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God From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Jump to: navigation, search This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and derived henotheistic forms. See deity or goddesses for details on polytheistic usages. See Names of God for terms used in other languages or specific faiths. See God (disambiguation) for non-religious meanings. God is the term used to denote the Supreme Being believed by monotheistic religions to exist and to be the creator and ruler of the Universe. Conceptions of God can vary widely, despite the common use of the same term for them all.
Contents [hide] 1 Definition 1.1 Concept of God 1.2 Attributes of God 2 Etymology 2.1 Capitalization/Captialisation 3 Names of God 4 History of monotheism 5 Theology 6 Conceptions of God 6.1 Abrahamic conceptions 6.1.1 Biblical definition of God 6.1.2 Kabbalistic definition of God 6.1.3 Quranic definitions of God 6.1.4 Negative theology 6.1.5 God as Unity or Trinity 6.1.6 Binitarianism 6.2 Conceptions of God in Hinduism 6.3 Christian Monism 6.4 The Ultimate 6.5 Aristotelian definition of God 6.6 Modern views 6.6.1 Process philosophy and Open Theism 6.6.2 Posthuman God 6.6.3 Extraterrestrials 6.6.4 Phenomenological definition 6.6.5 The Rosicrucian conception of God 6.6.6 Neurobiological findings on belief 7 Notes and references 8 See also 9 External links
[edit] Definition Look up God in Wiktionary, the free dictionary[edit] Concept of God In many Western religions, God is usually said to have a specific and clearly defined relationship to, and interest in, the happenings of this world and the lives of those in it. Metaphors for God's relationship to the visible world often include that of ruling authority (king, ruler), and (in most Abrahamic religions) judge of individual activity therein.
By contrast, many Asian and Oriental religions and philosophies consider that there is an ultimate intelligence, purpose or awareness beyond this world, but without necessarily conceptualizing it in such a human-oriented manner or positing it as having created the world predominantly for human beings.
Thus, it might be fair to say that the term "God" is a label or linguistic symbol, for the ultimate being or truth of existence which many people believe exists, and that different people subsume within that term their different concepts about the nature and attributes of such a being.
[edit] Attributes of God Common traits attributed to most concepts of God are absoluteness and other superlative qualities. However, many other definitions of the word exist. For example:
God may be Supreme but is not necessarily a Being. Some concepts of God may include anthropomorphic attributes, gender, particular names, and ethnic exclusivity (see Chosen people), while others are purely transcendent or philosophic concepts. The concept of God is often embedded in definitions of truth, where the sum of all truth is equated to God. There are variations on defining God either as a person, or not as a person but as an ambiguous impersonal force (see Absolute Infinite). Also at stake are questions concerning the possibilities of human/God relations. There are countless variations in traditions of worship and/or appeasement of God. Some concepts of God center on a view of God as ultimate, immanent, transcendent, eternal Reality beyond the shifting and constantly mutable multiplicities of the sensible world. In much religious and philosophic thought, God is considered the creator of the universe. Some traditions hold that the creator is also the sustainer (as in theism), while others argue that their God is no longer involved in the world after creation (as in deism). The common definition of God assumes omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. However, not all systems hold that God is necessarily morally good (see summum bonum). Some hold that God is the very definition of moral goodness and that God is equivalent to love. Others maintain that God is beyond morality. *Negative theology, sometimes called apophatic theology argues that no true statements about attributes of God can be made at all, while agnostic positions argue that limited human understanding does not allow for any conclusive opinions on God whatsoever. Some mystical traditions ascribe limits to God's powers, arguing that God's supreme nature leaves no room for spontaneity. The concept of a singular God is characteristic of monotheism, but there is no universal definition of monotheism. The differences between monotheism and polytheism vary among traditions (see also dualism, and henotheism). Some espouse an exclusionist view, holding to one sole definition of God. Others hold an inclusionist view, accepting the possibility of more than one definition of God to be true at the same time. There are also atheistic explanations for the concept of God that can include psychological and/or sociological factors. See also theology below.
[edit] Etymology
Earliest attestation of the Germanic word in the 6th century Codex Argenteus (Mt 5:9)The word God continues Old English/Germanic god (guþ, gudis in Gothic, gud in modern Scandinavian and Gott in modern German), from Proto-Germanic *ǥuđan. The original meaning and etymology of the Germanic word god has been hotly disputed, though most agree to a reconstructed Proto-Indo-European form *khutóm, which is the neuter passive perfect participle of the root *khu-, which likely meant "libation", "sacrifice". Compare:-
Vedic Sanskrit hu- = "to sacrifice". Greek khu-, kheu- = "to pour". Common Germanic strong verb *geutan (Anglo-Saxon gēotan) = "to pour", English in-got. The connection between these meanings is likely via the meaning "pour a libation". Another possible meaning of *khutóm is "invocation", related to Sanskrit hūta.
The same root appears in the names of three related Germanic tribes, the Geats, the Goths and the Gutar. These names may be derived from an eponymous chieftain Gaut who was subsequently deified, who sometimes appears in early Medieval sagas as a name of Odin or one of his descendants, a former king of the Geats (Gaut(i)), an ancestor of the Gutar (Guti), of the Goths (Gothus) and of the royal line of Wessex (Geats) and as a previous hero of the Goths (Gapt). The Lombardic form of Odin, Godan, may derive from cognate Proto-Germanic *ǥuđánaz.
The word God was used to represent Greek Theos, Latin Deus in Bible translations, first in the Gothic translation of the New Testament by Ulfilas. For the etymology of deus, see *dyeus. Greek theos is possibly unrelated, and of uncertain origin. De Saussure tentatively connected Baltic and Germanic words for "spook", ultimately cognate with Latin fumus "smoke".
[edit] Capitalization/Captialisation
KJV of 1611 (Psalms 23:1,2): Occurrence of "Lord" (and "God" in the heading)The development of English orthography was dominated by Christian texts. Capitalized "God" was first used to refer to the Judeo-Christian concept, and may now signify any monotheistic conception of God, including the translations of the Arabic Allāh and the African Masai Engai.
In early English bibles, the Tetragrammaton was rendered in capitals: "IEHOUAH" in William Tyndale's version of 1525. The King James Version of 1611 renders
YHWH as "The Lord" Elohim as "God" Adonay YHWH and Adonay Elohim as "Lord God" kurios ho theos as "Lord God" (in the New Testament) The use of capitalization, as for a proper noun, has persisted to disambiguate the concept of a singular God from pagan deities for which lowercase god has continued to be applied, mirroring the use of Latin deus. Pronouns referring to God are also often capitalized and are traditionally in the masculine gender, i.e. "He", "His" etc. However, in more recent times, some people have referred to God in feminine terms, such as "She" and "Her".
[edit] Names of God
YHWH, the name of God or Tetragrammaton, in Phoenician (1100 BC to AD 300), Aramaic (10th Century BC to 0) and modern Hebrew scripts.For more details on this topic, see Names of God. The noun God is the proper English name used for the deity of monotheistic faiths. Different names for God exist within different religious traditions:
Allah is the unique name of God used in Islam, and also by most non-Muslim Arabs. ilah, cognate to northwest Semitic El, is the generic word for a God ( any god), Allah contains the article, literally "The God". Also, when speaking in English, Muslims often translate "Allah" as "God". Yahweh Hebrew: 'YHVH' (יהוה), Elohim, and Jehovah are some of the names used for God in various translations of the Bible. Others include El Shaddai, Adonai, Amanuel, and Amen. When Moses asked "What is your name?" he was given the answer Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. See The name of God in Judaism for Jewish names of God. (Note: when written or typed as a proper noun, some observant Jews will use the form "G-d" to prevent the written name of God from becoming desecrated later on, although this is usually not observed in books or other forms of writing where the Name is unlikely to be destroyed or desecrated. Some Jews consider this unnecessary because English is not the "Holy Language".) The Holy Trinity (meaning the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit/"Holy Ghost") denotes God in almost all mainstream Christianity. God is called Igzi'abihier (lit. "Lord of the Universe") in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Jah is the name of God in the Rastafari movement. Some churches (United Church of Canada, Religious Science) are using "the One" alongside "God" as a more gender-neutral way of referring to God (See also Oneness). The Maasai name for "God" is Ngai, which occurs in the volcano name Ol Doinyo Lengai ("the mountain of God"). The Mi'kmaq name for "God" is Niskam. Ishvara is the term used for God among the Hindus. In Sanskrit, it means the Supreme Lord. Most Hindus worship the personal form of God or Saguna Brahman, as Vishnu, Shiva, or directly as the Supreme Cosmic Spirit Brahman through the Gayatri mantra. A common prayer for Hindus is the Vishnu sahasranama, which is a hymn describing the one thousand names of God. Ishvara must not be confused with the numerous deities of the Hindus. In modern Hindi, Ishvara is also called Bhagavan. Buddhism is agnostic: When asked about a supreme God, Buddha remained silent on the subject. Buddha believed the more important issue was a way out of suffering. Enlightened beings are called Arhats or Buddha (e.g, the Buddha Sakyamuni), and are venerated. Bodhisattva is an enlightened being that has chosen to forego entering into nirvana until all beings are enlightened. Buddhism also teaches about the devas or heavenly beings who temporarily dwell in states of great happiness. Jains invoke the five paramethis: Siddha, Arahant, Acharya, Upadhyaya, Sadhu. The arhantas include the 24 Tirthankaras from Lord Rishabha to Mahavira. But Jain philosophy as such does not recognize any Supreme Omnipotent creator God. Sikhs worship God with the name Akal (the Eternal) or Omkar (See Aum). Help of the gurus is essential to reach God. In Surat Shabda Yoga, names used for God include Anami Purush (nameless power) and Radha Swami (lord of the soul, symbolized as Radha). Ayyavazhi asserts Ekam, (The Ultimate Oneness) as supreme one and Ayya Vaikundar the Incarnation of Ekam. There are also several separate lesser gods who were all later unified into Vaikundar. Most Orthodox Jews, and many Jews of other denominations, believe it wrong to write the word "God" on any substance which can be destroyed. Therefore, they will write "G-d" as what they consider a more respectful symbolic representation. They also will not speak the Hebrew representation written in the Torah, "yih-yah", aloud, and will instead use other names such as Adonai.
[edit] History of monotheism See also monotheism, Abrahamic religion.
The religions that are monotheistic today are often thought of as having been of relatively recent historical origin -- although efforts at comparison are usually beset by claims of most religions to being very ancient or eternal. Eastern religions, especially in China and India, that have concepts of panentheism, are notably difficult to classify along Western notions of monotheism vs. polytheism.
In the Ancient Orient, many cities had their own local god, though this henotheistic worship of a single god did not imply denial of the existence of other gods. The Hebrew Ark of the Covenant is supposed (by some scholars) to have adapted this practice to a nomadic lifestyle, paving their way for a singular God.
The iconoclastic cult of the Egyptian solar god Aten was promoted by the pharoah Akhenaten (Amenophis IV), who ruled between 1358 and 1340 BCE. The Aten cult is often cited as the earliest known example of monotheism, and is sometimes claimed to have been a formative influence on early Judaism, due to the presence of Hebrew slaves in Egypt. But even though Akhenaten's hymn to Aten offers strong evidence that Akhenaten considered Aten to be the sole, omnipotent creator, Akhenaten's program to enforce this monotheistic worldview ended with his death; the worship of other gods beside Aten never ceased outside his court, and the older polytheistic cults soon regained precedence.
Other early examples of monotheism include two late rigvedic hymns (10.129,130) to a Panentheistic creator god, Shri Rudram, a Vedic hymn to Rudra, an earlier aspect of Shiva, which expressed monistic theism, and is still chanted today; the Zoroastrian Ahuramazda and Chinese Shang Ti. The worship of polytheistic gods, on the other hand, is seen by many to predate monotheism, reaching back as far as the Paleolithic. Today, monotheistic religions are dominant, though other systems of belief still exist.
[edit] Theology Theologians attempt to explicate (and in some cases systematize) beliefs; some express their own experience of the divine. Theologians ask questions such as, 'What is the nature of God?' What does it mean for God to be singular? If people believe in God as a duality or trinity, what do these terms signify? Is God transcendent, immanent, or some mix of the two? What is the relationship between God and the universe, and God and mankind?
