I'd say the large portion of "Intellectual Community in University" is still a large portion of the United States. And also the next wave of "adults."

Do I have to come up with the correct quantity of how many people I mean? Or can we just get what it is I'm saying?

85-95% of the United States is religious. 30 million are more radically religious than almost all Muslims. Pretty much leaves no room for you to bitch.

Sadly though after you leave the free open-mindedness and tolerance of acadamia once you meet a few acquaintances years later you may ask yourself how in the hell they graduated or even went to college. Age seems to have closed many of the minds of some old friends personally, hopefully the same doesn't happen to ya.

I'm not hating on religion Denchi, just organized religion. I myself am a firm believer of something greater. But you seriously can't sit back and say Judaism is 100% correct, nor can you say Catholicism or something else is 100% correct, because in real truth no one really knows for sure...hence faith. So my edited statement holds true. ;p

And there are maybe 16 million college aged people who many of adamantly hate religious people. Can I address them? Or since they're such a small percentage do they not count?

If that is your calling then by all means...

but if you can reach 16 million people, get a collection plate, because you'd have one profitable evangelical career. (j/k)

Yeah age will do it. Like the old saying goes "If you're under 40 and a republican, you're heartless. If you're over 40 and a democrat, you're brainless." I hope I never leave academia. I hope to be learning in one way or another for the rest of my life. I can't relate to close-minded people at all.

And I know what you're saying about 100% true. But what I'm saying is that the people who are of said faith, they think their religion IS 100% true. Like I'm a christian, and I believe following christ is the 100% true path. Judaism, on the other hand, would be 0% true. There's of course no way to prove one way or the other, but welcome to life. There are plenty of things you can never prove. "I think therefore I am." Descartes could do away with all things in the world said to be true. He could reject as absolutely false everything in which he could imagine the least doubt. The only thing he wasn't able to reject was the fact that he was thinking, and so because he thought, he was. So if you're only going to believe things that are 100% true, then don't be surprised if you ever find out you're mistaken. Because nothing is 100%.

While many people may have certain religious beliefs, the fact remains that they are still people. In a perfect world everyone would respect each other regardless of skin color, religion, ethnic background or sexuality. Respect is something earned not a given though.

It comes down to tolerance. Everyone has the right to think whatever the fuck they want, pray to whatever God they want. I'm an Atheist. I don't go around bashing people for having beliefs and faith, however if someone tryed to force their beliefs onto me, I would plain out tell them to fuckoff lol.

If more people would just be tolerant, the world would be a better place in some ways.

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this is a gay post edited hahaha

basically I was just popping in to say that denchi you haven't seemed to have read past Meditation II lol, or the discourse. God is a clear and distinct (true) concept to Descartes.

They'll grow out of it.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

Unfortunately. It's refreshing that there's at least one place in this country where religious people need to go into the closet with their beliefs. I don't care what they believe but their beliefs are generally incompatible wholesale with the principles of academia.

I haven't read Descartes (I will this semester in a class I'm taking) but I'm familiar with what he says, and I know he believed in a God. I was just arguing the point that many Philosophers (AKA Seekers of Wisdom), including the oh-so-popular Descartes, believe that there are many things that cannot be known by empirical evidence, so why should empirical evidence be a basis for anything true? Our senses deceive us, and science doesn't answer the question of "Why."

I'm glad Ulgo thinks that way. That's the way I'd hope most people can think.

And right now I'm reading a lot of Aristotle. Posterior Analytics and Physics. Read a little Galileo and Descartes soon. Then a lot of Kant, then Hume and Leibniz. And then a bunch of Logic stuff that isn't really very difficult. Aristotle is kicking my ass, though.

You haven't read Descartes? The most important western philosopher since Plato?


I've read him extensively and here are the philosophy classes I have taken:
101
201 (this is logic and it doesn't count)

Meditations and Discourse on Method combined is about 150 pages. Go read it, especially the part in Discourse about the 4 step method.

Personally i'm a Sartre guy, being an atheist and all. Of course, Sartre's philosophy would condemn me calling myself "a Sartre guy" in the first place, lol

I've read PLENTY of Kant, and he's basically a new-age Descartes (in many respects)

Don't ask me, it just wasn't in the material in all my classes.

