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Even though Augustine provides reasons to support his statements in Confessions, some of his reasons or statements are still subject to critic. From here on, I will state possible objections by the critics and defend with my own reasons to support Augustine and strengthen his arguments. First of all, Augustine’s statement that time seems to move toward the non-existence (past) gives opening for critics to object by reasoning that in all cases, time only flows from the past into the future; coffee and milk will mix spontaneously after pouring the milk in (future) but will never un-mix after pouring milk in (past). The critic’s reason seems to be reasonable only on the ground that the critic already knows that milk and coffee will mix. What about to the majority with no knowledge of it? In my opinion, to such people, time flows from the future into the non-existence past; they can predict at a certain moment (present) that milk and coffee will mix (future) by basing on their previous experience that X and Y does mix recently (present of future things), at the instant they pour the milk into coffee they will see that it mixes (present of present things), and in the end they knew that milk and coffee did mix (past) and next time, will remember at an instant like they remembered that X and Y did mix before (present of past things). Therefore, I believe “time exists … in the sense that it tends toward non-existence”.

Second, a critic can argue that time exists not at the present instant with no duration but instead that it does have measurable duration, can provide examples of how a person can tell how long it takes for an object to move from point A to B, who can run faster or how a watch can tell the duration, and can argue how all the measurements can be done not through the mind but experimentally, externally from the mind. The critic needs to keep in mind that these are two different “times” she is referring to. Augustine is referring to time from larger creation view point in the sense that in eternity, there is only present, but in this world there seems to be past, present and future, which conveys that the bodies are created with time and moving in time. However the critic is referring to the different notion of time or fractional instant of the creation timeline. Nonetheless, if we are to accept that past and future have no existence or that time doesn’t have real existence in them, at any instant present, there will be no duration; for instance when trying to measure how fast a person is running at the present, she will see that it is immeasurable. And if we are to judge who runs faster, in order for us to remember the “time” taken for both runners, we may have to simultaneously recall form memory of their times and in this case, present is working with the past through memory, using the distention of the soul, the mind. In these cases, either the critic’s counter arguments are irrelevant to Augustine’s main concept of time or the arguments which are meant to contradict his concepts are instead being supportive.

I would provide a model based on God’s omniscience to support Augustine in that his notion of timeless God is consistent with the Bible and that instead of contradicting God’s omniscience, it is even strengthening the Biblical statements of Him. According to the confessions and how Augustine comes about to study the nature of time in detail in his Confessions, there are critics who counter argue him by asking that if there is no time before the creation by God, what He’s doing before all these creations. It appears to me that they are arguing that before creation, God has no will to do so and that there has to be a moment when He decides to initialize the creation. In order to do so, there has to be a new will being created and entering God and if He is truly eternal, this new will cannot enter Him or His old will to do nothing (no creation) cannot be changed. This is as if questioning the eternality of God.

Furthermore, in my opinion, the critics seem to also doubt the omniscient nature of God because they are stating that nothing could exist before creation and that only if something gets created, it may enter into God and change Him. Let’s look at such statement from the perspective of knowledge. If we were to reason like the critics, before the creation, there was nothing, not even knowledge, and if there was no knowledge, God did not possess knowledge before its creation and thus He does not know everything or possess omniscience as told in the Bible. If knowledge was later created, then for God to be considered omniscient, He has to be willing to change from “know nothing” to “know all”. These statements are contradicting both God’s eternality and omniscience. However, Augustine’s notion of timeless God helps solve this contradictory problem; “in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present”. God exists outside of the time so there is only present (no past or future) in eternity and the present consists of the ability to perceive all at once and that everything He knows already exists, which is consistent with God’s omniscience nature. Since the creation of time and the bodies are also a timeless act, through God, all creations happen in an instant without any moments to be labeled as past or future upon God’s creation. The critics may counter argue by using creationism chapter of Genesis by saying that above statement cannot be right because God did not just create all in an instant but took six days of creations and by saying that my reasons to support Augustine have fallacy.

