There has been a trend of “Six Word Stories” or memoirs started off (perhaps) by Hemingway’s famous example, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” A list of such stories can be found here. I thought it was a novel idea and so I propose starting philosophy (philosophy of religion, specifically) posts of six words. I’ve included some examples below, and I would love to hear what others come up with. Make sure to write only six words; no more, no less. I prefer philosophy of religion, but I’ll be accepting epistemology, idealism, etc. I will select comments I find particularly good to be featured in my list below (and citing them to the authors, of course). Note that I will not be accepting anti-theistic entries or the like.
Six Word Philosophy:
Universe Had Beginning: God Started It
Freedom of the Will: Explains Evil
Religious Experience: Perception of Divine Nature
To Be Is To Be Perceived [Berkeley]
God Exists And He Loves You
Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior
Some notable entries from comments (below):
“Science: seeking God’s ways since 1620.”
“Sin is darkness. Jesus is Light.”
“Nietzsche: ‘God’s dead!’ ‘No I’m not.'”
J.W. Wartick - Reconstructing Faith 
A few quick ones – will write more as they come… 🙂
(oh, and I hope you have html tags turned on for comments 😛 )
Nietzsche: “God’s dead!” “No I’m not.”
Screwed up? God loves you anyway.
Sin is darkness. Jesus is Light.
Jesus is knocking. Will you open?
Pain, suffering: only in this life.
Posted by Sentinel | May 10, 2010, 6:57 PMScience: seeking God’s ways since 1620.
(Note: that’s when Francis Bacon published his treatise on the scientific method).
Posted by Sentinel | May 11, 2010, 3:14 AMThese don’t sound much like six word stories. More like the titles of essays.
Still, it brings up a topic near and dear to my heart: philosophical fiction. I love the stuff.
A couple of my favorites are “The Theologian’s Nightmare” by Bertrand Russell (no surprise there) and, more recently, “Three Worlds Collide” by Eliezer Yudkowsky. A novella exploring meta-ethics through humans encountering two alien species with radically different value systems from ours (to give you an idea just how different, chapter 1 is titled “The Baby-eating Aliens”):
http://lesswrong.com/lw/y4/three_worlds_collide_08/
Also: The Tale of the Twelve Officers by Mark Vuletic (on the problem of evil).
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/five.html
And Cataract, also about the problem of evil, by the same author:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/cataract.html
Posted by DAVID E | May 16, 2010, 2:58 PM