Hello Philosophy Society!

I am proud to say that this is the 38th consecutive newsletter. One was written for every week since March of 2022. This is the last newsletter for Volume 2, 2022, for the Philosophy Society. Next newsletter will be the beginning of Volume 3, 2023.

PSN 2(38) - 28.12.22 - Distortion Chart, Anger, Negative Memories, Falling out of Love, FG Ch7, World Worth Saving, Feelings and Regard for Others, Spirituality, Existence of God, Reality, Science, Personal Experience

Philosophy Academy: Distortion Chart

We began this week’s meeting by creating a table that simplified all the distortions and offered what the solution to them would be.

The first step is being able to identify the distortion within the automatic thought. Once we have done this, we develop an automatic thought to replace the distorted thinking. We get a lot of practice in the development of rational responses by simply reading through the book. Burns goes through many different examples throughout each chapter and if we take our time to understand how each rational response relates to the distorted, automatic thought, we will be able to do it for ourselves.

If we have dealt with one distorted thought but still have negative emotions, we can ask ourselves what other automatic thoughts come from our feelings and repeat the distortion identification/ rational response process until we do not feel bad anymore. Our emotions can be like a block of ice floating in water. If we are trying to reduce the emotional content, it may take several attempts to chop the ice down until there is nothing left.

For example, if we are searching for a job but the descriptions have qualifications we do not possess. We could have the thought that we are not good enough. The first distortion would be disqualifying the positive; to say we are not good enough would also be to not count the positive attributes we do possess. It is important to look at the issue of a lack of qualification and make actions towards gaining those qualifications.

Discussion 1: Anger

Aristotle discusses the golden mean and the appropriate use of anger. It takes the development of practical wisdom to know how much anger is appropriate within certain situations.

Learning how to appropriate our emotions to the situation takes a degree of skill.

Discussion 2: Negative Memories

We may have past memories that are full of distortions that cause us suffering. To deal with these feelings, it is useful to write down these memories, identify the distortions and rewrite the story in such a way that it is a realistic reconstruction of what happened. We can remove the distortion and create a new way to remember the event by restructuring the narrative.

Discussion 3: Falling out of Love

Sometimes break ups occur and we can fall out of love. We can be faced with being rejected and distortions can arise. Being mindful of overgeneralization, just because this person doesnt love me, doesn't mean no one will, is important. As well, personalization, their not loving me is not necessarily my fault.

We can also make an effort to understand why they have fallen out of love. For example, being empathetic by seeing from their perspective. “Why don’t you love me? Because you do not love yourself.” The disarming technique would be to agree, “I understand that not loving myself makes it hard for others to love me.” Lastly, Negotiation: Even if this relationship has failed, I now have learned that self-love is necessary for others to love me. I will not make this mistake in the future.

If the relationship ends, there is a process of adjusting one’s lifestyle independent of the other person being in it. The first step is developing acceptance. We can look at Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages of grieving in this process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. It takes time for the brain to rewire itself to the new lifestyle of being alone.

Philosophy Academy: Feeling Good

Chapter 7: Feeling Angry? What is your IQ?

In our study of Feeling Good, we began chapter 7 which is about anger. We read through pages 149 -180. Burns begins the chapter by asking people how irritable they are; their ‘irritability quotient.’ We can measure this by how much we become frustrated or overreact to things that disappoint us. On page 149 - 153, he provides a questionnaire that presents situations and we are to rate how upsetting those circumstances would make us feel. We then compare our score to see how angry in general we are. (149)

Historically, mental health professionals viewed anger as something that either turned inward or outward. The internal manifestation of anger lacked empirical evidence but Freud believed it led to a form of internalized aggression developing into guilt or depression. The outward expression is when one ventilates their feelings towards others in society. The cognitive approach towards anger is to simply not create it in the first place. There is no need to hold it in or burst it out if it doesn’t exist. Burns goes through the pros and cons of experiencing anger and whether it is in our self-interest. The goal is for us to gain control over our feelings and prevent being overwhelmed by irritability and frustration. (153)

Some may believe that it is other people or external events that make us or are the cause of our anger. Burns would say we are fooling ourselves believing that other people make us angry. Burns states,

Burns reminds us that all of our emotions are created by our cognitions, including anger. On page 155, Burns shows a diagram of the relationship between the world, other people, us, our thoughts, emotions and behaviour. Before we can experience any irritation from an event or a person, we have to be aware of it through our own interpretation first. The feeling we have is a result of the meaning we give to the perception of our experiences, not the content within the experiences. (154)

The emotional reaction we have is completely dependent on the way we think about situations. Negative events in the world but our response to them is dependent on how we see them. The consequences of an emotional outburst are usually higher and not in our advantage because of the pain and suffering we inflict upon ourselves in contrast to that which caused our upsetness. Essentially, our anger is being caused by subtle distortions based in incorrect perceptions. Once we develop the skill of replacing these views in a more realistic and functional way, we will have greater self-control and become less angry. (156)

A common distortion in terms of anger is labeling others, the extreme form of overgeneralizing them as having a bad essence and directing our emotions and what the person “is.” This process uses the mental filter distortion by cataloging them in our mind in only a negative way and disqualifying the positive by ignoring the good things about them. Humans have a combination of positive, negative and neutral attributes so it is unreasonable to label a person as one thing. We can feel a sense of moral superiority through labeling and creating ourselves an unhealthy self-image leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy from polarizing the other person. (157)

We can become engaged in defending our self-esteem from perceived criticism or insults but the other person is not worthless even if we feel that way. It is untrue that we can raise our self-esteem by lowering others. It is only our own negative, distorted thinking that can reduce our self-respect. Burns says,

The solution lies in ending our inner aggressive self-criticism. (158)

The distortion, mind reading, when we create reasons why the other person was motivated to act in a certain way that satisfies our own explanatory purposes. These explanations are usually inaccurate because they do not represent what the other person was actually thinking or perceiving that motivated them. It is important that we reality test these assumptions of the thoughts of others. (158)

We can also be distorted in magnifying via exaggerating the importance of negative things, where the intensity and duration of our angry reaction will be out of proportion to the person or occurrence. (158)

Using the term ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ can create a sense that other people did not conform to our expectations, creating a sense of frustration with them. Burns says,

The unmet expectation is a representation of some injustice in the world that creates the feeling of anger in response. We are creating unnecessary frustration for ourselves when we impose perfectionistic expectations on others and believe they intended to harm us in such a way. We end up making ourselves miserable and upset because of what we believe the world is, instead of observing the world as it unfolds. (159)

