What about your own personal philosophy? Not sure if you have one? — Joshs

I have a half-baked worldview, not sure that counts.

For others the best way to articulate and grow their personal philosophy may be through the language of music , poetry, dance, painting , running a business , doing science or digging ditches. — Joshs

Ok. This is a different perspective to mine but I like it.

We are creatures of nature, so our thoughts, feelings, emotions and reasons are also natural. — Manuel

By extension then man made fibers are natural too. Cheers for nylon!

Can you name an example of anything we know of which is non-natural?

I use the word all the time and I am an atheist. It's useful to have a term to describe that which is sacrosanct and inviolable.

The sacred is religious rather than secular. — SpaceDweller

Definitionally yes, usage... who knows?

One question I would like to ask is of atheism is the sense in which atheism is the denial of the category of 'the sacred' or 'the holy'. — Wayfarer

Forget 'the holy', according to Nietzsche, if you believe in grammar, you're a theist. Is intelligibility a matter of transcendence? If it is, we are all participating in the sacred whether we know it or not, right?

'The sacred' is not a clear idea. Sacred tends to be held in relation to something. Lenin's embalmed corpse was sacred to the Communist party. I imagine that many atheists, who are also secular humanists, would hold human rights as sacred. If you take as a presupposition that human suffering is wrong and wellbeing is good, then this makes sense, but it lacks aesthetic charm and a transcendental guarantor. The Western cannon would be held as sacred by many secular folk too - Dawkins has made this point often.

I generally hold that belief in god/s or higher consciousness is an aesthetic response. And, as I have said to you before, I think the way you express your positions often suggests (to me) that transcendent significance (via idealism, reincarnation, meditation) is aesthetically superior to a world of Weberian disenchantment (the products of stultifying Darwinism, scientism, scepticism, rationalism).

What do you understand by 'the sacred' can it be a secular notion?

A peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich made with Jiffy peanut butter and Helman's mayonnaise on white bread is the only truly philosophical sandwich. — T Clark

I've recorded this in my philosophical notebook next to the section on Heidegger.

If will to power is the one will to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them), then just like in Lord of the Rings, will to power is the will that needs to be taken to forge from whence it came, the fires of Mount Doom, and destroyed in order for us to be free. — praxis

An aside - is the idea of a will to power an example of foundational thinking which FN purports to blow up?

No one does that. If they did, adherents would be stoning little girls. That they don't should give you pause as to what they must be looking at to decide how to act. — Hanover

Indeed. Do you know have a view why it is that Jewish fundamentalism hasn't gone down this path, given that Islamic fundamentalism (by contrast) seems quite ready to kill women, children and apostates in the name of Koranic fidelity?

whether or not this activity is in itself philosophy, you must agree that it does, or can, bring the decider into contact with philosophical issues — hypericin

I already said this:

It may be how philosophy begins and then from it an ontology and epistemology is gradually built. — Tom Storm

But none of this is very far from saying that making a sandwich is a philosophical enterprise...

Upon my death, I would not merely encounter in heaven only those persons who died before me, but I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who I thought I was leaving behind, and I would also encounter in heaven all those persons who would be my future descendants.

Any comments about this? — charles ferraro

I have no belief in an afterlife and I find the idea incoherent. Death holds no fascination for me and the idea of eternity is meaningless. I consider that before I was born I was effectively 'dead' for 'eternity'.

Death. The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a precious and fragrant drop of levity - and now you strange apothecary souls have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of life repulsive.

Nietzsche

There are lots of times in the regular old everyday world when it's important that I know how I know something and how certain I am — T Clark

Of course.

"I like this home. At least I think I do. But do I really know that? What if it is a passing whimsy? How do I distinguish my preference of the moment from a stable preference that will endure 10 years from now. — hypericin

Ok, thanks for that response. I understand that people do sometimes ruminate over basic life decisions. But I don't consider that kind of quotidian decision making (or lack thereof) philosophy. It may be how philosophy begins and then from it an ontology and epistemology is gradually built.

