All too many problems in life (and in philosophy...) are created by 1 or 0 -thinking, or by that there is supposed to be only two answers - on or off. However, in real life it is rare to find such problems at all.
Many people can, for example, think that there are just fully true or fully untrue answers to a certain question. This is all too often the case, even if there often can be several rather good and even several less good, but still not totally untrue answers.

In many cases, the truth-value of an answer or claim can be anything between 1 or 100 on a scale of 1 to 100. Assessing the exact truth-value is naturally very often quite impossible at the particular moment when a claim is made or an answer is given.
However, very often our knowledge of the issue at hand can grow later and the truth value of claim can either grow or diminish with time in the real world.

I have, in fact, been dreaming of a thing that I like to call Stochastic Motivational Analysis, which is in my mind could be a valuable tool in examining the history and things like history of religions.
It is an analysis of WHY people say and do certain things; what are the real reasons why they do them. Stochastic means that the results are always tentative. They will change always when new and better information is received or more argumentative theories are formed.

However, the real point is that in the SMA answers are never true or untrue, but always something in between, Their truth-value can be perhaps as low as 1 or 2 of 100 in worst cases and maybe even 60 or 70 in best cases.
I think that even the simple process of just thinking through the motivations of a historical person can give valuable insights. This is true even if the real truth-value of these ideas is unknown. In philosophy too many people live in a static universe, where things and most of all our knowledge over them does not change. This is the 'theoretical universe', where most of modern philosophers do unfortunately operate. This operation mode is the reason why their results have so little use in the real world.

On the other hand, one needs to remember that the truth-value of an answer or claim is dependent of the level of zoom or level of detail that is expected. “Why is this lamppost here in front of my house?” This question can be answered in a very simple and straightforward way. For example: “Because our community wants us to see in the dark.” It is also very easy to evaluate the truth-value of this answer.
However, the question: “Why is this tree growing in front of my house? “ is incredibly more difficult question. In fact, there is no absolutely true answer to it, if this tree has grown there without any input from humans.

There are an incredible number of factors that affect the growth of a tree and the selection of places where they choose to grow. To answer the question fully one needs to go millions of years back to the evolutionary history of the trees to discern why certain trees prefer certain kinds of areas and places.
To know why this tree is really growing in just this place, one needs to delve into the nature of just how this variant of a tree does live and what preferences it has for places that they prefer.

To understand this issue you need to delve into the nature of photosynthesis which is the engine that propels this tree in its growth. To understand photosynthesis one needs to delve into properties of matter and energy that make photosynthesis possible,
In fact, there is an incredible number of very complex questions that stem from the original questions. Under normal circumstances, we will never evoke or even notice all this enormous complexity, but just accept the tree as it is.

Of course, the same issue of hidden complexity is present every time we make a question about almost any natural phenomena or complex social process. What is the satisfactory level of an answer depends wholly on our own momentary expectations. In some instances, we want and expect just a simple yes or no – answer, but in other situations we expect a higher level of analysis.
The person who receives the answer always decides what level of complexity in the answer is deemed as satisfactory. The truth-value of the answer very much depends also on what is expected from it. There just is no simple single truth for even as simple a question as the ones presented in this piece.
Naturally we can very often tell when the answer is simply wrong according to what we already know of the issue, However, discerning "truth" is so often much more difficult task than just rejecting falsehoods.

Comments

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place."

Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (1977).

If you wish to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better."

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Over the Teacups (1891)

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body."

Cicero

I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better."

Samuel Butler, in The Way of All Flesh (1903)

If you start to think about your physical or moral condition, you usually find that you are sick."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Proverbs in Prose (1819)

Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady."

François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, No. 285.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

George Dennison Prentice, Prenticeana, 1860

It is part of the cure to wish to be cured."

Seneca, Hippolyus, CCXLIX.

I see rejection in my skin, worry in my cancers, bitterness and hate in my aching joints. I failed to take care of my mind, and so my body now goes to hospital."

Astrid Alauda

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

Attributed to Markus Herz by Ernst von Feuchtersleben, Zur Diätetik der Seele (1841)

Health is merely the slowest way someone can die."

Author Unknown

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling."

Anonymous nursery rhyme set to the tune of "Yankee Doodle", quoted in "The Health Club" in School Life

Comments

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements" (1951)

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance."