Theism holds that God is both transcendent and immanent; thus, God is simultaneously infinite and in some way present in the affairs of the world. Catholic theology holds that God is infinitely simple and is not involuntarily subject to time. Most theists hold that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, although this belief raises questions about God's responsibility for evil and suffering in the world. Some theists ascribe to God a self-conscious or purposeful limiting of omnipotence, omniscience, or benevolence. Open Theism, by contrast, asserts that, due to the nature of time, God's omniscience does not mean he can predict the future. "Theism" is sometimes used to refer in general to any belief in a god or gods, i.e., monotheism or polytheism. Deism holds that God is wholly transcendent: God exists, but does not intervene in the world beyond what was necessary for God to create it. In this view, God is not anthropomorphic, and does not literally answer prayers or cause miracles to occur. Common in Deism is a belief that God has no interest in humanity and may not even be aware of humanity. Monotheism holds that there is only one God, and/or that the one true God is worshipped in different religions under different names. It is important to note, however, that monotheists of one religion can, and often do, consider the monotheistic god of a different religion to be a false god. For instance, many Christian fundamentalists consider the God of Islam (Allah) to be a false god or demon. However, theologians and linguists argue that "Allah" is merely the Arabic word for "God," and not the literal name of a specifically Muslim God (this is more clearly shown by the fact that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews refer to God as "Allah" with no problem whatsoever). To Muslims, the Bible is a holy scripture and Jesus is a Holy Prophet, so Islam is considered a continuation of Christianity. Many Jews consider the messiah of Christianity (Jesus) to be a false god and some monotheists (notably fundamentalist Christians) hold that there is one triune God, and that all gods of other religions are actually demons in disguise (as in 2nd Corinthians 11 verse 14). Eastern religious believers and Liberal Christians are more likely to assume those of other faiths worship the same God as they. Muslims believe that Jesus is not the son of God, because relating God to any partners or spouses or offspring is considered blasphemy and apostasy. They believe that Jesus is the Messiah and a Holy Prophet. Pantheism holds that God is the universe and the universe is God. Panentheism holds that God contains, but is not identical to, the Universe. The distinctions between the two are subtle, and some consider them unhelpful. Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, paints a pantheistic/panentheistic view of God, which has wide acceptance in Hasidic Judaism, particularly from their founder The Baal Shem Tov. It is also the view of the Liberal Catholic Church, Theosophy, Hinduism, Ayyavazhi some divisions of Buddhism, and Taoism, along with many varying denominations and individuals within denominations. Dystheism is a form of theism which holds that God is malevolent as a consequence of the problem of evil. Dystheistic speculation is common in theology, but there is no known church of practicing dystheists. See also Satanism. Most believers allow for the existence of other, less powerful spiritual beings, and give them names such as angels, saints, Djinni, demons, and devas.
[edit] Conceptions of God [edit] Abrahamic conceptions
Michelangelo's view of God in the painting Creation of the Sun and Moon in the Sistine Chapel) 16th century Christian view of Genesis: God creates Adam (Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel)Judaism, Christianity and Islam see God as a being who created the world and rules over the universe. God is usually held to have the properties of holiness (separate from sin and incorruptible), justness (fair, right, and true in all His judgments), sovereignty (unthwartable in His will), omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), omnibenevolence (all-loving), omnipresence (present everywhere at the same time), and immortality (eternal and everlasting). He is also believed to be transcendent, meaning that He is outside space and outside time, and therefore eternal and unable to be changed by earthly forces or anything else within His creation.
Jews, Christians and Muslims often conceive of God as a personal God, with a will and personality. However, many rationalist philosophers felt that one should not view God as personal, and that such personal descriptions of God are only meant as metaphors, as it was widely viewed that God's transcendence meant that He could not act in the lives of ordinary people.
In Eastern Christianity, it remains essential that God be personal; hence it speaks of the three persons of the Trinity. It also emphasizes that God has a will, and that God the Son has two wills, divine and human, though these are never in conflict. However, this point is disputed by Oriental Orthodox Christians, who hold that God the Son has only one will of unified divinity and humanity (see Miaphysitism). The personhood of God and of all human people is essential to the concept of theosis or deification.
[edit] Biblical definition of God God according to the Bible is characterized not just as Creator, but also as the "Heavenly Father".
The Torah (Old Testament) characterizes God by these attributes: "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation." (Exodus 34:6–7)
The Torah contains no systematic theology: No attempt is made to give a philosophical or rigorous definition of God, nor of how God acts in the world. It does not explicitly describe God's nature, exemplified by God's assertion in Exodus that "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live". Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible are the words omnipotent, omniscient, or omnibenevolent used to define God in a systematic sense.
Although Scripture does not describe God systematically, it does provide a poetic depiction of God and His relationship with people. According to the Biblical historian Yehezkal Kaufmann, the essential innovation of Biblical theology was to posit a God that cares about people, and that cares about whether people care about Him. Some people believe that the Bible should be viewed as humanity's view of God, but theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Biblical God as "anthropopathic", which means that one should read the Bible as God's view of humanity, and not as humanity's view of God.
Similarly, the New Testament contains little systematic theology: no philosophical or rigorous definition of God is given, nor of how God acts in the world; however the first of John's letters states: "God is light" (John 1:5), before he states: "God is love" (John 4:8). In his gospel John states: "God is a Spirit" (John 4:24). The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews presents a more grim side of the deity when he states: "For our God is a consuming fire." (Hebrews 12:29).
The New Testament provides an implicit theology as it teaches that God interacted directly with people, in the person of Jesus, and that he subsequently sent the Holy Spirit. In this view, God becomes someone that can be seen and touched, and may speak and act in a manner easily perceived by humans, while also remaining transcendent and invisible. This appears to be a radical departure from the concepts of God found in Hebrew Bible. The New Testament's statements regarding the nature of God were eventually developed into the doctrine of the Trinity.
[edit] Kabbalistic definition of God Mainstream Orthodox Judaism teaches that God is neither matter nor spirit. They teach that God is the creator of both, but is himself neither. But if God is so different from his creation, how can there be any interaction between the Creator and the created? This question prompted early Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) to envision two aspects of God, (a) God himself, who in the end is unknowable, and (b) the revealed aspect of God who created the universe, preserves the universe, and interacts with mankind in a personal way. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, similar to a creation inside a persons mind.
This view has been developed further in Hasidic and anti-nomian circles, however. Kabbalah teaches that in order to create the universe, God "withdrew," and created the universe within the space from which "He" contracted. It is taught in the Zohar that God, at the beginning of creation, shattered ten ספירות ("sephiroth") or כלים ("kaylim" or "vessels") scattering their fragments throughout the universe. (Physicist-theologian Gerald Schroeder makes a correlation between this view and Big Bang theory in Genesis & The Big Bang.) The sephiroth — represented by the so-called עץ חיים ("Etz Hayim" or "Tree of Life") — are comprised of different vessels embodying various emanations of God's being.
With this in mind, the Kabbalist Isaac Luria, explained that all creation contained ניצוץ ("nitzutz" or "holy sparks") — the remnants and shards of the sephiroth/kaylim which God had shattered — and offered a theological purpose known as תיקון עולם ("Tikkun Olam" or "healing the world") which states that humanity's duty is to recognize the holy sparks inherent in all creation and to elevate them by performing מצות ("mitzvoth"), otherwise regarded as the fulfillment of Biblical obligations. This view gave rise to the concept of panentheism in Judaism: The notion that God is inherent in all things, and is corroborated by the Jewish principle בצלם אלוהים ("b'tzelem Elohim" or "in the image of God"), inferring that all humanity is created with God inherent. The concept derives from Genesis 9:6 (serving as a Biblical proof-text for the position), "For in the image of God He made man." Thus, suggested Luria, by doing mitzvoth directed towards our fellow human being, we recognize the nitzutz within them, and thus sanctify and elevate their inherent Godliness.
This notion is exemplified rather well by a Jewish nursery school song:
Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere. Up, up, down, down, right, left, and all around. Here, there, and everywhere, Hashem is truly there.
Over time, this view evolved into the belief that all of creation and all of existence was in fact God itself, and that we as humanity are unaware of our own inherent Godliness and are grappling to come to terms with it. The standing view in neo-Hasidism, currently, is that there is nothing in existence other than God. I.e., all being is God. As it is stated in the ancient Kabbalistic incantation, אין עוד מילבדו ("Ain od milvado") — "There is nothing but God." Thus, it has become understood that God used God's self to form the universe. Rather than a contraction and the creation of something "other" in the void which God created, it is as though God punched a doughnut-hole in God's self and used the remaining "munchkin" to form all of creation.
This paradigm shift is well documented by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a Lubavitch Hasidic rabbi and founder of Jewish Renewal and its neo-Hasidic progeny, in his book Wrapped In A Holy Flame:
I'd like to say we are in the shift to the place where everything is God, pantheism. The understanding that has come from mysticism and from people on the cusp of periods moving from past to present, people talking about primary experience, is that the body and the soul cannot be separated. It shouldn't be that they should be fighting one another, that you have too get rid of one in order to get the other. We want Wholeness, a holistic understanding, now. I believe that people are moving from theism to pantheism. There are some who don't like the word pantheism, the idea that God is everything. They prefer the word panentheism, which means that God is in everything. I, however, don't think that the distinction is real. What was the objection that people had to pantheism, God is everything? "Are you going to tell me that the excrement of a dog is also God?" And the answer to this would be—"Yes." What is wrong with that? It is only from the human perspective that we see a difference between that and challah. On the sub molecular level, on the atomic level, they all look the same. And if you look from a galactic perspective, what difference is there between one and the other? So if "God is everything," why are you and I here? Because we are the appearance of God in this particular form. And God likes to appear in countless forms and experience countless lives.
If you would have mentioned this point of view when theism was dominant, you might have been killed. The theists would complain, "What you are saying is that there are no differences anymore? Does that mean that everything is right, everything is kosher? Where are the differences?" And those are good questions. We are not so far advanced yet that we can explain all these things, but deep down, the deepest level of the pattern is that God is everything. So it's not that God created the world but that God became the world.
Another progenitor of neo-Hasidism, Rabbi Arthur Green, further describes the evolution of pantheistic thought in the Hasidic world, as well, in his book Seek My Face: A Jewish Mystical Theology.
[edit] Quranic definitions of God Main article: Allah
Allah (Arabic allāhu الله) is traditionally used by Muslims as the Arabic word for "God" (not "God's personal name", but the equivalent of the Hebrew word "El" as opposed to "YHWH"). The word Allah is not specific to Islam; Arab Christians and Arab Jews also use it to refer to the monotheist deity. Arabic translations of the Bible also employ it, as do the Catholics of Malta who pronounce it as "Alla" in Maltese, a language derived from and most closely related to Arabic, as well as Christians in Indonesia, who pronounce it "Allah Bapa" (Allah the Father).
Many linguists believe that the term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic words al (the) + ilah (male deity). In addition, one of the main pagan goddesses of pre-Islamic Arabia, Allāt (al + ilāh + at, or 'the female deity'), is cited as being etymologically (though not synchronically) the feminine linguistic counterpart to the grammatically masculine Allah. If so, the word Allāh is an abbreviated title, meaning 'the deity', rather than a name. For this reason, both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars often translate Allāh directly into English as 'God' especially the Quran Alone Muslims; however, some Muslim scholars feel that "Allāh" should not be translated, because it expresses the uniqueness of God more accurately than "God", which can take a plural "Gods", whereas "Allāh" has no plural. This is a significant issue in translation of the Qur'an. This also explains why Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians freely refer to God as Allāh.
Most of the 99 names of God found in the Qur'an are not actually names, but attributes. One, however, Al Haq, meaning The Truth, seems to equate to absolute truth as that which cannot be negated. Al Haq is more than a reflection of faith in the existence of The God, and links the concept of God to all creation forever. Thus Allah transcends the prophetic origins of Islam and is thus universal in all time and applies to all existence -- past, present, and future.
[edit] Negative theology Main article: Apophatic Theology.
Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim Medieval philosophers, including Moses Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius developed what is termed as Apophatic Theology or the Via Negativa, the idea that one cannot posit attributes to God and can only be discussed by what God is not. For example, we should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term; all we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. We should not say that God is wise, but we can say that God is not ignorant. We should not say that God is One, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being. The reason that this theology was developed was because it was felt that ascribing positive characteristics to God would limit Him in some way, because we could not possibly know His true nature. For example, if one said that He was good, because our conception of "good" would be understood in human terms, it would not be a fit definition for His goodness.
The proponents of this theory also devised a system of meditation which they viewed as one of the only effective ways of having a personal relationship with God. It involved trying to think beyond the words commonly used to describe Him and about His more ineffable characteristics, which could help the practitioner learn truths about Him which could not be achieved through religious language.
[edit] God as Unity or Trinity Muslims, Jews, and a small fraction of Christians are unitarian monotheists. The vast majority of Christians have been and still are Trinitarian monotheists.
Unitarian monotheists hold that there is only one "person" (so to speak), or one basic substance, in God. Some adherents of this position consider Trinitarianism to be a form of polytheism. Trinitarian monotheists believe in one God that exists as three distinct persons who share the same substance/essence; the Christian version of this is called the Trinity. The Hindu version Trimurti, differs from Christianity in holding that God has three aspects (though shown as anthromorphs) rather than being three distinct persons. Trinitarians hold that the three persons have the same purpose, holiness, and sovereignty, and therefore each can be worshipped as God, without violating the idea that there is only one God to which worship belongs. The Smarta denomination of Hinduism also hold that belief and believe that worship of any aspect of God is equivalent. Although not a perfect analogy, the other denominations of Hinduism, Shaivism and Vaishnavism would be considered be unitarian monotheistic faiths. Ayyavazhi says Ayya Vaikundar as the unity of Ekam, Narayana and human (See:Ayyavazhi Trinity) Mormons believe that there are three separate divine personages. One of these personages is a spirit without a body referred to as the "Holy Ghost". The other two personages are resurrected beings with perfected or glorified (often called celestial) bodies referred to as Heavenly Father (or less commonly "Elohim") and his son, Jesus Christ. Mormons hold that God is a Holy Man who advanced to his divine status through a repeatable process of progression. They believe that by following their religion's teachings, humans can literally become gods (sometimes phrased as "become like Heavenly Father") at some point after death and resurrection; this is also called Exaltation. Rastafarians believe that Haile Selassie is both God the Father and God the Son, made manifest in human flesh as the reincarnation of Jesus, while the Holy Spirit is seen to dwell within all believers (of Rastafari), and within all people (believed by some). Hasidic Jews hold that there are ten Sefirot (emanations) of God. Each of these are more distinct than a characteristic, but less distinct than a separate personage. Monism is the metaphysical position that all is of one essential essence, substance or energy, that being a pantheist, or panentheist, immanent God. Monism can be inclusive of other interpretations of God. Dualism is the idea of two, nearly equal divine entities, one being the good God, and the other being an evil god, or Satan. All beings are under the influence of one side, or the other, if they know it or not. Zoroastrianism is an example of dualism. [edit] Binitarianism Binitarianism: A view within Christianity that there were originally two beings in the Godhead--the Father and the Word that became the Son (Jesus the Christ). Binitarians normally believe that God is a family, currently consisting of the Father and the Son. Some binitarians believe that others will ultimately be born into that divine family. Hence, binitarians are nontrinitarian, but they are also not unitarian. Binitarians, like most unitarians and trinitarians, claim their views were held by the original New Testament Church. Unlike most unitarians and trinitarians who tend to identify themselves by those terms, binitarians normally do not refer to their belief in the duality of the Godhead, with the Son subordinate to the Father, as binitarianism--they simply teach the Godhead in a manner that has been termed as binitarianism.
"The word “binitarian” is typically used by scholars and theologians as a contrast to a trinitarian theology: a theology of “two” in God rather than a theology of “three”... it is accurate to offer the judgment that most commonly when someone speaks of a Christian “binitarian” theology the “two” in God are the Father and the Son...A substantial amount of recent scholarship has been devoted to exploring the implications of the fact that Jesus was worshipped by those first Jewish Christians, since in Judaism "worship" was limited to the worship of God" (Barnes M. Early Christian Binitarianism: the Father and the Holy Spirit. Early Christian Binitarianism – as read at NAPS 2001). Much of this recent scholarship has been the result of the translations of the Nag Hammadi and other ancient manuscripts which were not available when older scholarly texts (such as W. Bousset's Kyrios Christos, 1913) were written.
Although some critics prefer to use the term ditheist or dualist instead of binitarian, those terms suggests that God is not one, yet binitarians believe that God is one family.
[edit] Conceptions of God in Hinduism
Aum. Found first in the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism, Aum has been seen as the first manifestation of the unmanifest Brahman (the single Divine Ground of Hinduism) that resulted in the phenomenal universe Krishna revealing the eternal super-consciousness to ArjunaThe Sanskrit and Hindi word for God, that is used most commonly, is Ishvara, lit., the Supreme Lord, pronounced as "īshvərə". Hindus believe that Ishvara is only One. This must not be confused with the numerous deities of the Hindus known as devas, which can number upto 330 million. A deva may be translated into English as a god, a deity, a demi-god, an angel or any celestial being or thing of high excellence, and hence is venerable. The Vedantic school of Hindu philosophy also has a notion of a Supreme Cosmic Spirit called Brahman, pronounced as "brəh mən". Brahman is (at best) described as that infinite, omnipresent, omnipotent, incorporeal, transcedent and immanent reality that is the divine ground of all existence in this universe. Brahman is actually undescribable. It is at best, "Sat" + "Chit" + "Ananda", ie, Infinite Truth, Infinite Conscioussness and Infinite Bliss. Brahman may be called as God, or better, as Godhead. A major branch of Hinduism, Advaita Vedanta, served as the fertile grounds from which one of the first monistic philosophies of God was developed. According to Advaitins, Brahman is the only Ultimate Reality in this world, and everything else is an illusion. They believe that Māyā is that complex illusionary power of Brahman which causes the Brahman to be seen as the distinct material world. When man tries to know the attributeless Brahman with his mind, under the influence of Maya, Brahman becomes God (Ishvara as described as above). God is Brahman with Maya. He is Saguna Brahman or Brahman with positive attributes. He is one and unique. He is omniscient, omnipresent, incorporeal, independent, creator of the world, its ruler and also destroyer. He is eternal and unchangeable. He rules the world with his Maya. However, while God is the Lord of Maya and she (ie, Maya) is always under His control, living beings (jīva, in the sense of humans) are the servants of Maya (in the form of ignorance). This ignorance is the cause of the unhappiness and sin in the mortal world. While God is Infinite Bliss, humans are misereable. God (Ishvara) always knows the unity of the Brahman substance, and the Mayic nature of the world. There is no place of a Satan or devil in Hinduism, unlike Abrahamic religions. Advaitins explain the misery because of ignorance. God or Ishvara can also be visualized and worshipped in anthromorphic form like Vishnu, Krishna or Shiva. The Advaita Vedanta philosophy continues with the view that once one becomes aware of the unity of being of Godhead, he will then be able to see beyond the illusions of division and separation from Godhead, and recognize his or her own inherent unity with the Brahman. See Advaita Vedanta. In the two largest branches of Hinduism, Shaivism and Vaishnavism, it is believed that Ishvara and Brahman are identical, and God is in turn anthromorphically identified with Shiva or Vishnu. God, whether in the form of Shiva or Vishnu has six attributes. However, the actual number of auspicious qualities of God, are countless, with the following six qualities being the most important. The number six is invariably given, but the individual attributes listed vary. One set of attributes (and their common interpretations) are: Jñāna (Omniscience), defined as the power to know about all beings simultaneously; Aishvarya (Sovereignty, derived from the word Ishvara), which consists in unchallenged rule over all; Shakti (Energy), or power, which is the capacity to make the impossible possible; Bala (Strength), which is the capacity to support everything by will and without any fatigue; Vīrya (Vigor), or valour which indicates the power to retain immateriality as the supreme being in spite of being the material cause of mutable creations; and Tejas (Splendor), which expresses his self-sufficiency and the capacity to overpower everything by his spiritual effulgence.; (cited from Bhakti Schools of Vedanta, by Swami Tapasyānanda.) A second set of six characteristics are Jñāna (Omniscience), Vairagya (Detachment), Yashas (Fame), Aishvarya (Sovereignty, derived from the word Ishvara), Srī (Glory) and Dharma (Righteousness). Other important qualities attributed to God are Gambhīrya (grandeur), Audārya (generosity), and Kārunya (compassion). Chanted prayers, or mantras, are central to Hindu worship. Many mantras are from the sacred Vedas, and in Sanskrit. Among the most chanted mantras in Hinduism are the Vishnu sahasranama (a prayer to Vishnu that dates from the time of the Mahabharata and describes him as the Universal Brahman), Shri Rudram (a Vedic hymn to Rudra, an earlier aspect of Shiva that also describes Him as Brahman) and the Gayatri mantra, (another Vedic hymn that initially was meant as a prayer to the Sun, an aspect of Brahman but has other interpretations. It is now interpreted as a prayer to the impersonal absolute Brahman). The followers of Shaktism like to conceive the divine power of the Ishvara as a female goddess, the divine mother called Devi or Durga. Another famous hymn, Lalitha Sahasranama, describes the 1000 names of Devi, worshipped as God the Divine Mother. It is important to add that in Hinduism (Sanatana Dharama) God is considered the Supreme Being, and many views of God range from panentheism to dualism to monism and monotheism. His appearance, in its entirety, cannot be comprehended by the common man. His appearance with form is only a manifestation of certain characteristics. The various forms of God or deities which apparently give Smarta Hinduism a character of polytheism, are regarded as mundane manifestations of One Brahman or Ishvara, only to facilitate his devotional worship. Ayyavazhi prefers almost a similar theory to Advaita Vedanta. However, Kashmir Shaivism, one notable Saivite branch disagrees and focuses on panentheism. Furthermore, it rejects the Mayan illusion theory by stating that if God is real, then His creation must be real and not illusory. In Hinduism there are two principle methods of worship:
To worship God through meditation on an icon (murti). To worship God without icon worship.(eg. non-anthromorphic symbols such as linga, saligrama, Ayyavazhi, or through meditation) In the early Upanishads the conception of the Divine Teacher guru on earth. Indeed, there is an understanding in some Hindu sects that if the devotee were presented with the guru and God, first he should pay respects to the guru since the guru had been instrumental in leading him to God. Hence many gurus have the epithet of Bhagwan, a term often confused with God.
Hari Bhakti Vilasa mantra ( 4.344) Prathamam tu gurum pujya tatas caiva mamarcanam Kuran siddhim avapnoti hy anyatha nisphalam bhavet One does not directly worship one's God. One must begin by the worship of the Guru. Only by pleasing the Guru and gaining his mercy, can one offer anything to God. Thus, before worshiping God, one must always worship the Guru. See also Guru.
[edit] Christian Monism Within the body of Christian belief, the only well-known developed system of monism is found within the recently developed (1975) teachings of the book known as A Course In Miracles (ACIM). The philosophical system of ACIM presents what appears to be a unique synthesis of Hindu monistic Advaita Vedanta teachings, blended with the early Christian teaching of the universal-fatherhood-of-God belief. In this philosophy God retains the traditional Christian role of an All loving, all forgiving Father, as portrayed in the Christian allegory of the Prodigal Son, yet God is also attributed with the qualities of complete oneness with all of mankind. The apparent contrast between the existence of this oneness with God, and the common belief in human separation from God, is explained by the belief that man's apparent separation from God is a mere illusion, an illusion that can be overcome by gaining a full understanding of, and by adopting an unfailing practice of, the dynamics of Christian forgiveness.
[edit] The Ultimate Arguably, Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate (this, too, has many different names), except for Shaivism and Vaishnavism, which do focus on a personal God, are not conceptions of a personal divinity, though certain Western conceptions of what is at least called "God" (e.g., Spinoza's pantheistic conception and various kinds of mysticism) resemble Eastern conceptions of The Ultimate.
[edit] Aristotelian definition of God Main article: Aristotelian view of God.
