No one is a master of his or her own belief system. We have as humans no capacity to decide what we want to believe in, rather we have a capacity to explore what we believe in. If it's possible in full depth. So no one can be able to pick a side directly of being either atheist or agnostic, or theist agnostic or atheist agnostic whatever. It's just a game of words. It's not up to you. You have to accept that something is out of your control. Many things, including the ninety percent of your own mind.

And to make my phrase less intimidating, I don't say trust me. Instead believe me:)

SP

Thus, necessarily that the agnostic has to pick a side - become an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. — TheMadFool

Would be necessary indeed in certain situations. However, the strangest agnostics are the solipsists. According to this there may not be anything outside of your own mind. The view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

SP

Have you read much phenomenology? — Tom Storm

Not yet, I just keep my eyes open, and use common sense. If saying aren't in line with emotional reactions, I would seriously reconsider whether that they know what they are talking about. If the emotional harmony is given with the spoken words, I'm ready to believe that they believe that they believe anything. We can never be sure of anything.

SP

The human mind is the most complex thing in the universe, at best case, only a few percent of it is consciously controlled. We will never be able to know the full objective reality even about ourselves. Much Everything in our subconscious is decided even before we would awaken to the real causes of our actions. Many people do not have much self-knowledge. Many people have low level of consciousness. There is a long way to go to gain self-knowledge, and requires openness. Those who consider themselves believers have often doubted the strength of their own faith, even according to their own confession. Many who consider themselves atheists began to believe in God at some point in their lives without being able to give a rational explanation. Many people like an idea but still feel the need to force it on their subconscious self, simply because we don’t just have a conscious self. So many people strive to believe in something desperately but eventually they fail to believe anything, just because they urge what cannot be, gaining self-knowledge. Trust me, it's much more complicated than anyone would believe.

SP

I think everyone is agnostic subconsciously, regardless how considers oneself. We simply have no enough self knowledge to determine what we believe in. This is out of our control altogether. There’s no such thing as believer or non believer, only those who strive to believe they are believer or non believer.

SP

The Taliban ain't stupid either, they learned from the 1996 and 1999 evenings. In order to avoid civil war, the north was first taken under their control, before other militias could have done that in vacuum that was left by US withdrawal. The south supports them anyway.

Conclusion: The war on terror does not work, and never ever worked even for a minute. Killing one terrorist creates ten more. Violence breeds violence. In other words war on terror breeds exclusively more terrorists. The proof of this is that after twenty years not only did that happen the west failed to stabilize Afghanistan, but previously stable countries are destabilized by war launched or provoked by west: Libya, Iraq, Syria, etc.. As result of war on terror those countries are considered a stronghold of terrorism, where they have never seen before.

One thing is achieved indeed. The Taliban is no longer a terror group, but the government of Afghanistan, again.

SP

There's no such nation as Afghan at least not in such terms like German or French nation. Everyone there belongs to his or her own tribe, valley, and sects, rather than to state or nation. Occupying Paris or Berlin meant losing war for those nations, but occupying Kabul like occupying a valley, left the rest of the country totally intact. The Afghans don't even notice that their country is invaded. If someone wants to occupy this country and keep it occupied, has to occupy every single entity, tribe, valley individually, one after another, which is an absolutely hopeless undertaking given the Afghan infrastructure. Since the passes are impassable in winter and will remain so until the end of spring snowmelt. But this is exactly what Taliban had done. Afghanistan can be conquered only by Afghans. As long as this lesson is ignored Afghanistan remains the graveyard of superpowers.

SP

All right, I admit, this is a crazy idea, but think about something interesting. More than thirteen billion years have passed since the big bang, and by the end of the universe, who knows how much will pass. In this period incomprehensible to human reason, the longevity of human life cannot be detected, which justifies the cosmic insignificance of us. But still, what are the chances that we exist in this tiny time frame and thinking on this? What was the chance that we were born at all? One in proportion to infinity? Can there be such a coincidence that would justify our current consciousness?

Sixty generations have passed since the fall of Rome for instance, which is a very tiny time frame compared to billions of years. In this tiny time frame, only I have more descendants than there are people on earth today. If only one of these was missing, I wouldn’t have been born. Yet it’s just a tiny time frame. What of this enormous chance can be explained with, one is proportional to infinity, if not with argument, there’s no past, present, and future, that is, what we call time is an illusion, and we circulate in a matrix indefinitely, living the same life over and over again. Of course this alone does not prove anything, but this may be at least as probable as a ratio of infinity to chance. This argument leaves the atheists speechless by the way, since even a God has better chance to exist than we have at this moment. Perhaps we all live in delusion with regards to time, life, and mortality.

