We / I interrupt your regularly scheduled shitty stories to bring you a short philosophy blurb.
"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." - Francis Bacon
I've been listening to the work of Alan Watts, a Zen Buddhist philosopher and ex-Episcopal (Anglican) priest, etc. I've enjoyed it because for once it isn't a debate over idiotic modern questions like evolution or atheism. The smartest philosophers in the world are not Atheists. They aren't generally Christians either. Usually they hold to either Pantheism, a form of Deism, or some kind of Eastern religious tradition.
My favourite philosophy is philosophical theology or religious philosophy. I find it much more intriguing learning about Islam and different Mystic views and then analyzing them by the light of reason, than hacking it out with a 20-something ex-Baptist who is angry at everyone, and thinks Richard Dawkins is the messiah. That's not real philosophy. It's like my fellow Brock students who think they're Buddhists, but don't actually believe that the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of God, don't believe in Karma, and believe in the self, etc.
Comparative religious study is fun. It's like that line in Hamlet "there's more in Heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy".
The last fun thing about real philosophy that makes it fun, is that I don't have all the answers (yet). There are many more questions that I come to where the answer I have (St. Thomas Aquinas' answer usually) isn't something I've actually come to know for myself. Living is the thrill of the realist philosopher because life is where the theories of philosophy encounter the testing ground.
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