God's Omniscient; Man Isn't Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

God's Omniscient; Man Isn't - Essay Example 3.5). Just like Moses after them, Abraham and Joseph humbled themselves before God and sought His wisdom and direction rather than relying upon their own reasoning and intellect. Moses, the man who stood up to Pharaoh and parted the Red Sea, demonstrates through the accounts of Abraham and Joseph that strength, victory, and wisdom come through a humble dependence on God for knowledge, while weakness, defeat, and foolishness are a result of a prideful reliance on one’s own knowledge and ability. Abraham, whose name means â€Å"father of many,† ironically lived his first 100 years as the father on none, and Moses goes through great length to show the unshakeable faith Israel’s patriarch, which is demonstrated through his leaning on God’s promises. God’s first promise to Abraham (at this time, â€Å"Abram†) was to make him into a great nation (Gen. 12.2). God, who was unfamiliar to Abram at this point, also told him to leave his settled land and travel west into unchartered territory with his wife Sarai (later called Sarah) and a caravan of all their possessions, herds, and servants. Abram unwaveringly obeyed ? although the promise and command he received made little sense to him and his people ? but God later blessed him with immeasurable riches and fertile land for his faith and obedience, as he relied on God’s understanding and not his own. Even though Abram and Sarai were far from young (75 and 65 years old, respectively) and already living comfortably in a settled land, Abram believed that God would bless him with countless descendants and safely establish him in a hostile and unknown land, which He did. Moses shows through Abram that man, in his knowledge, cannot comprehend the wisdom of God or the scope of His plans, and that obedience and faith in God is much greater than human reasoning. Even though Abraham is known for having unparalleled faith, he had his lapses; yet Moses shows us how God, in His knowled ge, rectifies the things man blotches in his limited understanding. When Abram and Sarai went to Egypt to escape a famine, Abram relied on his own cunning for protection – not God’s. He told Pharaoh that Sarai was his sister ? not his wife ? because Sarai was beautiful and he thought that the Egyptians would kill him over her. God inflicted Pharaoh’s household with diseases so that Pharaoh would know Sarai was Abram’s wife and would not lay with her as his own wife (Gen. 12.20). Abram’s reasoning was exposed as foolishness that almost ended in disaster, but God still faithfully protected him and Sarai. God bailed Abram out once again when he relied on Sarai’s plan to deliver what God had promised – a child. Instead of waiting upon the Lord, Abram took Hagar as his wife and impregnated her at the request of Sarai, who was now 76 years old and barren. God then had an angel send Hagar and her son Ishmael away to avoid Sarai’s jeal ous wrath and then opened Sarai’s womb to allow Abram – now 99 years old ? to impregnate her with Isaac. Because Abram and Sarai second-guessed God’s wisdom, Ishmael was born, whose offspring would be at war with Ishmael’s for millennia to come. But when God later tested Abraham (the name God gave him when He fulfilled His promise to make him fruitful and multiply) and told him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, Abraham unswervingly obeyed. When he raised the knife, God ordered