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength."

Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements"(1951)

The Savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets. There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience; a readiness to attempt the impossible; a bias for simple solutions — to cut the knot rather than unravel it; the viewing of compromise as surrender; the tendency to manipulate people and "experiment with blood." Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power."

- Eric Hoffer in "Reflections on the Human Condition" (1973)

Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind."

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business."

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements" (1951)

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements"(1951)

There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements"(1951)

We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, "to be free from freedom." It was not sheer hypocrisy when the rank-and-file Nazis declared themselves not guilty of all the enormities they had committed. They considered themselves cheated and maligned when made to shoulder responsibility for obeying orders. Had they not joined the Nazi movement in order to be free from responsibility?"

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements"(1951)

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. Thus people haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance. A mass movement offers them unlimited opportunities for both."

- Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements"(1951)

The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. he echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already "know."

Eric Hoffer in "The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements" (1951)

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without."

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

A fateful process is set in motion when the individual is released "to the freedom of his own impotence" and left to justify his existence by his own efforts. The autonomous individual, striving to realize himself and prove his worth, has created all that is great in literature, art, music, science and technology. The autonomous individual, also, when he can neither realize himself nor justify his existence by his own efforts, is a breeding call of frustration, and the seed of the convulsions which shake our world to its foundations.
The individual on his own is stable only so long as he is possessed of self-esteem. The maintenance of self-esteem is a continuous task which taxes all of the individual's powers and inner resources. We have to prove our worth and justify our existence anew each day. When, for whatever reason, self-esteem is unattainable, the autonomous individual becomes a highly explosive entity. He turns away from an unpromising self and plunges into the pursuit of pride — the explosive substitute for self-esteem. All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride.

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats — we know it not."

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

The only index by which to judge a government or a way of life is by the quality of the people it acts upon. No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion — it is an evil government.

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

Rabid suspicion has nothing in it of skepticism. The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

- Eric Hoffer in "The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms"(1955)

We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

- Eric Hoffer in "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" (2005)

It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment."

- Eric Hoffer in "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'", The New York Times Magazine(1971)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
"Eric Hoffer (July 25, 1902 – May 21, 1983) was an American social writer. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, The True Believer, published in 1951, was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that his book The Ordeal of Change was his finest work. In 2001, the Eric Hoffer Award was established in his honor with permission granted by the Eric Hoffer Estate in 2005."

Comments

There are some so universally accepted misconceptions in history that many people have difficulty in even understanding that they can be challenged at all. One of these false ideas is that the Catholic Church was the only vehicle that could have saved the best ideas of the Roman civilization for us.
One part of the same claim is that, without the Catholic Church, the western civilization could even have disappeared completely. This is simply a guess over one possible outcome, but it has been spread as a fact for centuries. However, the facts on the ground do not support this educated guess.

Most of all, Christians themselves did forbid and destroy all of the Epicurean, Stoic and other philosophical schools in the Empire of Rome. If they would not have done so, these schools would have quite probably been accepted and flourished also under the new Germanic rulers of the Western Europe.
Quite probably this would have happened in a similar way as Roman Christianity was allowed to continue its operation also under Germanic rule. The victorious Germanic tribes had lived under the influence of Roman culture for centuries. Many of them wanted nothing more than to adopt the Roman customs and traditions.

However, at the time when these Germanic tribes achieved a position of power in the areas of modern Italy, France, and Spain these areas had already been utterly and forcibly Christianized. All remnants of the older Roman religious and philosophical traditions had been erased from these areas by the time of the German invasion.
One other complication was that most of the Germanic conquerors had by then already adopted Christianity. However, they had acquired it in its ‘heretical’ form of Arianism. This fact did lead them to needless confrontations with the newly Christianized Western Roman Empire. It was also one of the decisive factors that did lead to its demise.

Many these tribes had been allies of the Roman Empire for centuries. However, adaptation of the ‘heretical’ Arianism made them all too often to be seen as enemies of the newfangled Christianized Roman Empire.
The needs of the uniform Christian state church or the future Catholic Church dictated that they were often treated as enemies. This did happen in a situation where Rome would have needed all the allies that it could get.
These facts have avoided and tiptoed around by most Christian historians, as accepting and publishing these facts would not have benefited their pet ideology.