Should statements can produce an irrational sense of entitlement to instant gratification that leads to rage or panic when our expectations are not met. Desires can be formulated in a moralistic way in the sense that if they are nice to people, they ‘should’ get what they want or appreciated. Other people’s agency and free will means they will act and think in any way they like which is not necessarily in the way you want them to. If someone uses anger in a manipulative or coercive way to get what they want, they end up polarizing the relationship and demotivate others from wanting to do things for you. No one likes to be controlled or dominated. Anger most often limits our ability to be creative and discover different possibilities to solve problems. (159-60)

The root of anger, according to Burns, is in the perception of unfairness or injustice as the emotion that is tied to a correspondence with a belief of being treated this way. Burns respond to this view by stating that universal fairness and justice do not actually exist. They are both relative and dependent on the observer. What is perceived fair to one person is not to another. Cultures vary on social rules and moral structures. Burns states,

Our sense of fairness is based on our perception and interpretation of an abstract notion relative to a self-centered concept. (160-1)

Burns does not believe in personal, social or moral codes being objective facts in terms of statements or judgments about fairness. Social rules are accepted by members of a particular group that enhance the self-interest of the members of that group. If one does not account for the feelings or interests of others, they will feel taken advantage of and retaliate. (161)

The definition of fairness can vary and some behaviour may be accepted by some and not others. If rules are accepted unanimously they can become a moral code and later a law but even then they are not necessarily absolute or universal systems with ultimate validity in all circumstances for all people. Our anger often results when our personal wants conflict with moral codes, resulting in perceiving others as acting unfairly. They may be acting from a different frame of reference that is not unfair relative to the standards they are using. (161-2)

The sense of ‘fairness’ is based on the perception of a universal standard that everyone ascribes to. Unfairness would be when someone does not follow that assumed standard, but is actually working from their own understanding of a standard of fairness. Burns says that for a universal standard to exist it would mean that everyone’s morality would be the same, and it is not. Everyone has their own perception and thinks differently. Others can feel insulted and become defensive if we label them as being unfair and end up polarizing our interaction. (162)

Fairness’ relativity has a logical fallacy when we impose our standard on others that our anger is derived from. We judge others acting unfairly based on their actions relative to our value system even though they are acting from their own value system. Their actions may seem reasonable and fair from their perspective. Burns states,

Accepting that people act from within their own system of morality and perspective, we can make efforts to persuade them to change their attitude, standard or actions and ensure we don’t suffer regardless of what they do. (162)

Burns references Wayne Dyer who states,

Dyer’s position is the negative extreme of an all or nothing position. In some instances, anger can be useful and it would be an overgeneralization to say it never works. Burns develops two guidelines to determine if anger is productive or not.

1. Is the anger directed towards a person who knowingly, intentionally, or unnecessarily acted maliciously?

2. Is anger useful here? Is it helping achieve a desired goal or is it destructive?

We can use anger in an adaptive way to motivate us to win or push harder but it can become maladaptive once we have achieved success or if it is harming others. If we have self-control and decide to use anger, as in alarming a child of the danger of the street, the magnitude and expression are adaptive and have a positive result. Hostility, in contrast, is impulsive, aggressive an uncontrolled. (163-4)

If there is nothing we can do about some injustice in the world we see, anger would be maladaptive as a response. Burns offers some methods to reduce our anger in situations when it is not in our interest. (164-5)

1. Develop the Desire: When we have already become mad, it can be very difficult to let it go from being consumed for revenge. Anger, as a moral emotion in response to perceived unfairness, makes it difficult to let go of righteous feelings leading us to defend and justify the emotion. Burns suggests we first use the double column technique of advantages and disadvantages, shown on page 166, of acting in a retaliatory way. Upon evaluating our aggressive action, determine what the costs and benefits are and whether being resentful is in our best interest. (165)

Performing this kind of cost/benefit analysis is the first step in coping with anger and if we can do without becoming angry we have begun a motivation towards change. Removing destructive anger can give us inner peace, self-esteem, and increase how effective we are with others. (167)

2. Cool Those Hot Thoughts: Here, Burns asks us to write down the ‘hot thoughts’ coming to mind when we are angry. He then asks us to substitute ‘cool thoughts’ that are less upsetting and more objective with the double column technique. Attend to the antagonistic statements in our mind, record them without censoring anything, and substitute a more ‘cool,’ objective statement that entices less negative emotion. (167)

On page 168, Burns gives an example of the Hot vs Cool Thought double column technique. When we substitute the Cool for the Hot, we will most likely feel better. He also suggests using the Daily Record of Dysfunctional Thoughts chart, page 170, to describe what situation provoked us, and how to assess our anger before and after doing the exercise. (169)

3. Imagining Techniques: The negative aggressive thoughts in our minds are like the script of a movie projected in our minds. These mental pictures are a form of visualization that we can do with our eyes open or closed. These images are normal and part of the conscious illustration of our thoughts or memories. Our mental images can be the cause of great suffering or give us a boost of positive motivation depending on the perspective those images take. Anger can be fueled by reliving an incident through the visualization of mental imagery or remembering events in a negative way. (169-71)

Burns says,

Depending on the images we project to ourselves we can be the main source of harm to ourselves. Burns suggests that we transform these negative images into ones that are less upsetting via humour. For example, instead of imagining acting violently towards someone, we can picture them as a big baby in diapers falling over on themselves. (171-2)

The second technique Burns suggests is to stop the thoughts completely by thinking of something else. If the anger is not rewarded by being aroused from negative images, the emotion will be reduced in the future. In contrast to dwelling on a negative image, we can think about things that make us excited or happy. We can also engage in activities like exercising to take our minds away from negative visualizations. (172)

4. Rewrite the Rules: Sometimes we may have developed an unrealistic rule about relationships that disappoints our expectations often. We can feel entitled to a certain type of treatment from others and develop resentment when we do not receive that expectation. Burns states,

With a more realistic formulation of our expectation, we can have positive moods and not have our self-esteem compromised by other people. (172-3)

The principle of reciprocation is one expectation in the distortion ‘should’ that can cause problems in what we expect from others. Relationships are rarely perfectly reciprocal because people are different. Burns states,

When we put effort into our relationships, we may not get that back in the ways we want even if the person says they will. It is better to view reciprocity as a goal and not something that is assumed. (174)

