Are we really obliged to help the poor? What is the main reason for helping them without a bias in religious beliefs?

Greetings. My four-year-old daughter asked why she could not "see" god. My response at the time was something like the following. God is one without a second and undifferentiated. For one to "see" something it is necessary to distinguish that object from others. God has no other from which it can be distinguished as separate and distinct. Abstract, yes, but at least I avoided using terms like "transcendant", etc. I wanted to give her a thoughtful answer even if hard to grasp. How did I do?

Suppose we are to believe that the soul exists. If the body is extinguished upon death, then is any type of afterlife in which the soul survives impossible? To me, the body is the soul's material basis; the soul is the functioning of the body. Consequently they cannot be regarded as separate since they are but separate names referring to a single object. For example, the soul is to the material basis as sharpness is to a knife; the body is to its functioning as knife is to sharpness. "Sharpness" does not name knife nor "knife" sharpness. Nevertheless, without sharpness, there is no knife; and without a knife, there is no sharpness. I have never heard of sharpness surviving the destruction of a knife; how then can we accept that the soul survives after the body has died? Or is soul something else?

Is kissing a person on the lips other than one's spouse cheating? What about not on the lips? Does location really matter when it comes to kissing? I don't think it does, and even when it comes to major slip ups as much as penetrative sex, I don't think that's cheating either because promises are but a CONDITIONED vow of not doing any of those things. Because promises between a couple are usually not very precise unless lawyers are involved, I think the greater subject of importance is whether the other person FEELS betrayed and whether there are romantic feelings beyond sexual ones. A condition/promise, I think, even in marriage, is, "I love you so long as you fulfill and do such and such...conditions according to MY needs of such and such." So in other words, because you slept with another person, that does not mean you do not love me, but it does mean you do not love me "to the best of your ability" and so "I would like to change that fact." Do philosophers care for human feelings?

Hello, My name is Kyle, I'm a physics student. I have zero training in philosophy, save for an introductory philosophy course in my freshman year. I've been thinking about something quite frequently, and would like to hear an opinion from somebody who is knowledgable in the subject; The mind and the ego is a construct of the brain( at least as far as I know), and it's experiences. And I think it's fair to say that the brain is a clever organization of atoms, in what is essentially a computer. It has memories, which I think forms the ego, in a seemingly contiguous storyline. The hardware of the brain is however constantly changing, with atoms being lost and gained, through cell death, reproduction, respiration, and other biochemical functions, and yet our subjective experience remains. Suppose this effect is recreated in hypothetical setting where it is possible to create an exact replica of a person(A) to an artificially constructed person (b). Now, the copy is an exact replica, with every...

Should philosophers be able to speak as well as they write? For most people, speech is a more common form of communication in day to day life than the printed text so it bothers me whenever I watch online philosophy talks or even live philosophy lectures just how boring many philosophers deliver their material. There are exceptions of course (John Searle comes to mind) but is this because philosophers think being charismatic or funny somehow detracts from the material itself?

There is this theistic meta-ethical view according to which there can be evils in the world only if there is an orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god that is the ‘ground’ for the distinction between good and evil. On this theistic meta-ethical view, doesn't it seem that there is something incoherent in the attempt to argue from the relevant premises in arguments from evil to the conclusion that there is no orthodoxly conceived monotheistic god? Asserting "evil exists" seems to prove the existence of god and make the problem of evil self-refuting.

Some time ago I came to know about two horrible stories that happened in my city, one leading to the death of a young child, the other about a 12-year old raped by a 16-year old. Of course, events like these happen everywhere, all the time. We know about major wars and famines, but horrible suffering is happening somewhere at any time. My question is how should we (people who have more or less privileged lives) live with it? I'm not interested in religious answers or worldviews. I guess trying not to think about other people's suffering is not an acceptable response. The other extreme attitude, to go and try to fight suffering where you're more needed, with all your means, is something for saints, not something you could tell everybody to do. The problem is that intermediate ways also seem disrespectful towards those who are suffering most, and if they are the only possible reactions they should still leave us unhappy.

The Philippines has recently experiences the most devastating storm, Yolanda, in its history. The most affected areas of the country were wiped out and almost all sources of food and water became scarce. Looting became common in those areas. I honestly believe that stealing is wrong, but looting, which can be defined as stealing in the most extreme situations like those of life-and-death, seems a rather different case. My question then is this: is looting ever morally justified?

What's the difference between understanding an opponent's argument, and agreeing with it? What prevents me from saying that if my opponent disagrees with my argument, he must misunderstand it?