You're welcome, I guess. Btw, it's not Petulia, it's Patulia .

I asked the same question to my science professor, who is very religious. He said that one could be a believer but still be a man or a woman of science, but he actually didn't give me a proper answer to why it is so.

I then asked the same question to my religion teacher and she replied in a more complete way: she said that a Christian had the right to believe that the theory of evolution was true, or that any other scientific theory or principle was true, because the fact that evolution, for example, is a valid theory doesn't exclude the fact that God could have initiated everything. Of course, if you come from a branch of Christianity that takes the Bible ad litteram, then that's another whole story.

Also, a while ago, I watched a Richard Dawkins interview in which he said that science answers to the question "how?", while religion answers to the question "why?". According to Dawkins, however, the "why?" question was irrelevant, while for me it's actually an interesting query which doesn't necessarily have "God" or "Gods" as an answer.

Simple example: something perfectly imperfect. The perfection of an imperfection. — tim wood

Maybe that "something" is imperfect on its whole, but if we consider the fact that he is imperfect as a source of perfection we may consider it perfect. Or maybe is just a poetic way to say that one's imperfections might be simply perfect to another person. I don't know

I personally don't believe that a God played any role in the apparition of life on earth or in evolution (I am saying this because maybe my post suggested otherwise). However, I respect those who believe that everything happened according to God's plan (or Gods' plan, for that matter) and I don't think they are less logic or rational or that they can't fully understand/appreciate the theory of evolution.

However i can promise you that Darwin didn't understand evolution the way the modern evolutionist understands it — christian2017

Well, you're actually correct. Darwin created the basis of the theory of evolution, but it doesn't do science any good to hold on to Darwin's ideas and to Darwinism, because evolutionism has greatly evolved (sorry for the pun) since Darwin's age. For example, Darwin and neodarwinists usually represent evolution by using the Tree of life, completely ignoring that evolution cannot be only divergent but convergent as well. The tree analogy can be useful to describe eukaryotes, but fails to describe how bacteria evolve, since they can exchange genetic material also by using the horizontal gene transfer, which is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by the vertical transmission of DNA from parents to their offspring. The fact that a characteristic that has been acquired during an organism's lifetime could be transmitted to the offspring goes against what darwinists think (and might sound a bit "Lamarckian") , but it's happening so we have to accept it.

Also, about not being rational that the unicellulars partner with other unicellulars, Darwin himself stated that those organisms who actively cooperate with one another have a higher chance to survive, because cooperation is as valuable as competition.

They may accept some features of evolution such as common morphology or common ancestors but guided evolution is not Darwinian evolution. — Fooloso4

Darwin was a believer and, after reading his books and notes, one could come to the conclusion that Darwin actually believed there was a God behind the whole evolution process. At the end of the Origin of species he said that "life [...] originally breathed into a few forms or into one". However, before dying, Darwin wrote a letter to the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker saying he regretted having used the biblic word "creation" in many of his writings, and that he would have rather called it "apparition", since he wasn't sure of what or who was behind a mechanism such complex as evolution.

OK thanks

Thanks to all of you for the interesting perspectives and pieces of information you have provided me with! I have just realized that the word "happiness" is not appropriate for this context and that I was looking at things in a way that was too superficial.

I also have one question: in what branch of phylosophy should this discussion be placed? Like, what's the place in the world of philosophy for the "Philosophy of happiness"? And finally can you suggest me any articles or books to read that you find particularly useful to understand this topic? (In particular, I would like to know more about the happiness machine experiment)

I definitely would not, and I think many people wouldn't eithier, because I value "truth" over happiness. — Kloptra

I wouldn't either, because I value truth as well and I wouldn't give up truth to have happiness. If you are someone who cares about believing the most true things as possible and the least false things, than this would be your personal source of happiness. If you're not, then maybe you would try the machine.

I could give the example of veganism (for someone why adores meat), but you might say people just do it because they personnaly suffer from animal cruelty — Kloptra

Exactly, they *suffer* from animal cruelty. If they didn't suffer from a cow being butchered as much or even more than from giving up meat, they wouldn't be vegan. They are giving up a certain amount of happiness derived from eating a juicy steak to pursue the greater happiness that comes from thinking that a cow's blood is not on their hands (even though the cow was killed, anyway). They don't realize it, but that's what is happening.

Just finished reading "Le Père Goriot" by Balzac and currently reading a book on Darwin and Darwinism. Started but not finished yet (but plan to finish soon): Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche and The Republic, Plato.

In the small scale the "not giving a fuck" model works, though. It makes those who apply it happier and less stressed (I speak from experience).

OK, let's say you don't care about John's respect. But maybe John doesn't care about you not giving a fuck and he is stealing your stuff because he needs them or because his family needs them. The "not giving a fuck" strategy works when those who are causing you harm do it because they want to upset you (for example, bullies). But if John doesn't care about you being upset or no, would "not giving a fuck" stop him from stealing things from you?

the world will be a better place if we all don't give a fuck. — Three-Buddy Problem

We'll that's for sure! I am personally trying to pursue this way of life and it's actually working out pretty well.