Great Ormond street hospital Essay Example for Free

Great Ormond street hospital Essay This is because we all agreed that we would be keen to make money for this charity. This charity raises money for the hospital to provide exceptional care for young patients and to discover new treatments and cures for their illnesses. Before deciding this charity, we looked on their website (www. gosh. org) to see exactly where our contribution would go, and how it would benefit the charity. They state that donations help fund the most up-to-date medical equipment, refurbish the hospital, support the research of developing break-through treatments and provide accommodation and support for children and their families. In addition when looking up this information, we found Fundraising Guidelines that GOSH supplied for people running fundraising events. We read the guidelines and found them extremely helpful for running our first event. These guidelines can be found in Appendix -. Other events that were being contemplated are listed below: Formal Winter Ball   Halloween Fair   Car Boot Sale   A Cake Fair However, these ideas were not taken further as it was believe they would not be as successful as holding a Christmas Fair. This is because; a Formal Winter Ball subjects to only couples, and would find people being uncomfortable if they had no date, this means our amount of attendees would be smaller which would not bring as much profit. Our Christmas fair is open to all of the public, an event that you can go to with family, friends or partners. There is no limit to amount of people helping our chances of greater profit. After discussing a Halloween event, we concluded it would not be as successful because not everybody celebrates Halloween in great detail, and usually only celebrate with kids, also narrowing our attendees. Furthermore, we agreed that we would not be able to organise ourselves in enough time, whereas we had more time to prepare to hold the Christmas Fair because of seasonal timings. Also a, Cake Fair is too limited, and finding stallholders who would want to attend would be limited as there would be too much competition for them narrowing the chances of selling cakes. Finally we decided against a Car Boot Sale as not many of us were enthused by the idea, and felt a Christmas Fair would get people in a good mood before the celebrations begin. A copy of our research for these events and our Christmas Fair research can be found in Appendix 4. We chose the Christmas Fair to be our event as it can appeal to a large amount of people and therefore has a wider target demographic. By creating an event that appeals to a wide range of people will reduce the risk of not making a profit. This will help the success of an event, rather than a failed attempt. With more customers open to the event, means there is more potential for the event to be profitable. Also due to the Christmas season being celebrated by many, more people will be willing and interested to participate. The day will be full of excitement and entertainment for all members of the community to attend and enjoy them. It also seems relevant, as Christmas is an extremely popular annual holiday which dominates the end of November all the way through to December 25th. Being able to work in a team is essential in planning any event and also quite important to many businesses and therefore seems a skill that should be taken professionally. As the Christmas Fair was open to the public, it is even more important that the team work well together. Therefore it was the best event to stage in order to improve our skills. The event is also to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, which suggests that more people are likely to attend and support our school to raise money for a great charity. The objectives that we created used SMART, in order to help the day become a success. SPECIFIC MEASURABLE ACHIEVABLE RELEVANT TIMES These are our objectives: 1. Have over 100 attendees and supply great customer service. The objective is to have over 100 attendees; this will allow us to see how well our advertising techniques were used. In addition it is imperative to have good customer service throughout the function. Without customer satisfaction, people are less likely to buy products or help to achieve our aim of producing an enjoyable festive event. Without customer satisfaction could also relate to a negative impression of our school, and making stallholders look bad too as they are associated with our event. This objective is more than achievable and sensible when creating an enjoyable day for families. The amount of profit and products being sold could also measure the rate of customer satisfaction. This is because, if people are not happy with the service they are getting less raffle tickets are likely to be sold, as well a the amount of people in the event. 