Hello,
Let me state up front, that I more than love philosophy, I think it’s vital, but I approach it differently than most. When I took Philosophy 101, I felt I barely got out of there alive and swore off taking any more. I may have had a worse experience than most, the professor (grad student) was trying to push his “everything is subjective” viewpoint, but it appeared to me (and still does) that the academic focus was more on philosophers than on philosophy and ideas. I bring this up so some won’t be offended when I ignore arguments using philosopher’s names as adjectives.
I believe that philosophy is important since its implied purpose (for me anyway) is the pursuit of Truth via rational thought, which leads to the use of reason in everyday life, including religion through morality to politics. I won’t get into politics here, but my worldview on religion is agnosticism (no claim to absolute knowledge of the existence or not of God) above all, and with that said, that there are only two reasonable positions on the existence of God–atheism and deism. I lean toward the latter and call myself a deist.
I believe that God as an ultimate ideal does exist, whether or not there is a supernatural spirit behind the universe. That ideal is Truth, it being supreme over other gods such as money, fame, power and other more material pursuits. God is Truth and Truth is God. I of course have some ideas about Truth, but I guess that’s enough said for an introductory post.
A note on my avatar; that is more a political/economic statement than a philosophical one, but it is serious and suits me better than anything else I’ve tried in the 10 years I’ve been “boarding”.