101
103
105
200
224
226
323
333
356

and now I guess I'm finally getting to him in "Modern Philosophy." Actually a back-track course for me, I guess I just missed it.

I actually have the book sitting right next to me. It'll get read soon enough. I gotta get through this Aristotle Physics bullshit first.

Edit: I actually don't know much about Sartre lol. Isn't he kinda morbid?

Yes, descartes makes the claim that nothing outside of the foundation of all knowledge (I am, I exist) can be trusted. That's by the end of Meditation I. The rest of the meditations build up his ediface of knowledge/truth, that being "I am, I exist>>I am a thinking thing>>Clear and Distinct Ideas are true>>God Exists (is to descartes clear and distinct)>>the whole shebang.

It's maddeningly circular in a way but ultimately is most important in the first portion because it put skepticism on the map. You know, after your church stopped imprisoning and killing philosophers who questioned doctrine...

also I respect his proof for god (my beef isn't with religion, it's with irrationality and descartes is NOT irrational). Personally I think St. Anselm's is more poetic and concise but descartes is not bad

in the 90s or 80s Alan Gewirth tried to rework the circular argument to some success:
G.D= God is a deciever
C.D= Clear and Distinct

If CD Perceptions are false
/ God is a Deciever

~G.D is not C.D
ergo C.D perceptions are true

I'm interested in reading Spinoza. I hear the church was real nice to him too.

Have you read On the Genealogy of Morality yet? That seems like it might be more up your alley.

As for sartre, nay, he's not morbid. His fictions have an absurdist, postmodern style to them (No Exit, for example) but his primary doctrine is rather beautiful. With no god there is no objectivity (no "form of the good", etc). Everything is subjective in nature. However, with the lack of god comes the realization of utter freedom. Mankind is radically free, and with that freedom comes utter responsibility to maintain it. Acting in a manner that is contrary to freedom (believing a god is guiding you or evaluating you, blindly following a leader, not admitting to a crime) is acting in "bad faith". Everyone must accept complete responsibility for their actions. When I read it and evaluated how much of my life I consider to be influenced by others, or even intangible rejections of my own responsibility, I realized that for every instance doing that, I was and am acting in irrationality. That's sort of a doctrinal explanation of it, and sartre describes it poetically, rationally and philosophically, but eh.

Not yet but it looks interesting. I've been floating up in early Existentialism for now (Sartre and Camus) and down by Plato (with some eerie resemblances haha) but I guess the next logical step is into Nietzsche. I kind of want to take an ethics class first. I've been taking the same instructor and he's badass. No textbooks, just primary text after primary text.

Nietzsche is fun to read. His writing was, for a long time, not even considered philosophy since it was taken to just be angry rambling. But he's very animated much different than most other philosophers.

Ethics is fun. I have a much easier time learning ethics than most first philosophy. But most ethics are wrong, and the only one that comes close to something I would believe is Virtue Ethics. It's just fun to learn about all of them.

Back to Heath... I loved that guy in The Patriot... the scene where he dies was my favorite part of the movie and now he's actually dead booo =(

Unfortunately it doesn't just come down to tolerance. It is acceptance that should be the goal. Tolerance is a word that is stigmatized as negative. If one is to truly respect another's belief system, they would feel acceptance. It's not enough to just "tolerate" someone else's beliefs. In "accepting" the beliefs, there are no negative connotations. Everyone has the right to believe what they want, but everyone else has the responsibility to accept that as a truth. This is what needs to be explicitly taught in schools...acceptance and celebration of differences. I make a point of teaching it and living it each day in some way.

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Not this time, nancy-boy!

Both are impossible given human nature. I don't even see tolerance nevermind actual acceptance ever happening. Especially with how fucking stupid most religious people are. You can teach them whatever you want about tolerance and acceptance, they will take a different path every time when they get out into the harsh reality that is the world. Basically, people are shit.

I can't believe you haven't read Descartes yet and have taken that many philosophy classes. Spinoza is all about logic, very dry from what I remember reading 9 years ago. Most of that stuff isn't in line with religious thinking because it values logic. Belief in the spiritual realm itself defies logic in most cases.

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