I like to agree with people who are smart and disagree with people who are stupid.

To live we need air, physical warmth, liquids (water is for baptism), foods, safety, and a purpose.

The Artistic Artificer is one of the classic Proofs Of God.

There is art because God created it.

We love art because God loves art.

We are like God in that respect.

The created-things are like their Creator.

You should have put that phrase somewhere in your first paragraph then.

I am glad I was born in a Nation and in a State and that I also now live in a State that allows me to be free to own guns.

I have a pistol that goes with me everywhere and protects my life and the lives of everyone around me.

I have a scoped hunting rifle that helps me hunt deer, elk, moose, and antelope. I am a meat hunter not a trophy hunter. My State is covered with all these animals and they taste good and are very nutritious meat.

I have a shotgun which I use to guard banks, shopping malls, construction sites, liquor stores, and other places that I guard for a living from robbers, burglars, arsonists, and other criminals.

I have an assault rifle with high cap mags that helps me defend the U.S. Constitution from all enemies both foreign or domestic.

Australia cannot say that. Australia is dependent on the USA to defend them from all enemies both foreign and domestic.

The USA is the arsenal of democracy. There is a gun behind every blade of grass. I am glad.

Anyone who is not glad about that should move to Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Singapore, Wales or someplace else outside the English Speaking World.

Well if you were brainwashed since childhood by your parents, teachers, ministers, friends, the Government, and your employers, it is unlikely that you elected anything on your own.

Where are you with this?

Have you been able to use philosophy to rid yourself of all brainwashing yet?

You need to first define you terms.

You forgot to do this.

Your inference that everything has a start is influenced by your limited experience here on the Earth.

Everything must have existed forever otherwise you arrive at massive philosophical contradictions.

So no, nothing has a start. It all has existed forever. And that includes you, me, and God.

I have read Heidegger and I did not like it so I have discarded him.

Defining what is circular has already been done by Aristotle and others even more current. You need to look it up. Not plague me to educate you.

Anyone (like Heidegger) who cannot come up with an argument that grants that others exist as well is not worth considering further.

Your form of skepticism is somewhat extreme and has already been refuted by Descartes and also by the modern British Empiricists.

Surely you know the answer to your own question and therefore you are simply being verbose (as in the fallacy of verbosity).

If you do not dismiss the multitude of archaic superseded ideas then you become awash in detritus. And perhaps you should prove why you disagree with Aristotle on The Prime Mover and with Aquinas on The First Cause etc.! You seem to have mastered the fallacy of shifting the burden. Your methods are Sophist. Anyone who has studied anything can easily see that.

Sounds like you have gotten a great start on experientialism and Empiricism. Keep going.

Ultimately you will end up at a mind/body dilemma. Ergo are we mind or are we body?

All roads lead to the same place.

And don't forget tabula rasa -- that is the starting point for everybody on this Earth.

Not sure I have heard of The Bulletin. Does it quack?

Deception is another reason. When speakers/writers try to deceive they become perfectly UN-clear.

Jesus was talking about the Sanhedrin when he mentioned that.

Inference are by definition NOT deductions. Ergo they are NOT proofs. They are simply refined conjectures. And that is what Science is all about. That is why Science is NOT Philosophy.

Your initial definition/proposition is simply a circular logic/affirmation of the consequent fallacy.

Try again.

Try fighting Mike Tyson and then the experience would remove all doubt about pain.

For openers (a Poker term), Heidegger is somewhat narrow in his views in that in his book "Being And Time" he states that we can only be sure of our own existence.

This is contrary to Modern British Empiricism in that the existence of others is a given since they can harm you or kill you.

So Heidegger's thinking is flawed. Ergo he is easy to dismiss.

I look for major flaws and then I dismiss the source. It is my method of doing philosophy.

I don't need to give it my best shot. Aquinas has already done so. Have you heard of him perhaps?

If the climate is changing, which it probably is, then the ants, termites, and humans on the Earth have got nothing to do with it and cannot prevent it or change it.

Exactly! Thank you.

If girls hit boys it is insignificant. Sometimes it even means love.

Boys will always be boys and hit each other. Ergo some martial arts training from an early age is appropriate and necessary. I favor judo starting at age 6, karate at age 12, and boxing at age 16.

If in divinity school, you may want to concentrate on Augustine and Aquinas. Anything pre-Aquinas is going to simply be a challenge against your divinity philosophy.

Pure philosophy teaches people to think for themselves and avoid brainwashing and any doctrines. It is antithetical to Religion.

Good luck with Aquinas. Whenever you embrace him you are bowing down to Catholic Philosophy -- not that this is anything bad -- just that if you are Protestant then you are in somewhat of a quandary.

For me all of Plato can be distilled down to one metaphor. He states that if you go out into the wilderness and stay there for some length of time then you will eventually miss the City and your friends and want to come back. All the rest of Plato for me is simply a footnote to this.

Plato is simply too speculative to be very useful in modern times.

I don't remember where Plato talks about going into the wilderness. Some of you other more august philosophers here may recall it. I intend to find it somehow, but I sure do not want to re-read all of Plato to do it.

Thank you for resolving this for us M/U.

Thanks V for that update and clarification.

Finally the complete story comes out. You should have stated this in your opening posting.

Sounds like a big waste of time to have such a proposal. Politics is always about choosing the lesser of two weevils.

Trump is right about the forest situation in California. The forests there are not being cleared of the undergrowth at all because they do not have the money at the Federal or State level to budget for it. As a result people die and structures are destroyed. In addition the local cities and counties are not building fire breaks around their towns. It has all combined to be a cacophony of ineptitude.

Trump has got nothing to do with it. He simply made the correct call -- at the worst diplomatic time again as usual. You're supposed to cry and pray for the victims on tv, and then later on make corrections.

Washington D.C., Sacramento, and the City Of Paradise are each and all responsible for their own disasters there.

Retiring Arizona Senator Jeff Flake has mentioned today (on the news) that there needs to be a GOP primary against Trump.

If so, it is possible that Trump will lose the primary and almost certain that he will run in spite.

Then the GOP vote will be split.

The DEM's are then likely to win the White House in 2020.

Truth is stranger than fiction. You simply cannot make a thicker plot than this up.

We have learned since the Industrial Revolution (in England and in the USA) that Government regulation of business is critical to protect workers and the environment. This was first borne out by the coal industry. There is really no question about it. The banking and the savings/loan industries have also born it out in the financial arena. The Crash Of 1929 has born it out in securities. Nonstop continuous Ponzi schemes continue to bear it out. There is no longer any question.

The arguments for and against democracy go back to Herodotus the ancient Greek historian. He presents pro's and con's very clearly. If you have not read Herodotus then you need to.

The problems of a free market are discussed in detail by Adam Smith in Year 1777 when he published his now famous Wealth Of Nations. If you have not read that then you need to.

Seems like you are asking us here questions that you need to research yourself.

These word games do not impress me. I do not consider them as true philosophy. They are more like counterfeit philosophy.

And I have never been a fan of this particular ontological "proof of God" either.

There are stronger proofs of God. We do not need the ontological one.

Referring to a dictionary may be ok for an ordinary Joe Blow or Jane Row but for anyone claiming to be a philosopher it is merely a populorum fallacy.

Neither God nor Aristotle wrote your dictionary. You need to think for yourself. Not simply regurgitate your dictionary.

The British speak with a lot of double negatives that are unnecessary. Bad habit.

Can you live without a dictionary ??