The cosmological, or "first cause" argument asserts that since everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist, the universe must have had a cause which was itself not caused. This ultimate first cause is identified with God. Christian apologist William Lane Craig gives a version of this argument in the following form:
- | 13,678 |
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1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- 2. The Universe began to exist.
- 3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.
### Ontological argument.
The ontological argument has been formulated by philosophers including St. Anselm and René Descartes. The argument proposes that God's existence is self-evident. The logic, depending on the formulation, reads roughly as follows:
Thomas Aquinas criticized the argument for proposing a definition of God which, if God is transcendent, should be impossible for humans. Immanuel Kant criticized the proof from a logical standpoint: he stated that the term "God" really signifies two different terms: both idea of God, and God. Kant concluded that the proof | 13,679 |
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is equivocation, based on the ambiguity of the word God. Kant also challenged the argument's assumption that existence is a predicate (of perfection) because it does not add anything to the essence of a being. If existence is not a predicate, then it is not necessarily true that the greatest possible being exists. A common rebuttal to Kant's critique is that, although "existence" does add something to both the concept and the reality of God, the concept would be vastly different if its referent is an unreal Being. Another response to Kant is attributed to Alvin Plantinga who explains that even if one were to grant Kant that "existence" is not a real predicate, "Necessary Existence", which is | 13,680 |
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the correct formulation of an understanding of God, is a real predicate, thus according to Plantinga Kant's argument is refuted.
## Subjective arguments.
### Arguments from historical events or personages.
- The sincere seeker's argument, espoused by Muslim Sufis of the Tasawwuf tradition, posits that every individual who follows a formulaic path towards guidance, arrives at the same destination of conviction in the existence of God and specifically in the monotheistic tenets and laws of Islam. This could only be true if the formula and supplication were being answered by the same Divine entity being addressed, as claimed in Islamic revelations. This was formally organized by Imam Abu Hamid | 13,681 |
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Al-Ghazali in such notable works as "Deliverance from Error" and "The Alchemy of Happiness," in Arabic "Kimiya-yi sa'adat". The path includes following the golden rule of no harm to others and treating others with compassion, silence or minimal speech, seclusion, daily fasting or minimalist diet of water and basic nourishment, honest wages, and daily supplication towards "the Creator of the Universe" for guidance.
- Christianity and Judaism assert that God intervened in key specific moments in history, especially at the Exodus and the giving of the Ten Commandments in front of all the tribes of Israel, positing an argument from empirical evidence stemming from sheer number of witnesses, thus | 13,682 |
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demonstrating his existence.
- Christological arguments assert that certain events of the Christian New Testament are historically accurate, and prove God's existence, namely:
- The Resurrection of Jesus (an argument from miracles)
- The claims of Jesus, as a morally upstanding person, to be the son of God (an argument from authority)
- The belief of Jesus, as a wise person, that God exists (an argument from authority)
- Islam asserts that the revelation of its holy book, the Qur'an, and its unique literary attributes, vindicate its divine authorship, and thus the existence of God.
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormonism, similarly asserts that the miraculous | 13,683 |
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appearance of God, Jesus Christ, and angels to Joseph Smith and others and subsequent finding and translation of the Book of Mormon establishes the existence of God. The whole Latter Day Saint movement makes the same claim for example Community of Christ, Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), Church of Jesus Christ (Cutlerite), etc.
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite), similarly asserts that the finding and translation of the Plates of Laban, also known as the Brass Plates, into the Book of the Law of the Lord and Voree plates by James Strang, One Mighty and Strong, establishes | 13,684 |
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the existence of God.
- Various sects that have broken from the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) (such as Church of Christ "With the Elijah Message" and Church of Christ (Assured Way)) claim that the message brought by John the Baptist, One Mighty and Strong, to Otto Fetting and W. A. Draves in The Word of the Lord Brought to Mankind by an Angel establishes the existence of God.
