Originally Posted by cardboard adolescent
Basically I can only use philosophy in two ways; I can use it critically to show where others' logic has gaps or show what they're ignoring or glossing over, or to trace out their ideas to show the discomforting conclusions they lead to. This is using philosophy as a tool, and I am completely comfortable with it. However when I use philosophy to actually answer ethical, ontological or metaphysical issues, I betray a personal prejudice that it is not within my ability to trace to its origin, since its origin is the content of the prejudice (circular, but it makes sense, trust me). Hence, to answer the question "does God give you ethical guidance" I have to betray my mystical beliefs which I can't really convince anyone of unless they have had similar experiences to mine. So basically I can answer, but as long as you don't 'peel back the veil of reality,' so to speak, it doesn't really mean much one way or the other. That said, I believe that we all share one soul and repeat the same situations eternally with only the surface details changing. As such, my ethics are basically completely narcissistic, but aim for the survival/growth of the whole, rather than the individual. That also means that I don't really associate with my individual self (hello insanity) because I see it as being mostly arbitrary and the product of chance. Rather I identify with my thought trains, since I see them reflected throughout history in art and philosophy.
As soon as someone betrays certain mystical prejudices, people tend to take them less seriously as philosophers. However, most of the argumentation I do on the boards assume a certain degree of ontological uncertainty and aim more for logical coherence. This ties in to why I believe that without God, there is no purpose, hence no meaning, hence no ground for ethics or aesthetics, and nothing could really make much sense on any level.
And that is precisely the problem, you only know God insofar as it is a word, which is to say not at all. Maybe if you had had an experience of God, you would realize all religions are talking about the same thing, but that since it's something that can't be spoken of they just speak around it in erratic circles. Also, there are priests and there are mystics. Priests basically play telephone (and monopoly) with the ecstatic babble that mystics emit after taking the magic mushroom.
I apologize for that comment, my posts tend to be pretty dense because I know I would just end up going in circles and losing people if I developed every point as much as thinkers in the past have.
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