On page 175, Burns shows a chart of Self-Defeating ‘Should’ Rules and their revisions. He contrasts how we can revise our rules in realistic terms so that we are not disappointed and frustrated. We can replace ‘should’ with a hypothetical, if X happens then Y may occur. (175-6)

5. Learn to Expect Craziness: Burns takes our expectations and gets us to correspond them to what we observe from people and reality. This means that when someone frequently asks in some way, irrelevant of how we would want them to, it's better to expect the pattern we observe. If we impose unrealistic standards, standards that do not correspond to how people actually act, we will become disappointed. If we observe how people act and base our expectations on actual observations, we will know what to expect from them. (176-7)

6. Enlightened Manipulation: Not being angry and giving up expectations of others can make some people feel vulnerable that they will be taken advantage of and a reflection of a sense of inadequacy. (177) Burns references the psychologist, Mark Goldstein, who used behavioural conditioning to teach wives to reward good behaviour in their husbands instead of punishing unwanted behaviour. Burns states,

Switching to a reward model changed the dynamic of these relationships. By keeping records of their interactions, they distributed rewards and made sure the interaction was not perceived as a punishment by the other person. Shaping behaviour with the use of rewards can motivate people to want to be around you by focusing on the positive instead of the negative. (179-80)

Buy the book here:

https://a.co/d/89LT1Jq

Read a brief summary of the book here:

https://www.achillesjustice.com/post/feeling-good

Burns, David. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. Harper Publishing. New York, 1999. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Mass Market Paperback – Dec 30 2008

Whatsapp Chat

WaC 1: World Worth Saving

Achilles: Is the world worth saving?

Only together can we save the world.

The relationship we have with ourselves is paramount.

You are a being with self-consciousness.

This fact places you in a position of responsibility.

For all those who do not share the same advantage as you.

When you learn to become one with yourself; the consciousness function of awareness with the representation of your memories and place in society, you can take a step forward for our species.

We are humanity.

We have a right to exist.

We may not have been good to each other or respectful to our environment.

But, we can grow.

Growth is a form of change and is a good thing.

Growth is the development of your being into a more comprehensive and adjusted balance in the cosmos.

Society is part of the cosmos and hence there is balance within and without.

When you sit with yourself, breathing and allowing your mind to take in what it is, Independent of any other being, you are one with yourself.

The self, your identity, will change.

Only by awareness, will you be in control of that change.

How you see your self is important.

We are not necessarily taught this as our being grows.

We can become stuck in mindsets that seem as if there is no escape from suffering.

Our environment, other people and the self we are aware of can seem to be all against us.

Even if that is true...your awareness is pure.

You can observe all and learn to remove any bias or unjust emotional predisposition that clouds your mind.

This is where our training begins: the mind.

I have been teaching you to be aware of your thoughts and emotions.

I want your thoughts and feelings to help you.

I want to give you a structure that applies to all states of consciousness.

Remember, the state of consciousness is more fundamental than the social context.

Your relationship with your self will lead you to balance in your world and with those in your life.

I will be around for a little while longer but...

We need to figure out how to make this more than me.

I am giving my life to this

For all of us

I had many thoughts of killing myself since I was a child.

Those thoughts were a product of how unhappy I was with my life.

The wisdom of that is to change whatever you can so you don't feel that way.

Your emotions are a guide

They are bases on thousands of years of our ancestors living so we could exist

Now you are here

Because they put you here

What will you do with the time you have?

I care about all of you

I only have so much time

So i channel my attention for you here

If you need me,

Come to the philosophy society

Your struggle is valid.

Others will learn from it

Let us be vulnerable with each other

And set a compassionate foundation for our relationship

Then be understanding

Let us understand each other

We will practice communicating every week

So that when it really matters, we will be ready

You are most likely having fun or at least safe right now

People in Ukraine are being bombed because someone wants to prove they are right

If we can all begin the steps i am showing here

We will prevent people in power using it to prove themselves

Step one: relationship with yourself

Step two: bring balance to what you are. This is a process and amounts to self mastery. You can do it but only you can. We will teach each other how. This is the purpose of the Philosophy Society

Once you have balance

Step three: be good to others

Now that you have been good to yourself, you can b3 the guiding light for all those who are lost and suffering

Remember, the world is worth saving

No one is coming to save us

We have grown into this position, it's our responsibility to grow out of it

And we can. But it starts with you

Become one with the self

1. meditate

2. write down your thoughts and make sense of them

3. learn your relationship with those that matter in your life

I will be here at least 1ce a week

Goodnight

WaC 2: Our Feelings and Regard for Others

Achilles: I don't think the message of Achilles in the iliad is to kill oneself. The story of Achilles is about how one is to balance their power. He was 'invincible' but abused his power, disgracing Hector. There is an honorable way to fight and transcend our emotions so that we do not befall ourselves. The tragedy of Achilles was in how he dishonored himself with his power. Ayn Rand speaks of similar character flaws in her book, Atlas Shrugged.

My inquiry is why you felt the need to share it?

Whenever we communicate with others, first be mindful of your feelings for if you are upset or not balanced within, you can risk compromising the relationships you communicate in.

Second, be empathetic to how other people will resonate with the message you have constructed. What is your intention behind the message? Are you communicating with malicious intentions or to be constructive with others? If we feel a sense of harming others it is important for us to be aware of that. If we are not in control of ourselves, lack mindfulness of our actions or how we affect others, we will bring great disappointment to ourselves and push people away

There will be times when we do feel negative feelings towards others and our emotions are indicating important information to us. How we respond to our feelings is what matters most. Are you in control of your feelings or do you allow your feelings to control you?

Taking the time to understand how we feel is important. It is also important to make sure we have regard for others. How you treat the people you perceive hurt you defines your ability to manage your own self respect and boundaries with them. We can easily become malicious in response to perceived threats. This can be a slippery slope that leads us down a dark path.

Always take the time to understand yourself. This is the beginning of balance. If you do not have balance within, there will be no balance with-out ( the inner world of the self vs the exterior world of the others, which is society and your relationship to them)

The Philosophy Society, is the place where we can agree to practice the art and skill of these balances. I hope that by doing so, we can all become better people.

WaC 3: Spirituality

Reggie: What would you say the difference is between philosophy and spirituality?

Achilles: Spirituality is something we experience. Being philosophical is a way for us to make sense of that experience and put it into words. We can evaluate one's expression of spirituality based on the philosophical integrity of the words used to express it.

If the words do not make sense, like being contradictory or ambiguous, then we would 'philosophize' those parts of the expression to tighten up the relationship or gap between the words and the experience. Problems or limitations occur with qualia like phenomena. But i feel you can direct someone to those facets of the experience even though they cannot be directly translated linguistically.