2. Diverse Target Market The objective is to have leaflets given to different schools, and areas of Royston by 2nd November. By appealing to a wide target market means that the day has more chance of being successful and making a maximum profit. If the day only appealed to a limited audience, less profit is likely to be made. The wide target market also helps to achieve the aim of making a profit. This is very achievable and sensible in order to create a profitable day, as the amount of people that will enjoy the day is not limited. By creating a day for all ages means it is appealing to the maximum amount of people possible and therefore not leaving anyone out voluntarily. It is achievable by aiming stall, activities and prizes to a wide range of ages, and personalities. 3. A diverse amount of stalls Another objective of ours is to have 15 stalls by 15th September. By offering diverse stalls means it more likely that people will buy more products. It also helps produce a day for families by targeting all ages within the stalls taking part. Offering a wide variety of stalls also means that more money is likely to be made and therefore increases the chance of making a profit overall. If there were not a wide variety of stalls, less products will be sold as there will be a limited target audience. This could be measured through the range of ages, as well and products and prizes on the day. 2. Research   Primary Primary research is the technique of collecting data yourself. It is the process of collecting completely new and original information. These techniques include questionnaires, interviews, and surveys. The form of primary research used to collect information concerning the Christmas Fair was a questionnaire. This included relevant questions aimed at all ages in order to make the day as successful as possible and make it as easy as possible to reach the aim of the event. A questionnaire is not a very time consuming method of primary research and also means a lot of different information is found from a variety of different people. A questionnaire allows people to create questions that fit the audience, in this case, families and allows you to ask relevant specific questions to fit the purpose. A questionnaire also means fairly reliable answers are received. We asked a large variety of people that live in our surrounding area. A large variety of people including young children, teenagers, adults and elderly people were asked in order to get a wide variety of results and to ensure that our aim can be reach with this type of event. This is because, if the event is aimed at families, it is important to create an event that will appeal to all ages. Also, a total of 100 people were questioned, as it is easier to summarise and accurately measure. This means better results will be found. A copy of the questionnaire and the results can be found in Appendix 1 2. The results of the questionnaire show that we will benefit from including aspects such as having a raffle; refreshments and childrens stall such as painting as some of the activities and choices, in order to please the customers and meet the customer service objective created. The Santas Grotto and a chance to have a photo with Santa are also beneficial and would help raise more money for Great Ormond Street Hospital as well as meeting the requirement of younger children and parents. The majority of the responses was positive and therefore shows that a Christmas Fair would be extremely beneficial to stage. This means there is no reason to dispute over any other events as them Christmas Fair has a high chance of being successful due to all of the positive feedback. We also went to a surrounding areas annual Fate on the 19th June and asked stallholders if they would be interested in our Christmas Fair at the end of the year. We created a slip on Word Processor that they could fill out with their name, business name, number, e-mail address and nature of stall so that we would contact them in the near future. It also gave us an advantage to see what activities and layout that they had to use for our Christmas Fair. A copy of our information collected from Therfield Fate can be found in Appendix 4.   Secondary. Secondary research is information conducted and found by someone else used as part of your market research. This could be any information you see useful or need to find out information of your own, for example a school website with information of their Christmas craft fairs. There are a number of benefits and drawback to using secondary research. It is a very cheap method of collecting data as no effort or money has to be spent on creating, conducting or analysing of the results and source. As secondary research we looked at a variety of websites to find information about surrounding schools craft fairs such as dates and times.

