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Haridwar
Haridwar (/hʌrɪˈdwɑːr/; local pronunciation (help·info)) is a city and municipal corporation in the Haridwar district of Uttarakhand, India. With a population of 228,832 in 2011, it is the second-largest city in the state and the largest in the district. The city is situated on the right bank of the Ganges river, at the foothills of the Shivalik ranges. Haridwar is regarded as a holy place for Hindus, hosting important religious events and serving as a gateway to several prominent places of worship. Most significant of the events is the Kumbha Mela, which is celebrated every 12 years in Haridwar. During the Haridwar Kumbh Mela, millions of pilgrims, devotees, and tourists congregate in Haridwar to perform ritualistic bathing on the banks of the Ganges to wash away their sins to attain moksha. According to Puranic legend, Haridwar, along with Ujjain, Nashik, and Prayag, is one of four sites where drops of amrita, the elixir of immortality, accidentally spilled over from a kumbha (pitcher) while being carried by the celestial bird Garuda during the Samudra Manthana, or the churning of the ocean of milk. Brahma Kund, the spot where the amrita fell, is believed to be located at Har ki Pauri (literally, "footsteps of the Lord") and is considered to be the most sacred ghat of Haridwar. It is also the primary centre of the Kanwar pilgrimage, in which millions of participants gather sacred water from the Ganges and carry it across hundreds of miles to dispense as offerings in Shiva shrines. Today, the city is developing beyond its religious importance with the fast-developing industrial estate of the State Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand (SIDCUL), and the close by township of Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), as well as its affiliated ancillaries. Haridwar presents a kaleidoscope of Indian culture and development. In sacred writings, it has been differently specified as Kapilsthan, Gangadwar and Mayapuri. It is additionally a passage for the Chota Char Dham (the four principal pilgrim destinations in Uttarakhand). Subsequently, Shaivites (devotees of Shiva) and Vaishavites (devotees of Vishnu) call the city Hardwar and Haridwar, respectively, Har meaning Shiva and Hari, Vishnu.
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Topic Review
Spirit (Animating Force)
In folk belief, spirit is the vital principle or animating force within all living things. As recently as 1628 and 1633 respectively, both William Harvey and René Descartes still speculated that somewhere within the body, in a special locality, there was a "vital spirit" or "vital force", which animated the whole bodily frame, just as the engine in a factory moves the machinery in it. People have frequently conceived of spirit as a supernatural being, or non-physical entity; for example, a demon, ghost, fairy, or angel. In ancient Islamic terminology however, the term spirit (rūḥ), applies only to "pure" spirits, but not to other invisible creatures, such as jinn, demons and angels. Historically, spirit has been used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as put forth in the notable last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit. The concepts of spirit and soul often overlap, and some systems propose that both survive bodily death. "Spirit" can have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. "Spirit" is also often used to refer to the consciousness or personality.
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Topic Review
Heresy, Yes–Conspiracy, No
Heresy, Yes–Conspiracy, No was a 283-page anti-communist book by New York University philosophy professor Sidney Hook, which John Day Company, published in May 1953, about conflicts between support for Communism and for academic freedom in America. The book became "perhaps the most influential justification for firing Communists and suspected Communists from university and schools in the early 1950s" during McCarthyism.
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Topic Review
Sallekhana
Sallekhana (IAST: sallekhanā), also known as Samlehna, Santhara, Samadhi-marana or Sanyasana-marana; is a supplementary vow to the ethical code of conduct of Jainism. It is the religious practice of voluntarily fasting to death by gradually reducing the intake of food and liquids. It is viewed in Jainism as the thinning of human passions and the body, and another means of destroying rebirth-influencing karma by withdrawing all physical and mental activities. It is not considered as a suicide by Jain scholars because it is not an act of passion, nor does it deploy poisons or weapons. After the sallekhana vow, the ritual preparation and practice can extend into years. Sallekhana is a vow available to both for Jain ascetics and householders. Historic evidence such as nishidhi engravings suggest sallekhana was observed by both men and women, including queens, in Jain history. However, in the modern era, death through sallekhana has been a relatively uncommon event. There is debate about the practice from a right to life and a freedom of religion viewpoint. In 2015, the Rajasthan High Court banned the practice, considering it suicide. Later that year, the Supreme Court of India stayed the decision of the Rajasthan High Court and lifted the ban on Sallekhana.
