On The Philosophy of, well, Philosophy

Quetzal,I really, really disdain philosophy. And I'm not religious myself, at least as far as I am aware.With that said, the issue I have with your OP is this: questions which you may interpret as questions about truth; questions which religious people themselves believe are questions about truth: they are often not about truth at all! That's why we see the constant moving of goalposts, the convoluted responses to HARD DATA. Because it is not truth that is being sought.That's why your lumping of religion and philosophy in your response seems very poor to me (even understanding that you were responding to a question where that was also the case). In religion, truth is often not sought. In philosophy, as a discipline (but not necessarily in practice) it is.I can tolerate religion and understand it as simply a completely different approach to understanding than science. To me, philosophy is just a big lie. It's value lies not in truth, but in the same allegorical methods employed in fiction.Ben

Hi Archer Opertix. I'm happy to answer the question, but afraid that doing so might pull the thread off-topic. I hope it will suffice to say that my enduring respect for religion comes from the fact that I don't have a principled answer to this question.If you're looking for more, feel free to email me or try & help me understand how the question relates to the topic, so that I can answer in a way that will promote addressing Quetzal's original questions.

Please, seriously, stop it. What you are doing is extroadinarily frustrating, and leaves me with zero interest in discussing with you. Feel free to be an annoyance, but I simply won't respond to you.You are fundamentally and willfully breaking the implicit agreement that people make, to attempt to understand each other and work together to establish communication. That is sophistry. That is annoying. That pisses me off.I *WAS* happy to tell you my thoughts, but not because I wanted to argue or convince you, simply to inform you of my internal state. I told you, I hate philosophy. I have no interest in discussing the philosophy of my position in order to determine "right/wrong" or "correct/incorrect". I only had interest in letting you ask questions to facilitate making your own decisions about yourself.Fortunately for me (in your eyes), I am no longer happy to discuss anything with you. You lose, go away.Seriously, please don't reply to this message. Show me at least that amount of respect.