Ever find philosophical answers in strange places?

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WOW I haven't been on here in YEARS! Geez!

Anyway, I figured someone might find this entertaining...soooo...topic start!

Ever find answers to philosophical questions that have been bugging you in the oddest of places? I know it's happened to me right outta the blue.

For example, I was playing The Sims 2 when I realized a possible answer for why God gave us free will(yes, I do believe in God, but I'm not one of those evil, hyper-judgmental types.) What did The Sims teach me? Only this: God likely gave us free will because He doesn't want to have to constantly micromanage us all the time. In The Sims 2(yes, I jumped on the bandwagon when EA was offering it with all the expansion packs and whatnot for free, don't judge ^^; ), there's a feature called, appropriately enough, 'Free Will,' where you leave the Sim AI to automatically do things. It can be a pain sometimes, especially when you need them to go to work/school/class and they decide to go play with the Bubble Blower or watch TV, but other times it lets you leave them be while you control another Sim, since if they need anything the AI will direct them to do it themselves.

Here's another possible addition I thought of not too long after that may answer why God refuses to give us definite proof that He's there: Like the prisoners in a prison behaving if the guards are watching just so they can get out faster, if we knew for sure that God was always watching us, even during our most intimate/embarrassing moments, that would interfere with free will, meaning that just because we can act according to our own desires, we would not be able to because we would likely be afraid of pissing off God. Because of that, God intentionally leaves Himself ultimately unknown to us, leaving us to decide whether to believe in him or not. Even God just parting the clouds and saying, "Hey, I'm God, creator of everything," would cause the entire planet to flip the hell out.

Not uncommon at all as GOD is an equal opportunity employer; providing insights in everything, since GOD is allitis anyway allasone and so many other metaphors to describe THE force that's one...

Signs in life are everywhere for GOD for those who learn to find their own language of GOD; that again, since GOD does not discriminate the signs, guideposts or even goal posts are metaphors that GOD does promote; that can come from anything in reality that we live in now, and discern and know as much.

Synchronicity, promoted by Carl Jung, is how some folks term the way that GOD speaks to them, and it's also a New Agey thingie promoted by so-called New age Writers like James Redfield in his newer book named the Twelfth Insight, where the worlds religions find common elements that exist for fuller cooperation among the human species.

I guess that the appeal of the SIMs is that you get to "play God", and have god like powers over a fictional family. So its not surprising that it would give you a "God's eye view".

But God wouldnt have to micromanage folks. He could just preprogram you like a robot so you would do what he told you to do ahead of time without either giving you free will, or micromanaging you.

On a different aspect: astronomers found some equation in how the universe works that is the same equation used by programmers in computer simulations (I guess that would include "the Sims") prompting some to speculate that we live "in a simulation". So maybe we ourselves are Sims our selves being played by higher beings ( God maybe). And we play the SIMS, and could make the SIMS play the Sims.

Setting aside the God thing...

Many years ago, I learned to fly ultralights. The instructor would take us up in a two seater. During one of my early flights, I would try to correct for every bump and tilt. Up there, 300 ft above the ground, it can get a little bumpy, so my hand was constantly at the joystick. The instructor laughed and said I looked like I was stirring a can of worms. He told me to stop fighting the bumps and let the plane correct itself. So after that, I kept the stick steady and, sure enough, each time the plane hit a bump, it would recenter itself, without any input from me. It made things much more relaxing too.

Not long after that, I realized that the same applies to many situations in life. Don't fight every little bump. Just ride it out, keep the stick steady, and the anxiety will drop dramatically.

^^^

I think another great example of philosophy coming from weird places comes from what I've actually learned from one of my favorite mangas, Kuroshitsuji: Everything comes with a price you will inevitably have to pay somewhere down the line. Yeah, Ciel might enjoy having a loyal butler willing to do whatever he commands, but sometimes I think he forgets the price he will have to pay when all is said and done. Sure, he made his bargain under a moment of great stress, but even something like that can come back to bite you. College might be awesome while you're taking classes, but it's gonna suck when you're buried under mountains of debt, the IRS banging down your door and calling at all hours of the night while you work and work and work, your body falling apart beneath you as you struggle to pay off your debt and manage about fifteen different things at once.

Ten bucks says that when Kuroshitsuji ultimately draws to its close, Ciel's gonna start having second thoughts as the proverbial noose tightens, ultimately becoming a paranoid wreck as he sleeps with God-knows-how many types of holy protection against his butler even though he knows there's nothing he can do.