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Topic Review
Stereotype Space
In functional analysis and related areas of mathematics, stereotype spaces are topological vector spaces defined by a special variant of reflexivity condition. They form a class of spaces with a series of remarkable properties, in particular, this class is very wide (for instance, it contains all Fréchet spaces and thus, all Banach spaces), it consists of spaces satisfying a natural condition of completeness, and it forms a cosmos and a *-autonomous category with the standard analytical tools for constructing new spaces, like taking dual spaces, spaces of operators, tensor products, products and coproducts, limits and colimits, and in addition, immediate subspaces, and immediate quotient spaces.
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Topic Review
Creation–Evolution Controversy
The creation–evolution controversy (also termed the creation vs. evolution debate or the origins debate) involves an ongoing, recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life. Species were once widely believed to be fixed products of divine creation in accordance with creationism, but since the mid-19th century evolution by natural selection has been established as an empirical scientific fact. The debate is religious, not scientific: in the scientific community, evolution is accepted as fact and efforts to sustain the traditional view are almost universally regarded as pseudoscience. While the controversy has a long history, today it has retreated to be mainly over what constitutes good science education, with the politics of creationism primarily focusing on the teaching of creationism in public education. Among majority-Christian countries, the debate is most prominent in the United States, where it may be portrayed as part of a culture war. Parallel controversies also exist in some other religious communities, such as the more fundamentalist branches of Judaism and Islam. In Europe and elsewhere, creationism is less widespread (notably, the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion both accept evolution), and there is much less pressure to teach it as fact. Christian fundamentalists repudiate the evidence of common descent of humans and other animals as demonstrated in modern paleontology, genetics, histology and cladistics and those other sub-disciplines which are based upon the conclusions of modern evolutionary biology, geology, cosmology, and other related fields. They argue for the Abrahamic accounts of creation, and, in order to attempt to gain a place alongside evolutionary biology in the science classroom, have developed a rhetorical framework of "creation science". In the landmark Kitzmiller v. Dover, the purported basis of scientific creationism was exposed as a wholly religious construct without formal scientific merit. The Catholic Church now recognizes the existence of evolution (see Catholic Church and evolution). Pope Francis has stated: "God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life...Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve." The rules of genetic evolutionary inheritance were first discovered by a Catholic priest, the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel, who is known today as the founder of modern genetics. According to a 2014 Gallup survey, "More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising." A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found "that while 37% of those older than 65 thought that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years, only 21% of respondents between the ages of 18 and 29 agreed." The debate is sometimes portrayed as being between science and religion, and the United States National Academy of Sciences states:
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Topic Review
React (Media Franchise)
React (sometimes stylized in all caps as REACT) is a media franchise used by the Fine Brothers consisting of several online series centering on a group of individuals reacting to viral videos, trends, video games, film trailers, or music videos. React was also the first react channel on YouTube. The franchise was launched with the YouTube debut of Kids React in October 2010, and then grew to encompass four more series uploaded on the Fine Brothers' primary YouTube channel, a separate YouTube channel with various reaction-related content, as well as a television series titled React to That. In 2016, the duo announced React World, a program and channel in which they would license the format of their React shows to creators, which led to widespread negative reception from viewers and fellow content creators, as well as confusion about what their format is. This eventually lead to the Fine Brothers to removing all videos related to React World, essentially pulling the plug on the React World program.
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Topic Review
Intrusive Thought
An intrusive thought is an unwelcome, involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate. When such thoughts are associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and sometimes attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the thoughts may become paralyzing, anxiety-provoking, or persistent. Intrusive thoughts may also be associated with episodic memory, unwanted worries or memories from OCD, post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, eating disorders, or psychosis. Intrusive thoughts, urges, and images are of inappropriate things at inappropriate times, and generally have aggressive, sexual, or blasphemous themes.
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Topic Review
Bible Study (Christian)
In Christian communities, Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts; however in other denominations devotion has other meanings. Bible study in this sense is distinct from biblical studies, which is a formal academic discipline.
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Topic Review
Great Disappointment
The Great Disappointment in the Millerite movement was the reaction that followed Baptist preacher William Miller's proclamations that Jesus Christ would return to the Earth by 1844, what he called the Advent. His study of the Daniel 8 prophecy during the Second Great Awakening led him to the conclusion that Daniel's "cleansing of the sanctuary" was cleansing of the world from sin when Christ would come, and he and many others prepared, but October 22, 1844 came, and they were disappointed. These events paved the way for the Adventists who formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They contended that what had happened on October 22 was not Jesus' return, as Miller had thought, but the start of Jesus' final work of atonement, the cleansing in the heavenly sanctuary, leading up to the Second Coming.
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