The problem with philosophy as a way of knowing things

 I expect to get a lot of push back over this one, as I've had a lot of philosophy lovers go "well ackshully" on me a lot over this stuff. But I really don't think philosophy is a very reliable discipline for finding truth, and I wanted to give a core reason for why.

It's because philosophy is the math of words. basically if P1 and P2 are true, then P3 is true, yada yada. Follows the same train of thought as math. If A is 2 and B is 2 then C is 4.

The problem is words and realities are a lot more complex. I mean, in arguments for the existence of god, and I use this as an example as I used to debate this a lot both as a christian and an atheist (although now I don't really give a crap, because again, not really relevant), you can find arguments both for and against the existence of god. 

On the pro side you got stuff like the kalam cosmological argument William Lane Craig likes to trot out. 

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

It makes sense. Especially in normal physics. But then....when you deal with stuff like relativity, and time, and the big bang, you kinda realize, well maybe the universe doesn't HAVE to have a cause, and maybe stuff that applies in newtonian physics doesn't apply to the universe. Then you realize, wait, what about god? Does god need a cause? And then they'll be like "no, god's eternal", how do you know what? They don't. And they often are just trying to push an agenda. 

Ya know? I mean, after a while this is just mental...you know.

Same thing with arguments against god. Let's take the problem of evil as an example.

P1. If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god exists, then evil does not.

P2. There is evil in the world.

C1. Therefore, an omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient god does not exist.

 It makes sense. If a god is all powerful, they can prevent evil. If omniscient, they know evil exists, and omnibenevolent, they would be required to stop evil. But because evil exists, this doesnt work.

I find this one convincing against the christian god, but not against all gods. Even though I would say i believe in a god these days, and I would generally attribute all 3 characteristics to it in some form, evil still exists. Why? Well to give an answer, because omnibenevolence being required to eliminate evil is an assumption that may not be true. We may not know the whole story there about why this world exists, what its goals are, etc. And it could be possible evil is just part of the design to make it serve whatever purpose it does. 

Ya know? I mean, we as humans try to put crap in these boxes, and sometimes reality doesnt fit into boxes. The theory of relativity messes with the kalam argument to the point that it invalidates it, and you can have a spiritual worldview with more assumptions about god and good and evil that invalidates the problem of evil. I'm not saying philosophy is useless, but it very clearly has limitations.

The same applies to morality. Heck it's doubly so with morality. Because there are so many potential starting points of what makes a good morality that you can literally create hudnreds of systems all with pros and cons. And as a result you have tons of different camps of morality, and even more of political philosophy. And so many times, to go off of the previous articles I wrote yesterday about ideologue know it alls, people often think they found THE OBJECTIVE MORAL TRUTH OF THE UNIVERSE when in reality, they just found one moral system that's just as subjective and arbitrary of any other. Which is why a lot of political theory debates turn into crap shows where marxists and capitalist libertarians end up arguing for hours, talking past each other and circlejerking rather than doing anything useful. Which is why i refused to engage that socialist who started pontificating at me. I really didnt wanna spend hours on an argument that would go nowhere and given he was basically trying to evangelize to someone who has their own views on things, it wasn't gonna go well for either of us. 

As for my ideas, well, i do use some philosophy, but i try to be relatively loose with it, and I try to take a more scientific approach to knowing things, where i update my understanding of the world with new information. I also try to have a pragmatic "does it work" side of my views that many ideologues lack. At the end of the day, whatever your morals are, you need to translate them into some workable form in reality. But ideologues often try to make reality fit their moral ideas. Without any grounding to reality, this is dangerous.

Philosophies are attempts to systemize the world, within the limitations of the human mind, but because of those limitations, and the limitations of language, and nuance, well, sometimes its a very rough and clunky way of finding reality. And ultimately, we do need to keep checking back with reality as understood through science to ensure our philosophical ideas conform to it. If a philosophical idea does not conform to reality, it is a bad one that should be discarded. Good phiolosophy should conform to reality and lead to good results. 

And that's my take on philosophy as a way of knowing things. This isn't to say it's useless. I just wish people understood its limitations more because the amount of ideologues I come across stuck in their little philosophically created realities rather than the real one is too darned high and these people are like talking to a wall.