If Christianity would not have achieved its position of a totalitarian state church in the Empire of Rome, the real wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans would quite probably have been transmitted directly to new generations though the many philosophical schools that did exist before the Roman Christians suppressed them.
For example, the Epicurean, Stoic and Platonist schools were dutifully erased form all cities of the empire by the extremely intolerant Christians.

Catholic Church did originally suppress most of the legacy of the ancient Greece and Rome. Only with the advent of Renaissance, and the weakening of the position of the church, was the legacy of Greece was allowed to surface again.
Up to that time the Catholic Church allowed only those Greek or Roman ideas to be studied that did be seen to support their own new and strange ideas.
In practice, just Aristotle and Plato were among the allowed philosophers. Even their work was, in fact, quite totally suppressed for centuries. In the end, they just were the only Greek philosophers who could be misused to at some level to support the new Christian notions over gods, humans, and the universe.
Of course, I am only guessing here. However, so are those who do say that without Catholic Church there would not have been no other forms of education in Western Europe in the ‘Dark Ages’.

There is even compelling reasons to suggest that there would not have been ‘Dark Ages’ if there would not have been the rise of the intolerant and extremely narrow-minded Catholic Church. Nobody actually knows what would have happened if the new Germanic rulers would have acquired the traditional Roman religions and also the ideas of traditional Roman religious tolerance.
We do not know, what could have happened if they would have acquired also the wide mix of religions and philosophical schools and also the ideas that were present in Rome before the advent of the intolerant Christian religious totalitarianism.

The monolithic Catholic Church did occupy the monopoly of education for centuries for its own purposes in the Western Europe. However, nobody can predict what kind of education there could have been if the totalitarian Catholic Church would not have acquired its position of sole allowed ideology.
Nobody can predict what could have happened if the Christians would not have been able to destroy all competing religions and the old schools of philosophy from the Empire of Rome just before the final Germanic onslaught.
However, it is similarly hard to understand why Christians feel free to guess that without the spread of their narrow-minded ideology, the older and much more open-minded Greek and Roman ideas would not have survived. In real life, the main enemy many of these ideas was just the intolerant Christian ideology.

Comments

It has been argued that religions have served and fulfilled an important evolutionary purpose. Some people even claim that because of this fact we cannot even live without of them. However, even if having a religion really does give one an evolutionary advantage, nothing stops us from rejecting the current decidedly very old-fashioned world-religions and creating new and better ones.
Humans have created the existing religions to serve the needs of their society and to fulfill some personal needs. A fact of life is that humans can also create new, modern religions to serve the modern societies with a new and extremely different set of needs.

The main problem with existing religions is that they do not serve well the existing societies anymore, but just hold back their development in countless ways. A religion that would be based on science and philosophy needs not to include any of the old-fashioned fantasies and mythologies on which the existing religions are still based on.
A science-based religion could be a reasonable collection of ideas that concern the very basis of human existence. Of course, one needs to pick and choose the ideas that can make up such a religion from the vast collection of ideas that humanity has created thus far. Naturally, a very hard question would be who would do the picking and choosing.

However, it just might be possible to create a 'pseudo-religion’, which just would offer a wide framework for use of many kinds of existing ideas. Members could then pick and choose the specific ideas that they would like to be included in their own version of that science-based ‘religion’.
The reality on the ground among at least sophisticated folks among the religious people is that people do just this kind of picking and choosing. They very commonly already endorse only those parts of a religion that they find palatable for just themselves.

The grim reality is that religions will not go away as long is the religious organizations do employ hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them have a well-paid and fulltime job of promoting and propagating their own version of blind faith.
Religions will not go away as long as they are taught to little children with no intellectual faculties of their own as a 'greater truth', which they are never allowed to examine like all other areas of life are examined.