In his Metaphysics, Aristotle discusses meaning of "being as being". Aristotle holds that "being" primarily refers to the Unmoved Movers, and assigned one of these to each movement in the heavens. Each Unmoved Mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation, and everything that fits the second meaning of "being" by having its source of motion in itself, moves because the knowledge of its Mover causes it to emulate this Mover (or should).
Aristotle's "unmoved mover" is very unlike the conception of God which one sees in most religions. It has been likened to a person who is playing dominos and pushes one of them over, so that every other domino in the set is pushed over as well, without the being having to do anything about it. This differs to the interpretation of God in most religions, where He is seen to be personally involved in His creation.
[edit] Modern views [edit] Process philosophy and Open Theism Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Open theism, a theological movement that began in the 1990s, is similar, but not identical, to Process theology. In both views, God is not omnipotent in the classical sense of a coercive being. Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God and creatures co-create. God cannot force anything to happen, but rather only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. See the entries on Process theology, Panentheism, and Open theism.
[edit] Posthuman God Similar to this theory is the belief or aspiration that humans will create a God entity, emerging from an artificial intelligence. Arthur C. Clarke, world-renowned science fiction author, said in an interview, "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him." Clarke's friend and colleague, the late Isaac Asimov, postulated in his story "The Last Question" a merger between humanity and machine intelligence that ultimately produces a deity capable of reversing entropy and subsequently initiates a new Creation trillions of years from the present era when the Universe is in the last stage of heat death.
Another variant on this hypothesis is that humanity or a segment of humanity will create or evolve into a posthuman God by itself; for some examples, see cosmotheism, transhumanism, technological singularity, and omega point.
[edit] Extraterrestrials Some comparatively new belief systems and books portray God as Extraterrestrial life. Many of these theories hold that intelligent beings from another world have been visiting Earth for many thousands of years, and have influenced the development of our religions. Some of these books posit that prophets or messiahs were sent to the human race in order to teach morality and encourage the development of civilization. (See e.g. Rael). Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, suggested that life on Earth originated far away because of what he considered to be a miniscule timeframe allotted by scientists for the emergence of life on Earth.
[edit] Phenomenological definition The philosopher Michel Henry defines God in a phenomenological point of view. He says : "God is Life, he is the essence of Life, or, if we prefer, the essence of Life is God. Saying this we already know what is God, we know it not by the effect of a learning or of some knowledge, we don’t know it by the thought, on the background of the truth of the world ; we know it and we can know it only in and by the Life itself. We can know it only in God." (I Am the Truth. Toward a Philosophy of Christianity).
This Life is not biological life defined by objective and exterior properties, nor an abstract and empty philosophical concept, but the absolute phenomenological life, a radically immanent life which possesses in it the power of showing itself in itself without distance, a life which reveals permanently itself.
[edit] The Rosicrucian conception of God Main article: The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception
According to Max Heindel's The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, and in Esoteric Christianity, in the beginning of a Day of Manifestation a certain collective Great Being, God, limits Himself to a certain portion of space, in which He elects to create a Solar System for the evolution of added self-consciousness.
Heindel states that in the Solar system, God's Habitation, there are seven Worlds differentiated by God, within Himself, one after another. Rosicrucians teach that the, above referred, seven Worlds belong to the lowest of the seven "Cosmic Planes". The Worlds and Cosmic Planes are not one above another in space, but the seven Cosmic Planes inter-penetrate each other and all the seven Worlds. They are states of spirit-matter, permeating one another, so that God and the other great Beings pervade every part of their own realms and realms of greater density than their own, including our world.
[edit] Neurobiological findings on belief In the year 2005, some views have been proposed by a scientific approach to the physiological effects of religious experience in the human body. Neurobiological research [1] coupled with modern medical imaging, especially tomography, suggests a few things: it appears that serotonin is generated in some areas of the brain of people having religious experiences, and may have specific effects. These include the ability of believers to better cope with stressful situations. Viewed from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, this would suggest that in an uncontrolled environment, religious faith would objectively increase fitness for individuals.
These views lead to very original conclusions. For the first time, the faith becomes a materially identifiable phenomenon, thus non-deniable on an objective basis. As a reaction to environmental stress, it could be re-named as an efficient survival strategy within a non-controllable environment. Subsequently, the religious behaviour seems to be an especially human attribute, enabled by the human brain complexity. Probably the most surprising outcome of such a material investigation is that God is eternal. Indeed, because environmental uncertainty is unlikely to disappear, so is God.
[edit] Notes and references ^ Jacqueline Borg team - Karolinska university - Stockholm - Swedeen - The Serotonin System and Spiritual Experiences - American Journal of Psychiatry 160:1965-1969, November 2003.
Pickover, Cliff, The Paradox of God and the Science of Omniscience, Palgrave/St Martin's Press, 2001. Miles, Jack, God : A Biography, Knopf, 1995; Book description. Armstrong, Karen, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Ballantine Books, 1994. Rotch, Mike, God, the Sheep, and Me... And Other Stories of Godly En(tendre)counters, Modern Christian Press, 2003. [edit] See also Allah Atheism Agnosticism Arguments for the existence of God Arguments against the existence of God Baal Deism Existence of God God and gender God complex God in Buddhism God realm Jesus Jehovah Krishna List of appearances of God in fiction Natural theology Nontheism Pantheism Polytheism The Higgs boson, the God particle Theism Transtheism Planes of existence Yahuah Yazidi [edit] External links Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: GodCheung, Vincent (2003). "Systematic Theology" Dwyer, Francis (2005). "Theologian Elections" Draye, Hani (2004). Concept of God in Islam. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Aish HaTorah (2003). Binitarian View: One God, Two Beings from Before the Beginning Updated 10/05 Jewish Literacy. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Preston, Gregory (2005). Seeking Divine Guidance & Concepts of God. Nicholls, David (2004). DOES GOD EXIST?. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Salgia, Amar (1997)Creator-God and Jainism Retrieved October 18, 2005. shaivam.org (2004). Hindu Concept of God. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Schlecht, Joel (2004). The God Particle. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2004). Moral Arguments for the Existence of God. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2005). God and Other Necessary Beings. Retrieved June 26, 2005. Students of Shari'ah (2005). Proof Of Creator. Retrieved June 26, 2005. The Freethought Zone (2000). Arguments for Atheism. Retrieved June 26, 2005. All About God (2002). God - Scientific & Philosophical Arguments for God. Retrieved September 9, 2005. Journal of Religion and Society (2005). Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God"
Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter computer game and the highly anticipated sequel to Half-Life, developed by Valve Corporation. It was released on November 16, 2004 to very positive reviews [2], following a protracted five-year development cycle during which the game's source code was leaked to the Internet. Taking place in the fictional City 17 sometime in the near future, Half-Life 2 follows scientist Gordon Freeman and the events that happen around him. The game utilizes the Source game engine, coupled with a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine. The game has been critically acclaimed for advances in computer animation, computer graphics, artificial intelligence (AI) and physics, although it is controversial among many people for the introduction of Valve's Steam content delivery service. Since its release, the game has sold over 3 million copies [3]. Steam sales account for 25% of overall sales; their exact number is between 750, 000 and 937,500 depending on whether they are included in the figure of 3 million [4].
Contents [hide] 1 Story 1.1 Plot 1.2 Narration 1.3 Setting 2 Gameplay 2.1 Characters and creatures 2.2 Weapons 2.3 Multiplayer 3 Technical 3.1 Game engine 3.2 Steam content delivery system 3.3 Release and distribution 4 Mods and expansions 5 Cuts from the game 6 Further reading 7 References 8 External links 8.1 Official 8.2 Fansites/communities 8.3 Development communities 8.4 Related resources 8.5 Individual articles
[edit] Story [edit] Plot Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. The original Half-Life largely takes place at a remote underground laboratory called the Black Mesa Research Facility. When conducting an experiment, researchers at Black Mesa accidentally cause a "resonance cascade," opening a portal to an alien world called Xen, releasing a flood of strange and deadly creatures. The player takes the role of Gordon Freeman, one of the research scientists, guiding him in his attempt to escape the facility while wearing the Hazardous EnVironment (HEV) suit. At the end of the game Gordon is "extracted" by a mysterious figure known as the G-Man who offers him future employment. Half-Life 2 picks up the story an indeterminate number of years after the Black Mesa incident in City 17. However, a story fragment written by author Marc Laidlaw for the development team puts the intermission at ten years. [4]
At the start of the game, the G-Man speaks to Gordon Freeman as part of a hallucination, telling him that his "time has come." Freeman then finds himself riding a train into City 17, unarmed and without his HEV suit. Details begin to slowly emerge: City 17 is under the rule of a totalitarian administrator named Doctor Breen, the former administrator of the Black Mesa Research Facility in Half-Life. However, Breen is merely a puppet ruler who is carrying out the will of the aliens known as the Combine. It seems that the events of Half-Life were enough to attract the attention of the Combine, who soon after mounted a brutal assault on humanity in which the forces of Earth were completely overwhelmed in just seven hours (appropriately referred to as the 7-hours War). The Combine now has near-absolute control of the entire planet, with only a few pockets of human resistance remaining. Doctor Breen enforces his rule (and, by extension, the Combine's rule) through armies of intimidating Civil Protection units (also called "Metropolice" or "Metrocops") and Combine soldiers (referred to as the Overwatch).
Chapter sequence
Chapter 1: Point Insertion Chapter 2: A Red Letter Day Chapter 3: Route Kanal Chapter 4: Water Hazard Chapter 5: Black Mesa East Chapter 6: "We Don't Go To Ravenholm..." Chapter 7: Highway 17 Chapter 8: Sandtraps Chapter 9: Nova Prospekt Chapter 10: Entanglement Chapter 11: Anticitizen One Chapter 12: "Follow Freeman!" Chapter 13: Our Benefactors Chapter 14: Dark Energy
When Dr. Kleiner's teleporter malfunctions, Gordon is momentarily transported to Doctor Breen's office.Once Gordon gets off the train, he eventually meets up with his old friend Barney Calhoun from Black Mesa who now has infiltrated Civil Protection, for the resistance. Barney shows Gordon the way to reach Doctor Kleiner's lab, but along the way, the Civil Protection detects Gordon and he has to flee. Surrounded and stunned by the Civil Protection, Gordon is rescued by Alyx Vance, the daughter of Doctor Eli Vance, and is taken to Doctor Kliener's lab. After Gordon is outfitted with his trusty HEV suit, Dr. Kliener wants to teleport Alyx and Gordon to Black Mesa East, where Alyx's father is waiting. Although Alyx makes it to her father's lab, Doctor Kleiner's debeaked pet headcrab Lamarr wrecks the teleporter in mid-sequence, briefly transporting Gordon to the office of Doctor Breen twice, among several other locations. He then ends up outside Kleiner's lab, where Barney gives Gordon his old crowbar. The entire city is on high alert for Gordon, and Barney tells him to take the canals to get to Eli's lab.
Gordon then navigates the city's canals, being chased by Civil Protection and finding small resistance bases populated by both humans and Vortigaunts, who are now allies. After being helped through an underground railroad system, Gordon is provided an air boat, allowing him greater expediency. However, the air boat is soon spotted by the Combine and relentlessly pursued by a Hunter-Chopper assault helicopter. At another resistance base, a Vortigaunt affixes a weapon to the craft capable of downing the helicopter, which Gordon eventually does.
Gordon then arrives at Black Mesa East and meets Doctor Judith Mossman. Alyx gives him a new experimental weapon called the Zero-Point Energy Field Manipulator (also known as the gravity gun) and instructs Gordon on its use while also introducing Dog, Alyx's pet robot. In the middle of playing "fetch," the lab is attacked by the Combine, forcing Gordon to escape along an old tunnel leading to Ravenholm. Alyx and the rest stay behind.
