Much of what people call philosophy today is a parody of the real thing - pretentiously obscure, often unintelligible, cryptic at best.
- In the last few decades, science and cosmology provided us great insights about our place in the universe. However, the scientific worldview strives to be value-free; we thus need to extend it to give a meaning to our lives. A broader philosophical worldview answering our existential questions is such an extension. This worldview provides people a meaning of life, in harmony with cosmic evolution.
- Philosophy does not deal only with the questions that currently do not allow complete answers. It studies the questions that are in principle not answerable. "There are many questions - and among them those that are of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life - which, so far as we can see, must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers became of a quite different order from what they are now." In other words, there are questions that are in principle insoluble although very important and interesting. For instance, the questions like "What is the meaning of life?", "Does God exist?", "Does the universe have a final purpose?" resist definite answers by their very nature. Typically these unanswerable questions tackle either Cosmology (pertaining to the whole of the universe) or Theology (pertaining to the transcendent of the visible world). Philosophy is interested in these two realms but it cannot encompass the whole of the universe as a given object nor conclusively prove or disprove the transcendent content of religious beliefs.
- Scepticism is a Hellenistic school of philosophy. At its simplest, Skepticism holds that one should refrain from making truth claims, and avoid the postulation of final truths. This is not necessarily quite the same as claiming that truth is impossible (which would itself be a truth claim), but is often also used to cover the position that there is no such thing as certainty in human knowledge.
- The world-view contains something more than scientific information. It is a crucial regulative principle of all the vital relationships between man and social groups in their historical development. With its roots in the whole system of the individual and society's spiritual needs and interests, deter mined by human practice, by all man's accumulated experience, the world-view in its turn exerts a tremendous influence on the life of society and the individual.
- 'Philosophy' is derived from a Greek word literally meaning 'love of wisdom'. But it is better and more accurately defined as 'inquiry' or 'inquiry and reflection', allowing these expressions their widest scope to denote thought about general features of the world and human experiences within it.
- It would be a mistake, therefore, to insist on a fixed definition of science and of religion before undertaking this treatment of their historical relationship. Yet in spite of the complexity that blurs the line separating them, peoples in the West have continued to distinguish between scientific and religious outlooks. Here again history renders assistance, for by providing us with vast source material it enables us to evaluate as fully as possible the claims that have been made about the similarities and differences present in religion and science.
- If a relativist catches you audaciously suggesting that there is such a thing as (absolute) truth, then you are bound to be asked the rhetorical question: "But who is to decide what the truth is?" Apparently the relativist thinks that if you hold that there is an absolute, objective truth, then you have to believe there is some authority whose word on that truth must not be questioned. The rhetorical question appears to be meant as a challenge to your presumed right to set yourself up as such an authority. It is supposed to make you either abandon the whole idea of absolute truth or else reveal yourself for the arrogant dogmatist you are. But the possibility of skepticism shows very graphically that this is a false dilemma. Skeptics don't deny that there is an absolute truth, but they are as far from dogmatism as it is possible to be, since they deny absolutely that anyone (least of all themselves) could ever be in a position to say with certainty what the truth is. Even if you aren’t a skeptic, you can believe there is an (absolute) truth without thinking that anyone counts as an infallible authority about what it is.
- If one wanted to ask the question “What is the relationship between philosophy and religion today?” and one turned to the current literature in philosophy of religion for the answer, it would be difficult not to conclude that the discipline is primarily concerned with metaphysical or conceptual arguments for the existence/non-existence of God, the problem of evil, epistemic discussions of the relation between reason and belief, and (occasionally) questions related to religious pluralism and exclusivism. There is a sense in which this simply reflects the academic and scholarly interests, not to mention the religious/irreligious commitments, of those contributing to the field, as well as a certain historical continuity with questions that animated early modern philosophy. Yet while this might be the way things are, or the way they have historically come to be, one can always ask the question of whether this is the way things ought to be. The descriptive question regarding the relationship between philosophy and religion today could be taken as implying the normative question “What ought the relationship between philosophy and religion be?” While it would be arrogant to provide a strong prescriptive answer to this question, it does critically orientate us on the way this philosophical sub-division is practiced.
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