Religions will not go away as long as they are taught in schools like mathematics of physics to unsuspecting youngsters. Religions will not go away as long as they are part of the central power-structures in so many countries. They do even still form the central ideology for state-forming in some cases.
Religions will not go away as long as they are supported by official institutions in very many countries. Religions will not go away as long as they have special privileges to use nearly whatever means in which they ever want to propagate their ideology. One should not forget that in some countries any differentiation from the official religion is still punishable with death.
Religions will not go away as long as there is a class of people who see that they will benefit from their existence. The millions of members of existing clergy are one important part of this crowd. They will do their utmost to preserve the privileges. There privileges were given when people still thought that social stability cannot be achieved without a religion.

On the other hand, the ruling class of a society will greatly benefit from existence of population that believes that their current oppression is ordered by some kind of 'god'. There are religious organizations like the Catholic Church in Latin America, which will actively destroy all political dissidence among this religion and will support the local ruling elites through thick and thin.
All in all, religion is never just a personal experience. Often this 'personal experience' can be also fine-tuned to serve the greater interests of the religious organization and in many cases the needs of the ruling elite in society.

In modern western societies, the role of religion as a tool of state has been greatly diminished and has even evaporated quite completely, but does not mean that this role would not exist in very many other societies.
A person can have deeply personal private religious experiences. However , as soon as a prson joins a religious community he enters another level. On this level religions do work as social and political phenomena. On this level the sweet, loving personal message of a religion is so often forgotten and religion is used even as a weapon and a tool of oppression.

One should note that deists have never oppressed anyone. The deism of Baruch Spinoza or Albert Einstein or Thomas Jefferson was based on a personal religious experience only. It was not based an upholding of any kind of religious tradition.
They did not see the need to form a religious organization to force their deistic views on unsuspecting children. They did not see the need to arrange funerals and weddings according to their religious views, either.

A strictly personal religious experience is a quite different thing as a religion; as long as it is kept private. The game is changed totally if old religious books are taken at their face-value. Danger lurks, when interpreting these ancient books becomes a basis for forming the rules for an existing modern society.
Then the issue it is not the personal religious experience at all. The isssue is how a belief in a religious message offered by others can make one act as a part of society. This is a completely different thing than a personal religious experience.

These experiences will not go away in a totally secular society either, if they really are just private experiences. If they are used as justification for public policy, the situation is totally different. A science-based religion could be like deism. It could in practice be just a private framework for thoughts and ideas and a collection of higher ideals and goals for a better life and better society.
However, even this kind of religion just might be able the fill the void that could be left by the removal of the faith-based religion in many people’s mind.

The fiercely individualistic core group of current atheists would never need such a thing. This has been made clear in a recent discussion over the latest book of Alain de Botton called “Religion for atheists”.
This does not mean, however, that there would could not exist a group of people who could benefit from a new clear-cut alternative for the existing religions. All atheists really do not need to think alike.

Comments

Many of the most crucial events in our lives are predestined by our physiology, our traditions and culture, the general properties of time, space and matter and many other non-variables. However, there is always the element of surprise or 'freedom of choice' in life. There is always the one per cent of freedom or the non-predestined part that does make our lives so interesting and also worth living.

Some of us will get cancer and quite similar people will not. Some of us will wind up under a bus and most of the others will not. Some of us will learn from our mistakes, but most of us will not, but keep on repeating them.
Some of us will find the love of their life, but others will not. Some of us will be happy with they have already got, but others will complain until they die. Some of us will be happy, and others will not be under quite similar circumstances.

One could say that a lifeless world is also a predestined world. The ‘laws of nature’ or the basic structure of the physical world will govern it. A planet or sun will go through a process of birth and decay that can well be almost totally predicted.
However, the birth of life makes things much more complicated, as every living thing has an ability to act also unpredictably. This ability grows with the complexity and most of all with growing abilities of evolving life-forms.

The most basic and simple life-forms do lead quite predictable lives, but the level of predictability is eroded with the rise in complexity of life. The introduction of life-forms that have the ability to change their environment will inevitably make systems less and less predictable. However, unpredictable life can exist also in a quite predictable environment.
Even most of the actions of life-forms in the planet Earth can be predicted to a degree. However, the existence of self-propelled life will eventually erode the predictability of a system, even if it will never go away completely. To what degree this happens varies wildly in different situations and environments.