Reggie: Okay but "being philosophical" suggests a mere use of the tools of philosophy rather than philosophizing, no?

Achilles: I would say using the tool of philosophy is philosophizing.

Reggie: ie. philosophy at the service of spirituality. What is philosophy then?

Achilles: Hmm I wouldn't go that far. Our perceptions can be very biased so we have to determine what we value more, the truth or what we believe.

Philosophy is that which makes sense of things. When applied to spirituality, we are making sense of it. If spirituality reigned supreme, we would concede philosophical insight that conflict with particular spiritual views, as seen in religion faith based belief.

Reggie: Epistemology is the philosophical study of how we gain knowledge -- a branch of philosophy. That is where we would start to examine our perceptions. But understanding our perceptions themselves and our beliefs are not a sufficient description of philosophy.

Achilles: I agree, philosophy is a broader category than epistemology. Spirituality as an experience is reduced to our perceptions of it, hence limiting the scope of philosophy in terms of spirituality as fundamentally based in epistemology. It’s important to determine what can be known vs experienced spirituality. Being philosophical helps in this process.

It is wise to make sense of our experiences. If spirituality is an experience, making sense of it would be philosophical. We would apply limitations on how far we can go linguistically, i.e. qualia. With the linguistic information derived from a spiritual experience, we would apply rules of logic, critical thinking, awareness of cognitive and social biases, to increase the sense we establish from the experience. Humans are very prone to systematic error so some method to account for those errors is wise and hence philosophical.

WaC 4: Existence of God

Reggie: So this makes sense. How about the difference between philosophy and religion then? You seem to be suggesting here that it is somewhat related to priority (i.e. religion = supremacy of spiritual experience over philosophical thought/insight).

Achilles: Yes, there is a difference between philosophy and theology. Theology is dogmatic; there are some things assumed true for which everything else is made to fit. Only with faith can this be reconciled but it is not philosophical.

Reggie: St Thomas Aquinas and Avicenna are two great theologians who used a mixture of Aristotelian philosophy and sacred texts. Both use non-dogmatic, philosophical arguments for the existence of God. So I would argue that the more serious, intellectual theologians are philosophical. Five Ways (Aquinas) - Wikipedia

Achilles: Existence precedes essence. They both assume the existence of god without evidence of it. Anselm’s ontological argument in its structure can be used to prove anything that is the greatest of all things.

Reggie: Godel also has an ontological argument. But regardless, any argument for God based on Aristotelian logic is philosophical. And thus they did not presume the existence of God. They tried to prove it. I'm not suggesting that I agree with, just that their approach was philosophical.

Achilles: I understand your point. If so we would evaluate those arguments based on their reasoning and all have been disproven. They are all unfalsifiable. Ontological arguments have the problem of existence preceding essence. They did not discover god as a phenomena, but were mostly Christian theologians who were trying to make sense of a pre-established belief that god exists no matter what. They then did their best to develop an argument(s) to prove that. But there is no observable phenomena of god. Unless you're a pantheist like Spinoza, which i am more lenient towards.

Reggie: Aristotle doesn't use an ontological argument, for the prime mover.

Achilles: Again they are not observing god and describing it. They assume what it is then justify that thing's existence without evidence.

Reggie: That's not what it means to be philosophical.

Achilles: Exactly.

Reggie: No, I mean, they are being philosophical even though their arguments are flawed. Kant's arguments aren't really based on observation either. They are assumptions about the noumenal world that we can never understand. But that doesn't mean that he's not being philosophical in his approach.

Achilles: The intention is not to use reasoning to disregard beliefs that do not make sense. The intention is to support a belief that cannot be let go no matter how nonsensical it is. The belief in god does not make sense and is better explained as an evolutionary adaptation in a species aware of its own death.

If they were being philosophical they would have disregarded the belief because of the many issues with it like. How can an all loving being who is omniscient and omnipotent allow evil to exist? The poor response is god's plan that we are unaware of, or saying evil exists so we have free will. These answers are ad hoc reasoning and are created because there is no other way to make sense of it.

If god is all powerful then it would be able to create a universe that does not need worship or faith. It would create a universe where these logical errors do not occur. If anything, ontological arguments show how we are prone to misunderstanding what is and have a tendency to overreach what we think exists. Kant says we can never know god and is akin to that which is outside of our experience

Reggie: Hume proves that causality is simply a very strong correlation. Yet here we are, relying on physics terms such as "force", "energy" and "power", whatever those are. I'm not sure why you keep saying "ontological arguments" because that's not what Aquinas' arguments were. He uses cosmological and teleological arguments, and in fact explicitly disregards Anselm's ontological argument.

As for Kant, he simply argues that existence is not a true property, and so to suggest that existence is better than non-existence is nonsensical.

Achilles: Note taken. It's been a while since i looked at the other arguments but Sartre's existence precedes essence criticism holds either way. We need to establish the existence of a thing before we discuss what its properties are. How can we know what we are proving if we don't know what it is?

The only way to know what it is is to have some observation of it. That's not how it starts. These reasoning processes begin with the assumption that the premise, god exists, is true, then fill the logic in backwards.

Reggie: Is that not what science is? You start with a hypothesis, and then seek to prove/disprove it. Based on p-values.

Achilles: Yes but these theories of the existence of god are not doing that.

Reggie: True, they are simply using logical arguments.

Achilles: Well, arguments. I don't believe they are logical.

Reggie: They follow logical rules. If you look at Godel's argument, it is quite logical. And he's no lightweight. Gödel's ontological proof - Wikipedia

Achilles: “Gaunilo criticized Anselm's argument by employing the same reasoning, via reductio ad absurdum, to "prove" the existence of the mythical "Lost Island", the greatest or most perfect island: if the island of which we are thinking does not exist, it cannot be the greatest conceivable island, for, to be the greatest conceivable island, it would have to exist, as any existent island would be greater than an imaginary one. This, of course, is merely a direct application of Anselm's own premise that existence is a perfection. Since we can conceive of this greatest or most perfect island, it must, by Anselm's way of thinking, exist. While this argument is absurd, Gaunilo claims that it is no more so than Anselm's.” Gaunilo of Marmoutiers - Wikipedia

Applies to Godel as well

Reggie: Gaunilo's lost island example is flawed though because any island, as part of the earth, would have been created by God. Therefore, you could conceive of something greater than an island. Another way to think of such an inconceivable, great island is like one of Plato's forms. Thing is, the forms can be prioritized. Something physical like a perfect house or island would be a lower form than, say, love or courage. To Christians, God = faith+hope+love which are higher order forms than anything physical.