I completely disagree. — hypericin

Cool. We disagree.

It is what makes decisions so hard. — hypericin

I've never found such decisions hard at all.

If philosophy were a quaint exercise confined to certain abstract questions, it would be utterly uninteresting. — hypericin

From what I can see it mostly is. But I am not a philosopher.

Maybe you could take one of these questions, let's say, choosing a home, and demonstrate how philosophy would be applied to this task. :wink:

Do you know if Nietzsche actually looked at the God question? That is because from the reading which I have done, it doesn't seem particularly clear what he thought. — Jack Cummins

He's a pioneering anti-foundationalist - the question of god/s or not has no intrinsic meaning/value, it is but one of infinite possible perspectives (with no objective reality), which people hold in whatever value systems they adhere to. And by the way, I'm fairly sure FN would also have hated the current pop-atheists for their ostentatious foundational positioning of atheism and concomitant secularism and enlightenment values.


I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: it is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers — at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think! (Ecce Homo 'Why I Am So Clever' §1)

My understanding of FN is that he 'blew up' all totalising meta-narratives, which meant that for him the god question was not even wrong.

Is there any merit in distinguishing between what we call knowledge in the quotidian world and what we call knowledge when we seek to make a claim about what we might call reality?

In ordinary life, epistemology is of little consequence - in picking a partner, choosing a home or selecting a car, working out what university degree to do, or which job to take, what shopping to buy - we do not worry about the problem of induction, or the correspondence theory of truth, or philosophy in general.

But as soon as we start talking about whether we believe in god/s or not, or what we ought to do as human beings, we generally enter into some form of argument with evidence and justifications. It's here that what we call knowledge becomes interesting. Is this a fair observation?

Reminds me of Lord of the Rings. One ring to rule them all! What’s the point of this self-control? Why is it good or desirable? — praxis

That is the salient question.

My new philosophical position, a modification of Occam's razor - When you have two equal theories about some aspect of reality, choose the one that is less annoying. — T Clark

:up:

I don't disagree but I still can't really see how any of these perspectives are useful.

It is true that we should not follow the same steps of our idols because they had a very different way of life from ours. — javi2541997

That's not what I was saying. I was saying - we don't know why they did what they did. We don't have access to other people's situations or inner life and any narratives made by them (or others) must be treated with caution and possibly as myth building accounts.

I think we always have to take care not to base our understanding of others and their actions (such as suicide) via books or other people's stories/claims about them. The real answers if they are known are often quite different and more nuanced.

He certainly did like to throw around words like ‘gods’, but in what sense is becoming and self-overcoming religion? — Joshs

Indeed.

What he encouraged was recognizing that the ‘something’ one believes in is always transforming itself into something new, so it is the endless movement , the eternal return of the same movement , that he sees as fundamental — Joshs

Why is this important to him?

I am not saying this is wrong but none of that makes any sense to me.

Funnily enough, when I spoke of Nietzsche creating a new romantic movement, — Jack Cummins

When I was at university back in the 1980's Nietzsche was described as a romantic and so were the post-modernists who were raging against foundationalist modernity the way the 18th century romantics raged against rationalism.

One issue with reading Nietzsche, and it's a good quote by someone (I forget who), is that Nietzsche is easy to read but hard to understand. I've read a bit of his work now and for me it is fun, pithy, clever, portentous, but I have no real use for it. I would be interested in hearing from others about what N has contributed to their understanding, rather than hearing about how influential N is or isn't.

I get where you are coming from and I often wondered if this might lead anywhere myself but I suspect there are too many divergent and contradictory ideas held as moral.

Why not explore one thoroughly and test where it leads? The prohibition against killing, for instance, is almost meaningless in its application. Police can kill. We can kill in self defence. The state can kill. We can commit euthanasia in some countries; abortion in others. We can invade countries and kill and kill to defend our own countries. We can kill members of tribes as payback for crimes done to us. We can kill others with the products we can legally sell. We can kill gay people in some places and apostates in others. Etc.

