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I met my wife a few years after being disfellowshipped. Her family is fairly religious, but also very accepting of non religious people. Case in point, she is a dyed in the wool atheist, but her family loves her, and me, without regard to our religious status. My family, on the other hand, completely abandoned me. I've seen them once or twice in 46 years.
If so, what books would you recommend? I'm an agnostic and have been for most of my life, but I want to educate myself on the great works of philosophy...but I have no idea where to start at?
Not believing in god does not create a void, it just allows you the time to pursue things that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to fit into your life. It's not like I sit twiddling my thumbs wondering how I'm going to fill in the Sunday mornings that theists spend in church.
Same with 'philosophy'. My 'philosophy' is generally science based.
I recommend the podcast 'The infinite monkey cage'. It sets out to answer some of the great questions of life. It's science based but with a humorous look at these topics.
Deals with topics such as: A recipe to build a universe, the mind versus the brain, climate change; that sort of thing.
Big philosophy fan here. I actually just started on this book, written by a psychiatrist from the city you claim as your location (and lest the 'psychiatrist' part fool you, I'd classify the book as 'a work of philosophy'):
My favorite philosopher is Camus. I highly recommend 'The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays'. Talks about, well, various ways of approaching life in a world devoid of intrinsic meaning. Camus was f*cking awesome, IMO. Have attempted to read others who are classified as existentialists, but their writing, with the exception of some short passages from Sartre, doesn't do much for me. I found Heidegger impenetrable, although his 'Being And Time' is considered a magnum opus. Maybe someday I'll revisit it....
There IS a Philosophy forum on City-Data, ya know...
Yes. Rand S used to be religion and Philosophy until the Philosophy content became top -heavy. But Mystic's own personal thread has become really a mini Religion and Philisophy forum. it has a resident Masters' degree in Philosophy to talk to.
Are you speaking from experience? Are there some voids left in you that you don't know about? Because if you don't notice the void, it can't really be a void. I am not sure if you were trying to be funny with paradox.
First of all, philosophy is just absorbing the thoughts and conclusions of other people. I have my own thoughts, and I have reached my own conclusions. Shaped and moulded by the thoughts and conclusions of others to be sure. But my own thoughts and conclusions sustain me. I am 70 years old. Most of my life is behind me now. Yet I feel no "void." I have been far too fortunate to feel any emptiness or regret.
If you feel you need some stimulus to help bridge an emptiness caused by feeling that you have a very small and meaningless existence in a VERY immense universe, I offer you this to help sustain you.
Pay very close attention to the part where he says: "So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth."
Because you are the universe contemplating itself. You are made up of trillions of inanimate bits that can neither see or feel or think. You could be a rock, or a gas cloud. But instead you are something which seems to be very special in the universe, because we haven't, as yet, discovered it anywhere else. You are life. But even that is not good enough. Not for you. You are the sort of life that can not only see and feel, touch and hear, the world around you... you have the ability to think and to deeply contemplate your experiences. And attempt to make sense of it all. You have won the lottery.
The only void I know about is the one in the constellation of Bootes where there is some 22 million light years of space and hardly a single galaxy can be found within it ... just a few little dwarf galaxies.
Well, I guess you could count what lies between the ears of certain people. There's more void there than in Bootes, me thinks.
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