A group of Antlions attacking Gordon.Gordon quickly discovers why Ravenholm was abandoned; the town was shelled by the Combine, causing Ravenholm to be overrun with headcrabs and zombies. Father Grigori, a slightly-insane priest and likely the last human resident of Ravenholm, helps him survive the deadly town and escorts him to an abandoned mine which eventually leads to the dockyards outside City 17. Gordon then finds another resistance base under assault by Combine troops. Through a transmission, Alyx tells him that Eli has been captured and is being held in Nova Prospekt, an old maximum-security prison, now a factory where the Combine creates Overwatch Soldiers and Stalkers. Gordon travels the coast road in a dune buggy, helping down a Combine gunship after meeting Colonel Odessa Cubbage at another resistance base, who gives him an RPG launcher. After battling small pockets of Combine soldiers along the road, Gordon finally arrives at the Lighthouse Point resistance base and must continue the journey to Nova Prospekt on foot following a large-scale skirmish between the Combine and his allies in the resistance. The journey is made more difficult because it's spawning season for the insect-like Antlions, which swarm the area and are hidden underground, emerging to attack at the slightest footstep. After defeating an enormous "Antlion Guard," Gordon is given pheropods (aka pheromone grenades or bugbait): a gland filled with pheromones that pacify the smaller Antlions and allow Gordon to command them, by a Vortigaunt.
Finally reaching the old prison, Gordon searches within for clues to Doctor Vance's whereabouts. The Antlions' assistance helps to even the overwhelming odds against him.
Gordon joins forces with Alyx again, and together they find both Eli and Doctor Judith Mossman, the latter apparently found to be a Combine agent. The four meet at a Combine teleportation room, preparing to return to Kliener's lab. While Gordon and Alyx are distracted by a Combine assault, however, Mossman teleports herself and Eli into the Citadel, the Combine's base of operations. Gordon and Alyx barely manage to teleport themselves to Dr. Kleiner's lab before the teleporter explodes, but a strange malfunction in the equipment has caused them to arrive at Doctor Kleiner's lab a week after they teleported. Meanwhile, Gordon's struggles against the Combine have brought new life to the resistance, plunging City 17 into chaos. Resistance fighters led by Gordon travel towards the Citadel to free Doctor Vance while Alyx helps Doctor Kleiner escape the lab.
Gordon and some resistance fighters help take down a strider.After rescuing Barney, who has been pinned down by snipers, Gordon shuts down a suppressor field blocking access to the Citadel. A pack of powerful Combine war-machines, the Striders, attack until they are finally destroyed by RPG fire. In the process, Alyx briefly rejoins and accompanies Gordon in a battle, but is knocked out and captured by Combine forces.
Gordon enters the Citadel through an underground passage. Faced with a dead end, he is forced to enter a rail-driven containment apparatus. After a long trip through the Citadel, all his weapons are destroyed by a Dark energy-powered "confiscation field." However, the strange technology of the gravity gun absorbs the energy from the beam and shorts it out. It can now manipulate organic matter, instantly killing Combine forces, and its lift strength is greatly increased. Armed with only the new gravity gun, Gordon wreaks havoc upon the Citadel until he is again faced with a dead end. Once more, the only way to progress is to voluntarily enter a containment apparatus, which brings him face-to-face with Doctor Breen, who takes the gravity gun while Gordon is immobilized. Doctor Judith Mossman is with Breen, and he summons Eli and Alyx, who are being held in similar devices. As Breen threatens Gordon, Judith finally turns against him: she had only "betrayed" the resistance for an opportunity to infiltrate Breen's inner circle. Breen manages to escape and flees towards a huge teleporter that will take him to the Combine's world. Freed, Gordon and Alyx pursue him and destroy the teleporter, triggering a massive explosion. However, the G-Man appears, seemingly "stops time" and saves Gordon from the ensuing blast.
[edit] Narration Throughout the entire game, Freeman never speaks, and the action is viewed through his eyes only (i.e., there are no cut scenes).
There has been some complaint [5] about these holdovers, since they effectively limit how much of the backstory is explained. Due to the lack of cut scenes, the player never directly sees what has happened in Gordon's absence. Additionally, it would seem natural for Freeman to have a great deal of curiosity as to what has happened since the Black Mesa incident. In Half-Life it could be said that the player's bewilderment mirrors Gordon's during the chaotic events following the resonance cascade and alien invasion. By the opening of Half-Life 2; however, Gordon has proven that he can survive in strange and hostile environments, and should therefore be at least somewhat more level-headed and inquisitive.
In any case, it's not clear to what extent Gordon exists as a separate character outside of the player's influence. Since the start of Half-Life, Valve has made sure that the player's and Gordon's experience are one and the same. Gordon may be nothing more than an empty vessel for someone else (i.e. the player) to inhabit. Some of the Vortigaunts' enigmatic comments in the game seem to indicate this, the most prominent being:
"Far distant eyes look out through yours ... How many are there in you? Whose hopes and dreams do you encompass?" Adding to the sense of mystery is the fact that while most of Gordon's former co-workers from Black Mesa have visibly aged in the interim, Gordon has (presumably) not; however, only a few passing references are ever made regarding this. The game never specifies how many years have passed between Half-Life and Half-Life 2, but a story fragment written by Marc Laidlaw (featured in Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar) describes the transition as being a full ten years. Fans have speculated that Gordon has been kept in stasis during his absence, and this is reinforced by the presence of a strange "inter-dimensional tram ride" that Gordon finds himself on at the end of both Half-Life games, and the G-Man's repeated emphasis of the word time. Another cited explanation is that Gordon has been transferred using a "slow teleport," similar to the one discovered by the player at the end of the Nova Prospekt chapter, or otherwise sent forward in time.
The ending of Half-Life 2 is also very similar to that of the original: after completing a difficult task against seemingly overwhelming odds, Gordon is "extracted" by the G-Man, wielding incredible but unexplained powers. The player is smugly congratulated and told that further assignments should follow. The fate of many of the major characters, such as Alyx, Eli, and Judith, go unexplained. Very few, if any, of the questions raised by Half-Life are answered, and instead several new ones are presented. The identity and nature of the G-Man still remains undisclosed.
[edit] Setting
A Civil Protection officer is about to hit Gordon. In the background, the architecture has an Eastern European-style to it, mixed in with Combine architecture.The environments in Half-Life 2 are varied, ranging from the Eastern European-styled City 17 and surrounding areas, to the massive Combine citadel. There is a general Eastern European "feel" present throughout the human-populated areas, and it has been speculated that City 17 is based on Sofia, Bulgaria, the hometown of the art director of Half-Life 2, Viktor Antonov. This is based on both City 17's general resemblance to Sofia and the frequent appearance of Bulgarian words (written in Cyrillic characters) on signs and graffiti throughout the game (although some of these are words in other Slavic languages as well). One clear example is "цимент" ("cement") written across the top of a large building in Ravenholm - the only language that spells this word in this way, using the Cyrillic alphabet, is Bulgarian. Many old cars scattered throughout the game are similar to ones commonly found in Eastern Europe, such as Moskvitchs and Volgas. Also, during the game, Gordon comes to a Resistance settlement called "New Little Odessa." Odessa is a major city located on the coast of Ukraine, approximately 500 miles from Sofia.
A prominent character encountered in play, Father Grigori, has a name common to Eastern European countries and an accent that is stereotypically Eastern European. Some believe that the name City 17 itself is actually a reference to the Soviet practice of numbering secret closed cities rather than naming them. However, in addition to incorporating Eastern European elements, examples of Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Swedish and French influences also exist, suggesting that the setting is something of a montage of European locations.
[edit] Gameplay Half-Life 2's gameplay is broadly similar to that of the original. Players make their way through a linear series of levels, encountering both human troops and hostile alien wildlife. As in Half-Life, the gameplay is broken up with a series of puzzles; however this time the addition of physics-based puzzles are included. For example, one puzzle requires the player to turn a seesaw-like lever into a ramp by placing cinder blocks at one end.
The use of physics extends into the combat, in the form of the gravity gun. This unique weapon plays a crucial function throughout the game, granting the player an unprecedented amount of creativity in its use, such as picking up and throwing objects at enemies, holding objects indefinitely for use as makeshift shields, grabbing health and ammunition from out of reach places, returning enemies' grenades, building makeshift bridges or manipulate objects through Combine forcefield generators.
Vehicles are another major gameplay addition. The player has the ability to drive two vehicles during the single player campaign; an air boat, which Gordon uses to navigate through the canal network, and a dune buggy which Gordon uses to get to Nova Prospekt. The air boat is initially unarmed, but is later mounted with a Combine weapon from a downed Hunter-Chopper. The buggy is armed with a Gauss Gun similar to the one found in the original Half-Life.
[edit] Characters and creatures
Manhacks attacking Gordon, who is using his trusty crowbar to fend them off.Although Gordon battles through much of Half-Life 2 alone, like Half-Life he is assisted in several places by friendly allies. For the most part these are human members of the Resistance, but Gordon is also helped by Vortigaunts and later Antlions. This latter insectoid species is new to Half-Life 2 and is encountered first as a fiercely territorial foe, but is later co-opted into acting as an abundant and obedient ally. At several key locations, Gordon also meets up with, and fights alongside, more significant non-player characters like Alyx Vance, Barney Calhoun and Alyx's robot, Dog.
Many familiar enemies from Half-Life return in this game, such as the Headcrab, Barnacles, and Headcrab zombies, but the majority of the game is spent fighting the Combine, who wield large military forces against Gordon and the people of City 17. Combine forces are varied and consist of modified humans, biomechanical machines, and robot weapons. There are also large, biomechanical, three legged tanks, similar to the classic Tripods found in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. These are referred to by members of the human resistance as Striders which the Combine uses to help suppress the resistance forces and patrol City 17.
[edit] Weapons Main article: List of weapons in Half-Life 2 Many of the weapons featured in Half-Life 2 are carried over from Half-Life, including the crowbar, SPAS-12 shotgun, .357 Magnum revolver, Gauss Gun, crossbow, and Rocket propelled grenade launcher. Several new ones are also introduced: the Combine pulse rifle, pheropods (bug bait), and most significantly, the "Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator" (or Gravity Gun).
[edit] Multiplayer Half-Life 2 was released without a multiplayer component of the game and was instead packaged with Counter-Strike: Source. This later changed on November 30, 2004 when Valve released the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch component (HL2DM) along with the full SDK as a free download to all Half-Life 2 owners.
Like other deathmatch games, the aim is to kill as many other players as possible, using a variety of means, in either free-for-all or team matches. The player spawns with a gravity gun, a pistol, a sub-machine gun, and grenades. All weapons included in the single player portion of Half-Life 2, with the exception of the pheropod/bugbait, are available and scattered randomly around the maps. Players can be killed in a number of ways, including gunfire, explosions, or through contact with physics objects traveling at high speeds.
HL2DM's February 17th update is of particular note as it introducd a new map dm_steamlab and three new weapons that had been missing from the game previously, or cut before it shipped. The crowbar and the stunstick depending on the player model (Rebel or Combine); and the SLAM, or Selectable Lightweight Attack Munition, a real-world weapon which can either be thrown and detonated or planted on walls to produce a 'tripwire' laser which detonates the device when touched.
Official Half-Life 2 DM maps Name Release date Author Setting dm_lockdown Nov. 30 2004 Valve (Adrian Finol) Nova Prospekt dm_overwatch Nov. 30 2004 Valve (Adrian Finol) City 17 (Follow Freeman!) dm_steamlab Feb. 17 2005 Valve (Jess Cliffe) Concrete laboratory dm_powerhouse Apr. 13 2005 Third-party (Michael Schulz) Generic Industrial dm_resistance Apr. 13 2005 Third-party (Jonathan Linker) "Bodies" from Blood dm_underpass Apr. 13 2005 Third-party (Scott M Jordan) City 17 railway dm_runoff Apr. 25 2005 Valve (Jess Cliffe) Water Hazard
[edit] Technical [edit] Game engine Main article: Source engine
Doctor Breen's office at the top of the Citadel, showing the advanced lighting abilities of the Source engineFor Half-Life 2, Valve developed a new game engine called the Source engine, which handles the game's visual, audio, and artificial intelligence (AI) elements. The Source engine comes packaged with a heavily modified version of the Havok physics engine that allows for an extra dimension of interactivity in both single player and online environments.
Additionally, when coupled with Steam, the engine can be easily upgraded to include many new graphical technologies. One such example is high dynamic range imaging, which Valve released as a 15-minute free outdoor level called Lost Coast.