Godel uses modal logic to prove out his version of an ontological argument. Thus Gaunilo's reductio ad absurdum doesn't really work here. The main challenges to Godel's argument have been targeted at the axioms (assumptions) he uses. In this way, it would be more appropriate to suggest Kant's refutations of the ontological argument.

Achilles: The argument is in the form reductio ad absurdum, showing that you can take the same reasoning and extend it to any 'perfect' entity. God is the greatest of all conceivable ideas simply categorically pushes the property of god as something that is undefinable as a set. It's more of a problem of set theory than a proof of god. The greatest category is the category that includes all categories. That's not what people mean by god.

Reggie: Actually, it argues that existence is the greatest thing that can be conceived. And that is what Kant shuts down. But regardless, even Aquinas thought the ontological argument was ridiculous.

Achilles: Kant argues we cannot prove or disprove god because it's beyond the phenomena.

Reggie: Yes, you're right. I'm just talking about his refutation of the ontological argument specifically.

Reggie: Here's another question then: what is the difference between philosophy and psychology?

Achilles: When we evaluate a theory we can use Kuhn's criteria of adequacy: simplicity, scope, coherence, falsification, and predictability. The god belief does not hold up well. A psychological account for why humans believe in god fits the criteria much better than the theological frustration of trying to prove something they were socialized to believe.

philosophy can be understood as a way of life, wisdom in the sense of living the good life, which we spend a lot of time learning about here. But also, as taught in university, conceptual analysis of certain perennial ideas like free will, the mind, and ethics. Psychology is the study of mental processes and behaviour. Philosophy is not meant to be an empirical science whereas psychology uses empirical means of testing to prove their assertions. philosophy does draw upon scientific disciplines but is not limited to them. I believe there is a large overlap in the good life (philosophy) and psychology. Positive psychology is the study of eudaimonia, living well or the good life.

Reggie: So if philosophy is not an empirical science, then philosophical arguments shouldn't require observations or hard evidence. It is not limited by science. So then why does it matter whether we observe God? Why should philosophy be subject to the same kind of evidence that science is?

Separately, Aristotle noted that achieving eudaimonia required that a person live virtuously. To that end, he lists out a number of virtues to guide how someone should live. A virtue for Aristotle requires achieving the golden mean.

Achilles: Conceptual philosophy is the study of how to reason using logic and critical thinking to arrive at sound conclusions. In reasoning, appealing to empirical evidence or facts is necessary. In the example of God, most people start with the assumption that god exists and reason backward instead of discovering some phenomena and then using some means to understand it. God is a fiction created by humans, it's that simple. there is no need to strain one's thought unless they are attempting to find out how to make sense of the idea that really does not make sense.

I have written about aristotle's view on eudaimonia here. Aristotle's Happiness: Eudemonic Being

Reggie: That's an epistemological view.

Achilles: Well, any claim about god is a knowledge claim unless you say you experience god. The only place where you can argue against any logical proof is if you personally experience god. In that case, it does us no good because we would also have to experience god. the experience of god has been reproduced in the lab God helmet - Wikipedia

It is all the mind my friend. there is no need for god in our universe. if there is one we would have a lot of questions. but we can exist ethically without a god. we have done much better as a species understanding the cosmos without god as an explanation for everything.

Hitchens responds to some of the ideas here.

Your Miracles Won't Do It - Cristopher Hitchens

Reggie: I don't believe in God.

Achilles: Neither do i. There may be some alien we don't know about or dimensional being, but there is no evidence for it as of yet. It seems to me that the cosmos can be explained without these ideas.

Reggie: The point of this is to try and distill what we mean by philosophizing, and how it differs from religion/theology and science. Just because a person argues that God exists does not mean that s/he is not being philosophical. What's more important is understanding the line of reasoning used by those who argue God's existence.

Achilles: Theology is reasoning that starts with the conclusion that god exists and seeks to support that. philosophy is either a way of life or the study of how to reason. Well, I would say that the person who is arguing for the existence of god has some other agenda in mind other than being philosophical. I separate the two ideas distinctly for we are to dispel beliefs that are shown to be untrue. It is also important to look at how one formulates their beliefs. The belief is god is taught and socialized, it is not an instinct. The belief in god is predominantly based on faith, which is the lack of reason or evidence.

Reggie: I think that depends on one's definition of god.

Achilles: That goes back to the existence precedes essence problem.

Reggie: eg. Spinoza.

Achilles: Before defining what a thing is we need to establish its existence.

Reggie: Well how does one establish the existence of anything?

Achilles: Yah I would say I am a pantheist, that god is the cosmos. That means we are all god too. god is not a being who is vengeful that acts like a human with superpowers.

Reggie: So you do believe in God?

Achilles: A posteriori, science is the best. I believe in the cosmos; that our universe is ordered.

Reggie: What does that mean?

Achilles: god for me is just nature.

Reggie: So believing in God is an issue of semantics then?

Achilles: It is not an anthropomorphic guy with a beard who gets pissed if you draw cartoons of him.

Reggie: Aristotle didn't believe in God proper, but he believed in a prime mover.

Achilles: Well, semantics is important. Let us not devalue being clear in our definitions. 'god' per say and religion are different. it's hard to escape the fallacy of equivocation in these kinds of discussions.

Reggie: How would you define God/nature then? All that exists?

WaC 5: Reality

Achilles: Well, orderliness, regularity. My paper on Kant's objective reality goes into this. We are now talking about what we can perceive.

Reggie: No, I'm just asking about a definition.

Achilles: sure, but what we know exists is either a priori or posteriori and is limited to our perceptions.

Reggie: Assuming that our perceptions are an actual reflection of reality.

Achilles: Science was developed as a method to gain clearer accuracy in what we perceive by different ways to ensure we are not biased or incorrect. Yes, well, that goes back to Kant's phenomena and noumena.

Reggie: But recall how David Hoffman describes that our perceptions are the result of evolution, and we evolved to survive.

Achilles: But there is objectivity.

Reggie: Therefore, the only thing we know is that our perceptions have helped us survive. That does not mean that they portray reality as it actually is.

Achilles: Yah, Hoffman doesn't talk about Kant so much, he goes into Berkeley which seems outdated. so for example our perception of time and space seem to be very consistent and independent of any specific observer.

