Toughest Philosophical Questions

Perhaps. But we know that what we think influences what we perceive...

If our 'scenario' here is accurate then would not one never leave the point of 'thinking'? Perception doesn't happen.

Could you rephrase that please?

If what we have established here is indeed accurate, then one would not ever leave the 'point' of thinking.

If we have established that perception is 'automatic' and ultimately there is no controlling or changing. Also, that 'thinking' would be the only option, then the thinker would never be able to go outside the point of 'thinking'.

You see, perception is what it is, and you can only think about them by using empirical 'evidence' or thinking through them with thoughts from who you really are.

You're not making any sense.

Everything else being equal, why (philosophically) would a most beautiful girl date a most ugly guy?

Kind, considerate, and rich.

And she said: Monnnneeee honey!!! If you want to get al ong wit me...

More a general comment than questions or answers.

The major problem that divides believers and scientific skeptics is the definition of God. For any rational debate, we must separate the proposition of a material Prime Mover existing from the God of Religion. If you do that, then the result is a draw. Given a choice between the origin of the Universe being a dumb blob of pre-Big Bang plasma on the one hand and being a sentient Prime Mover or even an alien Earlier Being on the other: one is no more lunatic than the other. Both either always existed or created themselves: a very god-like ability and an article of faith of both science and religion.

But religion insists on this magical quality and that the Mover is willing and able to relate to man. By "relate" I mean that its actions can be directly linked to a result perceived by man. The ant fondly believes it occupies the high ground of objective observation. It is wrong. It has no conception of man even when he waxes wrath and smites it verily with insecticide when it sinneth in his sugar bowl or fishes one of them out of his swimming pool. But man still exists. We may be ants in turn. Religion must be less demanding and science must be less arrogant.

We man-apes are cursed with intellect exceeding knowledge. It could be that what we see as true may be limited by what our brain interprets as true and that ability may be only appropriate to our species. Our eyes and instruments are contaminated by the very laws we seek to examine. The more science researches, the more existentialist and subjective this existence becomes. Magic may be just a cheap trick by a conjuror a bit brighter than we. Nature is a masterful illusionist. If we don’t examine the hat, we won’t spot the rabbit.

It is possible that the Universe was true chaos in which a gazillion monkeys could type their fingers off and the result would still be Rush Linbergh. But a hand may have molded that clay into something we recognize as orderly. In the case of the monkeys, there could have been a Bill Gates to provide the word processor to nudge Hamlet along a bit. So while God may not be the panacea religion expects, it may have made this Universe a darn sight better place. Returning to the ant: the fact is, he was able to return to his people from my swimming pool. And, had he the intellect to be able to spell and produce a bible, I might have been very flattered by its contents. As Douglas Adams suggested: the truth may be just a matter of comic scale.

So science should approach these imponderables with the open-mindedness of a child. After all, didn’t Einstein stick out his tongue like a naughty kid?

My full thesis lies behind my radio play “The Littlest Devil”. I have self-dramatized excerpts from it on YouTube. It is an allegory: being a one-time political cartoonist whose tool is the illustrated allegory, that form comes naturally to me. I chose the Nativity Story as the vehicle as it was well-know and contained metaphors (such as in the previous paragraph) useful to my intent. So it appears more religious than it, in fact, is. It is primarily with philosophical and anthropological intent. It is about how we man-apes come to terms with Life, the Universe and Everything. The presentation itself, because I have to grab and entertain and because the Story has all the Hollywood drama, makes it appear even more religious. The fact is, because there is just me to do all the acting, all dialogue-driven scenes which contain all my underlying arguments had to be omitted. However, if you look at my cartoons and sketches there, you will see that reverence is not my style. One of the duties of the political cartoonist is to be that lone voice that says that the Emperor is naked. My You Tube channel is horselord23.

Voltaire said “Judge a man not by the answers he gives but by the questions he asks”. I may be very well be an idiot but if everyman was afraid to ask questions for fear of looking a fool, we would all remain fools. I do not claim to know the answers but I do try to ask the questions that religion and science seem coy to answer. As a kid, I asked my science teacher what caused the expansion of the Universe to accelerate: this was before Dark Matter was the flavor of the month. He told me to shut up and sit down. This suggests that science, like morality, is a matter of fashion. I also asked inconvenient questions at Scripture class and was thrashed. My bog-Irish and probably illiterate mother-in-law asked me what kept the moon up. Luckily I knew: my father was a keen amateur scientist and mathematician and had, in fact, met Einstein. Had I been Newton, that question may have saved me a trip to the orchard.

Ah, that answers my question, C.I.--how you managed to catch such a beautiful wife.

Ah, that answers my question, C.I.--how you managed to catch such a beautiful wife.

That's it, "a dumb blob of pre-Big Bang plasma". We can give up that problem of astrophysics.
BTW, horselord: welcome. Nice post.

Good post, and I also extend my welcome.

Beyond the guessing game between a god and the big bang, both are still "up in the air."

I will stick with my evolutionary friends, because it has the most and best record of proof, and we're still expanding our knowledge about it.

I think many of us will stick with "atheism" until such a time when there are more answers than questions about a god.

Thanks JL Nobody and Cicerone Imposter for your kind remarks. I've just had a Eureka moment. No, I wasn't in the shower. Dark Matter.
You pour out a glass of Pepsi. The CO2 bubbles expand and cause the liquid to fizz to the top.
Reading the science mags recently, they are talking now of negative gravity. Imagine a big pool of such: the opposite of Black Holes. They, too, would expand and drive the Universal boundary fizzing out at high speed.
Just a thought. I will now take my pills.

Me too.

Me too.

A word of warning. I suffer from philosophical diarrhea. Drives the wife nuts. My original thesis runs to several hundred pages. So don't encourage me. So, as an outlet, I crack silly jokes; draw cartoons and perform inane sketches. That dooms me as a serious philosopher: after all, Schopenhauer didn't get where he was by being a bundle of laughs.

I guess it is: is the first thing that existed a dumb blob of pre-Big Bang plasma or a nice old guy with a beard. We must assume that the first thing either created itself or always existed. Probably the second as it is in line with Einstein.

Other great questions, of course, are-
Why does the phone ring when you are having a leisurely crap?
Why do the traffic lights change to red just as you get to them?
Why does one of a pair of socks just disappear into a black hole?
Why doesn't Charity and Evangelism go together?
Why is the logical and safe place in which you have put an object turn out to be the last place you look when you are trying to find it?
Why do bureaucrats, in order to save one dollar, spend two on red-tape?
Why do geeks, when "improving" something, make it twice as bad (eg Windows 7)?
Why does no one comment on my wise and witty comments on my Facebook when they twitter away ad-nauseum to someone else's inferior contribution?
For other great devilish questions see my "Interview with the Devil on You Tube horselord23 channel.

Well, I can answer at least one of those questions with a fair degree ofcertainty, Horselord. Why does something you're looking for always turn out to be hiding in the last place you look? Because after you've found it, you stop looking. That's why it was in the 'last place.' Simple.