[edit] Steam content delivery system Main article: Steam (content delivery)
The Steam user interfaceIntegral to Half-Life 2 is the Steam content delivery system developed by Valve Corporation. All users playing the single player or multiplayer game are required to have Steam installed and an account with Steam to play. The accounts allow customers to purchase games other software straight from the developer and have it downloaded directly to their computer, in addition to having their games updated with "micro updates." These updates also make hacking the game harder to do and has thus far been somewhat successful in staving off cheats and playability for users with unauthorized copies. Steam can also be used for finding and playing multiplayer games through an integrated server browser and friends list, and game data can be backed up with a standard CD or DVD burner. Lastly, Steam and a customer's purchased content can be downloaded onto any computer, as long as that account is only logged in at one location at a time.
Users have had numerous problems with Steam, sometimes being enough to prevent a reviewer from recommending a given title available on the service. In other cases, review scores have been lowered. Long download times, seemingly unnecessary updates, and verification checks are criticisms levelled by critics of the system's use for single player games such as Half-Life 2. Whether or not a customer intends to use any multiplayer features, the computer the game was installed on must have Steam and an Internet connection to verify the transaction.
[edit] Release and distribution A 1 gigabyte portion of Half-Life 2 became available for pre-load through Steam on August 26, 2004. This meant that customers could begin to download encrypted game files to their computer before the game was released. When the game's release date arrived, customers were able to pay for the game through Steam, unlock the files on their hard drives and play the game immediately, without having to wait for the whole game to download. The pre-load period lasted for several weeks, with several subsequent portions of the game being made available, to ensure all customers had a chance to download the content before the game was released.
Half-Life 2 was simultaneously released through Steam, CD (most initial U.S. "bare-bones" retail copies), and on DVD in several editions. Through Steam, Half-Life 2 had three packages that a customer could order. The basic version ("Bronze") only includes Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source, whereas the "Silver" and "Gold" (collector's edition) versions also include Half-Life: Source and Day of Defeat: Source (ports of the original Half-Life and Day of Defeat mod to the new engine) as well as the right to download all previous games by Valve through Steam. The collector's edition/Gold version additionally includes merchandise such as a t-shirt, and a strategy guide. Both the disc and Steam version require Steam to be installed and active for play.
A single-CD demo version was later made available in December 2004 at the web site of graphics card manufacturer ATI Technologies, who teamed up with Valve for the game. In September 2005, Electronic Arts published the Game of the Year edition of Half-Life 2. Compared to the original CD-release of Half-Life 2, the GOTY edition adds Half-Life: Source.
An Xbox version also published by Electronic Arts was released on November 15, 2005, but does not feature any multiplayer components.
[edit] Mods and expansions Main articles: Half-Life 2: Lost Coast, Half-Life 2: Aftermath & Half-Life 2 mods Since the release of Half-Life 2, Valve has announced plans to release an additional level and an expansion pack. The level, "Lost Coast," takes place between the levels "Highway 17" and "Sandtraps" and is primarily a showcase for high dynamic range imaging (HDR) technology. The expansion pack, Half-Life 2: Aftermath will take place shortly after the events of Half-Life 2, with the player taking on the role of Gordon Freeman once again. Alyx Vance will also play a more prominent role.
Several mods have been developed by the Half-Life 2 community. This includes partial conversions which allow players to manipulate the physics engine (Garry's Mod), add new weapons, or even new levels to expand the story from different points of view. Some total conversions have also been developed, which introduce completely new settings, multiplayer modes, or entirely new and original types of games.
[edit] Cuts from the game The book Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar [6] revealed many of the game's original settings and action that were cut down or removed entirely from the final game. Half-Life 2 was originally intended to be a far darker game where the Combine were more obviously draining the oceans for minerals and replacing the atmosphere with noxious, murky gasses. This quote from the book, from an early draft of the introductory sequence, gives a feel for what the game would have been like:
"Off to one side, you see another train hurtling through the dusk. It gives you some sense of the train you are riding. The nose of the engine car is protected by a huge, deadly variant of a cow-catcher, a sharpened steel plough designed to shear through herds of whatever creatures might stray across the tracks or try to take the train head-on. Something that resembles the old Gargantua looms up from a fissure, lunging at the parallel train, and the engine slices right through the thing, leaving it in gory pieces on the track."
In addition, the evolution of Nova Prospekt is described: originally as a small Combine rail depot built on an old prison in the wasteland (the depot model remains in the game, visible from the beach and trash compactor) it grew and grew from a stopping-off point along the way to the destination itself.
Promotional shots and gameplay videos released before the game became available showed parts of these scenes, and also showed enemies which do not appear anywhere in the final game, such as a hydra-like enemy. The hydra was apparently cut because its AI proved troublesome: while impressive when attacking NPCs, it was less interesting and frustrating for players to fight.
It remains unknown if most of the cut Half-Life 2 scenes will eventually be completed and released, or if they are lost forever. A removed section of the original Half-Life was eventually released as the Half-Life: Uplink demo; a similar situation was in place with the HDR technology demo, Lost Coast, which was based on a cut scene from the sequel. It is possible or even likely that more removed sections of HL2 will be seen in expansion packs such as Half-Life 2: Aftermath.
[edit] Further reading 7-hours War Half-Life 2 controversies and criticisms Half-Life 2 mods List of weapons in Half-Life 2 [edit] References ^ Half-Life 2 reviews for the PC. GameTab. URL accessed on June 5, 2005. ^ A primer on HDR and a tour of Valve's Lost Coast. Arstechnica.com. URL accessed on September 16, 2005. ^ Steam's Finances. The Steam Review. URL accessed on October 26, 2005. ^ Half-Life 2 for PC Review. GameSpot. URL accessed on October 10, 2005. ^ a Hodgson, David (2004). Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar, Prima Games. ISBN 0761543643. [edit] External links [edit] Official Official Half-Life 2 website Steam homepage Half-Life 2 demo (1CD) [edit] Fansites/communities Halflife2.Net - Largest Half-Life 2 community Half-Life Fan Network - Half-Life StealthHouse is a Fan Network for the Half-Life Series Games. HLFallout - A popular Half-Life 2 fansite. HL2 Central - One of the oldest Half-Life 2 fansites. HLForums.com - A popular Half-Life related community along with Half-Life related news. Half-Life Portal - A Half-Life site Half-Life 3d Animations - A Half-Life mini movie site Planet Half-Life [edit] Development communities sourceWiki - For Half-Life 2 mod developers Half-Life 2 Wiki. A complete knowledge base and tutorial dump for Half-Life 2. Valve Developer Community - A wiki made by Valve to aid in the editing of Half-Life 2 [edit] Related resources interlopers.net A site that collects tutorials for Hammer mapping as well as texturing and other Source SDK related content. VisualWalkthroughs.com - Screenshot-based Half-Life 2 walkthrough 3DBuzz Offers several free video tutorials on how to use the Hammer editor [edit] Individual articles Half-Life Saga Story Guide - A speculative timeline of the Half-Life games' plot as a whole. Pidgeon's guide - A guide for console commands that can be used in Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 tweak guide at TweakGuides.com MobyGames' entry on Half-Life 2 Half-Life 2: Under The Surface - NTSC-uk examines Half-Life 2.
A monkey is any member of two of the three groupings of simian primates. These two groupings are the New World and Old World monkeys of which together there are nearly 200 species. Because of their similarity to monkeys, apes such as chimpanzees and gibbons are sometimes incorrectly called monkeys. Also, a few monkey species have the word "ape" in their common name. Because they are not a single coherent group, monkeys do not have any important characteristics that they all share and are not shared with the remaining group of simians, the apes.
Monkeys range in size from the Pygmy Marmoset, at 10 cm (4 inch) long (plus tail) and 120 g (4 oz) in weight to the male Mandrill, almost 1 metre (3 ft) long and weighing 35 kg (75 lb). Some are arboreal (living in trees), some live on the savanna; diets differ among the various species but may contain any of the following: fruit, leaves, seeds, nuts, flowers, insects, spiders, eggs and small animals.
Some characteristics are shared among the groups; most New World monkeys have prehensile tails while Old World monkeys do not; some have trichromatic colour vision like that of humans, others are dichromats or monochromats. Although both the New and Old World monkeys, like the apes, have forward facing eyes, the faces of Old World and New World monkeys look very different though again, each group shares some features such as the types of noses, cheeks and rumps. To understand the monkeys, therefore, it is necessary to study the characteristics of the different groups individually.
The name monkey may come from a German version of the Reynard the Fox fable, published in around 1580. In this version of the fable, a character named Moneke is the son of Martin the Ape. The word Moneke may have been derived from the Italian monna, which means "a female ape." The name Moneke persisted over time likely due to the popularity of Reynard the Fox.
Contents [hide] 1 Monkeys in captivity 1.1 As pets 1.2 In laboratories 2 Classification 3 Monkeys in pop culture 4 Zodiac 5 See also 6 References
[edit] Monkeys in captivity
A macaque sits in a cage in a German laboratory. [1][edit] As pets Generally, monkeys do not make good pets. They may appear to be nice and friendly and may resemble human babies for some people, but they should not be looked at as pets. While baby monkeys are usually as easy to keep clean as a human infant (by diapering), monkeys that have reached puberty usually remove their diapers and cannot be toilet trained. They require constant supervision and mental stimulation. They usually require a large amount of attention. Monkeys can not handle being away from their owners for long periods of times, such as family trips for example, due to their need of attention. Bored monkeys can become extremely destructive and may even go so far as to smear or throw their own feces. There needs to be a lot of time set aside for cleaning up whatever mess the monkey might make. Most adolescent monkeys begin to bite unpredictably and pinch adults and children. Any surgical means to stem this behavior (such removing the teeth or fingertips of the monkey) is widely considered cruel, and it is usually difficult to find veterinarians who will treat them: even exotic-animal veterinarians may not be familiar with them. The nice looking monkey eventually has to grow up and may in most cases become wild and not easy to control. The monkeys may also become aggressive even to their owners. They can change from one minute to the next without warning making it hard for the owner to fully understand them.
While a majority of monkey owners find other homes for them, such as zoos and monkey rescues, some people report having long and rewarding relationships with monkeys. Monkeys are known to get attached to their first owner so switching from one to another would not be a good idea. It is not easy for a monkey to get used to their new environment. Monkeys need to be placed in social areas. It might be bad for the monkey to place them in non-social areas which could lead to problems.It is not cheap to bring up a monkey. It becomes very costly when it comes to buying food and housing them. Some monkeys may even have special needs such as diets.
In most large metropolitan areas in the U.S. it is illegal to keep monkeys in the home; even in places where they are legal, a Department of Agriculture permit is usually required. Their legal status as pets varies in other countries. Permits may be issued to those who qualify in the caring of monkeys.
[edit] In laboratories
The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please view the article's talk page.
Macaques and African green monkeys are widely used in animal testing facilities because of their relative ease of handling and their psychological and physical similarity to humans. In the United States, around 50,000 non-human primates, most of them monkeys, have been used in experiments every year since 1973 [2] (pdf); 10,000 monkeys were used in the European Union in 2004. Highly sociable animals, monkeys are kept in many different enviorments. There hasnt been any reports of abuse so far with any of the research laboratories in the US
Viktor Reinhardt, a former research veterinarian, wrote for the International Primate Protection League that: "[t]he conditions I witnessed were so depressing that most monkeys had developed stereotypic behaviors such as pacing, rocking, bouncing, somersaulting, swaying from side to side, biting parts of their own bodies, pulling their ears, tossing their heads back and forth, or smearing feces on the cage walls." [3] [4] (mpg)
[edit] Classification The following lists shows where the various monkey families (bolded) are placed in the Primate classification. Note that the smallest grouping that contains them all is the Simiiformes, the simians, which also contains the apes. Calling apes monkeys is incorrect. Calling either a simian is correct.
