cool-yun 100 years...

cool 100 years...

Culion is an island situated at the northernmost part of Palawan. It belongs to the Calamianes Group of Islands. It has a total land area of 415 square kilometers which includes the 41 surrounding islands and measures 1,191.39 square kilometers including its territorial water. It is bounded on the north by Busuanga Island, on the east by the Coron Reef, on the south by Linapacan Island, and on the west by the South China Sea. Three ecosystems sustain the rich marine life of Culion: mangroves, seagrass, and corals. 17 mangrove species cover the coastline of Culion. 9 seagrass species and 47 coral genera representing 60% of the total genera found in the Philippines are found in Culion. It used to have high density forests with hardwood or “iron trees” like narra, mahogany, molave, kayataw, wasi and ipil.

On June 22, 1988, Congress passed R.A. No. 6659 that authorized qualified residents of Culion Leper Colony to vote for the elective provincial officials of the Province of Palawan. In 1991, Speaker Ramon Mitra and House Representative David Ponce De Leon introduced a house bill for the creation of the Municipality of Culion. On February 12,1992, President Corazon C. Aquino signed Republic Act 7193 creating the Municipality of Culion in the Province of Palawan.

The sudden conversion of Culion into a municipality brings with it problems both internal and external. These are all interconnected with integrity of sustaining each others continues existence. But somehow people began to realize the shift in power and authority from the sanitarium to the municipality. An aftershock of shifting sand or governance.

It’ll give Culion disservice if we will not mention the beautiful Indigenous People or the ‘Calamian Tagbanua’ the original residence of the place, as old as the Philippine history. We simply need a kind of respect to the sacredness of our roots, not only Culion but most of all our motherland itself before the influx of migrants bringing their customs, habits, regional characteristics and even dialects that made the place uniquely heterogeneous population. Not to mention the gaining numbers of its residence.

Through these complex series of events within and without, the past and the present, we can also recount the facts like Divine message of a truly unique gift, chronicled not only in our country but for the whole world that we would like to expressed this great joy of ‘healing’ which lots of people ought to know and must learn against the prejudices and misunderstanding if not ignorance of this so called stigma.. This is the message of the manifestation of dignity.

Today when you hear the word Culion it’ll simply whisper to you a meaningful logo against the backdrop of its past displayed now in our museum. But that scary isolation is now a cool word like “cool-yon” that offers a meaningful journey complimenting with adventure or something you’ll remember the rest of your life. I remember some friends telling me about their tour in many places, they said go first to the rest of the world and make your last tour in this place and you’ll forget all those places that you've seen, but of course that’s an exaggeration until you encounter the place itself. It's some kind of retreat and communion that can lead you to a garden of wisdom... ;) Many travelers have been in awe of the tranquility of this place because the experienced is not just about the views but most of all the compassionate kindness that one senses of harmony and peace that in the end you'll will find out that this peace is all about right relationship with ecology and awareness of the environment in likeness to the call of natural world. The very reason of Culion's ecological realization that reaches out into something like a spiritual journey...

Like Divine message of a truly unique gift, chronicled not only in our country but for the whole world that we would like to expressed this great joy of ‘healing’ which lots of people ought to know and must learn against the prejudices and misunderstanding if not ignorance of this so called stigma.. This is the message of the manifestation of dignity.

So from here we can now travel around Culion sphere and rediscover the whole new world called the land of a meaningful journey.

My love for this place simply echoes its message that's embedded in every pixels of all these images, just like the trillion trillions of stars in the universe and the innate or universal language that even alien world utters on this magic word beautifully;
i love you i love you i love you

i love you i love you i love you i love you :))

till eternity :))

voice of pinoy live...

voiceofpinoy

survival of the fittest

flying lion... A young male lion in South Africa discovered that it had taken on more than it could chew when a water buffalo flipped the lion several feet into the air in a daring attempt to rescue a fallen comrade.

operation lift culion

We would like to make a DIFFERENCE in a collective way like a synergy to support this project in simple or unique ways and giving back the blessings we have received.

This is also our simple gift of EDUCATION to our alma mater, our share of kindness and generosity. To give as frequent as we can.. as what Mother Teresa once said: 'give until it hurts'...