Slave Life Essay -- essays research papers

As slavery continued and grew, complicated systems of social status developed on plantations. The lowest ranking slaves, the backbone of the plantation economy, were the field slaves. The field slaves were divided into ‘gangs’ according to their physical strength and ability, with the strongest and fittest males and females in the first gang. The highest ranking slaves were the domestic servants who worked in the owner’s house. The difference in status between field and domestic slaves caused a division between the slaves on most plantations. Field work on the sugar plantations was intense and exhausting, particularly the digging of holes for planting and the cutting of canes when it was time to reap them. The incentive used to encourage hard work, was lashes of the cart whip, which were freely administered by the drivers, who were ‘privileged’ slaves under the overseer's supervision. During crop time, work in the factories was equally intense and the hours were long. The cruel pace at which slaves were driven effectively shortened their lives, and this continued to be the case despite legislation, which claimed to restrict how severely enslaved Africans were treated. Plantations throughout the Caribbean were organised in much the same way, though there were differences amongst the islands. In Puerto Rico for example, the Spanish established slave codes that gave enslaved Africans more rights than in many other colonies. These codes allowed some enslaved Africans to own pr...

Security Monitoring

Security Monitoring Amy Smart CMGT/442 University of Phoenix Online Instructor: James Summerlin April 15,2013 Security Monitoring In this paper we will be discussing security monitoring techniques that can and should be used within an organization to help put together an solid action plan when there is an risk identified. For any business or organization to ensure that they are conducting quality business to their customers as well as achieving their business goals should consider risk management as an huge part of their organization. Security Monitoring ProcessThe organization IT department and e- commerce applications are the ones that conduct security monitoring and measuring. Security monitoring is very important, because it is the process of preventing attacks and responding to threats that could happen in the future. An organizations can prevent small risk from turning into a bigger and more expensive problem by taking preventative steps. The IT department should be monitoring the system at all times and it must be implemented both externally and internally. However the first step each organization should take when starting the monitoring system is to first discuss what a potential risk is.For an organization to truly have an secure system they must determine an list of risk. Businesses and organizations can use security monitoring to ensure both integrity and confidentiality for sensitive information. As well as holding IT administrators responsible for keeping their organizations sensitive and financial assets safe and secure from unwanted eyes. Internal IT and Secure Monitoring Processes The security monitoring activities that should be conducted in an organization with both internal IT payroll, human resources, inventory, general ledger, inventory monitoring.However these internal structures constantly grow and increase revenue and the possible risks are also always growing and increasing. So for an organization to make sure that there information is safe and secure they will have to make sure that they have their network secure. There are an number of tools an business or organization could use to help keep the network secure, but we will only be discussing a few. The first step would be to create an good an strong password. The pros on having an password would be that it helps to protect unwanted users on their computers.However employees could forget the password so the organization would have to decide if that was an problem then they may want to have an only IT members knowing the password. Then we would have to decide which network firewall would work best for their business. The network firewall is very important to have, because it protects the network from unwanted users and can be used from small company networks to large corporate system. Another great tool to use to keep the organization network secure internet filtering software and monitoring tools, which would be used to protect their employers from inappropriate usage from their employees.Lastly vulnerability assessment and penetration testing is an very great tool to use, because any company that does any business online should and needs to perform an regular vulnerability assessment on their network. The next step in keeping all the organization personal and financial information secure would be to set in place an antivirus protection. Antivirus is important to have because it will protect the computer and the information store in it safe from virus that can wreak havoc on your computer and the information store upon it as well.However antivirus cannot do it alone so by also making sure the organization computer are always up-to- date and running properly is another step closer to being fully protected. Some examples of Antivirus software would be Norton, AVG, Shield Deluxe, or Panda Antivirus Pro, and all are very good antivirus software to use to keep their computers safe and secure. Data security is the next step in which an organizati on needs to take to make sure that their whole system is safe and secure from the inside out. Establishing an strong password is the first level of defense to keeping data secure.The next would be to make sure that there is an strong firewall, by having firewalls in place will help to keep the network properly protected from viruses and hackers. Data security is also achieved by having antivirus and anti- malware which is an systems last line of defense if everything else has failed. Having an organizations computer systems up to date and running properly is another great step to keeping their data safe, because if their computer software is not up to date then it won't be able to provide the upmost protection towards their personal data.Performing backups to the external hard drive is the best way to insure that all the data is stored safely. Then lastly is to have their IT department monitor diligently so that they can look for specific information coming out of their network. In conclusion we have discussed the security monitoring activities that should be conducted in an organization with both internal IT payroll, human resources, inventory, general ledger, inventory monitoring. As well as how important each one of these activities are and how they help to monitor and keep their system safe and secure from unwanted eyes.