SP

Kant went to great length to prove the possibility of a priori cognitions, the objects of which do not arise naturally from phenomena, re: mathematics and geometry. From that, it is the case pure reason and pure understanding, have no legitimacy in experience. — Mww

If this correct the same rules apply to such abstract concepts as spirituality, inner motivation, soul, or universal ethics. Kantian ethics.

SP

Can’t argue with your logic. — Mww

The pure logic sometimes too abstract, not necessarily unswallowable, but the question is, whether legitimate argument can be built with no empirical observation. How are synthetic a priori truths possible? Kant's investigations in the Transcendental Logic lead him to conclude that the understanding and reason can only legitimately be applied to things as they appear phenomenally to us in experience.

On the other hand however you don't have to experience anything or conclude from experience of others to feel necessity of avoiding trouble. Just by using common sense. Or no any theory can be legitimate which is built on no empirical evidence.

SP

True. But there is a ton of empirical evidence that justifies the claim no two physical objects can occupy the same space at the same time. — Mww

There is empirical evidence for other cases indeed, but even the statement above that concludes from cases of others regarding my case is primarily logical. What if, for example, I get hit by a train even when I get off the rail because the train also derails towards me? Again, it is very unlikely that this will happen, but what if? For a sake of discussion, since every case is unique.

Okay this was a pretty easy example, but there are cases that are much harder to conclude from the experiences of others. What if Julius Caesar was never assassinated? In the absence of empirical evidence for this scenario, we can conclude based only on logic. From an empirical approach, this is a pure waste of time. And for historians it is indeed, but this is where the philosophy starts playing role. Just because we have no evidence, the answer is not yet random or arbitrary and the question is not meaningless or counterproductive either.

SP

There is no empirical evidence that the train would have hit me if I would have stayed on the railroad, waiting to be hit. This is just a most likely logical possibility.

SP

If we really do exist as aliens to others, why don’t we visit other aliens in the multiverse? If we don't, where is the evidence that we really exist? This is a reversal of logic.

It takes a fleeting six hundred thousand years for humanity to reach the level of development of type I. of civilization on Kardashev scale, if of course we develop at such a pace and do not bomb ourselves back into the Stone Age, for which there is no guarantee. Not mentioning the possibility of mass extinction.

Even though we will be capable to reach that level, it won't be sufficient to visit another civilizations. If, on the other hand, an extraterrestrial civilization is advanced enough to visit us, it must have an infinite amount of resources.

But what can that kind of civilization want from us? It would be like we want to communicate with earthworms. The Fermi Paradox is a childishly naive assumption.

SP

Countries come, countries go, empires rise, flourish, decline, then fail. The zones of influence of the states are constantly changing depending on the real political power relations.

Eventually they all fail, and end up where they belong to, on the midden of history, but everyone has only one god damn life.

The moral lesson here, human being should be treated as an individual, not as a member of a group, masses, nation, commune, and so on. Human being is a human being, no more, no less. Should be treated so, not as a expendable unit.

But it will never happen, as long as our rulers educate our children, and we tolerate it, moreover yearn for it. Which is not an education, rather indoctrination.

The sad truth of society, people don't listen to philosophers and arguments, but listen to demagogues and slogans. And if we let this happen once, the most awful people will take advantage of our naivety, and gullibility. And nothing good will happen, but every bad will happen that can be imagined and that either, which we can't yet even imagine.

SP

"If there is no God, everything is permitted."

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

SP

Avoiding War - Philosophy of Peace
War requires money, money, and money. As simple as that. Okay how we get money from? From taxpayers, selling an unborn generations as debt slaves, and so on.

The war in Afghanistan cost U.S. taxpayers more than two trillion dollars so far. What happened to that amount of money? Where did it go? Funny because that money exists in physical form even now, but it became totally worthless. The inflation has eaten it up completely.

What is missing is the fruit of two decades of work of Americans, their investments, the future of their children, creativity, talent, and their hard work that didn't pay off. It did not benefit society. It was not invested back into the economy, but consumed by the military industry.

