This is cognitive dissonance.
If what you’re striving to understand is the constituent makeup of liquid water, then your outlook is sufficient.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to come off like that. It was a dickish thing to say it that way.
I was genuinely putting it out there as I myself have only just started looking at the multiple definitions of fallacies.
I’ve already forgotten what the focus of the thread was after the end of the first page. o_O
I propose for the sake of this discussion that we should lay out on the table our philosophical backgrounds, however limited or expansive they may be, so that we can get the general idea of how to communicate our thoughts more effectively. Instead of as CLU 2 said, arguing semantics. At least if we do argue semantics later, we still have a better understanding how to avoid it easier.
It doesn’t mean we have to pigeonhole ourselves into specific schools of thought or anything. Just a thought.
Occam’s razor is a jump in logic performed out of necessity due to a lack of empirical evidence with a bias towards simplicity.
It is not a strong point in any argument invoking an empiricist angle. It is the weakest (and should only be invoked cautiously as a rule of thumb to progress towards some useful model rather than the backbone of some overarching paradigm that puts a pretty cap on objective reality). Any player that does not acknowledge it as an argument from aesthetics is contributing to the errors of conventional wisdom (which has apparently promoted it to bonafide tenet of the scientific method - instead of ugly theological secret).
Also, the scientific method is indeed pure philosophy, upon which science is built upon (ideally). However, even the proposed application of scientific method itself as the tool of falsifiability for the maturation of science (Popper) has been relegated to fantasy by many (Kuhn).
peace
WHY NOT?
If you define philosophy as the study of general/fundamental problems, including the big ones that we as all humans, being the emos that we are, have struggled with at some point in our lives (why are we here?), then religion fits that bill. It provides these answers typically in the form of a religious narrative about a religious deity/deities that are actively involved with the lives of humans, or in the case of taoism, a compilation of mystical sayings (it was very interesting to me when reading a commentary on the tao te ching that they didn’t really have a concept of “God” in the western sense, which is fascinating to me. i still think the book contains way too much mumbo jumbo that only sounds deep if you’ve smoked a ton of pot but I digress).
Religion has undeniably bettered many people’s lives, giving them comfort and hope in otherwise completely shitty situations. Waxing on about empiricism vs rationalism is great, but if you’re living in poverty in a third world country where a dictator’s army could come in at any minute and kill/rape you, you don’t really have time to worry about it. Following a simple philosophy of “I get to go into heaven and live in paradise and these bastards will burn in hell” is pretty much the only comfort you’re going to have in that kind of shitty existence.
The tradeoff is that it has also ruined lots of other people’s lives, but such is the world we live in, everything has tradeoffs, both positive and negative.
Because it’s going to open a whole new can of worms that will involve trolling and flame wars the instant anyone disagrees with someone else’s religious beliefs, which is obviously not productive.
The two are similar but they are separate. There is usually much less emphasis on the afterlife in philosophy and the rewards that it offers, it if does offer any rewards, are understood to more applicable to the present only. Yes, I’m sure there are philosophies that have emphasis on the afterlife, but that is not the general trend.
Philosophy is admittedly like religion in it’s purpose, but it is far more scrutinizing and has only to deal with the bureaucracies of academia as opposed to the bureaucracies of academia, politics and a totally specialized form of bureaucracy within religion called clerical hierarchy, not to mention the violent history of all the different sects of religion, let alone the violent history between several religions.
See how much more complicated it all gets when discussing that topic in here?
Philosophy doesn’t have anywhere near the emotional and historical baggage of religion and it shouldn’t be in this thread not only because this thread is about philosophy, but because it will muddle the discussion into something so incomprehensible that the thread will die, therein defeating itself.
That’s why not.
Sorry if it bothers you, but I see no valuable reason for it to be included.
Not to be rude, but could you be a little more clear please? I really don’t know what you’re trying to get at here.
Religious discussion is only a problem when people who discuss it actually have any religious beliefs so I don’t see what the issue is. I am only trying to discuss it with an objective, scholarly standpoint and pretty much everyone in this thread is capable of doing that, as they are all either agnostics or atheists.