Their counter argument can be replied in two ways. First I could object their counter argument and restate Augustine where he said that Biblical passages should not be taken literally but instead only spiritually, which means that the critics are interpreting the Bible with the wrong reason. On the other hand, I could instead agree with their statement about the creation in six days while also restating Augustine’s statement on Biblical interpretation. For a timeless God of eternity, everything exist at present and in this case everything is still created at an instant even though it may seem days according to the uncertain accounts of “someone” but no one can know for sure the duration of the creation because as said before, the creation is a timeless act and Biblical duration cannot be taken literally. That is why I state that Augustine’s notion and understanding of the nature of time and eternity is no where in contradiction but even supports the Biblical nature of God.

In Summary, Augustine argues that there is no time before creation and that eternity consists only of the present. He also states that God of eternity exist outside of time and that all creations are made in an instant by a timeless act. He provides reasons to support that even though time has no real existence, it can have its existence through the presence and incorporation of memories and predictions and that one reason people can measure time is due to distention of the soul; through the memory, introduced by the mind, which is also the soul. Although Augustine’s arguments are subject to critics, they are not weakened by the critics’ objections because either the critics’ views are weak, irrelevant or are supporting Augustine in a sense. Furthermore, Augustine’s notion of nature of time is consistent with Biblical aspect of God, His actions and events in nature.

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Literatures Cited
Saint Augustine. Confessions.1961. Penguin Group, Book XI.

Copyrighted By:  Kaung Ko | KMKBlog.com

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Even though the three types of times do not have a real existence, people still talk about and measure time. Since a person cannot measure something that does not exist, in order for him to be measuring time, it must exist for him in a sense. Augustine concluded that the existence of time in the humans can be achieved through existing in the present and by experiencing memories (past) and predictions (future) (Book XI: 20). Instead of stating there are three times in past, present, and future perspectives which are proven to have no real existence, Augustine now reasons that time can be in some sort of existence as such: “a present of past things, a present of present things, and a present of future things”. This is what he means; if a person remembers how things those were in the past were like when they were at the present, it is through his memories at the present time, and if a person predicts how things will exist in the future, it is through the notion of present happenings and making extrapolation at this present time. Augustine now holds the idea that time can be measured only when it is in the passing processes through the present moment since it cannot be measured before passing, for they will be nothing and cannot be measured after it has passed, for there will no longer be anything existing to be measured. However, Augustine does not know how we can actually measure this instant of the present although it appears to be measurable to people because the present, as stated previously, does not have actual duration or extension. He disagrees with other philosophers or astrologers’ way of measuring time through the movement of the heavenly bodies because he believes that bodies are just moving in time and not time itself (Book XI: 24); even if the sun did stop as told in the bible, the hours that make up one day will still pass and therefore, time cannot be measured through movement of bodies.

The idea Augustine holds, in addition to the statement that time has existence only in a sense of present instant with no duration, is that time is a extension of the soul into the temporal world (Book XI: 26). Augustine knows that this would mean the soul is falling away from what is previously believed to be close to the goodness as in God, but this is the only possible way so far to measure time. When people measure time, they measure as if time is the property of the soul in that people are measuring things in their own memories at the present moment; since the past does not actually exist and the only way to measure time then is to measure it while it is passing at the “present of past things” state, people consider things from the past as though happening in the present only through memories. Since memories cannot be perceived by bodily aspects but only through the mind or the soul, time is an extension of the soul in a sense for Augustine.

In summary, Augustine states that time, past, present, and future do not have real existence because the present instant has no duration, that the reason why people still speak of time as measurable is when it is in passing process to reach to the non-existing past through the present, that time, as widely used by most, can only exist in the present through memories and predictions, and that time is in some way an extension of the soul.

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Literatures Cited
Saint Augustine. Confessions.1961. Penguin Group, Book XI.

