Yes, I agree with that, however, try to tell a *"born again christian", baptist, or "seventh day adventist" that god is something that only exists in the realm of philosophy or within one's subjective reality, and not in objective, scientific reality. This is not what they preach. The problems that exist due to people mixing their theistic beliefs with every day life ( ie. hospitals refusing certain types of services, restaurants refusing to serve homosexuals, government offices spending tax payer's money on religious statues, discrimination against non-believers or different believers) are not isolated to some philosophical plane. These are real world issues.
When people are discriminated against for being pagans, non-believers, or those who are not-saved, do you think these folks are referring to a subjective or philosophical belief in god?
Wait, wait ... I haven't said
god is something that only exists in the realm of philosophy, I said the
definition of god is something that only exists in the realm of philosophy. For me god is real (where real is yet another philosophical concept) and it's clear for you it's not and I have no problem accepting that.
If we speak about discrimination (and since you spoke about would-be christians) I would like to say it's not a christian behavior becuase christ acted in the opposite way accepting everyone he met for what he was.
That said there's something very important to say: a human being cannot separate its faith from his ordinary life because they are not separate things. If I am christian, I am christian here, at my working place, when I sleep, when I practice sport ... because it's part of my own being and cannot be put away. This of course does not mean I can't work, talk, cooperate, live with people with a different religion or no atheist. Nothing prevent me from doing that and people shielding being their religion for doing that are just plain wrong imo.
Regarding the heart, what is the difference between the "heart" and the "mind"? The heart sounds to me like its a subset of the mind. We perceive emotions and process logical thought in the brain, don't we? If they are both perceived with the brain, then how to you call one set of neural reactions heart, and another set of neural reactions, mind?
( ^ This question is meant as a friendly challenge. Honestly, I have not really tried to pick it apart myself yet. )
Thank you for your well thought out response.
Glad to give it a try
Speaking about the differences between heart and mind we're still in the field of philosophy so the concept of brain and neuronal reaction don't help us much being mostly scientific stuff, so I would leave them out of this specific discussion.
As I defined the heart the seat of human emotions I would define the mind the place of our creativity and the intellect where our highest and abstract ideas are elaborated, the seat where logic reside. However even for this philosophical system the "heart" and the "mind" are not separate entities that live on their own, the work together and affect each other, they cannot live on their own. Other two pieces are missing: the body and the soul: in this specific philosophy the quartet body-mind-heath-soul make up the whole human being but neither of them can be separated from a person: take one and you destroy the person as a whole.
Now considering the same matter in scientific terms: the heart is "simply" a muscle whose purpose is pumping the blood. The mind as term doesn't really exist, perhaps it was referred in the past but afaik even psychology now use different terms and definitions, we have however a central neuronal system (aka brain) which is divided in two hemispheres and we know emotional responses use to activate the right hemisphere while logic, math language (iirc) use to activate the left one.
@Illisia: if you look above you can't really reconcile the two views, they are only loosely related and their purpose is different, trying to reconcile them at all costs will not work much, just like when kids try to get a plastic triangle inside a plastic star of the same size... they just don't couple