However, wouldn't you be happier if John didn't steal your stuff because you "didn't give a fuck" but because he respected you as a person and as the owner of the things he initially wanted to steal? I don't know, maybe my world view is excessively romantic and I believe in human morality too much. Also, do you really think everyone is capable of not giving a fuck?

Can't we solve the paradox using the concept of infinits and of limits? Like, Achilles first covers half the distance from the tortoise, then he covers half of the remaining distance and so on:

1/2 + 1/4 +1/8... Shouldn't this tend to one at infinite? Just because we add up an unlimited amount of numbers doesn't mean we'll get a finite quantity.

Are we all immortal in some weird sense? — TheMadFool

I don't think we are immortal because it's not like we are living an unlimited amount of intervals all of the same length: it's like cutting a square shaped cake first in a half, than the remaining half in a half and so on. You'll still eat one cake.

There's no need to apologize, really!

Well, yes, we do have a lot of problems in the South, that's what I was saying. I am Sicilian and the stereotypes foreigners have about us do not make me happy at all. I emigrated to the North of Italy because it was hard for my mother to find a job in the South, since if you don't have a friend or a relative recommending you, you have no hopes at all (that's the lack of meritocracy I was talking about). And yes, we gave birth to the Mafia, but it's very unfair to label all Sicilians as criminals. Finally, about Plato, he chose Syracuse to test his ideal form of State, so I don't think we were so bad after all (Don't hate me if I have used a harsh tone, I just hate when they attack Sicily. People have said really bad things to me because of my origins - they often asked me if I was capable to speak Italian, for example. It's nothing personal).

The truth is, a multitude more people die yearly in car accidents in the US than in the hostilities in most of these conflicts combined. — Tzeentch

And should this be something to be proud of? People are dying, everywhere, in this very second. It's not some sort of competition in which there is a winner. People shouldn't die only because someone made the poor choice to drink and drive, just like people shouldn't suffer because they were born in a country in which there is a war.

Many people stay behind in the countries from which people are supposedly "forced" to leave — Tzeentch

What you are describing as a choice is absolutely not one. It's like saying: you can choose whether you want to go to hell or you prefer following a certain doctrine. It's not a that hard of a choice, isn't it?

No country should ever be forced to take in immigrants. — Tzeentch

You're right. But immigrants still arrive, and they arrive by sea on half-wrecked boats. The Ngo have the duty to save them, and this duty is indipendent from the laws of the single states. They also have the duty to bring them to the safest, closest port. So they cannot be brought back to Libia, since we can all agree on the fact that it's not a safe place and that the immigrants would be imprisoned under inhuman conditions. The closest port is Lampedusa's (Sicily), but since Salvini wants all the ports in Italy to stay closed to immigrants, this year many Ngo boats have waited to dock in Lampedusa's Port for weeks, because, according to the Government, they should have chosen another port, for example Malta's. Salvini has all the right to regulate immigration here in Italy, but the thing is he has no plan when it comes to actually dealing with this delicate issue. Also, the only thing he seems to care about right now are the Ngo boats that carry immigrants and draw the media's attention. In Lampedusa, immigrants on small boats arrive every day, without being noticed by the authorities. It's up to the islanders to help them or not. He should just stop doing useless propaganda and think about actual problems: our population is getting older and older, our economy is slowly sinking, the South of the country has been devastated by corruption and no one knows anymore what meritocracy is.

What does the pope say? — frank

He says governments should build bridges not walls. However if Italy cannot welcome, cannot integrate, cannot provide the right services to those who arrive, politicians have the duty and the right ask other European countries to do so.

Oh, sorry I didn't understand what you were asking. Basically they are immigrants who come mainly from Libia, where there is a civil war. The government is limiting immigration because they think immigrants are invading our country and that most of the people who come to Italy do not actually come for humanitarian reasons. Also, Salvini wants to put "Italians first" and he wants to keep them safe from all the foreigner criminals who "invade" Italy.

Who are the asylum seekers? — frank

It's a person who flees their home country, gets to another country and applies for asylum, which is the right to have international protection

Well, the consent thing is something I don't entirely agree on as well, but I also think that giving birth to another human being is a matter of responsibility: it's not about giving life, but rather giving a good, and if not good than decent, life to another individual. What matters is what life and opportunities you can give a child once born, not what he or she would have been if he or she had not "consented" to live.

If I understood correctly what you meant by "consent to be brought into existence", I think that we cannot talk about giving consent in such a situation. Consent is defined as "permission for something to happen or agreement to do something". I don't think consent, as we have defined it, can be given before being born. A similar line of reasoning can be applied to the fear of death: you are dead, you cannot feel pain and you cannot experience human emotions as we know them, since your body and all the functions related to it can't coexist with what is know as "death" (of course, you can be scared of what might happen to the people around you after your death) . If you are not yet born, you cannot give consent since you don't have any of the brain function and any of the experience needed to actually give consent. And even when you are born, you still haven't developed all those functions yet. That's the reason why there is an age of consent for sex in the first place, for example. How can you give or not give consent to something you now absolutely nothing about? Now, I'm sorry if I wasn't really clear, but English isn't my first language, I'm quite young and don't have a solid philosophical education. Also, it's my first time writing on this forum so forgive me if I have made any mistakes.
P. S. I'm talking in atheist terms, so your idea of an after life and of what we were (or where we were) before being born could be different from mine.