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About Me

Hello, whoever is interested in reading my bio. First off the basics, I am seventeen, a current high school student in Arizona, am graduating in 2013 and look forward to my upcoming college years. One of my main goals at present is to get accepted into the United States Military Academy, West Point. This goal has of course pushed me to try very hard in school but does not surpass my goal to simply learn and to lead. Throughout my high school career I have gained valuable lessons from my experiences and believe I have the work ethic to apply those lessons out in the real world. I'm not what you would consider a typical teenager. I constantly seek to learn new things, not because I have to but because I want to. I have fallen in love with knowledge and philosophy. I love to read, think, and write. Some of the books I have read include Plato's "The Republic", Dante's "Divine Comedy", Machiavelli's "The Prince", "The Meditations" by Emperor Marcus Aurelius, many of Ayn Rand's books and others. I keep a written journal of my favorite quotes and my interpretations of their inner meanings. I also carry a Moleskin notepad with me everywhere now, as I jot down thoughts, which come to me throughout the day, and analyze the inner meanings of my everyday interactions. I love to learn for myself, but also find joy in leading others to enlightenment as well, or at least in pursuit of some common goal, that may be agreed upon. I try to improve my leadership by actively participating in my school and community. I am a board member my school's NHS program, captain of the school wrestling team, and have participated in several leadership seminars across the country from Alabama's US Space & Rocket Center, to New York's West Point Academy Summer Leadership Seminar. I hope to, like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, attempt through leadership to bring people out of the dark, which is ignorance, and into the light, which is truth. I do not mean to ramble, I am only trying to give a most genuine depiction of how I view myself. I will end off by saying that I like this website and am here because I want to learn from others, like yourself, so please feel free to contact me or show me things that you have found interesting. I see the long lasting benefits of a cultivated mind and don't believe my learning should ever end on the boundaries of formal education, as learning only ends with the end of life.

Location:
United States, Goodyear, AZ
Current organization:
National Honor Society
Current role:
Treasurer & Board Member
Gender:
Male
Areas of expertise:
Philosophy - Ethics
I am:
Athlete, Brainstormer, Christian, Entrepreneur, Idea generator, Single, Student, Writer/Editor
Languages:
English
My website links:
Academic Earth, Khan Academy
Member Picture

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Philosophy, reading, writing, the great sport of Wrestling, athleticism, Military, and specifically the Army's West Point Academy, which I hope to gain entrance into.

Talk to me about

-Your opinions on ethics and Philosophy. -Your favorite videos on TED, -any interesting current events, -the Military or the academies, -Any sports, -or anything else really; I won't bite.

Comments

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  • A reply on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 8 2012: @Entropy Driven

    Your argument is the most logical I've heard so far, but still doesn't explain the cause of anything. Science is not aimed at simply answering "what?"; it has to also answer "How?". You seem to think that repulsion and attraction just happen, without cause and without explanation. This is completely unscientific, and although the causes of repulsion/attraction have not been found, a real physicist would never argue that the causes do not exist.

    Gravity is another problem that physicists have yet to answer. They have answered What?: a force that attracts a body towards any other physical body having mass, but not How? And the answer to that question is down a rabbit hole that physicts have been unable to reach for now.

    Gravity does bring up another interesting thought though, which is that if its force brings masses together and is found all throughout the universe, then what is the force which ever seperated these masses in the first place? The Big Bang? what caused that? and more importantly how?
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    A reply on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 7 2012: Time is just a word we use to understand the specific order in which we experience events. Regardless of whether or not "time" existed as we know it, before the Big Bang, science would tell us that something (as in something physical) could not come from nothing, and therefore everything physical must have a cause. Even if the the "cause" and the "effect" were to exist simultaneously because of the lack of what we call "time", the latter effect would still be unable to exist without the former cause. Science will never be able to fully answer questions on how something (matter) came from nothing, so logically the answer to that question will come from somewhere else. God? perhaps.

  • A reply on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 7 2012: @ Obey I was simply stating that the physical laws which we agree on and employ in every aspect of physics cannot explain the origins of the universe we observe around us.

    "Surely you can see the error in - everything needs a cause, except I'll invent a first cause that doesn't. Special pleading."

    The things we hold true can be of two types; either material or immaterial. The laws of physics apply to all material things and state that material things cannot move without an initial action, and as result cannot explain the origins of our universe. You misunderstood me, I am not inventing a first material thing which caused the first movement; that would be a fallacy. No material thing could have made the first movement, unless all that we know in physics is based off of fallacy. Therefore, the initial cause must have been immaterial and not subject to physical laws, and is as of now, incomprehensible to us. Your opinions on what that initial cause could be, or whether or not you call it "God" or "deity" are not of my concern. As for other's specific concepts on what that "God" or "deity" means to them personally; I make no attempt to disprove or prove any of them.

  • A reply on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 6 2012: Well it sounds like the charges you refer to rely on the law of inertia, because they remain at a constant velocity forever, but in in order for these charges to be in motion they must be in response to some previous action a long time ago. If you could theoretically have an electron at rest then you could not get that electron to move or "spin" without imposing some initial force on it. It's great to hear from an actual physicist, but to be clear you are physicist who rejects Newton's First Law of Motion?
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    A reply on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 6 2012: A magnet is an object that has a magnetic field (magnetic field is that part of the electromagnetic field that exerts a force on a moving charge. A magnetic field can only be caused by another moving charge (i.e., by an electric current), and is thus reliant on that charge's initial movement. I'm no physicist, but Newton was, and it's going to be a pretty tough argument if you're trying to disprove his founding law of all physics.

  • A reply on Conversation: Debate: Are humans better than other forms of life?

    Dec 6 2012: I have to agree with Zman. Samantha, If your argument is...

    (We are at the top of the food chain) = (because we have Technology)

    and it is true that..

    (We have Technology) = (because we have Higher intelligence)

    Then it only follows that..

    (We are at the top of the food-chain) = (because we have Higher intelligence)
  • +2

    A comment on Conversation: Can anyone prove the existence of a supernatural deity?

    Dec 6 2012: Well one argument for a God is the First Mover argument. You of course must know Newton's 1st and 3rd laws, which govern all physical motion, and state that an object that is at rest stays at rest until an external force is applied to it, as well as that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

    So if you are moving right now it is because some force acted on you, and in order for whatever acted on you to have moved something must have acted on it, and so on indefinitely.

    These laws being found true for all physical things goes to show that if all objects were at rest at some point, then nothing would have ever moved and the universe would be completely still.

    The universe is on the contrary not still and full of constantly moving parts, so there must have been some variable (we can call it "x" for now) that acted on something else without itself being acted on; in other words the First Mover, which could not have possibly been a physical thing, because it violates the very first law of physics in that it moved without any external force being applied to it.

    This is a problem which has bothered physicists for centuries and still goes unanswered. Many highly intelligent people who have encountered this issue simply replace that "x" or First Mover variable with the word "God", and regardless of how strongly you may find your laws of physics to be, they have gotten no closer to answering this question then any Faith in a deity has, and until you can disprove a "First Mover" you will never be able to disprove a God.

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