### Arguments from testimony.
Arguments from testimony rely on the testimony or experience of witnesses, possibly embodying the propositions of a specific revealed religion. Swinburne argues that it is a principle of rationality that one should accept testimony unless there are strong reasons for not doing so.
- The | 13,685 |
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witness argument gives credibility to personal witnesses, contemporary and throughout the ages. A variation of this is the argument from miracles (also referred to as "the priest stories") which relies on testimony of supernatural events to establish the existence of God.
- The majority argument argues that the theism of people throughout most of recorded history and in many different places provides "prima facie" demonstration of God's existence.
#### Arguments grounded in personal experiences.
- The sincere seeker's argument, espoused by Muslim Sufis of the Tasawwuf tradition, posits that every individual who follows a formulaic path towards guidance, arrives at the same destination of | 13,686 |
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conviction in the existence of God and specifically in the monotheistic tenets and laws of Islam. This apparent natural law for guidance and belief could only be consistent if the formula and supplication were being answered by the same Divine entity being addressed, as claimed in Islamic revelations. This was formally organized by Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali in such notable works as "Deliverance from Error" and "The Alchemy of Happiness," in Arabic "Kimiya-yi sa'ādat". The path includes following the golden rule of no harm to others and treating others with compassion, silence or minimal speech, seclusion, daily fasting or minimalist diet of water and basic nourishment, honest wages, and daily | 13,687 |
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supplication towards "the Creator of the Universe" for guidance.
- The Argument from a proper basis argues that belief in God is "properly basic"; that it is similar to statements like "I see a chair" or "I feel pain". Such beliefs are non-falsifiable and, thus, neither provable nor disprovable; they concern perceptual beliefs or indisputable mental states.
- In Germany, the School of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi taught that human reason is able to perceive the suprasensible. Jacobi distinguished three faculties: sense, reason, and understanding. Just as sense has immediate perception of the material so has reason immediate perception of the immaterial, while the understanding brings these perceptions | 13,688 |
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to a person's consciousness and unites them to one another. God's existence, then, cannot be proven (Jacobi, like Immanuel Kant, rejected the absolute value of the principle of causality), it must be felt by the mind.
- The same theory was advocated in Germany by Friedrich Schleiermacher, who assumed an inner religious sense by means of which people feel religious truths. According to Schleiermacher, religion consists solely in this inner perception, and dogmatic doctrines are inessential.
- Brahma Kumaris religion was established in 1936, when God was said to enter the body of diamond merchant Lekhraj Kripalani (1876–1969) in Hyderabad, Sindh and started to speak through him.
## Hindu arguments.
The | 13,689 |
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school of Vedanta argues that one of the proofs of the existence of God is the law of karma. In a commentary to Brahma Sutras (III, 2, 38, and 41), Adi Sankara argues that the original karmic actions themselves cannot bring about the proper results at some future time; neither can super sensuous, non-intelligent qualities like adrsta by themselves mediate the appropriate, justly deserved pleasure and pain. The fruits, according to him must be administered through the action of a conscious agent, namely, a supreme being (Ishvara). The Nyaya school make similar arguments.
## Other arguments.
- The evolutionary argument against naturalism, which argues that naturalistic evolution is incapable | 13,690 |
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of providing humans with the cognitive apparatus necessary for their knowledge to have positive epistemic status.
- An argument from belief in God being properly basic as presented by Alvin Plantinga.
- Argument from Personal Identity.
- Argument from the "divine attributes of scientific law".
# Arguments against the existence of God.
Each of the arguments below aims to show that a particular set of gods does not exist—by demonstrating them to be inherently meaningless, contradictory, or at odds with known scientific or historical facts—or that there is insufficient proof to say that they do exist.
## Empirical arguments.
The following empirical arguments rely on observations or experimentation | 13,691 |
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to yield their conclusions.
### Arguments from inadequate revelations.
The argument from inconsistent revelations contests the existence of the deity called God as described in scriptures—such as the Hindu Vedas, the Jewish Tanakh, the Christian Bible, the Muslim Qur'an, the Book of Mormon or the Baha'i Aqdas—by identifying apparent contradictions between different scriptures, within a single scripture, or between scripture and known facts.