ORDER PRIMATES Suborder Strepsirrhini: non-tarsier prosimians Suborder Haplorrhini: tarsiers, monkeys and apes Infraorder Tarsiiformes Family Tarsiidae: tarsiers Infraorder Simiiformes: simians Platyrrhini: New World monkeys Family Cebidae: marmosets, tamarins, capuchins and squirrel monkeys Family Aotidae: night monkeys, owl monkeys, douroucoulis Family Pitheciidae: titis, sakis and uakaris Family Atelidae: howler, spider and woolly monkeys Catarrhini Superfamily Cercopithecoidea Family Cercopithecidae: Old World monkeys Superfamily Hominoidea Family Hylobatidae: gibbons ("lesser apes") Family Hominidae: humans and other great apes
Cheese is a solid food made from the curdled milk of cows, goats, sheep, or other mammals. The milk is curdled using some combination of rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidification. Bacteria acidify the milk and play a role in defining the texture and flavor of most cheeses. Some cheeses also feature molds, either on the outer rind or throughout.
There are hundreds of types of cheese. Different styles and flavors of cheese are the result of using different species of bacteria and molds, different levels of milk fat, variations in length of aging, differing processing treatments (cheddaring, pulling, brining, mold wash) and different breeds of cows, sheep, or other mammals. Other factors include animal diet and the addition of flavoring agents such as herbs, spices, or wood smoke. Whether or not the milk is pasteurized may also affect the flavor.
For a few cheeses, the milk is curdled by adding acids such as vinegar or lemon juice. Most cheeses, however, are acidified to a lesser degree by bacteria, which turn milk sugars into lactic acid, followed by the addition of rennet to complete the curdling. Rennet is an enzyme traditionally obtained from the stomach lining of young cattle, but now also laboratory produced. Substitute "vegetable rennets" have been extracted from various species of the Cynara thistle family.
In some societies, stored cheese is a hedge against famine and a good travel food. It is valuable for its portability, long life, and high content of fat, protein, calcium, and phosphorus. Cheese is lighter-weight, more compact, and has a longer shelf life than the milk from which it is made. Cheesemakers can place themselves near the center of a dairy region and benefit from fresher milk, lower milk prices, and lower shipping costs. Cheese's substantial storage life lets a cheesemaker sell when prices are high or money is needed. Some markets even pay more for "aged" cheeses, exactly the opposite case from conventional milk production.
Cheeses are eaten raw or cooked, alone or with other ingredients. As they are heated, most cheeses melt and brown. Some cheeses, like raclette, melt smoothly; many others can be coaxed into doing so in the presence of acids or starch. Fondue, with wine providing the acidity, is a good example of a smoothly-melted cheese dish. Other cheeses turn elastic and stringy when they melt, a quality that can be enjoyed in dishes like pizza and Welsh rarebit. Some cheeses melt unevenly, their fats separating as they heat, while a few acid-curdled cheeses, including halloumi, paneer and ricotta, do not melt at all and can become firmer when cooked.
Contents [hide] 1 History 1.1 Origins 1.2 Classical times 1.3 Post-classical Europe 1.4 Modern era 2 Cultural attitudes 3 Types of cheese 3.1 Fresh 3.2 Distinctively aged 3.3 Other categories 4 Health and nutrition 5 Making cheese 5.1 Curdling 5.2 Curd processing 5.3 Aging 6 Cheese in language 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links
[edit] History Cheese is an ancient food whose origins may predate recorded history. Probably discovered in Central Asia or the Middle East, cheesemaking spread to Europe and had become a sophisticated enterprise by Roman times. As Rome's influence receded, local cheesemaking techniques diverged from one another and each region became home to specific types of cheese. This diversity reached its peak in the early industrial age and has declined somewhat since then due to mechanization and economic factors.
[edit] Origins The exact origins of cheesemaking are unknown, and estimates range from around 8000 BCE (when sheep were domesticated) to around 3000 BCE. Credit for the discovery most likely goes to nomadic Turkic tribes in Central Asia, around the same time that they developed yogurt, or to people in the Middle East. A common tale about the discovery of cheese tells of an Arab nomad carrying milk across the desert in a container made from an animal's stomach, only to discover the milk had separated into curd and whey by the rennet from the stomach.
Folktales aside, cheese likely began as a way of preserving soured and curdled milk through pressing and salting, with rennet introduced later— perhaps when someone noticed that cheese made in an animal stomach produced more solid and better-textured curds. The earliest archaeological evidence of cheesemaking has been found in Egyptian tomb murals, dating to about 2300 BCE. The earliest cheeses would likely have been quite sour and salty, similar in texture to rustic cottage cheese or feta.
From the Middle East, basic cheesemaking found its way into Europe, where cooler climates meant less aggressive salting was needed for preservation. With moderate salt and acidity, the cheese became a suitable environment for a variety of beneficial microbes and molds, which are what give aged cheeses their pronounced and interesting flavors.
[edit] Classical times Ancient Greek mythology credited Aristaeus with the discovery of cheese. Homer's Odyssey (8th century BCE) describes the Cyclops making and storing sheep's and goats' milk cheese. From Samuel Butler's translation:
We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens could hold... When he had so done he sat down and milked his ewes and goats, all in due course, and then let each of them have her own young. He curdled half the milk and set it aside in wicker strainers... By Roman times, cheese was an everyday food and cheesemaking a mature art, not very different from what it is today. Columella's De Re Rustica (circa 65 CE) details a cheesemaking process involving rennet coagulation, pressing of the curd, salting, and aging. Pliny's Natural History (77 CE) devotes a chapter (xi. 97) to describing the diversity of cheeses enjoyed by Romans of the early Empire. He stated that the best cheeses came from the villages near Nîmes, but did not keep long and had to be eaten fresh. Cheeses of the Alps and Apennines were remarkable for their variety then as now. A Ligurian cheese was noted for being made mostly from sheeps' milk, and some cheeses produced nearby were stated to weigh as much as a thousand pounds each. Goats' milk cheese was a recent taste in Rome, improved over the "medicinal taste" of Gaul's similar cheeses by smoking. Of cheeses from overseas, Pliny preferred those of Bithynia in Asia Minor.
[edit] Post-classical Europe Rome spread a uniform set of cheesemaking techniques throughout much of Europe, and introduced cheesemaking to areas without a previous history of it. As Rome declined and long-distance trade collapsed, cheese in Europe diversified further, with various locales developing their own distinctive cheesemaking traditions and products. France and Italy are the nations with the most diversity in locally made cheeses— today with approximately 400 each. (A French proverb says there is a different French cheese for every day of the year, and Charles de Gaulle once asked "how can you govern a country in which there are 246 kinds of cheese?"[1]) Still, the advancement of the cheese art in Europe was slow during the centuries after Rome's fall. Many of the cheeses we know best today were first recorded in the late Middle Ages or after— cheeses like cheddar around 1500 CE, Parmesan in 1597, Gouda in 1697, and Camembert in 1791.[2]
In 1546, John Heywood wrote in Proverbes that "the moon is made of a greene cheese." (Greene refers here not to the color, as many now think, but to being new or unaged.)[3] Variations on this sentiment were long repeated. Although some people assumed that this was a serious belief in the era before space exploration, it is more likely that Heywood was indulging in nonsense.
[edit] Modern era The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in Switzerland in 1815, but it was in the United States where large-scale production first found real success. Credit usually goes to Jesse Williams, a dairy farmer from Rome, New York, who in 1851 started making cheese in an assembly-line fashion using the milk from neighboring farms. Within decades hundreds of such dairy associations existed.
The 1860s saw the beginnings of mass-produced rennet, and by the turn of the century scientists were producing pure microbial cultures. Before then, bacteria in cheesemaking had come from the environment or from recycling an earlier batch's whey; the pure cultures meant a more standardized cheese could be produced.
Factory-made cheese overtook traditional cheesemaking in the World War II era, and factories have been the source of most cheese in America and Europe ever since. Today, Americans buy more processed cheese than "real", factory-made or not.[4] Worldwide, cheese is a major agricultural product. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, over 18 million metric tons of cheese was produced worldwide in 2004. This is more than the yearly production of coffee beans, tea leaves, cocoa beans and tobacco combined.
[edit] Cultural attitudes Cheese is rarely found in East Asian dishes, as dairy products in general are rare. However, East Asian sentiment against cheese is not universal. Cheese made from yaks' (chhurpi) or mares' milk is common on the Asian steppes, and cheese is used in India, where paneer curries are popular. Even in China, cheese consumption is increasing, with annual sales more than doubling from 1996 to 2003 (to a still quite-small 30 million U.S. dollars a year).[5] Certain kinds of Chinese preserved bean curd are sometimes misleadingly referred to in English as "Chinese cheese", due to their strong flavor.
Strict followers of the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam must avoid most hard cheeses, which are made with rennet from animals not slaughtered in a manner adhering to kosher or halal[6] laws. Both faiths allow cheese made with vegetable-based rennet or with rennet made from animals that were processed in a kosher or halal manner. Many less-orthodox Jews also believe that rennet undergoes enough processing to change its nature entirely, and do not consider it to ever violate kosher law. (See Cheese and kashrut.) As cheese is a dairy food under kosher rules it cannot be eaten in the same meal with any meat.
Many vegetarians avoid any cheese made from animal-based rennet. Most widely available vegetarian cheeses are made using rennet produced by fermentation of the fungus Mucor miehei. Vegans and other dairy-avoiding vegetarians cannot eat real cheese at all, but some vegetable-based substitute cheeses (usually soy based) are available.
Even in cultures with long cheese traditions, it is not unusual to find people who perceive cheese — especially pungent-smelling or mold-bearing varieties such as Limburger or Roquefort — as unappetizing, unpalatable, or disgusting. Food-science writer Harold McGee proposes that cheese is such an acquired taste because it is produced through a process of controlled spoilage and many of the odor and flavor molecules in an aged cheese are the same found in rotten foods. McGee notes "An aversion to the odor of decay has the obvious biological value of steering us away from possible food poisoning, so it's no wonder that an animal food that gives off whiffs of shoes and soil and the stable takes some getting used to."[7]
[edit] Types of cheese Main article: List of cheeses No one categorization scheme can capture all the diversity of the world's cheeses. These are some commonly used classifications.
A cheese platter with many types of cheese.[edit] Fresh For these simplest cheeses, milk is curdled and drained, with little other processing. Examples include Cottage cheese, Romanian Caş, Neufchâtel (the model for American-style cream cheese), and fresh goats' milk chèvre. Such cheeses are soft and spreadable, with a mild taste. Fresh cheeses without additional preservatives can spoil in a matter of days.
Whey cheeses are fresh cheeses made from the whey discarded while producing other cheeses. Ricotta, Romanian Urda and Norwegian Geitost are examples.
Traditional Mozzarella also falls into the fresh cheese category. Fresh curds are stretched and kneaded in hot water to form a ball of Mozzarella, which in southern Italy is usually eaten within a few hours of being made. Other firm fresh cheeses include paneer and queso fresco.
[edit] Distinctively aged Soft-ripened cheeses such as Brie and Camembert are made by allowing white Penicillium candida or P. camemberti mold to grow on the outside of a soft cheese for a few days or weeks. The mold forms a white crust and contributes to the smooth, runny, or gooey textures and more intense flavors of these aged cheeses. Goats' milk cheeses are often treated in a similar manner, sometimes with white molds and sometimes with blue.
Blue-mold cheeses like Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and Stilton are produced by inoculating loosely pressed curds with Penicillium roqueforti or Penicillium glaucum molds. The mold grows within the cheese as it ages. These cheeses have distinct blue veins and, often, assertive flavors. Their texture can be soft or firm.
Washed-rind cheeses are periodically bathed in a saltwater brine as they age, making their surfaces amenable to a class of bacteria (the reddish-orange "smear bacteria") which impart pungent odors and distinctive flavors. Washed-rind cheeses can be soft (Limburger), semi-hard (Muenster), or hard (Appenzeller).
[edit] Other categories Categorizing cheeses by firmness is a common but inexact practice. The lines between "soft", "semi-soft", "semi-hard", and "hard" are arbitrary, and many types of cheese are made in softer or firmer variations. Harder cheeses have a lower moisture content than softer cheeses. They are generally packed into molds under more pressure and aged for a longer time.
The familiar cheddar is one of a family of semi-hard or hard cheeses (including Cheshire and Gloucester) whose curd is cut, gently heated, piled, and stirred before being pressed into forms. Colby and Monterey Jack are similar but milder cheeses; their curd is rinsed before it is pressed, washing away some acidity and calcium. A similar curd-washing takes place when making the Dutch cheeses Edam and Gouda.