The problem is that many people want to categorize even so vast and multi-faced phenomena as life in one single category of "predestined" or "free". However, in reality life is always a combination of both. The amount of how predestined things are or how free we are to choose varies immensely from situation to situation, day to day and place to place.
Of course, also the level of zoom is an important thing here. If you look too close on an event in human life, you will lose the big picture of causes and consequences that are behind the event.
However, if you look from too far, you will lose sight of all of the little things that can lead to a bigger event in the life.

The biggest obstacle for understanding the true nature of life as a combination of predestined and 'free to choose' elements is the false dichotomy according to which things are classed as either predestined or ‘totally free'.
In the real world most things are combinations of these two. The level of freedom of choice can vary wildly with time even on same issues with time.
I could even simplify things to the uttermost and claim that an event can be 0,01 per cent predestined and 99,99 per cent free or it can be 99,99 per cent predestined and 0,001 per cent free or anything in between (mostly in between).

However, many people claim for no apparent reason that there are just two choices – things are either totally predetermined or totally free. They forget totally that real life is not at all like that. Outcomes in the real world are always combinations of many kinds of different, simultaneous forces.
The idea of total predestination or total freedom of choice can be valid only in a vacuum of a theoretical world. Unfortunately, so many people choose to spend their time in the vacuum of a theoretical world...

The freedom of choice is in one sense a variable that can also be traded or bought and sold. This aspect just cannot be left out from when one considers if a human life is predestined or not. This is naturally somewhat different idea than predestination and fatalism that can grow out of it. However, in the real world the needs and will of other people are even the main reason why we do certain actions and make many decisions.
Of course, one can claim that these needs are predestined, but I claim that the same holds true to them as life in general. Most of these needs are generated by previous events and are in this sense predestined.

However, there inevitably remains the element of chance and freedom of choice even here. I will give away much of my freedom of choice to achieve benefits that are offered by social institutions like marriage and membership of a society in general.
Most of all I will sell much of my freedom of choice in exchange for food and shelter from elements or when I sell my ability to work to others. These people can and will then demand me to diminish my own freedom of choice to satisfy their needs.

All in all, my thesis is that life is not predestined or free. It is an ever-chancing combination of both. The exact amount of predestination or freedom of choice varies immensely from issue to issue and day to day.

Sam Harris has recently published a book called "Free will" on this subject. I generally see it as a worthwhile read on the subject of predetermination and freedom of choice. However, I think that hes has slided too much to the determinist camp because of some his very basic views of how human mind works.
Sam Harris claims that the fact that we can see how an action emerges from the human mind before we are even aware of it in a conscious level is some kind of a proof for a deterministic world.
However, in my mind subconsciousness is an integral and important part of all humans. Subconscious mind is, in fact, the place where all the big decisions are prepared before they are brought to a conscious level.
One's whole life-experience, inherited genetic properties and learned cultural traits all take part in the process of subconscious decision-making before the process ever surfaces to the conscious level. However, it is YOU who is making these decisions in the subconscious level, even if you are still not aware of it in a conscious level.

Comments

There are people who have not noticed yet that science has already explained many of the things that used to be explained with metaphysics. Metaphysics was a useful tool when there was no real knowledge upon these matters.
Luckily, now we much more real information and we do not need hairy metaphysics to explain simple everyday phenomena anymore.

People who use metaphysics to explain things like ‎"imagination, creativity, and the very nature of consciousness" have not realized that these things have nothing to do with metaphysics. They are products of our brains and extremely complex processes that are going on there all the time.
Our knowledge of how the human brain does work has grown exponentially during the last few years. At the same time, reasons for explaining the products of normal brain processes with metaphysics have simply faded completely away.

One problem in modern philosophy is lack of understanding on the state of current science. There simply are people in the field of philosophy who are quite unaware of many of the current advances in science.
However, at the same time there are also people who see knowledge as a threat to their religious ideology. They are often people who misuse philosophy and metaphysics as defensive weapons to protect their pet religious ideology. These people tend to just ignore the new advances in science.

I personally think that metaphysics is overall largely an exercise in futility. There is nothing to 'discover' in metaphysics. New claims can be created at will. Al of them will rest on a similar layer of nothing. They are often just as wild as theories as the old ones.
I would even suggest that metaphysics will survive as long as there is money in it. Most of all professionals in the philosophy-departments in universities will find endless new angles into metaphysics. This happens as long as their paychecks are in the mail.
The incredibly strong forces of authority and tradition do keep also metaphysics alive, even if the real need for it has evaporated a long time ago.