Religion has played a key role in the historical development of philosophy and its exploration of questions such as ethics, morality, and the existential crisis. Anyone whose studied european history would be familiar with all the famous religious philosophers such as Anselm and his famous ontological argument. Guys like Dostoevsky claimed morality could not exist without belief in a God (and wrote a book spanning hundreds of pages, Brothers Karamazov that explored this) and of course guys like Nietzsche wrote books such as the Beyond Good and Evil to refute that argument.
Its really epic stuff, so you can’t really have any meaningful discussion of philosophy, and the history of philosophy, and the “benefits” it provides, without talking about all the famous religious philosophers, who shaped philosophy today. The book, A History of God, explored how religion and the concept of God has evolved and changed over the centuries as a result of all of this. I mean the Enlightenment from what I understand was essentially a revolt against religion.
Religion interests me, and I know who I can and can’t talk to about it in an objective manner without hurting any feelings IRL. In here I don’t, because anyone can chirp in and ruin it for everyone else.
I agree with the importance religion has in philosophy, but in this context a risk is ran in discussing it in any serious depth because lets be honest, this forum is full of trolls and other such immature people as any forum is.
It’s not that I don’t want to discuss it so much as that I know it is fruitless in this context to discuss it. There is a profound difference between secular folks talking about religion critically to talking to religions people about religion critically. For secular people it’s just another thing to study, but for other people it’s a huge part of their life and to speak of it in any other way then they are used to threatens them.
If you want to talk about it so badly make your own thread, or add me and PM me.
Thank you for at least being cordial about it and not just blaring something. 
Lol trolling is fun and what makes the internet the wonderful place that it is. But I digress.
In terms of useful philosophies I like Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
[media=youtube]z0teSHmk2aM[/media]
Lots of philosophies and religions try to delve deep and look for reasons why we are here. I feel pretty fortunate that I am a part of the indestructible universe, and for a brief period of time, a bunch of star particles all came together to form me, and when I pass away, although my consciousness is gone, I will return to the stars. In a way it is kind of like reincarnation. Although I am no more, the particles that form my body and brain will someday be part of new life. Its pretty poetic, humbling, and beautiful. That’s kind of what keeps me going.
I like to listen to Osho from time to time:
[media=youtube]Y8gtLtaNTwo[/media]
He’s probably too anti-organized religion for a lot of peoples taste though.
lol religion…Even though some people explicitly said they don’t want to bring religion into this…I just can’t help myself. Time to rant.
First Christianity. I think just about everyone here will agree that christianity shouldn’t be taken literally-most of the miracles probably never happened. But can christianity be taken seriously on an allegoric -symbolic- level? It’s interesting, what happens, if in all the morality tales, you replace god, with any authority figure: your boss, your parents, elected political figures, people richer than you.
For starters, God -or the authority figures- only son in the bible -Jesus- suffered throughout his life and sacrificed for all sins. Most authority figures children are spoiled, and breeze by life, working much less than poor people do to achieve the same results. They don’t sacrifice and suffer like the son of god supposidly did. They’re generally much more selfish than poor people are.
Jesus- God’s son- was supposidly born in poor conditions, a stable of horses and animals, and tons of people came from far away lands to help him. In real life, most people will only help rich children to get money. People will ignore poor children because there’s no money in helping poor people.
It’s funny, Jesus’s mom-the virgin Mary- was supposed to be super pure and innocent. lol In a lot of cases, rich men marry women only because of their looks and have sex all the time, just for for fun.
I could go on and on. Christianity is an interesting religion. It’s funny how it’s been embraced by western culture. A lot of the “details” I just mentioned seem more far fetched than the magical elements of the stories.
Now, on to Buddhism, or should I say, Eastern religions. My main complaint with them is the notion of Karma. Intuitively it makes sense-what goes around comes around. If you’re bad to other people, eventually other people will be bad to you, and vice versa, if you’re good to other people, they’ll be nice right back. Right?
In my experience, that “really” is not the way reality works. I know a lot of people who committed bad acts in a certain area and got rich, then simply moved to another area and starting living a moral life, and nothing bad ever happened to them afterwards. Same thing with good deeds, a lot of times in my life, I’ve felt that I did a lot of good for somebody, and time passes, and they simply forgot my good deeds, and don’t do anything good for me. They’re not being malevolent or evil, they simply forgot my good deeds because of time.