Swiss-style cheeses like Emmental and Gruyère are generally quite firm. The same bacteria that give Emmental its holes contribute to their aromatic and sharp flavors. The hardest cheeses — "grating cheeses" such as Parmesan, Pecorino, and Romano — are quite firmly packed into large forms and aged for months or years.
Processed cheese is made from traditional cheese and emulsifiers, often with the addition of milk, more salt, preservatives, and food coloring. It is inexpensive, consistent, and melts smoothly. This is the most-consumed category of cheese in the United States. The most familiar processed cheese may be pre-sliced mild yellow American Cheese or Velveeta. Many other varieties exist, including Easy Cheese, a Kraft Foods brand sold in a spray can.
[edit] Health and nutrition
Cheese selection on market stand in Basel, Switzerland.In general, cheese supplies a great deal of calcium, protein, and phosphorus. A 30 gram (one ounce) serving of cheddar cheese contains about seven grams of protein and 200 milligrams of calcium. Nutritionally, cheese is essentially concentrated milk: it takes about 200 grams (seven ounces) of milk to provide that much protein, and 150 grams to equal the calcium.[8]
Cheese shares milk's nutritional disadvantages as well. The Center for Science in the Public Interest condemns cheese as America's number one source of saturated fat, adding that the average American ate 30 pounds (13.6 kg) of cheese in the year 2000, up from 11 pounds (5 kg) in 1970.[9] Their recommendation is to limit full-fat cheese consumption to two ounces (60 grams) a week. Whether cheese's highly saturated fat actually leads to an increased risk of heart disease is called into question when considering France and Greece, which lead the world in cheese eating (more than 14 ounces (400 grams) a week per person, or over 45 pounds (20 kg) a year) yet have relatively low rates of heart disease.[10]
A number of food safety agencies around the world have warned of the risks of raw-milk cheeses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration states that soft raw-milk cheeses can cause "serious infectious diseases including listeriosis, brucellosis, salmonellosis and tuberculosis".[11] It is U.S. law since 1944 that all raw-milk cheeses (including imports since 1951) must be aged at least 60 days. Australia has a wide ban on raw-milk cheeses as well, though in recent years exceptions have been made for Swiss Gruyère, Emmental and Sbrinz, and for French Roquefort.[12] Some say these worries are overblown, pointing out that pasteurization of the milk used to make cheese does not ensure its safety in any case.[13] This is supported by statistics showing that in Europe (where young raw-milk cheeses are still legal in some countries), most cheese-related food poisoning incidents were traced to pasteurized cheeses.
Some studies claim to show that cheeses including Cheddar, Mozzarella, Swiss and American can help to prevent tooth decay.[14] Several mechanisms for this protection have been proposed:
The calcium, protein, and phosphorus in cheese may act to protect tooth enamel. Cheese increases saliva flow, washing away acids and sugars. Cheese may have an antibacterial effect in the mouth. Cheese is often avoided by those who are lactose intolerant, but ripened cheeses like Cheddar contain only about 5% of the lactose found in whole milk, and aged cheeses contain almost none.[15] Some people suffer reactions to amines found in cheese, particularly histamine and tyramine. Some aged cheeses contain significant concentrations of these amines, which can trigger symptoms mimicking an allergic reaction: headaches, rashes, and blood pressure elevations.
[edit] Making cheese Main article: Home cheesemaking [edit] Curdling The only strictly required step in making any sort of cheese is separating the milk into solid curds and liquid whey. Usually this is done by acidifying the milk and adding rennet. The acidification is accomplished directly by the addition of an acid like vinegar in a few cases (paneer, queso fresco), but usually starter bacteria are employed instead. These starter bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The same bacteria (and the enzymes they produce) also play a large role in the eventual flavor of aged cheeses. Most cheeses are made with starter bacteria from the Lactococci, Lactobacilli, or Streptococci families. Swiss starter cultures also include Propionibacter shermani, which produces carbon dioxide gas bubbles during aging, giving Swiss cheese or Emmentaler its holes.
Some fresh cheeses are curdled only by acidity, but most cheeses also use rennet. Rennet sets the cheese into a strong and rubbery gel compared to the fragile curds produced by acidic coagulation alone. It also allows curdling at a lower acidity—important because flavor-making bacteria are inhibited in high-acidity environments. In general, softer, smaller, fresher cheeses are curdled with a greater proportion of acid to rennet than harder, larger, longer-aged varieties.
[edit] Curd processing At this point, the cheese has set into a very moist gel. Some soft cheeses are now essentially complete: they are drained, salted, and packaged. For most of the rest, the curd is cut into small cubes. This allows water to drain from the individual pieces of curd.
Some hard cheeses are then heated to temperatures in the range of 35°C–55°C (100°F–130°F). This forces more whey from the cut curd. It also changes the taste of the finished cheese, affecting both the bacterial culture and the milk chemistry. Cheeses that are heated to the higher temperatures are usually made with thermophilic starter bacteria which survive this step—either lactobacilli or streptococci.
Salt has a number of roles in cheese besides adding a salty flavor. It preserves cheese from spoiling, draws moisture from the curd, and firms up a cheese’s texture in an interaction with its proteins. Some cheeses are salted from the outside with dry salt or brine washes. Most cheeses have the salt mixed directly into the curds.
A number of other techniques can be employed to influence the cheese's final texture and flavor. Some examples:
Stretching: (Mozzarella, Provolone) The curd is stretched and kneaded in hot water, developing a stringy, fibrous body. Cheddaring: (Cheddar, other English cheeses) The cut curd is repeatedly piled up, pushing more moisture away. The curd is also mixed (or milled) for a long period of time, taking the sharp edges off the cut curd pieces and influencing the final product's texture. Washing: (Edam, Gouda, Colby) The curd is washed in warm water, lowering its acidity and making for a milder-tasting cheese. Most cheeses achieve their final shape when the curds are pressed into a mold or form. The harder the cheese, the more pressure is applied. The pressure drives out moisture — the molds are designed to allow water to escape — and unifies the curds into a single solid body.
[edit] Aging A newborn cheese is usually salty yet bland in flavor and, for harder varieties, rubbery in texture. These qualities are sometimes enjoyed—cheese curds are eaten on their own—but usually cheeses are left to rest under carefully controlled conditions. This aging period (also called ripening, or, from the French, affinage) can last from a few days to several years. As a cheese ages, microbes and enzymes transform its texture and intensify its flavor. This transformation is largely a result of the breakdown of casein proteins and milkfat into a complex mix of amino acids, amines, and fatty acids.
Vacherin du Haut-Doubs cheese, a French cheese with a white Penicillium mold rind.Some cheeses have additional bacteria or molds intentionally introduced to them before or during aging. In traditional cheesemaking, these microbes might be already present in the air of the aging room; they are simply allowed to settle and grow on the stored cheeses. More often today, prepared cultures are used, giving more consistent results and putting fewer constraints on the environment where the cheese ages.
For the blue cheeses (Roquefort, Stilton, Gorgonzola), Penicillium mold is introduced to the curd before molding. During aging, the blue molds (P. roqueforti or P. glaucum ) grow in the small fissures in the cheese, imparting a sharp flavor and aroma. The same molds are also grown on the surface of some aged goat cheeses. The soft cheeses Brie and Camembert, among others, get a surface growth of other Penicillium species, white-colored P. candidum or P. camemberti. The surface mold contributes to the interior texture and flavor of these small cheeses.
Some cheeses are periodically washed in a saltwater brine during their ripening. Not only does the brine carry flavors into the cheese (it might be seasoned with spices or wine), but the salty environment may nurture the growth of the Brevibacterium linens bacteria, which can impart a very pronounced odor (Limburger) and interesting flavor. The same bacteria can also have some impact on cheeses that are simply ripened in humid conditions, like Camembert. Large populations of these "smear bacteria" show up as a sticky orange-red layer on some brine-washed cheeses.
[edit] Cheese in language Throughout the history of the English language, the word cheese has been chese (in Middle English) and cīese or cēse (in Old English). Similar words are shared by other West Germanic languages — Frisian tsiis, Dutch kaas, German Käse, Old High German chāsi — all of which probably come from the reconstructed West-Germanic root *kasjus, which in turn is an early borrowing from Latin. The Latin word caseus — from which are derived the Spanish queso, Portuguese queijo, Romanian caş and Italian cacio — and the Celtic root which gives the Irish cáis and the Welsh caws are also related. This whole group of words is probably derived from the proto-Indo-European root *kwat-, which means "to ferment, become sour".
When the Romans began to make hard cheeses for their legionaries' supplies, a new word started to be used: formaticum, from caseus formatus, or "molded cheese". It is from this word that we get the French fromage, Italian formaggio, Breton fourmaj and Provençal furmo. Cheese itself is occasionally employed in a sense that means "molded" or "formed". Head cheese uses the word in this sense.
In modern English slang, something "cheesy" is kitsch, cheap, inauthentic, or of poor quality. One can also be "cheesed off"— unhappy or annoyed. Such negative connotations might derive from a ripe cheese's sometimes-unpleasant odor. Almost certainly the odor explains the use of "cutting the cheese" as a euphemism for flatulence. A more upbeat slang use is seen in "the big cheese", an expression referring to the most important person in a group, the "big shot" or "head honcho". This use of the word probably derived not from the word cheese, but from the Persian or Hindi word chiz, meaning a thing.[16]
A more whimsical bit of American and Canadian slang refers to school buses as "cheese wagons", a reference to school bus yellow. People getting their photo taken are often encouraged to "say cheese!", as the word "cheese" contains the phoneme /i/, a long vowel which requires the lips to be stretched in the appearance of a smile.[17] People from Wisconsin and the Netherlands, both centers of cheese production, have been called cheeseheads. This nickname has been embraced by Wisconsin sports fans — especially fans of the Green Bay Packers or Wisconsin Badgers — who are now seen in the stands sporting plastic or foam hats in the shape of giant cheese wedges.
[edit] Notes ^ Quoted in Newsweek, October 1, 1962 according to The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (Columbia University Press, 1993 ISBN 0-2310719-4-9 p 345). Numbers besides 246 are often cited in very similar quotes; whether these are misquotes or whether de Gaulle repeated the same quote with different numbers is unclear. ^ Smith, John H. (1995). Cheesemaking in Scotland - A History, The Scottish Dairy Association. ISBN 0-9525323-0-1.. Full text, Chapter with cheese timetable. ^ Cecil Adams (1999). Straight Dope: How did the moon=green cheese myth start?. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ McGee, Harold (2004). On Food and Cooking (Revised Edition), Scribner. ISBN 0-684-80001-2.. p 54. "In the United States, the market for process cheese [...] is now larger than the market for 'natural' cheese, which itself is almost exclusively factory-made." ^ Rebecca Buckman (2003). Let Then Eat Cheese, Far Eastern Economic Review, 166 n. 49: 41. Full text ^ Toronto Public Health. Frequently Asked Questions about Halal Foods. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ McGee p 58, "Why Some People Can't Stand Cheese." ^ Nutritional data from CNN Interactive. Retrieved October 20, 2004. ^ Center for Science in the Public Interest (2001). Don't Say Cheese. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ McGee, p 67. McGee supports both this contention and that more food poisonings in Europe are caused by pasteurized cheeses than raw-milk. ^ FDA Warns About Soft Cheese Health Risk. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ Chris Mercer (2005). Australia lifts Roquefort cheese safety ban. Retrieved October 22, 2005. ^ Janet Fletcher. The Myths About Raw-Milk Cheese. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ National Dairy Council. Specific Health Benefits of Cheese. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ Lactose Intolerance FAQs from the American Dairy Association. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ Michael Quinion (2000). World Wide Words: Big Cheese. Retrieved October 15, 2005. ^ Straight Dope Staff Report (2005). Why do photographers ask you to say "cheese"?. Retrieved October 15, 2005.
- This page simply appears to be copied from God. Why? I don't mean to say that there is a problem with that, but I'm curious... Ecw.Technoid.Dweeb | contributions | talk | ☮✌☮ 00:41, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
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