Throughout my life I have been, at one time or another, a believer in God, an agnostic and an atheist. I am amazed at the strength of other people's faith, especially at the faith of people who have taken up a new religion and fervently hold on to and defend their new beliefs for the rest of their lives. My question is how are people so convinced that their chosen religion is right over all the others. It seems impossible that a person can believe in a religion simply because he or she wants to - there must be some logic behind their reasoning - but I cannot understand it. Can you explain or is this one for psychologists?

What is the best age to become a parent? I am 27 years old, married, and have no desire to have kids anytime soon. I am aware that age is a factor though, so am I just being selfish?

My husband critised me for holding on to my opinion despite persuasive opposing views from others in our discussion group; his point being that, as a general rule, the opinion held by the majority is more likely to be right than the opinion held by the minority. He continued to say that if he was in similar circumstances he would begin to doubt his own certainty and concede that the majority must be right. Although I see some merit in his point in some situations I would never concede on something on which I was certain, regardless of pressure, unless I was convinced by facts I hadn't originally considered, etc. Two questions: Am I just being stubborn and how does one determine when we are simply being stubborn as opposed to being justifiably strong-willed?

A few things here. First, would someone like Kurt Gödel be considered a philosopher of math, a logician, or a mathematician? Maybe all three (or something else not listed)? And what are the differences between the three? Thanks.

I'm a person living in a muslim country. There are lots of problems/discussions between religious and non-religious people about the limits of freedom. For example, some religious people say that they feel offended when someone nearby drinks a alcoholic drink. On the other hand the non-religious people say that it is their freedom to drink alcoholic drinks. There are many other cases of this type, that is, one say that they get offended (generally the religious ones) and the other say that it is their freedom to do such and such. My question is how should we think about such issues? Are there general principles about limits of freedom that we can use to solve such cases? Also, can you suggest introductory reading material on this issue? Thank you. Ahmet

My question concerns analyticity. I'm a Danish undergraduate student of classics, so I don't have any formal education in philosophy. Anyway, here goes: How do you determine whether or not a proposition is analytic? I believe that the traditional definition is something like this: for a proposition to be analytic the predicate has to be contained in the subject (in the sense that the truth of the proposition can be determined purely on the basis of the semantics of the concepts used and of an understanding of the logical form of the proposition). But this does not seem to be enough. Consider this example: "Wolves live in packs". This would normally qualify as a synthetic proposition, but why exactly? Imagine that a person sitting in her favourite armchair uses her semantic mastery of the concept of wolves and determines the truth of the proposition without lifting a finger. Would that make the proposition "analytic". There seems to be something wrong here. One could say that every proposition that is...

Suppose a defense lawyer strongly suspects (to the point that he would be willing to bet a large amount of money on it) that his client has committed the crime he charged with. Would it be right or wrong for him to encourage the jury to deliver a "not guilty" verdict?

I have question about the ethics of life writing. What can I (or any other author for that matter) write in an autobiographical work? My life and my autobiography belong to me, so I should be able to decide what I reveal and how, but since they are so entwined with so many other lives, it seems as my autonomy is in conflict with the autonomies of the people in my life and my autobiography. For example: my girlfriend and I used to have a blog together (it’s closed now since we broke up some time ago) where we would write about very intimate things concerning our relationship and feelings and so on. We used nicknames to conceal our identity, so of all of the people who read the blog, only a handful of very close friends knew who were behind it. Although the blog is no longer available online, I have all the posts on my computer. It’s fairly obvious to me that I ought not to show any posts written by her to anyone, let alone reveal her identify to someone. But it’s not that obvious that I ought not to show...

In our society, any modern way of making one's daily life easier is considered an advance. I am only fifteen, so I might not fully understand the importance of technology in our lives yet, but my question stands: If these advances ultimately have a consequence (an example being television, which may provide temporary distraction and entertainment, but in reality just distracts us from doing something more constructive), is it really an advance at all? My mind is in conflict because many of the examples I think of often have many pros as well as many cons. Is that the nature of advancement: with every move forward there is a risk of developing problems? ~Juliet

Is this argument valid?: A) The sky is blue. therefore B) 2+2=4 It may not seem that the premise is relevant to the conclusion. But an argument is supposed to be valid if its premises cannot be true without its conclusion being true. B is a necessary truth (we can imagine a world in which the sky is red, but a world in which 2+2=5 is just incoherent). B is always true, therefore B must be true in cases in which A is true. So this must be a valid argument. There's something horribly wrong with this thinking, but I can't figure it out.