Copyrighted By:  Kaung Ko | KMKBlog.com

In Book XI of “Confessions”, Augustine questions the nature of time and expresses the possibilities of its nature by providing examples regarding the three types of time, past, present and future. This paper will present that Augustine’s conclusion on the nature of time not only succeeds but is consistent with both the occurrence in nature and the Biblical aspect of God. In the first paragraph, the reasons behind Augustine’s inquiry of nature of time will be explained along with the reasons behind his statement of timeless God. Second paragraph will convey why time does not have real existence in the sense of past, present, and future aspects while the third paragraph will explain that time can have existence by existing in the present and by experiencing memories (past) and predictions (future). Third paragraph will explain why extension of the soul accounts for ability to measure time, followed by the fourth paragraph, summarizing Augustine’s arguments. Beginning from the fifth paragraph, I will critically engage Augustine’s argument by providing possible objections by the critics and defending Augustine by providing my own examples and reasons. From the seventh paragraph and beyond, I will conclude by providing a model to further support Augustine’s statements and show how they are consistent with most views. Summary will be presented in the last paragraph.

According to Augustine, God creates the heavenly and earthly bodies with time t and not in time, that there cannot be time before that time t. Since there is no time before time t, Augustine argues in defense against the critics that one cannot ask what God was doing “then” “before” all the creations because then and before both refer to having a time before the creation (Book XI: 10,11). Augustine also advises to take creationism in Genesis spiritually instead of taking it literally in a sense that God did not create things like a craftsman would have because there are no being or intermediate ingredients or substances to be used in creation of the universe and the world (Book XI: 5). From this and since God of Eternity is the Beginning and the End in Himself where there is none before and after, Augustine concludes that creation of time by a timeless God should then be a timeless act. However, Augustine does not understand why God creates the world, which is still in time and is changing in time and why he or others think they know what time is but fail to answer its nature. These lead to his inquiry of the nature of time itself.

First Augustine argues that time does not have real existence in his discussion regarding the three types of time; past, present, and future (Book XI: 15). He noted that time depends on the becoming (future), being (present) and passing away (past). Here, Augustine is already expressing his notion of time that time tends to move toward non-existence by arriving from the future, remaining for a moment and passing through the present, and going away into the past. He initially focuses on the real existence of time in past and future. He believes that since nothing that does not yet or no longer exists can be described as long or short time in a present tense, the correct way to describe the past and future in the sense of long time ago or ahead and short time ago and ahead is not to use present term but the past and futuristic terms “was” and “will be” (Eg. It was a long time ago). However, even then he states that it would be foolish to say that the past was long or short because once anything enters the state of the past, it becomes a non-being and non-existence, and if it no longer exists, then it no longer is what it was; in this case, no longer a long or short time. Similarly, it would not be right to state that the future will be a long or a short time because the future is not yet here and is still a non-existence, so there is no way of considering what anything that has yet to arrive really is. He concludes from these that past and future times do not really exist. Later, Augustine focuses on the real existence of time in present. He divides the present into present century, year, month, day, etc and finds out that even present time is hard to observe. He gets to this statement after expressing his examples: in the present century, only the present year is present in existence and the other years are either in the past or the future; in that present year, only the present month is in existence, only the present day exists in that present month, only the present hour exists in that present day, and so on. The only moment when it is possible to observe and call it present is at an instant, but since that instant cannot be broken down into smaller periods, it does not have a duration or length and thus it cannot really be called time. From this Augustine concludes that present time also does not have real existence.

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Literatures Cited
Saint Augustine. Confessions.1961. Penguin Group, Book XI.

Copyrighted By:  Kaung Ko | KMKBlog.com

You can write essay for any specific purpose, but keeping one aim in mind and that is of having a structured well-written Essay.

Three important factors in Essay that matters are Sentence framing, use of appropriate Grammar and than it is the careful use of spellings.

Essay on any topic should be simple and enjoyable to read. The Essay should portray reality, which gets the readers to be enthusiastic more.

Let us start with some of the Tips for Essay writing. We are going to start with Sentences, the use of sentences appropriately is very important in essay writing.

Sentences are formed of Punctuation, Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs and prepositions. Than along with this group comes ‘frequently confused words’ which are used in essay writing as well.

We all have knowledge of what Punctuation is? It is the use of Period (.), question mark (?), exclamation mark (!), comma (,), apostrophe (‘), quotation marks (“), colon (:), semicolon (;), dash (-) and hyphen (_).

Use of period is done at the end of every sentence, for example, [India is one of the largest countries]. Use of period is also done with certain abbreviations ex, [Dr. Hanson is out of town] or [it is 4:00 p.m. here].