Behavioral Perspectives

Follet, Munsterberg and Mayo are mostly known for behavioral- science approach theory. They are more focused on the human and psychological factors, which are likely to affect the workers. A considerable philosophy of the theory illuminates employee relationship and motivation, information processing and organizational development. The three are also considered the founders of organizational psychology and behavioral approaches in the theories of management. Follet is an American social worker, a pioneer in the organizational theory and organizational behavior. He is works as a management consultant. Her theory criticized the poor handling of employees and urge managers to be friendly. In doing so, they should grant them the liberty to collaborate, socialize and work in teams. Munsterberg, on the other hand, states that only workers with standard mental capability and moral standards should be hired. Moreover, increased employee motivation, job performance, and employee retention are very imperative. In other words, he encourages matching an employee merits with his or her job description. Elton Mayo, who started human relations movement is best known for Hawthorne studies which were conducted at the western electric company. His theory is based on the soft ways for successful management. According to him, individual's work performance depends greatly on job satisfaction. He contributed significantly to behaviorism movement in the management field. However, Marx, Weber, and Taylor oppose such positions and call for employees liberations. For instance, Marx is against the bourgeois who use other people to become rich. They are uncomfortable with the states of affairs that use other people as instruments of making wealth. Even though Marx, weber and Taylor contrast them, Follet, Munsterberg and Mayo transformed the way modern employers relate to their employees. Q2Organizational structure defines how organizational activities are coordinated, and directing supervisions of the allocated tasks towards the achievement of organizational goals. Major types of the organizational structure include functional, divisional and matrix. Functional structure refers to the grouping of the organization departments according to purposes. It is useful for small organizations with flexible departments which can solely rely on the skills, talents, and knowledge of employees. Divisional structure is used by large organizations which operate in different geographical areas. The organization is divided into divisions which areas separately managed towards achieving the common set goals. It is useful in the sense that its desires can be met rapidly and more specifically since each division operates independently. Q3Everyone in a workplace possesses different personalities. The use of personality test immensely employs the use of the big five personality traits which includes openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. In a workplace, personality traits can help in revealing strengths and weaknesses of the employees. Moreover, it helps in determining levels of emotional intelligence among employees, a key tool for effective communication. In addition to this, personality traits help in creating awareness and enhancing excellent teamwork among employees. Finally, personality traits it helps in promoting a deeper understanding of employee capabilities based on their strengths and capabilities, thus making it easier to delegate the duties. Q4 Perceptual distortions refer to the variations of a person's response to a stimulus from the common perception. Majorly, it occurs as a result of intellectual biases of an individual. The major causes of perceptual distortions include but not limited to stereotyping, halo effect, pre-deposition, recency effect, pre-deposition effect, primacy effect, and prejudice. An example of perceptual distortion is that of an individual who is suffering from anorexia and holds a biased self-image. Such people see their bodies as overweighed and unsightly whereas others perceive them as the undernourished as well as underweighted. Q5 Impression management refers to a self-presentation system which focuses on improving a person's image in the eyes of others. Typically, it refers to a process in which people attempt to influence the perception of others. Managers synonymously implement the use of impression management to present themselves to their employees, the public and to their peers as a way of impelling the insights of their appearance. The underlying motives and basic governing factors of impression management culminates in the awareness of being a potential monitoring instrument and the kind social status. Additionally, cultural norms, personal goals, and social perspectives form other impression motives and governing factors for managers. The duo reveals the assertions, which leads to a dynamic way of presentational aspects. Managers tend to impress their employees, peers and the public through the types of clothes they put on, which have specific designs and fashions. Politicians wear nice suits, carries an expensive suitcase and move inexpensive cars so as to impress the public as they woe for votes. Christianity is another strategy used by managers to impress peers and the public alleging that their ways are pure. Q6 Stress refers to a hypersensitive response of the body to any kind of emotional strain. It occurs as a result of personal conflict between the job workload or demands and the little amount of time an employee has to meet these demands, hence lack of control. The common demands that may lead to stress in the workplace include poor organization of the work, poor work design, poor working conditions, poor management and lack of supervisory support. Moreover, job monotony and excessive workload are also sources of stress in a workstation. The general responses to stress that can be experienced are majorly classified into physical, Emotional responses. Physical stress occurs in the general body and includes pains, aches and other diseases that may be caused by stress. Physical stress is accompanied by frequent headaches, chest problems, back pain and aching stomach. It is also characterized by insufficient sleep and high blood pressure. On the other hand, Emotional responses are experiences involving feelings and thoughts during stressful circumstances. Such responses include depression and anxiety, withdrawing socially and becoming more forgetful. Anger, lack of focus and becoming more restless are other emotional responses to stress. Excessive stress is fatal and prevention measures should be put in place. In order to deal with stress, one should first trace the origin and know the causes of stress and develop healthy responses to curb the situation. Relaxing the mind and having sufficient sleep are important techniques suppressing stress. Avoid being lonely, talk to other people and seek for their help. Finally, talking to the supervisor about the stressing issue can help solve the situation. This can be perfected by improving working conditions.

