Creationism? I cannot believe you are bothering to discuss it. This is not the middle ages.

Wayfarer, it is interesting how deconstruction is a very useful tool at times.

Sapientia, it is my usual way of writing: something I do naturally now, however I try and curtail it for this forum.

Wayfarer, I am with you all the way on this topic. I left a philosophy forum on fb because I grew very tired of the convoluted one-way streets of many of the posts. The simplistic dogmas got so tedious. I got off fb altogether at the same time.

To be free of belief is not the same as either for or against a God . It is different and that is the beauty of it.

Abstract Expressionism is as the words used to define it self explanatory , so how one would view it or it's manifestations on canvas would be as evaluated as any art form, though perhaps requiring a more comprehensive approach to deconstructing images..so the question would not be how should one view it , how should one view anything ? and that depends on the individual in question....in a relatively free society one views as one views......

Well, if the summation of human understanding is just bat-and-ball God or no God, then we may as well pack up and go home. That to me is so tedious and boring and not what I want. No philosophy, no questioning, no reflections, except on a convoluted belief system. No thanks.

A reflective, if brief post, which it's points I note.. I would say though , that existentialism has it's roots in experience and not in any theory, this means It is perhaps harder to question or compartmentalize . I would also posit that it's fundamentals are valid , that is, without any judgements or comparisons, a very difficult area of study because for one thing It is basically an experience of being....not a philosophy or dogma..as for Sartre his novels were illuminating of the existential experience, the philosophy came after...

The question of democracy here (as everywhere, especially it's birth place Greece) is relative. The word is banded about as if it represented the will of the people. It representes the will of the people in a highly manipulated way - even without the set up from which statistics are taken. And the statistics are rarely thoroughly presented - and, here's the nub, understood. A simple breakdown of the brexit vote shows that it was not representative of the people. But the people are too driven by simplistic assumptions and rarely question. Ah democracy: meaningless, yet we swear by it...

The awareness of a being to it's essential presence in existance.

I like your question , at this point I will not attempt to answer it but would like to jump obliquely and say that I find the (if I may put it this way) questioning behind the question of greater significance..I do a fair amount of ruminating during the night, if I wake up for some reason, I like questions as this one you put because , to me at least, it exposes the action of original thinking as opposed to some reflection on ã quote for instance or ã direct quote from any of the standard philosophers...Thank you