Reggie: Hoffman does talk about Kant.

Achilles: What does he say?

Reggie: What Immanuel Kant got wrong | Donald Hoffman and Lex Fridman

He agrees with Kant that we start with certain faculties which in turn help shape our understanding of the world.

Achilles: Well, there he says that euclidean geometry is not a priori. He didn't give an argument for it though.

Reggie: My point though is that to say that we are limited by our perceptions suggests that we are stuck with those perceptions and cannot abstract the true reality from them. I think that's because he assumes the audience knows that Euclidean geometry is not reflective of reality.

Achilles: yes but we can transcend the limitations of our perceptions. we are not reduced to them. Perception can be correct, but it isn't always the case. correct as in objective.

Reggie: What does that mean though? Objectivity.

Achilles: For example, an optical illusion like a rainbow, can be seen from one position but not another. the closer you get, it will disappear. Something is objective in the sense that it is not limited by one's perception. The boiling of water is objective with a standardized set of factors, so the perception of the boiling is not limited to the observer per say. if you are blind then you cant see so i'm excluding that.

A great example is the problem of visual hallucination. Is that objective? or phantom limb phenomena.

Reggie: The hallucination and phenomena are both real.

Achilles: Well, what is real? Is it experienced by someone? That means everything someone experiences is real. The christian god is real too and so are ghosts.

Reggie: I dunno, in what respect do we experience a supernova?

Achilles: It's more accurate to say they are experienced but they are not 'real.' We can experience imaginary things.

Reggie: The qualia is real, no?

Achilles: Yes.

Reggie: So then it's real. Perhaps the better question is, what's fake about it? What is colour? Or pain?

Achilles: Well, independent observers perceiving an apple would all have the experience of red. Only some people with limb amputations experience phantom pain. and we can observe that the limb is non-existent.

Reggie: Independent observers would experience 'something'. After all, you can't prove that my red qualia is the same as yours. We just assume because we think we have the same referent.

Achilles: We can measure the experience of red and we can also measure the wavelength of photons emitted from the object. the experience itself is known to the subject.

Reggie: Those wavelengths though are simply what 'causes' the qualia. But other things can cause qualia. All of them are real.

Achilles: A cross evidence based method establishes objectivity. We may be correct in our perceptions but we have to develop some tests to be sure. If I feel pain and see no arm, I can conclude it is not a real experience of pain but pseudo pain.

Reggie: It's just that the understanding of what caused them might be different.

Achilles: A misfiring in my brain that is causing the experience.

Reggie: The misfiring is the cause. But the pain is the result. It's still pain.

Achilles: The output of the experience does not necessitate its reality. We are often mistaken in our perceptions and beliefs. We can be wrong.

Reggie: The experience is the reality though. You can't simply tell a person feeling phantom pains that they are not in pain. And that they are wrong.

Achilles: Yes you can lol. You can say, your experience of pain is not real even though it feels like it.

Reggie: You might try to reason with them and try to explain, but they still 'feel' it. And that makes the pain go away?

Achilles: to use feeling as the arbiter of reality is to commit the emotional reasoning fallacy.

Reggie: But the feelings are real.

Achilles: Well it's an issue in the brain not the pain.

Reggie: I'm talking about the actual qualia. You are talking about the cause.

Achilles: Feelings are representations of our experience. they can be based on non-real information. Yah, but the qualia does not amount to reality.

Reggie: But feelings are the effect, as you know. And the effect is real, no?

Achilles: Not Always.

Reggie: So feelings are sometimes not real? Perhaps I'm not explaining myself....

Achilles:

Refraction: we experience the pencil as bent. That is qualia, but it is not real. The light is bending the image we perceive. depending on the medium the light passes through.

Reggie: I would not say the pencil is broken. I know how light acts on the water. BUT... My experience of it as bent is real.

Achilles: I don't use the term reality like that. We have a difference in what we mean by reality.

Reggie: If I measured the angles in that picture, it would show a sharp angle.

Achilles: Reality is that which exists independent of humans beliefs and perceptions. We approximate reality through those mediums. Science helps us in that.

WaC 6: Science

Reggie: Science only helps us understand things based on their relations to other things.

Achilles: Science is a measuring device and a means to ensure our data is not biased.

Reggie: All physics equations are based on relations. Remember Hume and the billiard balls...

Achilles: There are different types of science based on what phenomena we are observing.

Reggie: The only thing we know is that there are correlations between two events. All science is just an understanding of correlations.

Achilles: We establish causality based on experimentation. We have a control group and an experimental group.

Reggie: Right. And then we use statistics to arrive at a p-value. So we define truth as that which we are 95+% confident in. No?

Achilles: You don't have to go that far, we just say it's probable not necessary.

Reggie: But that's what we do.

Achilles: It's important not to mistake inductive reasoning for deductive reasoning.

Reggie: And then from those results, we extrapolate a 'truth.' How so? Experimentation simply confirms the correlation we are confident about.

Achilles: There is a difference. The third variable problem for example can mislead us in correlation.

Reggie: So all science is essentially inductive. Sure.

Achilles: It is a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning.

Reggie: The deductive part is mathematics. The inductive part is experiment and observation. All of it though is based on certain axioms. But those axioms are simply assumptions that we've made for one reason or another.

Achilles: The main difference between inductive and deductive reasoning is that inductive reasoning aims at developing a theory while deductive reasoning aims at testing an existing theory. In other words, inductive reasoning moves from specific observations to broad generalizations. Deductive reasoning works the other way around. Both approaches are used in various types of research, and it’s not uncommon to combine them in your work.

Inductive vs. Deductive Research Approach | Steps & Examples

Reggie: That's not quite right. Deductions are simply conclusions that are derived from a set of premises. You don't need additional data to make a deduction.

Achilles: You can reason from a theory (deduction) or you can make observations and create a theory (induction).

Reggie: I agree. So I'm not sure why this says that deductive reasoning requires collecting data (ie. observations).

Achilles: You’re testing the general rule.

Reggie: That's not deduction. When scientists discovered the double slit experiment, many people tried to explain it via a theory. Quantum theory developed as more and more data came to light. This eventually led to the Copenhagen interpretation.

One of the 'deductions' made from this was the EPR paradox or Einstein's spooky action at a distance. This deduction was based on the math of quantum physics. It was only proven correct after experimentation.

Achilles: That would be a hypothesis that was confirmed.

Reggie: The reasoning was deductive. Inductive reasoning relies on a body of observations. Those were not available until the experiment. Theoretical physics is all deductive.

