DaimonicPossession

I had a friend who hooked up with the gardener. No lie. She left him, eventually.

By the time I finished the Ad Atare Dei emblem (the first to receive a religious emblem in my troop), I was more or less an atheist. Of course, I still maintained the belief in a "high power" but it wasn't God.

Eventually, I became an Eagle Scout and then studied Philosophy in college.

I was given the position after I obtained my Ad Altare Dei (Catholic) emblem, which more or less contributed to my then-budding atheism. I mostly did nothing as the Troop Chaplain took care of the prayers. However, around the same time, I was also heavy into reading my brother's philosophy textbooks and uncle's theology books that I probably knew more about Christianity than the Chaplain. It was awkward the whole time.

I became an atheist while I was in the Boy Scouts, especially after obtaining my Ad Altari Dei religious emblem. Of course, I wasn't brave enough to declare my atheism and I seriously enjoyed everything else too much to quit but it was weird when they made me the Chaplain Aide.

We Fremen have a saying: God created Arrakis to train the Faithful.

Wow, it's been a long time coming to see thepassingofdays be transparent with his (or her) views. I've seen your observations, which I have at times both agreed and disagreed with, since I first discovered reddit.

Ultimately, though, my disagreement lies in the idea that philosophy is distinct from biology, physics, sociology, and so on. I've seen academic philosophy, too, and that is distinct but that isn't the full breadth of philosophy. As I undertand, philosophy is the ground of all formal thought. All of those things either begin in philosophy or begin in something that began in philosophy. In this way, those that transcend such a "branch" dip into philosophy. However, there is also a space afforded that is not merely between disciplines but philosophical for its own sake. This, I think, you construe for the entirety of philosophy when, really, its just a very strong discipline in a field that includes all disciplines.

I made this comment because I wanted to express that I was interested in suggestions as well but had a tangential suggestion to make.

I'm unaware of much contemporary application of existentialism apart from Hubert Dreyfus' general criticism of artificial intelligence.

Disappointingly short.

About a year ago, I put my cat (whom I had since when I found him as kitten in 1997). I kept my hand on him when the vet gave him the general anaesthetic. I kept my hand on him when the vet gave him the shot to stop his heart. Feeling him stop breathing was hard but necessary.

That typewriter looks a pain in the ass to type on. Then again, some ergonomic keyboards freak me out.

I'm 25 years old and I want to name my son, assuming I ever have one, Arthur after my grandfather. Win?

I would thoroughly enjoy owning a print of this.

This is a very short song (1:29) that I wrote and recorded for a solo acoustic guitar. It's rather rough but I kind of like that.

When I finish writing a song, I feel alleviated. An unfinished song just keeps demanding that I work on it whenever I have a guitar in my reach and it's really rare to satisfyingly finish any for me.

And I don't even really think about whether it's good to other people or even myself if I could imagine listening to the song without playing it. What's most important is that I don't have to write it anymore. On to the next one.

Here's one such finished piece.

To quote Meno, "And how will you inquire into a thing when you are wholly ignorant of what it is? Even if you happen to bump right into it, how will you know it is the thing you didn't know?"

If I could limit myself to just one book for someone to start with, it would be Five Dialogues by Plato translated by G. M. A. Grube.

It's a rather short book, very easy to read, and the topics are rather timeless (such as "What is justice?"). It's very intuitive for someone beginning philosophy.

This, more than anything else, will show you how to philosophize rather than merely present you with a summary of the history of philosophy, which is almost always selective and biased.