What is your own philosophy?
Offline So we here this time and time again from theists asking what our philosophies are. Many of us have a wide variety of responses to this. Well, in all seriousness, I've been having trouble with this. I'm trying to see what others have been inspired by because I have been struggling. I've been feeling like such a nihilist baby lately and I can't snap out of it. I'm trying to learn more about philosophy and pull myself up.
"Every true faith is infallible -- It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search." - Nietzsche
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Well, I believe in minimizing suffering (human and otherwise) as much as is realistically feasible, I believe that human creativity and insatiable curiosity are our most prized and beautiful traits and I believe that human laziness and ignorance is the road to our demise. I believe that we're capable of a lot more than we get done, and I believe we could reach well beyond this home of ours if we really put the effort in.
I believe that 'spirituality' and any and all paranormal claims are bunk (including the things metioned by folks like Harris as 'healthy spirituality'), but I also believe that related fiction - recognized as fiction - makes for healthy entertainment. I'm also a desperate supporter of SETI - because this universe is a big and complicated place, and it would be nice to find some help for exploring it.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Yeah, pretty much what he said....LOL
I will ad, a firm belief in non-violence, unless life or family is threatened. (46, and about 8 fights in my lifetime)
And yes, I served in the U.S. Army.
As far as alien life?
I could not imagine a universe this big, and we here on earth are all there is....(How can theists believe that?)
Well for personal philosophy, I actually like the wiccan creed: "As long as it harms done,do as you will." Other than that,I pretty much agree with what everyone else said.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
My personal pholosophy on life is that we are indeed animals. I'm a big fan of human evolution and delight in learning about our evolution from our apelike ancestors. I have had many arguments with otherwise intelligent and educated people that refuse to believe that we are one species of the Great Apes which consists of Gorillas, Orangutans, Chimpanzee's, Bonobos, and Humans. Furthermore we need to keep this quote in mind when we think of humanity.
Based on this line of thinking I believe that ALL great apes should be jealously protected and afforded almost the same rights that we afford to each other.
Beyond this I believe in the Maxim "Live and let live". We need to break down barriers between cultures to fully embrace all of humanity and learn to view all peoples as our neighbors and friends. Sometimes deadly force will be required however to stop those that seek to divide us.
Life is a precious experience that we have for only a brief time. There is so much to stand in awe of in this universe that gave birth to us. We must enjoy it to the fullest before we close our eyes forever and cease to exist. Religion blinds most of humanity to the truth and robs us of the wonderful and amazing facts of reality.
Religion is the most damaging, divisive, and horrid idea that humanity has ever created. And it could very well destroy us.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
Another "ditto" post here I guess.
Suffering and the avoidance of causing it, as well as the reliving of it, is the basis of my moral compass. There's also personal responsibility, a touch of game theory especially as it relates to the "prisoner's dilemma" where I default to cooperation first, then tit-for-tat after. Also; a need to re-examine my ideas about reality and any given situation therein in hopes I can avoid deluding myself, so I can hopefully make more rational decisions.
Underlying it all is the knowledge that our African ape cousins are troupe animals, and that we basically are as well. Humans have a natural lean toward cooperating in smallish groups, and a lean toward distrust of outsiders. That helps give me the patience to wait through assimilating into a new group, and to help folks assimilate into groups I'm a member of. Great for new jobs and getting new neighbors =^_^=
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
It may sound kind of odd, but I'm a naturalist/fatalist/optimist.
I, like others who've responded, view everything through ape-colored glasses. I don't believe in 'higher morality' or in the ability of humans to improve upon nature. I think absolutely everything we do is by definition 'natural,' and I think that it is impossible for us to escape our evolution. That's the fatalism part and the naturalist part.
(I also believe that humans are doomed to destroy the planet, but hold on while I get to the optimistic part.)
I am strictly not a humanist. That is, I don't feel like human interests "naturally" supersede those of other life. I believe that the rational thing for humans to do is to moderate their own consumption and reproduction to live in balance with the rest of life on earth. Since we are instinctive, not inherently rational, I have no delusions that we will ever do such a thing. We will consume everything we can until there is mass starvation.
The optimist part is that our existence will be a blip on the radar screen, and in a few hundred thousand years, most of the evidence of our existence will be gone. The earth will have a couple billion years during which life will continue evolving.
While I'm here, I do my best to encourage people to do rational, rather than unthinking instinctive things. Despite my pessimistic long term views, I think life is an amazing thing, and I try to make the most of every day I have. I don't let events that I'll never see get me down too often. All I can do is live today.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I don't have a philosophy, per se. I think we're free from dogmatic supernatural constraints to do whatever we want, but there's a catch, and it's a doozy. What we want to do is a product of the natural and social circumstances that shape our perception; and on this assumption we can make probabalistic projections about the direction of society. There is a middle ground the majority will find; a comfort zone where people can best serve their simple motives; which aren't limited to the crass straw-man, but include behaviors considered noble and wholesome. In fact, I think this is all we've ever done.
I think I'm still working my philosophy out. As far as belief goes, I think I'm some mixture of evidentialism and pragmatism, and think evolution explains the basic framework of my morality.
Great responses.
I really like what you said here, Watcher:
Right now I've been trying to understand the differences between religious morality and rational morality. The different concepts of right and wrong and what is natural, or denaturalized. I'm re-reading some nietzsche for starters.
"Every true faith is infallible -- It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search." - Nietzsche
I agree with this statement. I also think that I pretty much follow the Wiccan Rede. I think it's important to fight for our rights and to not allow anyone to take them away from us yet I have no intention of stomping on someone else's rights in the process.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
All you have control over is here and now, so that is all that matters. You make each day your own private heaven or your own private hell. Sounds like you've been doing the latter lately.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
Haha yeah that's right. Well I've actually been going through this self-inflicted hell for awhile, but I started learning about Sartre and it has completely rocked my world. I've been gaining some perspective.
"Every true faith is infallible -- It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search." - Nietzsche
Here's my philosophy, in a nutshell:
http://whybelieve.blogspot.com/2007/11/lottery-winner-theory-of-human-behavior.html
Nobody I know was brainwashed into being an atheist.
Why Believe?
Right on, that was a great article... Have you ever read anything about anarcho-primitivism? I completely disagree with the ideology, but it's huge here in Eugene, Oregon and I've met John Zerzan. I think I would agree with it more if the state of our planet and it's environment was horribly horribly awful. The idea of overthrowing industrial civilization and our domestication completely, moving to what they call a "future primitive."
Have you seen the latest George Carlin stand up? I really like what he says about the environment in that, and our obsession with reproduction. Put simply, he says something like, "have you ever thought about what this planet is going to look like in 50 years from now? It's going to be a huge gassy ball of shit!"
As for my problems with morality and my personal philosophy, I figured my problem out after reading some existentialism and other ideas on rational morality. I'm completley motivated and inspired now.
"Every true faith is infallible -- It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search." - Nietzsche
My philosophy is this:
* I'll be able to make better decisions if I have a more accurate understanding of the world and of myself.
* To arrive at such an understanding, I should carefully and skeptically observe the world around me, and try to disprove my hypotheses at every opportunity.
* Talking to other people, reading what they write, etc. can help me form new hypotheses more quickly, but since I'm not going to live long enough to investigate them all, I have to prioritize which will be the most beneficial for me to investigate.
Meeting ones material needs leeds to personal fulfillment, with the corollary that one should keep those needs simple as possible. After one meets the basic needs, everything else falls into what I call the art of living. Ethically, the creed espoused by Alester Crowley best sums it up for me. "That ye harm none, do as you will." LC >;-}>
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.