Just like a symbolic action when we drop a pebble into a pool, we make ripples all the way to the shore as when we drop a good deed into another person’s life, those ripples, tiny and imperceptible though they may be it will also be like a light that leaves the star goes everywhere in the universe, forever... so is our good deeds even as small as it can be...

 culionaires in action

lapis papel atbp.

Lapis, Papel  atbp.

 

 

OUR OWN WAYS OF THANKSGIVING.

We are the online group culionaires mostly outside our beloved town Culion and as our ways of gratitude we would like to help our kababayans or fellow culionaires who are living in remote areas especially their children studying in elementary schools without immediate access to basic needs mostly relying on their farms or the sea for fishing and farming. This website calls for help for these students who can't afford much of the school items for their studies, as we all know the situations of the majority of our people are in dire needs. This is our simple gesture as small as it can be, to support our beloved kababayans most importantly on their studies...

Just like a symbolic action when we drop a pebble into a pool, we make ripples all the way to the shore as when we drop a good deed into another person’s life, those ripples, tiny and imperceptible though they may be it will also be like a light that leaves the star goes everywhere in the universe, forever... so is our good deeds even as small as it can be.

so for all of us who have been blessed in little or many ways, it is time to give back to Isla Culion. 

We would like to make a DIFFERENCE in a collective way like a synergy to support this project in simple or unique ways and giving back the blessings we have received.

This is also our simple gift of EDUCATION to our alma mater, our share of kindness and generosity. To give as frequent as we can.. as what Mother Teresa once said: 'give until it hurts'.

Our call to action: Project ng 'Alay sa Mag-aaral ng Culion - Lapis Papel Atbp.' for Culion Kids! (para sa mga batang culion) Please support us. We do not have to break the bank, just a few pens, pads of paper, notebooks, pencils, used books for elementary, construction papers, crayons, watercolors, little scissors, atbp. can go a long way para sa ating mga pag asa ng bayan. Maraming nagsasabi na tulong tulong tayo. Heto na po ang chance na ipakita natin ang pagbabahaginan. Maraming-maraming salamat po.

This is another sign of love. A simple gesture of oneness.. a new kind of 'Bayanihan' and 'Bahaginan'.. this is Beyond dole-out... ito'y para sa mga kabataan na magkaroon nang pagpapahalaga sa edukasyon. 

our heartfelt thank also to Swiss-Culion-Connexion

here's our site - http://lapispapelatbp.weebly.com/

Why We Don't Have Free Will

By Sam Rocha

Patheos is hosting a symposium on the question “Do we have free will?” — one the classic questions of philosophy, psychology, and the humanities in general, a question rich in religious significance and theological implications, a ridiculous question.

...reply is very simple, albeit perhaps deceiving in its point of emphasis.

We do not have free will.

The positive way to put it would be to correct the original question and posit the following as an alternative:

Insofar as we are able to exercise free will, it is not our possession; we have no rights or deserts to will freely; our free will is a gift — it is given.

If freedom of the will, even as a mere possibility, is given, then, it cannot, strictly speaking, be had. Even after the gift is received, the gift does not cease to be a gift, it remains a gift and demands, from its donation, to be treated as such. When gifts are treated as possessions, ingratitude is the result.

This is an important qualifier upon the original question that also tempers and chastens the possible replies: one cannot be free in the most radical (and nihilistic) sense when one is not in full possession of one’s freedom. Insofar as our free will is a gift, then, its most obvious manifestations are limited by their origin as gifts.

This answer is more than a few shades removed from determinism. But it also forces us to recognize and remember that freedom of the will truly is free, as all gifts must be given freely. As such, it is not only a gift — it is also a responsibility. Gratitude is required. Plus, if freedom isn’t free, then it’s not freedom.

As such, we cannot even take the possibility of our free will lightly and must realize that it is tethered to a mystical act of donation.

Arguments for God's Existence 1 by peter kreeft

Argument from Design

The argument starts with the major premise that where there is design, there must be a designer. The minor premise is the existence of design throughout the universe. The conclusion is that there must be a universal designer.