U.S. taxpayers worked for virtually free for twenty years for their own government to finance the meaningless war on the other side of the world. The war which solved nothing. And even God knows how long their children will work for the same war for free to repay the huge public debt. Which will never happen, but the debt slavery will still remain.

One of the ancient great Christian fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus said: inflation is the mother of war, and of course the mother of taxation.

What do you think? Is it really worth fighting the endless and meaningless war of the ruling elite? Is the life is not short enough for doing this?

SP

War requires money, money, and money. As simple as that. Okay how we get money from? From taxpayers, selling an unborn generations as debt slaves, and so on.

The war in Afghanistan cost U.S. taxpayers more than two trillion dollars so far. What happened to that amount of money? Where did it go? Funny because that money exists in physical form even now, but it became totally worthless. The inflation has eaten it up completely.

What is missing is the fruit of two decades of work of Americans, their investments, the future of their children, creativity, talent, and their hard work that didn't pay off. It did not benefit society. It was not invested back into the economy, but consumed by the military industry.

U.S. taxpayers worked for virtually free for twenty years for their own government to finance the meaningless war on the other side of the world. The war which solved nothing. And even God knows how long their children will work for the same war for free to repay the huge public debt. Which will never happen, but the debt slavery will still remain.

One of the ancient great Christian fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus said: inflation is the mother of war, and of course the mother of taxation.

What do you think? Is it really worth fighting the endless and meaningless war of the ruling elite? Is the life is not short enough for doing this?

SP

The minimum wage is an illusion, it contributes nothing to wealth and prosperity, or livable life. everything has a realistic market price, including wages, because that is the price of work. The minimum wage causes not too much trouble if it consistent with the realistic market value of labor, but even in this case, it makes no sense at all, because the employer always pays the realistic market price of the work, otherwise, the worker goes to an employer who pays more. People tend to forget that employers extremely need their workers either. The problem arises when the minimum wage is raised towards a realistic market price of labor. In this case, it really causes unemployment. If prosperity really depends on the minimum wage, it could be raised by a million dollars a month, or better by ten million dollar per hour for everyone. And everyone will be happy with one hundred percent unemployment.

ASP

One of the reasons Nietzsche despises both Stoicism and Christianity is accepting the morality as supreme rule in cosmic term. As Stoicism says live according to nature means, be virtuous, however Nietzsche pointed out that the nature has no morality. In nature nothing is good or evil. For the nature the morality is not else than an arbitrary, artificially, man-made approach, and everybody’s free to set own moral rules, and everyone tyrannizes oneself with obeying own moral rule.

We’ll never have capacity to learn the objective truth in full depth anyways. Despite the fact morality does not exist on the level of nature indeed, Nietzsche failed to understand, and I began to understand that the morality is not social and cultural rather biological phenomenon in case of humans. Every person has a unique connection with transcendental morality without any social or cultural influence. The human race can make difference between good and evil for seventy thousand years at least and the cultures were built on this, sometimes hack this. This is comparable to that fact even the colors don’t exist in the nature, they are all merely illusion. Yet we perceive them, we see colors, moreover we all see particular colors at the same way without influencing each other.

How could it possible, since the colors don’t exist in reality? But they exist FOR US! And this is the key issue. Of course there’s some people who are color blind, who are unable sense colors, as there’s psychopaths, who are unable feel empathy and compassion, or the necessity of being virtuous, but this alone does not override the rule. Even a child has a sense of justice without learning it from others. How could it possible? The same point between the Nietzschean and Stoic views, they both deny the existence of free will. According to it we have no capacity to determine what we believe in, and in some sense they’re right about this indeed. Since the existence is not optional, we didn’t decide about whether we’re gonna be male or female either, we’ll have male or female brain structure.

No one chooses sexual orientation, preferences, even choosing sexual partner is not conscious choice. We can’t determine our intelligence level, which is genetical in seventy percent or even more. We didn’t select our traits and temper. We did neither choose mother tongue nor environment we were raised in. Those markers determine our behaviour and personality, and ironically we can’t decide whether we want to feel a sense of justice or necessity to be virtuous. At this point Nietzsche contradicted himself. On the other hand however, yet we still have choice, in that how we chase the best version of ourselves or remains coward, lazy, betraying our nature. This is a very interesting paradox. In fact it is very difficult if not impossible to imagine free will without considering our ability in making moral judgement and decision.

The nature has no morality indeed, we have by nature.

SP