How much of my time should I spend helping others? Let me first say that I am a pretty happy person in general and I enjoy my life. However, although I volunteer a considerable amount (15-20 hrs. a week), I always feel like I should and/or could be doing more. I am a college student (majoring in philosophy) who lives a considerably comfortable lifestyle (I have a home, food, etc.), and I can't help but feel guilty for taking any pleasure in frivolous activities (video games, socializing, etc.) while I know how many people on earth live extremely hard lives. At the same time, it seems necessary to spend time not helping others and merely enjoying myself. What percentage of our time/effort/money should we spend making others' lives better? Would it be morally mertitorious to devote one's self entirely to others at the expense of ourselves or conversely, would it be alright to not volunteer at all and focus soley one's self? I can't seem to find a happy medium. p.s. This is a great service...keep it up.

How is it that almost anything that any religious preacher says to prove the existence of God turns out to be typical examples of one or the other of the well known logical fallacies? How is it that they don't realise this simple fact when all such fallacies are enumerated in the Web in such sites as the Wikipedia? Are human being basically very irrational creatures ?

I just graduated from college with a philosophy degree. I don't think that I want to get a Phd in philosophy (though, you never know...) but I remain excited by many philosophical questions, particularly in philosophy of mathematics and ethics. How can I keep philosophy a part of my life?

Is there more to peace than the absence of war?

I am an atheist, so I tend to find belief to be equivalent to superstition and group-think. I generally admire the ethical thinking of some believers -- the compassion, the commitment to justice, the reverence for "creation" -- but I am insulted at the suggestion by some believers that atheists cannot be equally ethical because our ethical commitments are not anchored to any fixed basis in revelation, scripture, or the promise of eternal rewards/punishments. When I reflect on the subject, I realize that there are certain advantages to having a moral framework as one finds in his chosen/inherited religious tradition. Where can an atheist go to consider and adopt his own framework? Are there any recommended readings on this question?

I recently had a discussion about racial pride. It is my belief that circumstances of birth are random and just as they should not be a source of shame, cannot be claimed as a source of pride. One has nothing to do with being born Irish, therefore how can they claim this as a source of pride? We all sneer at white supremacists for claiming a sense of pride in their race, yet people all over are doing essentially the same thing. Pride implies achievement. You did not achieve anything in being born, it's just something that happened to you. I was born in America, I didn't do anything to be born here, so I can only claim that I'm proud to be an American so far as I haven't chosen to move elsewhere. I think you all get the idea here. Everyone loves to say they're proud of their ethnicity or heritage, but is this logically correct? I would say no.

As far as I know, it's not illegal in football (soccer) to kick the ball really hard at someone's face if they are in the way of goal. Throwing dummies and gamesmanship are also treated as acceptable. So how exactly does agreeing on rules of a game remove normal moral constraints? I know people wouldn't be happy if I started blasting a football at their faces, but would it be morally ok?

Does worthwhile Philosophy start with good questions or can it start with the proper mood? I am an International Relations major and have decided on writing my honors thesis on a question of political philosophy, not because I have a burning question, but rather because it was the subject I enjoyed the most and because I want to understand whether or not it is something I'd like pursuing in the future in the form of a postgraduate degree. I often find myself in what I - and some friends- call a "Philosophical mood" -though the friends are not without irony when the employ the term- i.e. in the mood for thinking and discussing dispassionately about what I am passionate about. I think Heidegger privileged moods as a way to knowing. I've decided researching the nature of power and the use of this concept in twentieth-Century political thought because I want to satisfy my mood, not because it seems like a burning question. Can real philosophy come from this? Is it (I know it is unscientific) silly to pursue...

There are many attributes that are commonly attributed to God, or at least some versions of the Christian God, one of which is omniscience. I have my doubts that omniscience is a possible trait for any being to have because it seems to me to be a paradoxical trait. If God (or any being) knows everything that can be an object of knowledge can s/he know what it is like to not know everything that can be an object of knowledge? I say everything that can be an object of knowledge because there are obviously things that are unknowable like a round square or a married bachelor. However, I don't think that a being could know everything that was knowable and simultaneously know the experience of not knowing everything that it knowable (knowing the experience of not knowing everything that is knowable is something that is knowable because as humans that is how our experience is).

Is power (its nature, its use, its definition) a philosophical issue? It seems as if the social sciences have appropriated "power" to themselves. I think that often power is presented as being everywhere, in every human relation, and that its use borders on obscurantism insofar as it substitutes the need for more detailed explanations of social problems. Is this right? Is there an alternative? How should philosophy address power and power relations? Should it do so? Andrés.