That's because that knowledge is suppressed from the time you were a kid. It's simple though. It's knowledge about the heaven and the gods in it. — Haglund

Well I know you believe that, but I have no reason to. I'm not in the secret, suppressed knowledge business.

I hear you. I think part of the problem is scientists often use the term god ironically. It's irresistible, especially for an atheist. People also call rock guitarists and great sporting stars 'god' too.

Isn't religious knowledge proof? Isn't theology taught at our universities — Haglund

I don't know what you mean by religious knowledge.

question what was there before becomes infinitely never ending question.
in other words, scientists will never be able to defeat God. — SpaceDweller

What does this mean? I had no idea scientists were even talking to god let alone trying to defeat it - do explain this.

The actual question is probably 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' Not 'Did something come from nothing?' I don't think humans can answer this yet - certainly not by using wonky science on an internet forum.

Has science ever been able to describe what nothing 'is'? But it wouldn't surprise me if there is some range of views when it comes to this kind of cosmological speculation. My own view is that I have no grounds to accept the proposition that once there was nothing - nothing can't even be defined.

Can't we have an innate, a priori divine, religious knowledge? If beyond human understanding for now, when will we know? When we die? — Haglund

No, I can't see that. How would you demonstrate this?

If the universe is eternal, which, in my calmly reasoned, humbly humbleness, seems to be the case, then who created eternity? — Haglund

I have no reason to ask 'who' or use the word 'created' for anything. I think you may be right about eternity but this may be beyond human understanding for now.

Perhaps, God is the first existant; I thought this natural view might be interesting to some enquirers. — val p miranda

I don't think science (or anyone) can determined if there was ever nothing. The 'something from nothing' trope seems unique to religious worldviews.

So Nietzsche is not only a proto-postmodernist, and a nascent existentialist, he's also a progenitor of the New Age movement. :wink:

Cool - @Banno said someone like you would show up... he's now a prophet.

...and Jesus wanted to be Satan but his Dad said "No". — Banno

And Jesus (in Mathew 4 1-11) is tempted by Satan. 'Kid, I'll give you anything if you worship me...' Very strange story given Jesus is God... what would God want with kingdoms when he created everything and is already omnipotent and impotent when it comes to the worship of others?

People wave a priori knowledge around like it's a magic wand, but it's just fancy words for regular old stuff. — T Clark

Yep. I guess it was useful in as much as I learned at university many years ago that we discover things a posteriori (by observation) or a priori (by theoretical deduction). The simple and common example of the latter being every mum has (or has had) a child. It's tautological, as you have stated. Some people might view certain arguments for god as a priori.

Does a bird which migrates south for the first time in its life use a priori knowledge to get there, or are they just copying the others?

I don’t find the apologist arguments I’ve seen (for example, William Lane Craig) convincing. Apologists IMHO embrace reason only in so far as it supports dogma. — Art48

I am not convinced either, but they use reason, that's the point which most atheists deny. The more highbrow of them are serious academics - Alvin Plantinga, Bentley Hart... Still doesn't mean you will be convinced (nor am I) but the point is they are engaged in reason and philosophy, not magic.

By truth I mean correspondence with reality. — Art48

I think you may need to explore the correspondence theory of truth (and others). This kind of Matt Dillahunty notion will only get a person so far in philosophy. Reality has yet to be defined and if you define it as truth you enter circularity.

The intelligent design argument is an example of using reason only in so far as it supports dogma. If God designed the universe so that conscious life can exist, then God also designed the universe so that childhood cancer could exist. — Art48

Yes but you are only arguing against a literalist fundamentalist Christian conception god. Shooting fish in a barrel isn't it? Theists and deists are far more diverse.

Are you an Ayn Rand objectivist?

Sometimes even more than that - that it is somehow woven into the very structure of reality. Which is what this whole thread is about. — T Clark

:up:

I suspect there are far more people influenced by Nietzsche than Jung. — Jackson

Even if that were true (and I am no Jung enthusiast) it has no impact on the quote.

An incel.