How did Directed Activities Related to Text come about Essays

How did Directed Activities Related to Text come about Essays How did Directed Activities Related to Text come about Essay How did Directed Activities Related to Text come about Essay Essay Topic: Education Traditionally secondary school pupils copied from the blackboard or from dictation to make a set of notes that they learned (by heart) for exams. However, copying things down is a completely passive task requiring little mental effort or involvement in the lesson. As comprehensive schools developed during the mid-1970s, classes became increasingly differentiated with some pupils for whom extended writing was a difficult and unpleasant experience and therefore a source of anxiety. The first step towards resolving this issue was to set small group work using worksheets needing only short answers to structured questions. This seemed a feasible way to organise a mixed ability class. However, many of the first worksheets relied heavily on recipe style instructions providing little opportunity for interaction with the text or making the pupils think (Sutton, 1992). Around this time, a case was made for language for learning, or language across the curriculum (Bullock Report, 1975). There were concerns that the routines of secondary school would allow some pupils to become too passive in their learning, with insufficient demand on them to reformulate their ideas, in other words, construct their own meaning (Sutton, 1992). There developed a need to resolve conflicting demands for busy science teachers to manage practical work well, but also to organise a range of other language-centred activities (ibid. ). A project described in Lunzer and Gardner (1979) suggested that passive reading occurred when reading tasks were vague and general, rather than specific, and where reading was solitary rather than shared. This project developed activities and techniques that made pupils focus on important parts of text, and involved them in reflecting on the content otherwise known as DARTs (Henderson and Wellington, 1998). What were the consequences for the classroom? It was not just a matter of adding a text-based activity to each lesson, it also meant a change in attitude in how teachers engaged pupils in science lessons. Science teaching today is considered a process of facilitating learning new ways of seeing and talking. The means available are partly through experience (such as practical work) and partly linguistic (written work and discussion), and both develop what the learner sees in his or her minds eye (Sutton, 1992). What are the strengths and limitations of DARTs? Present-day DARTs offer a great deal of variety of tasks, and are designed to make pupils think more actively rather than following a set of instructions (see Appendix II) and therefore offer an invaluable tool to the teacher. Pupils can build up a collection of them into a record of their work. Few textbooks exactly cover the material as required by the teacher and, unless they have kept their own record, how will the pupils revise their work? Notes in the form of DARTs, from which the pupils make tables or label diagrams etc. rovide an accurate record. Any lesson time spent copying is dead time (no good at making a class think). If we use this dead time for a DART, pupils will have the text and will have begun to construct their own ideas of it. Their writing time is therefore more productively and creatively spent. DARTs can be used to test childrens understanding of how concepts are linked rather that the meaning of words. For example, the widely used Cloze technique aims to ensu re that pupils read the sentence with enough understanding to supply the missing word. To ensure the learning is active, the working words are omitted from the text (e. g. into, have, make, for) therefore requiring the pupil to understand the concept (active) rather than just filling in the words by their meaning (passive). During my school placement, I had the opportunity of creating and delivering DARTs to Year 9 pupils (see Appendix II for examples). In addition to the strengths of variety, recording and active learning, I encountered several other advantages of using DARTs. For example, teaching National Curriculum science is by definition a crowded agenda. There is little spare time and therefore every lesson minute must be treated as precious, and needs to be carefully planned (whether it is for practical, written work, discussion, problem-solving etc). Copying large chunks of text or tables is time-consuming and leaves less time for active learning. Using DARTs enabled me to spend more time on the learning objectives. Using DARTs avoided too much chalk and talk and ensured the class stayed engaged in the lesson. In addition, a bonus advantage was that a DART exercise settled lively classes (particularly worth remembering as a trainee teacher). Finally, and significantly, a strength which can only be observed first-hand the pupils enjoyed DARTs. Despite all the strengths of DARTs, there are limitations to the technique. For example, it is easy for worksheets of any kind to be discarded or lost after use and the pupil not to regard them as having value. For example, during my school placement, any worksheets should have been glued into pupil notebooks during the lesson. However, in any class I observed there were inevitably at least 2 pupils who had forgotten their notebooks and therefore their worksheets remained loose at the bottom of their school bags or in the class tray until the following week, or worse, left behind on the floor of the lab. Clearly there are organisational and management issues which need to be addressed. Effective use of DARTs requires a recognised (by pupil and teacher) system for keeping DART records. Cloze text can suffer from the problem that pupils tend to want to find the missing word without understanding the text which it is why it is wise to omit the working words. Since each pupil needs a copy of their own, it may be better to convert cloze text into scrambled text, which requires more understanding and less guessing. There can be common difficulties with reading. For instance pupils often cannot relate to the type of science texts used in school in terms of language and style or the class could comprise of a wide range of reading ages. There are three problems with using extracts from textbooks. First the writing may be too difficult. The simplest formula that measures the readability of texts is the SMOG test (see Appendix III). If the book has short sentences and few long words it is easier to read and therefore a low reading age score. Any DART needs to be tailored to the reading age of the pupil. A second problem is that the subject content may not fit your requirements exactly and schools are often limited in the range of text that they can offer pupils. The third problem is that DARTs may pose difficulties for ESL pupils. Therefore the individual literacy abilities in a class must be considered when selecting DARTs for use in a lesson.

