← Back to context

Comment by kayodelycaon

5 days ago

I took a few philosophy classes. I found it incredibly valuable in identifying assumptions and testing them.

Being Christian, it helped me understand what I believe and why. It made faith a deliberate, reasoned choice.

And, of course, there are many rational reasons for people to have very different opinions when it comes to religion and deities.

Being bipolar might give me an interesting perspective. Everything I’ve read about rationalists misses the grounding required to isolate emotion as a variable.

Rationalists have not read or understood David Hume.

You cannot work out what out to be from what is.

To want to be alive is irrational.

Nietzsche and the Existentialists understood that.

Arguably religions too.

  • > To want to be alive is irrational.

    This is some philosophy bullshit. Taking "rational" to be ~ "logical choice" the truthness of this statement depends on the assumed axioms, and given you didn't list them this statement is clearly false under rather simple "sum of all life is the value" system until that system is proven self-contradictory. Which I doubt you or the famous mouths you mentioned did at any point, because it probably is not.

    • Even if being alive was irrational by some measure, it’s not a particularly useful or helpful observation.

      The desire or instinct to be alive is necessary for the survival of a sentient species. (Sentient, not sapient)