characters from all the readings has to be Michael from Microserfs. "This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he won't come out." (Coupland 1) Through lack of interactions and his "flat diet," ("Todd and I got concerned about Michael's not eating, so we drove to the 24-hour Safeway in Bellevue. We went shopping for "flat" foods to slip underneath Michael's door." (Coupland 1)) Michael

Pascal's Gamble The human condition is one of suffering and redemption. One who does not suffer is not human. Death and the withering away of youth and vitality explicitly demonstrates the entropic nature of existence. This situation is problematic for the rationale mind. No universally accepted system of navigating the death sentence, known has human existence, has sufficiently explained the quandary. Blaise Pascal, the renowned 17th century mathematician and philosopher, in

Life After Death Introduction classical point of departure in defining Death seems to be Life itself. Death is perceived either as a cessation of Life - or as a "transit area," on the way to a continuation of Life by other means. While the former presents a disjunction, the latter is a continuum, Death being nothing but a corridor into another plane of existence (the hereafter). A logically more rigorous approach

.. The actual universe, with all its good and evil, exists on the basis of God's will and receives its meaning from His purpose. However, these two conclusions do not stand in simple contradiction, to one another. The one says that evil is bad, harmful, destructive, fearful and to be fought against as a matter of ultimate life and death. But the other does not deny this. It does not

Exposure to an Outgroup I am spiritually inclined though I have never been part of an organized religious group. That is, I believe in God, or as the Native Americans refer to Him, "The Great Spirit," the enormous and mysterious power that is responsible for the "Big Bang" and for everything that has evolved in the Universe and on Planet Earth. But as to heaven and hell and the rituals that

Whether one considers it a place of communion with God and those who left before us or whether we think of it as a place of eternal beauty and sunlight is neither here nor there. I think that it is important for us to contemplate what happens to us when we die even though it creates major conundrums (at least for me). It confuses me and it brings me