A churchgoing colleague explained to me once that his personal rule of faith is to believe whatever doctrine is the most “uplifting.” He tells me that he finds it more uplifting to believe in reincarnation than in death, judgment, and resurrection, because it “gives us as many chances as we need to get it right.”
The warlords, satraps, and barons of ancient times visited cruel burdens upon the underclass, but there was a natural limit to what they could do. Though a man could be treated like a dog, in the end a man was a man, and a dog was a dog.
"If I cannot be certain, then what is the use of thinking or believing anything?" ... is an evasive way of saying "Since I cannot be God, I refuse to be man." -- Mary Shideler, Theology of Romantic Love
Philosopher David Benatar made ripples several years ago with his book Better Never to Have Been. The author maintains that in view of the pain, disappointment, anxiety, and grief of life, our parents did us harm by bringing us into existence.
“There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own ....
“Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first ....
Hoorah! The blog has been redesigned with all the features readers have been asking for. You can subscribe, you can find the posts you’re looking for, you can link to them, and in general everything works better.
The RSS link is in the horizontal menu bar up above. If you prefer, you can use the link in the footer.
“The study of philosophy is directed not toward knowing what men may have thought but toward knowing what is true.” -- Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s De caelo et mundo (trans. by James V. Schall, S.J.)
You propose to become a professional scholar. Unless you are independently wealthy, your ability to do so will depend on the expenditure of other people’s wealth (in the form of tuition, taxes, or patronage) to pay your salary. What reason can you sincerely give for what you want to do, sufficient to justify such expenditure? Consider possible objections. Discuss thoroughly.