Welsh v. United States (1970)

Welsh v. United States (1970) Should those seeking conscientious objector status under the draft be limited to only those who make their claims based on their personal religious beliefs and background? If so, this would mean that all those with a secular rather than religious ideology are automatically excluded, regardless of how important their beliefs are. It really makes no sense for the U.S. government to decide that only religious believers can be legitimate pacifists whose convictions should be respected, but thats exactly how the government operated until the militarys policies were challenged. Fast Facts: Welsh v. United States Case Argued: January 20, 1970Decision Issued:Â  June 15, 1970Petitioner: Elliot Ashton Welsh IIRespondent: United StatesKey Question: Could a man claim conscientious objector status even if he had no religious-based grounds?Majority Decision: Justices Black, Douglas, Harlan, Brennan, and MarshallDissenting: Justices Burger, Stewart, and WhiteRuling: The court ruled that claiming conscientious objector status was not dependent on religious beliefs. Background Information Elliott Ashton Welsh II was convicted of refusing to submit to induction into the armed forces - he had requested conscientious objector status but did not base his claim on any religious beliefs. He said that he could neither affirm nor deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Instead, he said his anti-war beliefs were based upon reading in the fields of history and sociology. Basically, Welsh claimed that his had serious moral opposition to conflicts in which people are being killed. He argued that even though he was not a member of any traditional religious group, the depth of sincerity of his belief should qualify him for exemption from military duty under the Universal Military Training and Service Act. This statute, however, allowed only those people whose opposition to the war was based on religious beliefs to be declared conscientious objectors - and that did not technically include Welsh. Court Decision In a 5-3 decision with the majority opinion written by Justice Black, the Supreme Court decided that Welsh could to be declared a conscientious objector even though he declared that his opposition to war was not based on religious convictions. In United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965), a unanimous Court construed the language of the exemption limiting the status to those who by religious training and belief (that is, those who believed in a Supreme Being), to mean that a person must have some belief which occupies in his life the place or role which the traditional concept of occupies in the orthodox believer. After the Supreme Being clause was deleted, a plurality in Welsh v. United States, construed the religion requirement as inclusive of moral, ethical, or religious grounds. Justice Harlan concurred on constitutional grounds, but disagreed with the specifics of the decision, believing that the statute was clear that Congress had intended to restrict conscientious objection status to those persons who could demonstrate a traditional religious foundation for their beliefs and that this was impermissible under the . In my opinion, the liberties taken with the statute both in Seeger and todays decision cannot be justified in the name of the familiar doctrine of construing federal statutes in a manner that will avoid possible constitutional infirmities in them. There are limits to the permissible application of that doctrine... I therefore find myself unable to escape facing the constitutional issue that this case squarely presents: whether [the statute] in limiting this draft exemption to those opposed to war in general because of theistic beliefs runs afoul of the religious clauses of the First Amendment. For reasons later appearing, I believe it does... Justice Harlan believed that it was quite clear that, as far as the original statute was concerned, an individuals assertion that his views were religious was to be regarded highly while the opposite proclamation was not to be treated as well. Significance This decision expanded the types of beliefs that can be used to get conscientious objector status. The depth and fervency of the beliefs, rather than their status as part of an established religious system, became fundamental to determining which views could exempt an individual from military service. At the same time, though, the Court also effectively expanded the concept of religion well beyond how its typically defined by most people. The average person will tend to limit the nature of religion to some sort of belief system, usually with some sort of supernatural basis. In this case, however, the Court decided that religious...belief could include strong moral or ethical beliefs, even if those beliefs have absolutely no connection to or basis in any sort of traditionally acknowledge religion. This may not have been entirely unreasonable, and it was probably easier than simply overturning the original statute, which is what Justice Harlan seemed to favor, but the long-term consequence is that it fosters misunderstandings and miscommunication.