Question Mark (?) is used when you have to end a sentence to show a direct question or when you are trying to ask something. Do not use question mark when you are asking indirect questions. Examples are 1. [How many siblings do you have?], 2. [She asked where you went, please don’t ask me why].

Exclamation mark (!) is used at the end of the sentence to show excitement or shock. Ex [I can’t believe that some one can be so pretty!] or [The house is on fire!

Use of comma (,) can be very confusing at times. One has to be very careful in using comma’s at appropriate places in essay writing. There are some rules you can follow.

• Rule one – Use comma to show a pause in your sentence.
Ex – Hence, we ought to leave this place now

• Rule two- Use comma when you want to show some one has said something directly.
Ex- “I can come to your house today”, he said, “but not on Thursday”.

• Rule three- you can use comma to list three or more different things.
Ex- Canada, America, and India are different from each other.

• Rule Four- Use comma around relative clauses when you have to add extra information to a sentence.
Ex- Emily Carr, born in 1871, had a great talent of painting.

Use of Apostrophe (‘) is done when you want to show ownership of something, for ex, this is Jackson’s computer. You can also use apostrophe (‘) when you want to show letters that have been left out of a word, for ex, she doesn’t know how to fix it.

Quotation marks (“) are used when you want to show, what some one has said directly, and ex. Prime Minister Bush said, “We are going to win this war”.

Use of colon (:) is used when you want to introduce a list of things in your essay, ex. She has three belongings: hairbrush, toothbrush and toothpaste.
You can also use colon (:) when you are introducing long quotation, ex. Prime minister of India said: “we are going to fight this war against terrorism. We will not give up. We have to keep looking at our aim”.

You can use, Semicolon (;) to join related sentences together, ex. The festival of lights is popular; everyone wants to celebrate it.

You can use, Dash (-), when you are summarizing the idea of the sentence, you can use it before and after a phrase or list that adds extra information in the middle of the sentence. Examples are 1. [Smart, pretty, witty- these are the characteristics of Miss. Johnson], 2. [Children- Ashley, Laura, Adie- went to the store together].

You use hyphen in your essay when you are joining two words that form one idea together, ex. Bad-odor or sweet smelling.

These are some of the basic but important rules in essay writing that help in having a good frame of sentence in an essay.
Making a proper use of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions will give you one of the best essays. You have to know where to use each of these grammars in your essay. This definitely comes with practicing some grammar skills before you write your essay.

Some of the frequently confused words in the essay are,
(Accept, except; advice, advise; all ready, ready; buy, by; choose, chose; complement, compliment; emigrate, immigrate; it’s, its; loose, lose; miner, minor; past, passed; principal, principle; stationary, stationery; than, then; their, there, they’re; threw, through; to, too, two; weather, whether; your, you’re).

The above words as explained can be confusing while writing essay, therefore you need to make proper evaluation of the following words to use them appropriately in your essay.

Paragraph in an essay can contain, topic sentence, supporting details and closing sentence. Paragraphs can also contain definition, classification, description, compare and contrast, sequence, choice, explanation and evaluation.

Paragraphs always have three stages, Introductory Paragraph, supporting paragraphs and the ending or summary paragraph.

You can start and end your essay with a thoughtful introduction and a challenging summary, this is what most of the readers look for.

By: Kaung Ko | KMKBlog.com

You may have heard about the toys and especially videos made and advertised as language and brain development enhancer for your infants. The recent studies show those will only do harm than good!

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. “The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew,” says Christakis. “These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos.”

Source / Read More at: Time.com

Ever been to Texas? If you haven’t or if you had but still haven’t visited Stark Museum of Art, you really have to visit there! Stark Museum displays the arts of the American West and has many collections including Western Art, American Indian Art, Decorative Arts, and rare Books & Manuscripts. It is an amazing place indeed.

Western Art

In the early 19th century, explorer-artists traveled across the continents, and recorded and document portraits and scenes of the natives. Later in the 20th century, many settled in the west and more artists came to the regions bringing new interpretations to the concept of the west. Start museum has collections of famous artists and their Western Art.

