Old Jules, is it Possible to have no feelings or emotions?
No. But it’s possible to train your feelings and emotions to sit in the passenger seat and keep their voices down. It’s possible to train what’s driving you to slap them back to where they belong when they try to get hold of the steering wheel or their foots on the gas pedal or brake. It’s possible not to allow them to turn on the windshield wiper, lights or try to work the turn signals.
Old Jules, do you think philosophy is worth studying or not? Isn’t philosophy just opinion?
Philosophy isn’t about knowledge and it isn’t about what people think. Philosophy is about learning to discipline or train your mind to think effectively. If you’d like to learn to think by methods that will help you understand what’s going on around you study philosophy. If you want knowledge study something else.
Old Jules, can the Book of Genesis be taken as an allegory?
Seems to me the problem isn’t whether something doing something that rhymes with something human beings might call a deity might have something to do with the beginning of and running of the universe. It might. My personal view is that it probably does. The problem is whether bronze age nomads had a particularly insightful explanation and whether it’s more worth considering than the lots of other possibilities. Yes, the OT probably has a lot of allegory. Does that allegory relate to anything in modern life outside the minds of people who choose to believe it? Maybe, but more likely it doesn’t. Is it worth reading multiple times and knowing, digesting what it says? I think it is. Otherwise there’s no way of reaching any kind of comprehension of what’s motivating the people we have to deal with in life who do believe it. Does it contain wisdom? Yes, it does. Bronze age nomads weren’t stupid. They just didn’t manage to offer up a set of explanations for the physical workings of the universe that seems to me to be the most likely answer. But they weren’t stupid and they weren’t lacking in their particular brand of wisdom.
Old Jules, why is it that some of us want to help all life in so many ways yet others just simply do not?
Some of us prefer honest and brutal self-examination over platitudes.
Old Jules, what’s the purpose of life?
The purpose of life is to scratch cats behind the ears, feed the chickens and gather eggs, and get the garden ready to plant come spring, pull weeds out from around the winter spinach and onions, and to watch Orion chase the Seven Sisters across the sky nighttimes.
So Far From Heaven 