One very famous argument based on evidence only available to the self comes from Descartes... 'I think, therefore I am.' Sounds reasonable enough to me.

It is certainly wise to take these statistics seriously and to realize that you and your relationship are not immune from those trends. Yet, I don't think the ideal response is to 'accept the possibility' that your relationship will fail, but instead you should ask yourself why relationships fail so frequently in our society and take steps to avoid those pitfalls. If you do all the same things that everyone else does, you should expect the same results. If you take extra steps to protect honesty, intimacy, closeness, commitment, fidelity, etc. in your relationship that other people don't take, you are more likely to succeed.

If I'm reading the question correctly, it assumes that if morals aren't empirically verifiable, then they must be based upon emotion rather than reason. Frankly, I don't know why anyone would make that assumption. There are lots of important claims that aren't based upon emotion, but that ultimately aren't empirically verifiable. For example, the claim that 'if morals aren't empirically verifiable, then they must be based upon emotion rather than reason' is not empirically verifiable but does not seem based upon any emotion. If any of the great modern philosophers had the 'last word' on ethics (and a vast range of other issues) it would have probably been Kant who wrote after Hume and rejected many of his views (including this one).

The current debates about embryonic stem cell research concern whether federal funding should be spent upon it, not on whether such research is banned in the USA. Similarly, federal funding for abortion is more controversial than its legality.

Actually, many of the better philosophers take time to define the concept of God they have in mind. For example, in Richard Swinburne's The Existence of God you can find a 12 sentence, page long account of the God he has in mind (I believe it appears on page 7). While I understand that some people think the intrinsic probability of 'Yahweh' existing is rather low, it is a belief that is at least nominally subscribed to by about 2 billion people including some very intelligent thinkers (such as Oxford/Yale/Princeton/Cornell professors). So, I'd suggest that any belief with that kind of status is at least worth arguing about. If there are Oxford professors arguing for the existence of one of the African deities, I think it'd be fun to look at their arguments.

I appreciate your question and identify two major subquestions in your comments: 1) Why is it widely accepted that technological progress helps us live better and increase happiness? Well for one thing, technology is literally a matter of life and death for some of us. As someone who survived cancer in my mid-20's, I'm very aware of the fact that technology makes all sorts of things possible. It increases our life expectancy, it increases our leisure time, it broadens the options concerning how we can spend our leisure time, etc. So, I have to go with the mainstream view that technology does help us live a happier life. Yet, I also appreciate your point that technology is not unqualifiedly positive. Your comment about the complications it introduces into life reminds me of a line from the classic movie 'The Gods Must Be Crazy' where the narrator mentions that in 'advanced' societies children are 'sentenced' to over a decade of school. Furthermore, lots of technology can be misused. 'Web'...

The term 'good' is notoriously ambiguous. However, I often tell my students that a goal for their arguments should be that an intelligent, well-informed person with no strong pre-existing opinion on the matter would find it convincing. Thus, a 'good' argument could have a conclusion that is ultimately false. And it is possible for 'good' arguments to exist for logically incompatible conclusions. Note, however, that there is more to this account of a 'good' argument than pure persuasive power... it has to be persuasive to a certain kind of person (whereas some arguments that 'persuade' the masses are not particularly convincing to the well-informed or the intelligent). As for the ontological argument, I don't think it is a good argument (in the sense above) in contemporary culture because most people would not find its premises to be more likely than its conclusion (and generally the point of an argument is to get someone to accept a conclusion based on the strength of its premises and their...

I'd like to supplement Allen Stairs's fine response with two additional points. First, giving significant credence to the possession of degrees isn't merely a time saver. As a society we have largely delegated the measurement of learning to degree granting institutions. At least in theory, possession of a degree is supposed to correspond to the actual possession of knowledge. There aren't a lot of reliable alternatives for judging whether or not someone possesses the knowledge in question (especially if the person trying to gauge another's level of knowledge is not an expert in that area herself). Sure, a prodigy might be able to self-teach and attain more knowledge than the credentialed person, but that is still relatively rare. Second, there is more to the possession of a degree than mere knowledge. It communicates to potential employers (and anyone else who cares) that the person has a level of perseverance and discipline and is able to work within the guidelines of an institutional...

I disagree with one of your stated assumptions and one of your implied assumptions. First, I certainly don't want to die before many of the beloved people around me (and I insist that I still love them quite a bit). However, I disagree with this stated assumption, because I disagree with your implicit assumption that when we should wish to die ought to be motivated mainly by a desire for self or others to avoid the sadness of grieving. It seems to me that we should be more motivated by a desire to avoid (and for others to avoid) the 'bad' of death. I would prefer not to die at all but since that doesn't seem to be an option, it seems wisest to accept the natural pattern of this world: to die after your beloved parents, before your children and grandchildren, and in roughly the same time span as siblings, friends, and spouses. It is also easier to accept mortality (your own and others) if you don't think this is the end, as many excellent philosophers such as Plato, Aquinas, Kant, and Kierkegaard...

An important ethical principle advanced by Kant was 'ought implies can.' So long as you are doing what you can to carry out your moral convictions, you have no reason to feel guilty (though perhaps, you still have reason to feel sorrow). It is legitimate to try to persuade others to embrace your view within reason, but remember that damaging your relationships with your family over this issue or getting yourself thrown into jail would only introduce another evil into the universe. So, perhaps you should do more than you currently are, but I don't think you ought to 'beat yourself up' over things that are outside of your control.