Of course, there are also those who do metaphysics as a hobby too. They will speculate endlessly on the qualities of contradictory theories and endless stream of non-provable ideas even if there is no money on it; they do it just for the pure joy of mental exercise.

One test for validity of things is to see what insights we will be left without if we lose that data or theory. The sad fact is that nothing will change in our lives or in our universe if all traces of current metaphysics would be wiped out completely.
We can of course then create an endless stream of new metaphysics that has similar value as the old had. There could even be same ideas popping up after a fresh start. However, it is to be expected that the same old divisions between rationalists and religious people would just re-appear.

Most of all the religious people would be creating again new lot of metaphysics that would support their pet ideology. These ideas will with time get more and more complex. This happens when their presenters try to safeguard these ideas from criticism. They often do this by creating new ideas to counter the objections to their existing theories.

Other major problem with modern philosophy is that it so easily becomes a form of collecting stamps. People just collect and classify different ideas without really putting them in perspective. Most of all they just learn about them without really understanding why philosophers of the past have made their wildly differentiating claims in the first place. A person can be admired if he or she can easily categorize even brand new ideas into different schools of philosophy, even without taking any stand on their validity or truth-value.

The other version of philosophy as collecting stamps is the collecting of difficult-sounding words and concepts and parading them in discussions and texts. Some people just seem to confuse deepness of thought with the complexity of expression.
Especially among the followers of modern continental philosophy there are clearly people who hide the lack of true insight behind a smoke-screen of complex-looking phrases and words. A part of existentialism seems to be a love of hairy concepts and ideas. All too often they seem to evaporate into almost nothing at all, when all the odd concepts are translated into a real language.

Among the modern philosophers, my own favorites are Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper, A.C. Grayling, Alain De Botton and Daniel Dennett. They all have one thing in common: for them philosophy is just a tool for better understanding our world and not an end in itself. They apply their ideas on the real world and see how their ideas do correspond with reality.
They all share clarity of writing and speech, as they need not to hide behind a wall of difficult words and concepts. As they are not defending any clear-cut ideology and form of thinking, they can allow themselves the luxury of an open mind when looking into ideas of others.

On the other hand, the people who populate the philosophy-departments in universities seem to me all too often consist of people who see philosophy as something that exists for its own sake. They can even use it as a smokescreen for pushing their religious ideology.
They seem to see philosophy as a thing that is to be learned by basis of authority of certain philosophers. These philosophers are then to be revered seemingly often just because they have been revered by many for a long time.

In practice under the name of metaphysics are classed those abstract ideas that are just speculation without real evidence. The question still remains: why these questions are labeled under the heading of 'metaphysics'?
The other question is the wisdom of trying to find universal answers to questions that do not and cannot have such universal answers that could ever be agreed on universally.

Metataphysics is a classical case of trying to find a black cat in the dark room without really knowing if this cat even exists and if the room is the right one. All people just have not given up the bad habit of speculating on some of the issues that have been settled by science a long time ago.
Mostly this happens to protect religious beliefs. They seem to sorely need the existence of metaphysics to give them some protection them from forces of reason.

This little essay does naturally present just one opinion on the issue and it cannot be any kind of ultimate truth. However, I see that it is necessary to raise this debate, as the discussion of this kind of extremely basic ideas is needed from time to time.

"Metaphysicians cannot avoid making their statements nonverifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend upon experience and therefore belong to the region of empirical science. This consequence they wish to avoid, because they pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science. Thus, they are compelled to cut all connection between their statements and experience; and precisely by this procedure they deprive them of any sense."

— Rudolf Carnap

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I just had a long discussion on the page for Marcus Aurelius in Facebook that I founded a few years ago and still administer where a Christian apologist claimed that Marcus Aurelius was a ‘midget’ as a thinker compared to Jesus of the Christian fame.
There is one slight problem in this comparison. Marcus Aurelius did write a book or that is definitely his own words from the beginning to the end. In this respect, he beats Jesus 1-0.

Marcus Aurelius has demonstrably himself written down his ideas. On the other hand nobody knows who has come up with the ideas that are attributed to Jesus in the "New Testament" of the Christians. This strange book was after all written many decades and even century and a half after the death of this Jewish preacher and rebel.