Achilles: In the example above, they start with a theory then test it. the testing would be observations.

Reggie: The theory is a deduction from the math. You cannot prove it is actually 'true' though without evidence.

Achilles: They are confirming if that deduction is accurate.

Reggie: Right.

Achilles: It begins with deduction then switches to induction.

Reggie: So until observations are available, it's all theoretical.

Now back to God then... If all one makes deductions based on assumptions without observations to back them up, how is that so different from theoretical physics?

Achilles: That's the point, you cannot prove that god exists but there is no evidence of it. Even though all the arguments actually have issues in reasoning and logic. There are simpler reasons and explanations for the cosmos. Then the assumption of a faith based god.

Reggie: I don't think that's relevant. Euclidean mathematics was quite simple until it wasn't. Same with mathematics without irrational numbers.

Achilles: What would the deduction be? You would have to define god first as a theory. How would you go about proving it? It is not a scientific endeavour.

Reggie: Occam's razor isn't always the sharpest.

Achilles: Simplicity is a means to not make unnecessary assumptions in our reasoning.

Reggie: Aristotle discussed the first mover. Is that not sufficient? You defined God as nature. But we can't really define nature in the sense that we don't know all its laws. We can never know everything about nature though because we are limited in our senses. Therefore, we can never define God. = deductive proof 😁

Achilles: In book XII Lambda, Chapter VII, Aristotle discusses and defines the Prime Mover by stating that the world’s generation is due to something which is always moved through uninterrupted, circular, motion. That which is moved and moves must be intermediate and therefore a substance of eternal activation is the prime mover; ‘moving without being moved.’ I will argue that, it is here, [XII.7, page 373 section (b)] in Aristotle’s discussion, that he makes a category mistake with his analogy of desire in humans being the efficient cause of objects in physical space moving and incorrectly assumes this reasoning applies to the inanimate motions of the cosmos.

Sorry, it was a category mistake. Nature is something we learn more about as we progress in science. god is a bad term to use here.

Reggie: Interesting... How did Aristotle make a category mistake? Go back far enough, and everyone -- everything -- would have a cause.

Achilles: Anthropomorphism - the cosmos does not have desire.

Reggie: What does desire have to do with biology?

Achilles: That was Aristotle's argument for the unmoved mover.

Reggie: How so? I'm not sure that's what he was arguing...I know he uses metaphors, but keep in mind that he didn't have the same physics on casual forces.

WaC 6: Personal Experience

Juliet: There’s a whole lot we don’t know about the cosmos and if that’s your God there’s a whole lot you don’t know about your God. Astronomers still don’t know exactly what the sun is made of | PBS NewsHour

I used to believe in God. My whole life I believed in God and I’ve never felt the need to prove God was real to anyone. God was always real to me. I felt God’s presence all the time and that was enough for me but this changed when I met Achilles. Achilles told me he didn’t believe in God, he believed in the cosmos instead, and he told me because there was no proof of God I had no valid argument regarding God’s existence.

I wasn’t convinced God wasn’t real because I still felt God’s presence wherever I was and wherever I went.I decided to go on my own journey to find out the truth and or the proof about God’s existence. I thought about studying philosophy of religion so that I could perhaps learn more about it and be able to prove to Achilles God exists. The proof was not for me at all. I was already convinced and I already believed in God. I wanted the proof to show Achilles that God is real because I cared so much about Achilles and because I felt the unconditional love God has for all of us, I wanted Achilles to experience that unconditional love too.

I stopped hanging with Achilles around Christmas Eve of 2021 and I only saw him a few times after that but I really wanted this proof so I could show Achilles God was real. Sometime in August of 2022 God revealed Himself to me while I was at home alone. I immediately knew it was God. When you see God there isn’t any doubt in your mind. God does not confuse you. God clears your mind and your heart before he shows Himself to you.

Seeing God changed my life in such a profound way. I no longer feel the need to prove to Achilles or to anyone God is real. I know God is real.I will still talk about my experience if anyone wants to know about it because I want everyone to experience God’s unconditional love for all of us but I do not care about winning or losing any arguments anymore. Peace ✌️to all of you and I hope this new year will bring joy and happiness to all of us ❤️ we all need it. We also need more love in the world ❤️ Happy new year and God bless you. ❤️

Uma: For me, I’ve always believed in god in my whole life time, life was easier when I see the world with it. But the complicated part is it’s hard to find out which god u You imagine. If talk Christians they would say theirs is only one, Muslims, Buddhist.. that’s why I’ve started to study all of them. I like to tell all of different religion people that first of all we have to learn and talk about how to be a person a true nice person. Hence we have work on ourselves first which philosophy talks about. It gives more chance us to learn and improve ourselves

I’m enjoying learning about myself with scientifically proven ways :-)

Priscilla: I would love to hear more about your experience as I’ve had my own as well.

Achilles: There are many things we do not know about in the cosmos/universe. Our lack of knowledge does not reduce our perspective on the universe. Before science, there was a period in time where christians only looked to the bible for knowledge, a period called the dark ages.

Through being scientific, we have made more advancements and increased the quality of life for all humans by developing healthcare, improving environmentally sustainable technology, and techniques to provide food for the planet. Pantheism is a way to humbly say that nature itself is equivalent to god. This was first discussed by the philosopher Spinoza.

To say that the belief in the cosmos is not valid because we do not know everything about the cosmos would be an example of the fallacy, an appeal to ignorance. Just because we do not know everything about nature does not reduce the meaning of nature. Our approach to nature from a position of inquiry and understanding, instead of using god as the answer to explain everything, has made it possible for us to further our understanding of the environment we live in.

The god thesis does not produce predictability, whereas much of science develops hypotheses that have predictable power. We can say when you take this spacecraft into orbit, it will successfully land at a particular point in space with extreme precision. When we revert to god as an explanation for everything, we lose our ability to further our understanding and stop our progress in our relationship with nature.

If you have experienced god yourself, that is the only proof that really holds any evidence. The philosophical issue would be how your personal experience translates to others who have not shared the same experience as you. If you see a rainbow, you can point to someone standing beside you and they will most likely see it too. In the case of divine experiences, it is rare that you can point to the person standing beside you so that they can also experience what you observe. This makes it difficult for personal perception of god to translate to others.

