My 4-year old son is asking incredibly good questions about God. As for myself, I do not partake in the idea of religion. My wife does. Together we decided to let the children make their own decisions. To that end, on Sundays they go to Sunday School with their Mom and I sat home to “do chores.” My son is questioning nearly everything they are telling him. “Why did God make man first then a woman if they are equals?” “If God made man, where was God before we were there to talk about him on Sundays?” “How did God make God before was us?” (real quotes). I’m amazed, proud, and confused. How do I answer these questions without dashing his chances at the illusion of “it’ll be alright” that Christians harbor in their lives? Do I have an moral obligation to tell him I don’t believe in that “stuff”? Or am I better off to string him along? I hate to discourage this sort of dialogue; I love wondering at the world. The Church people tell him to stop asking questions. Is that healthy?

How many cells does a 6-week-old human fetus have? And how many cells does a fully developed human adult have? Comparatively, how many cells does a 6-week-old chimpanzee fetus have? And how many cells does a fully developed chimpanzee have? I am interested because I want to see if the abortion debate could be drawn along the lines of personhood relative to number of cells. Do you think this is a plausible way to think about the debate? Also, where could I find more information about this topic? Thank you, Alexander

I'm in a quandary. My question relates to when does a person's decisions about their own life become reliant on others' decisions; who should have the last say, as it were. My mother, an emigrant who returned to her own country, was recently widowed and has expressed a wish to return to the country where her children are, thus leaving her native country again. Her children, including me, have grave reservations as we think, amongst other considerations, that the trauma of the move may well impact on her health and actually shorten her life. I think she knows this and wants to move back anyway. Apart from all the obvious issues about grief and getting old and frail, for me a big issue is who am I to say she shouldn't come back? Because her decision would require co-operation of her children, does that mean our views should over ride hers? Because she is elderly, should our views have more validity than hers? I don't think there is a right or wrong solution to this but I would appreciate your thoughts. ...

What makes philosophers such as Kant, Aristotle, and Plato (and the many others) able to gain and retain such vast amounts of knowledge? Are they somehow able to use more of their brain than others, or are they merely the same as everyone else yet they have chosen to read and learn more? At the same time... I wish to become as great as these philosophers. Here is the scenario I have in mind: I graduate school in June. Once I graduate, I have a stack of grammar books and philosophy books I have yet to read. Granted they are "beginner" philosophy/grammar books (such as "The Art of Making Sense 2/e", "The Elements of Moral Philosophy 3/e", The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle", "What Does It All Mean?", "The Elements of Style- Strunk and White 3/e" and "An Introduction to Language 3/e"), I aim to move upward and get into the heavy stuff soon. If I keep this steady flow of progression, in due time, will I become a great thinker? I feel as though I have wonderful thoughts circulating inside of my mind...

Do we have any control over what we believe? I can think of countless things that I hold to be true that for all the tea in China I couldn’t make myself think otherwise. When we’re presented with good grounds for believing something, is it possible to not believe it? Do we have any choice on the matter? I realize that some people can enter a state of denial over something, but isn’t this just acting as if they didn’t hold that particular belief? Is it possible in theory to be caused (perhaps through hypnosis or indoctrination) to believe or not believe something contrary to what would normally seem obvious to us?

Is it possible to comprehend happiness if one never experiences unhappiness? In a life in which a person has no negative experiences, is it possible for a person to distinguish especially positive experiences? In other words, can happiness exist without something negative to compare it to?

Are there any arguments for the existence of an objective morality that are not religious?

If you had the chance to save either a newborn child or an elderly woman, which would you choose and why? In this situation would it be immoral to choose on just the basis of their age? Would this show that people's own thoughts on others put down the possiblity of equality? In one idea, I would chose the newborn because they still have not experianced life. But in another idea, it is more righteous to save the elderly woman because she may have offered more to society.

I am only in my first few years of studying philosophy, yet I have been reading simple introductions, and philosophical novels since I was quite young. When I was younger I often thought I had stumbled upon some "great new theory" or other, only to find out that, not only had it been done before, but done much better than I ever could have. Now that it is the main focus of my academic life, I find myself truly discouraged every time I have what I think might be something new to the world of philosophy, or some original thought. It seems that all there is to discover in philosophy has been picked apart to the bare bones, or that my own thoughts simply could never in my wildest dreams stand up to any critical analysis. I have thought of simply giving up on the subject to start writing novels about my far-fetched ideas. Should I let it go and save myself the discouragement and disappointment? (please don't take this late night e-mail as evidence of my writing skills... I promise with some coffee I...

In Western culture, polygamy is generally considered immoral. Is there sufficient justification for this classification? Can it honestly be said that polygamy is wrong? I don't only mean one man/many wives but all the various possible arrangements of multiple partners, for instance one woman/multiple husbands, multiple husbands/multiple wives, etc.... There are some economic advantages to multiple adult partners living together. Take for example a situation where a man has two wives. The man works and so does one of the women. You now have a dual income household. The second woman does not work, but instead stays home and cares for any children and housekeeping duties. What would normally fall on one woman (working, housekeeping and child-rearing) is divided between two. It is assumed that all parties are consenting adults who consider themselves equal to one another. This has the added advantage of reducing the child day care costs so often frustrating for households with just two parents who...