Relatedly, the argument from parsimony (using Occam's razor) contends that since natural (non-supernatural) theories adequately explain the development of religion and belief in gods, the actual existence of such supernatural agents is superfluous and | 13,692 |
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may be dismissed unless otherwise proven to be required to explain the phenomenon.
The argument from "historical induction" concludes that since most theistic religions throughout history (e.g. ancient Egyptian religion, ancient Greek religion) and their gods ultimately come to be regarded as untrue or incorrect, all theistic religions, including contemporary ones, are therefore most likely untrue/incorrect by induction. H. L. Mencken wrote a short piece about the topic entitled "Memorial Service" in 1922. It is implied as part of Stephen F. Roberts' popular quotation: I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the | 13,693 |
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other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
The argument from nonbelief contests the existence of an omnipotent God who wants humans to believe in him by arguing that such a god would do a better job of gathering believers.
### Arguments from the poor design of the universe.
The problem of evil contests the existence of a god who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent by arguing that such a god should not permit the existence of evil or suffering. The theist responses are called theodicies. Similarly, the argument from poor design contends that an all-powerful, benevolent creator god would not have created lifeforms, including humans, which seem to exhibit poor design.
Richard | 13,694 |
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Carrier has argued that the universe itself seems to be very ill-designed for life, because the vast majority of the space in the universe is utterly hostile to it. This is arguably unexpected on the hypothesis that the universe was designed by a god, especially a personal god. Carrier contends that such a god could have easily created a geocentric universe "ex nihilo" in the recent past, in which most of the volume of the universe is inhabitable by humans and other lifeforms— precisely the kind of universe that most humans believed in until the rise of modern science. While a personal god "might" have created the kind of universe we observe, Carrier contends that this is not the kind of universe | 13,695 |
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we would most "likely" expect to see if such a god existed. He finally argues that, unlike theism, our observations about the nature of the universe are strongly expected on the hypothesis of atheism, since the universe would have to be vast, very old, and almost completely devoid of life if life were to have arisen by sheer chance.
## Logical arguments.
The following arguments deduce, mostly through self-contradiction, the non-existence of a God as "the Creator".
- Stephen Hawking and co-author Leonard Mlodinow state in their book "The Grand Design" that it is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that | 13,696 |
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of who created God. Both authors claim that it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings. Christian mathematicians and scientists, most notably Leonhard Euler, Bernard d'Espagnat and John Lennox, disagree with that kind of skeptical argument.
- A counter-argument against God as the Creator takes the assumption of the Cosmological argument ("the chicken or the egg"), that things cannot exist without creators, and applies it to God, setting up an infinite regress.
- Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 gambit analogizes the above. Some theists argue that evolution is akin to a hurricane assembling a Boeing 747 — that the universe | 13,697 |
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(or life) is too complex "not" to have been designed by someone, who theists call God. Dawkin's counter-argument is that such a God would himself be complex — the "Ultimate" Boeing 747 — and therefore require a designer.
- Theological noncognitivism is the argument that religious language – specifically, words such as "God" – are not cognitively meaningful and that irreducible definitions of God are circular.
- The analogy of Russell's teapot argues that the burden of proof for the existence of God lies with the theist rather than the atheist; it can be considered an extension of Occam's Razor.
### Arguments from incompatible divine properties.
Some arguments focus on the existence of specific | 13,698 |
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conceptions of God as being omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect.
- The omnipotence paradox suggests that the concept of an omnipotent entity is logically contradictory by considering questions such as "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot move it?" or "If God is all powerful, could God create a being more powerful than Himself?"
- Similarly, the omniscience paradox argues that God cannot be omniscient because he would not know how to create something unknown to himself.
- Another argument points to the contradiction of omniscience and omnipotence arguing that God is bound to follow whatever God foreknows himself doing.
- Argument from free will contends that omniscience and | 13,699 |
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