Decorative Arts

Decorative Arts consists primarily of glass and porcelain. At Stark Museum, you can find the complete series including some duplicates and unpainted versions.

American Indian Art

In this collection available at Stark Museum, there are arts created by members of the tribes of Southwest, Great Plains, Northwest Coast, and Eastern Woodlands, which also includes pictures of Plains clothing, body ornaments, bead work, moccasins, etc… Baskets from major basket-producing cultures in the West can also be found at American Indian Art section.

Rare Books & Manuscripts

if you wish to view the rare books and manuscripts such as The Birds of America by naturalist John James Audubon, letters and journals by Audubon and artist Paul Kane, seven Books of Hours manuscripts, and more historical and interesting collections, Stark Museum has them all!

Stark Museum also has connection to The Stark Foundation.

The Nelda C. and H.J. Lutcher Stark Foundation was established as a non-profit corporation in 1961 by H.J. Lutcher Stark and his wife, Nelda C. Stark, to be operated exclusively for charitable and educational purposes.

The main goal of The Stark Foundation is to reserve the life of Southeast Texas, arts, health, and human services. or that reason Stark Museum of Art was established.

That is why when you get to Texas, do not forget to visit Stark Museum of Art at City of Orange!

By: Kaung

During the Industrial Revolution, the social structure of society changed dramatically. Before the Revolution most people lived in small villages, working either in agriculture or as skilled craftsmen. They lived and often worked as a family, doing everything by hand. In fact, three quarters of Britain’s population lived in the countryside, and farming was the predominant occupation (Porter). With the advent of industrialization, however, everything changed. The new enclosure laws—which required that all grazing grounds be fenced in at the owner’s expense—had left many poor farmers bankrupt and unemployed, and machines capable of huge outputs made small hand weavers redundant. As a result, there were many people who were forced to work at the new factories. This required them to move to towns and cities so that they could be close to their new jobs. It also meant that they made less money for working longer hours. Add to this the higher living expenses due to urbanization and one can easily see that many families’ resources would be extremely stretched.

As a result, women and children were sent out to work, making up 75% of early workers (Stearns). Families were forced to do this, since they desperately needed money, while factory owners were happy to employ women and children for a number of reasons. First of all, they could be paid very little, and children could be controlled more easily than adults, generally through violent beatings (Sadler). Children also had smaller hands, which were often needed to reach in among the parts of a machine. Furthermore, employers found that children were more malleable, and adapted to the new methods much better than adults did. Children were also sent to work in mines, being small enough to get more coal and ore from the deep and very often unsafe pits (Stearns). They could also be forced to work as long as eighteen hours each day (Sadler). For these reasons, children as young as eight years old were sent to factories—usually those which manufactured textiles—where they became part of a growing and profitable business. 

This unprecedented growth and profit was another social change that occurred during the Industrial Revolution. The laissez-faire approach taken by the government, and advocated by philosopher-economist Adam Smith, allowed capitalism to flourish. There were little or no government regulations imposed upon factory policies, and this allowed the wealthy, middle-class owners to pursue whichever path was most profitable, regardless of the safety and well being of their workers. This relentless pursuit of money caused another important social change: the ultimate breakdown of the family unit.

Since workers, especially women and children, were laboring for up to eighteen hours each day, there was very little family contact, and the only time that one was at home was spent sleeping. People also had to share housing with other families, which further contributed to the breakdown of the family unit. As a result, children received very little education, had stunted growth, and were sickly. They also grew up quite maladjusted, having never been taught how to behave properly (Sadler). The living conditions were indeed horrible; working families often lived in slums with little sanitation, and infant mortality skyrocketed. During the early Industrial Revolution, 50% of infants died before the age of two (Stearns).

However, the social changes that took place were not all negative. Most classes eventually benefited in some way from the huge profits that were being made, and by 1820 most workers were making somewhat better wages. The “widespread poverty and constant threat of mass starvation…lessened, [and] overall health and material conditions of the populace clearly improved” (Porter). The government, however, did have to eventually intervene in order to put an end to child labor and other unacceptable practices.

By: Kaung | ChitChat247.com | KMKBlog.com