Why must we believe the major premise, that all design implies a designer? Because everyone admits this principle in practice. For instance, suppose you came upon a deserted island and found "S.O.S." written in the sand on the beach. You would not think the wind or the waves had written it by mere chance but that someone had been there, someone intelligent enough to design and write the message. If you found a stone hut on the island with windows, doors, and a fireplace, you would not think a hurricane had piled up the stones that way by chance. You immediately infer a designer when you see design.

When the first moon rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, two U.S. scientists stood watching it, side by side. One was a believer, the other an unbeliever. The believer said, "Isn't it wonderful that our rocket is going to hit the moon by chance?" The unbeliever objected, "What do you mean, chance? We put millions of manhours of design into that rocket." "Oh," said the believer, "you don't think chance is a good explanation for the rocket? Then why do you think it's a good explanation for the universe? There's much more design in a universe than in a rocket. We can design a rocket, but we couldn't design a whole universe. I wonder who can?" Later that day the two were strolling down a street and passed an antique store. The atheist admired a picture in the window and asked, "I wonder who painted that picture?" "No one," joked the believer; "it just happened by chance."

Is it possible that design happens by chance without a designer? There is perhaps one chance in a trillion that "S.O.S." could be written in the sand by the wind. But who would use a one-in-a-trillion explanation? Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don't wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. We have a logical explanation of the universe, but the atheist does not like it. It's called God.

There is one especially strong version of the argument from design that hits close to home because it's about the design of the very thing we use to think about design: our brains. The human brain is the most complex piece of design in the known universe. In many ways it is like a computer. Now just suppose there were a computer that was programmed only by chance. For instance, suppose you were in a plane and the public-address system announced that there was no pilot, but the plane was being flown by a computer that had been programmed by a random fall of hailstones on its keyboard or by a baseball player in spiked shoes dancing on computer cards. How much confidence would you have in that plane? But if our brain computer has no cosmic intelligence behind the heredity and environment that program it, why should we trust it when it tells us about anything, even about the brain?

You can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause.

Another specially strong aspect of the design argument is the so-called anthropic principle, according to which the universe seems to have been specially designed from the beginning for human life to evolve. If the temperature of the primal fireball that resulted from the Big Bang some fifteen to twenty billion years ago, which was the beginning of our universe, had been a trillionth of a degree colder or hotter, the carbon molecule that is the foundation of all organic life could never have developed. The number of possible universes is trillions of trillions; only one of them could support human life: this one. Sounds suspiciously like a plot. If the cosmic rays had bombarded the primordial slime at a slightly different angle or time or intensity, the hemoglobin molecule, necessary for all warm-blooded animals, could never have evolved. The chance of this molecule's evolving is something like one in a trillion trillion. Add together each of the chances and you have something far more unbelievable than a million monkeys writing Hamlet.

There are relatively few atheists among neurologists and brain surgeons and among astrophysicists, but many among psychologists, sociologists, and historians. The reason seems obvious: the first study divine design, the second study human undesign.

But doesn't evolution explain everything without a divine Designer? Just the opposite; evolution is a beautiful example of design, a great clue to God. There is very good scientific evidence for the evolving, ordered appearance of species, from simple to complex. But there is no scientific proof of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, Natural selection "explains" the emergence of higher forms without intelligent design by the survival-of-the-fittest principle. But this is sheer theory. There is no evidence that abstract, theoretical thinking or altruistic love make it easier for man to survive. How did they evolve then?

Furthermore, could the design that obviously now exists in man and in the human brain come from something with less or no design? Such an explanation violates the principle of causality, which states that you can't get more in the effect than you had in the cause. If there is intelligence in the effect (man), there must be intelligence in the cause. But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore there must be a cause for human intelligence that transcends the universe: a mind behind the physical universe. (Most great scientists have believed in such a mind, by the way, even those who did not accept any revealed religion.)

How much does this argument prove? Not all that the Christian means by God, of course—no argument can do that. But it proves a pretty thick slice of God: some designing intelligence great enough to account for all the design in the universe and the human mind. If that's not God, what is it? Steven Spielberg?