The other thing would be how do we know that our perception is accurate and not our minds projecting in our experience? We do know that the brain produces the chemical DMT, which if taken as an external substance, can create vivid experiences of perceiving beings like god. How could we be sure that the experiences people have of god are not the brain producing DMT or some other effect as discussed earlier in the God Helmet. In this example, a headpiece with electrodes stimulated the areas of the brain that give people religious experiences. The researchers put the helmet on Nuns and turned it on. Many of them said they had a religious experience with god, but it was clearly the piece of technology that created the experience.

The last point in personal experience is the quality of it. Some people may have a very loving religious experience, god speaks to them, helps them make sense of their lives and directs them to being good people. But, what do we say about people who experience god and then want to do terrible things to others?

The classical example would be someone suffering from schizophrenia and hears the voice of god telling them to harm others. If one's personal experience is a source of knowledge and cannot be questioned, what are we to say to these individuals who have also had an experience of god but have negative intentions from it?

I want us to discuss all of these ideas and experiences in a respectful way with each other but with the foundation of making sense of them. We can do that by asking questions and being reasonable. My intention by writing this is to bring up some of the issues philosophically with personal experience as a source of knowledge, "to say I know god because I have seen him," and what that means.

I also want to express my appreciation for those who have had a positive experience with what they believe is god. If that experience is helping you, makes your life better and directs you to being an ethical and good person, I am grateful and happy for you.

The Philosophy Society is not a religious group, so all of the ideas and experiences we discuss here are open to discussion. At the same time, it is important to care about how important these experiences are to some people and take time and put effort into how we talk about them so that our communication itself is not harmful.

Juliet, I invite you to learn about the philosophy of religion here. We can go through many of the theories on the subject and discuss them together as a group.

Reggie: Peter Kreeft, a Christian apologist, summarizes 20 different proofs for the existence of God, based on arguments made over time by various believers Twenty Arguments God's Existence by Peter Kreeft (& Ronald K. Tacelli)

Based on some of the comments on this thread, the two that stand out for most people are the arguments from aesthetic and religious experience.

The first five are rooted in Aristotle.

The ontological argument that Achilles and I were discussing is based on God's existence. Or rather, thinking about/conceptualizing God's existence. All of these arguments have been subject to much criticism over the centuries, pointing out some of the flawed logic and/or false premises. But there have also been many counter-arguments to those criticisms. IMHO, it seems to depend on whether you 'want' to believe in God. If you do, you will lean hard on these rational arguments. If you don't, you will look to break them down.

Regardless though, dissecting these arguments is a good way of at the very least practicing one's ability to think critically and be philosophical.

Juliet: I can tell you something I realized about religions when God revealed himself to me in August of 2022.

I learned that almost all religions that worship God, with the obvious exception to Satanism and or other similar religions that do not but instead worship the fallen narcissist “angel” Lucifer (aka, Satan, the devil, etc), or religions that worship humans and call themselves their own gods, with this exception, almost all other religions that worship our God hold very important little bits of truth about our creator.

Ancient religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, etc, have crucial little bits of truth but none of them have the whole truth about God. It would be almost necessary to put all of the religions together like pieces of the same puzzle, to get one inch closer to the big picture that is God.

But, even with all of the little bits of truth of all of the religions in the world together, to form the big picture, there would still be a lot of missing pieces of this huge puzzle that is life and that is our life’s Creator.

One little huge piece of the puzzle is the bible. The bible is not just a book, the bible is more like a combination of books, it is more like a library of very ancient writings. We might think that those ancient men who did the writings didn’t have a lot of knowledge but whatever little knowledge they had at the time they thought it was important to write down for future generations to read.

Whatever those ancient men wrote in stone, wood and in papyrus at the time, most definitely got lost in translation. I know this because my mother tongue is Portuguese and whenever I watch something on tv I can clearly see the meaning of something being lost in translation.

I also have a hard time expressing myself. It is almost like what I feel and the words that come out of my mouth are not compatible and do not mean the same thing I’m feeling and thinking. Today, we still have a hard time understanding what the great philosophers really meant when they said what they said. It seems they always leave room for interpretation.

We still don’t understand the great philosopher that called himself the son of God. What he said and what he did got lost in translation and got changed by peoples interpretations of what actually happened there. We don’t have the whole picture of what happened then, and we still don’t have a whole lot of knowledge nowadays, even though we think we do. We still don’t know exactly what stars are made of, for example.

Whatever knowledge we have today we write down so future generations can learn from it. Years from now humans are going to read what we think we know today and are probably going to be able to prove we don’t know what we think we know. Some people are more confused and or more close minded when they tend to believe in only one particular religion.

Believing in just one religion is almost like holding on to just one piece of the puzzle and believing that piece holds the whole truth and is the most important piece of all, the piece that is going to solve the whole puzzle. That’s never going to happen. One cannot solve a puzzle with just one piece unless that’s the only piece that is missing but this is not the case.

So, it’s better to gather all of the pieces of the puzzle we can gather and for this to happen we need to be open minded. When one says God does not exist, one already closed his mind to possibility. God is too huge for us to completely understand. Our minds would actually explode if God talked to us. This is why He doesn’t.

The good news is that we do not need to understand God or life in order to be happy. God understands and loves all of us equally and unconditionally because God understands our nature better than any one on earth understands anything or anyone.

God loves you. ❤️ God understands you ❤️ God loves all of us and God doesn’t want our self-destruction. He really does not, and that is the only reason I’m here and I’m writing to you about God. Perhaps one day we will love again and we will stop destroying ourselves like God intended from the beginning. ❤️

Achilles: It's more of a psychological predisposition as you mentioned before in terms of someone wanting to believe in it. The problem is that it causes other issues as seen in the crusades, spanish inquisition, protestant reformation, the great witch hunt, the current issues of islam killing people fighting for women's rights.

Religious belief in its substance as an appeal to a higher authority that imposes consequences on our existence gives people the justification of a means to an end to harm people for the perceived greater good. beliefs can lead to serious problems because people will uncritically follow charismatic leaders in pursuit of 'the good' and end up hurting a lot of people. This is a large reason why I started this group.

I like how you communicated Juliet. I agree that there are many pieces of the puzzle and maybe if we can figure out how to fit them all together things would make more sense. I believe that 'fitting the puzzle pieces together' is what philosophy can do for us. I appreciate that your view on god is one of compassion and love. That is a very good thing.

For some people who have not experienced god, it is much more difficult to accept that it exists. There is some wisdom in the bible, but there are a lot of problems like genesis I and II. If we can take an interpretative approach that is not literal, we can use our skills of philosophizing to sort through what is worth keeping and what may not make sense.

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