A simple unpleasant fact (for Christians that is) is that Jesus has not written a single word that we would know to be his own work. We have just a book that this full of alleged quotes from him, but their real and source will probably never be known for sure.
The Greek-speaking writers of the New Testament could well have made up a majority or even all of these quotes and ideas by themselves. Nobody knows their sources. Bart D. Ehrman has written some good books about the issue. I have reviewed one of them in this blog at: http://beinghuman.blogs.fi/2010/12/22/for-what-purpose-was-the-bible-written-10240754/

Marcus Aurelius’ only book ‘Meditations' was translated into Latin from Greek. It was the preferred language of Roman intelligentsia of that day. Meditations was originally called in Greek "Τὰ εἰς ἑαυτόν" or "Ta eis heauton", literally "thoughts/writings addressed to himself".
Marcus Aurelius wrote the 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek that was used by the highly educated class of Romans. He wrote the book as a source for his own guidance and self-improvement.

The basic difference between Christianity and Stoicism is that in the heart of Christianity is a group of magical and superstitious beliefs in things like virgin births, sons of gods and resurrections. On the other hand, Stoicism is a rational system of thought. It is based on practical experience of how the human social relationships and societies do work in practice.

The Stoic concept of "god" is not at all compatible with the Christian idea of heavenly father watching all your moves, punishing, and rewarding you for your actions. The Stoic "god" is just an idea of a pantheistic sameness of all nature, and this "god" does not interfere in human life at all. In fact, the basic nature of Stoicism remains quite unchanged if the idea of a "god" is totally removed from it.
The removal of the idea of "god" from Stoicism is a thing that very many Stoics have done already with good results. I would even venture to say that agnostic and atheist Stoics can be even a majority among the Stoics of today, but this is just a guess, nobody has really studied this issue.

Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic, and he was personally a firm opponent of Christianity. He may have initiated some harsh and violent actions against Christians too, when he tried to defend the Roman traditional toleration of all belief-systems against the harsh and open fanaticism and intolerance of the early Christians.
The later, extremely intolerant Christian rulers of late Roman Empire did not see any kind of compatibility with the Stoic philosophy. They did destroy and eradicate every single source of Stoic teaching and thinking without mercy.

They did eradicate all the older religions and schools of philosophy with brute force during the fourth and fifth centuries. In this process also the Epicurean school of philosophy was completely destroyed. Sadly also the whole body of writings of Epicurus was lost forever.
The modern Western Lutheran Christianity is of course a completely different religion than the one that did rule unchallenged in the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries.

The rise of humanistic values and thinking has changed this also religious organization during the last century. The change is so big that even some in their ranks are able to accept ideas from the old enemies of Christianity.
There are Christians who think that Stoicism is fully compatible with Christianity. This is naturally a quite strange idea given the very basic differences between Christian faith and Stoic philosophy.

Of course Stoicism and Christianity can well live side by side, as long as Christians do not try to change the central ideas of Stoicism to fit their pet ideology. However, to become a Stoic a Christian needs to lose much of the Christian religious dogma.
The core message of Christianity simply is not compatible with Stoic way of thinking. Most Stoic Christians seem to end up more Stoic than Christian. A hard-core Christian will never fit in the Stoic way of thinking in the first place.

PS. The fact that belief in Jesus is so widespread today has been decided in the battlefields of the past. If Muslims had won at Poitiers or at Vienna a few hundred years later, Jesus would perhaps be just a footnote in history; a forgotten figure in a forgotten religion. To put it bluntly; the followers of Jesus just have had success and luck in the battlefield and more divisions than followers of his competitors.

The fact that Christians succeeded in stamping out all other religions in the Roman Empire and in most later acquisitions tells how it pays in the long run to be extremely intolerant, if you want to create a stable religion. When you allow no competition and destroy outright all attempts to doubt your beliefs, your religion is bound to survive, and other religions are bound to disappear.

It is not a question of the quality or teachings of a religion. The main thing is how ruthless the leaders of this religion dare to be. Same tactics has made also Islam so strong. When you preach universal love in a church and burn heretics at the same time, you have a winning proposition; a religion that makes people think that burning people is an act of love.

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