My Philosophy of Life

I can remember as a child always asking myself the "why" questions of life. What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why do certain things happen? And is there really a God? I had always kept these questions to myself and eventually pushed them out of my mind altogether. I was raised in a Christian household and you just were not allowed to ask questions of that nature and doubt the faith. The world is the way it is because God made it that way and that is all there is to it. I was really excited to take this class because it would finally give me the opportunity to exercise my personal thoughts and beliefs. I have come to agree with Socrates that "the unexamined life is not worth living." In my opinion life is a combination of philosophical ideas such as morality, respect, free-will and scientific issues.

The study of philosophy is a very complex and complicated task. There are so many different questions on many different topics and philosophy tries to explain them all. It tries to provide answers to the many questions that science and religion cannot explain. And from this it urges you to think about issues that may otherwise be ignored.

I agree with the goal of autonomy, that philosophy is having the freedom to make your own decisions and beliefs by using your own reasoning capabilities. I believe that we all have the God-like quality of reasoning and therefore can make our own educated decisions. And because we can make our own decisions, we are fully responsible for our actions. This responsibility includes those of the personal and social nature. On a personal level, we have to take care of ourselves and stay healthy and happy individuals. Socially I strongly believe in the saying, do unto others, as you would like them to do unto you. Abiding by this rule helps society to operate as smoothly as possible without too much conflict. Besides, it is not worth any minute of our shirt lifetime to be unhappy or rude. We as humans are able to make conscious, individual choice and take responsibility for our actions, beliefs, feelings and attitudes. And I believe that we need to exercise these abilities.

I am entering the medical field; so all the science courses I have taken have led me to believe that science is the answer. However, after taking this course I have realized that science can only take their answers just so far. There are some issues that science is unable to