If you add in the factor of time, and how time effects memory, Karma simply breaks down. The same thing goes for traveling to different areas, societies, locations. Even with cell phones, facebook, the internet…your bad/good deeds from one area don’t necessarily always follow you. Even if they did, the degree of your goodness/badness isn’t garunteed in karma. For example, let’s say i dedicated one year of my life to helping another individual. Let’s say they helped me in return for 1 day. I was good to them, so they were good to me, but I gave much more to them than they did to me. lol I could talk about this all day, but bottom line is the notion of Karma is absurd.
I think there are a lot of good concepts in religion. I personally need to work on “forgiving people” and “keeping an open mind” two main concepts emphasized in Christianity and Buddhism. But those two religions are far from perfect.
His last couple of sentences really struck me. Mathematically speaking, if you do only have one life, then your life really could be considered eternal in the context of itself. o_O
Maybe there is no such thing as death.
And Neil Tyson kicks ass as well fishjie. I saw that video awhile ago.
Sigh
Fuck it, I can’t stop anyone from talking about it, so let the thread go where it goes, much like The Tao.
I also believe karma isn’t real. And if it is, it isn’t as prevalent as people say it is.
…Shit, maybe it does if “karma” is considered the general way people treat you as a result of how you treat people on a personal basis. I.e. mono e mono.
Some of my own philosophies based on my personal experience:
“Never expect anything, or anything good because you will get fucked over or let down. By not expecting anything you are pleasantly surprised when something happens, and when nothing happens, no biggie.”
“Life has no meaning, but you should at least do some ‘good’ while you are here.”
Confucius/K’ung Tzu and his disciples had similar beliefs.
Mostly from the Analects, I tried to read through the I Ching but it seems pretty superstitious.
The version I had was just trigrams and diagrams and future predicting thingamadoos.
You would be surprised how many things you thought you made up were written down thousands of years ago, it’s both humbling and a chance to make you feel smart in a introspective way, as egotistic as it may be. 
I guess i have more reading up to do. LOL I haven’t read from Confucius, this is all as I have said in my post I have learned from in life.
I usually read and learn from Buddhism. I guess learning more from Confucius/Confucianism.
Since the topic has moved more towards personal experience I want to know what is thought about my next sentence.
I don’t love myself.
It’s not that I hate myself, or even dislike myself. It’s that I think to love yourself (at least for myself) is egotistical.
I see people that love themselves too much, and it disgusts me. I’m just too interested in other things and care for other people too much to think about myself in that way I guess.
Maybe self love isn’t something that you’re supposed to think about.
Thoughts?
Interesting. But this seems to almost confuse loving yourself with narcissism.
Right, I have nothing against moderate self love, but my moderate self love to others seems like it’s not enough or something.
Instead of what Havatchu said, I, in all honesty hate myself (for personal reasons I don’t wanna talk about).
But what I believe is that there is to much outward hate in the world, and if you were to feel hate, hate yourself so as to not add to the outward hate.
I think that’s utter nonsense, but hey, I’m not you.
I will admit there is sense in not adding to the outward hate of the world, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of yourself either.
Fallacies are unethical, but not always incorrect… depending on whether the situation calls for it…
If I wanted to convince someone of something(I indulge in this fallacy alot admittedly), I would use this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_stacking
Card stacking is basically stacking all of the evidence in your favor… to favor only one side of the argument… when you don’t bother to refute another side of an argument or even mention it, then you are usually committing this fallacy…
There are plenty of people both good and evil that have used this one…
/OT
But seriously just pick a philosophy that coincides with your the beliefs you hold… what is adequate is a matter of opinion…
Hell if you have a set of values that you stick by, that is considered a ‘philosophy’… gather your beliefs and create your own code of ethics/morals…
For example, I believe in self-reliance… if I want positive things to happen to me, I have to make them happen is what I believe… I also believe that humans are selfish and will only help you if you happen to be a stepping stone to further success or if you manipulate them into doing something for you somehow.