Philosophy itself reveals a truth to us, where there is demand, corresponding things will be born. Philosophy itself naturally conforms to this law. In other words, philosophy was born in response to human needs.

The birth of human beings, the emergence of self-awareness and the desire to know the world itself are very complicated natural science problems. Until today, we still can't say that we have fully understood ourselves. The human nervous system has an extremely simple but extremely complex structure. This itself has a philosophical dialectical relationship between quantitative change and qualitative change. The question of natural science is left to natural science, but I must explain that primitive philosophy actually contains natural science. We might as well say that scientific thinking on natural problems is actually part of the thinking of ancient philosophers. The division of science is actually determined by the complexity of the world.

Human beings are made up of individual human beings. Human society is a complex system. And everyone is also a very complex biological system. What characteristics should a perfect and sustainable orderly system have? One of the necessary characteristics is that we can know its external environment and make corresponding actions to adapt to the environment for our own survival and development. Let alone that human beings are advanced animals. Even many mononuclear animals have the ability to change their adaptation to the environment. Needless to say, all animals and birds around us have the ability to know and get familiar with the environment and adapt to it through their own actions.

However, the biggest difference between humans and other animals is that we have something called wisdom. Remember that philosophy itself has the meaning of' love wisdom'? Here, let's not discuss what wisdom is, how it was born and what its operating mechanism is. I just want to make it clear that because of our wisdom, we can make rational and systematic analysis and research on this world more comprehensively and deeply, find some essential operating rules, and use them to transform this object world, so that the environment is more conducive to our survival and development, far exceeding the practice of ordinary animals changing their own adaptation to the environment.

At this time, a very interesting phenomenon appeared. In other words, we try to think with the thoughts we have, and finally understand the thought itself, the objective world and the laws that produce our thoughts. Therefore, regardless of western philosophy or eastern philosophy, ancient philosophers realized that we were doing a job of nesting ourselves. Alex Dodd said that philosophy has a "thinking" responsibility, which is to explain the thought itself with thought.

Don't forget that we are made up of this material world. It is a fact that we already exist and have the wisdom to know ourselves and the object. Therefore, it is an unavoidable task to think about the meaning of the world and our own. You don't have to think, but humans do. Everyone has more or less thought about the meaning of life and the mystery of the universe. Because of existence, we can't ignore the value and significance of existence. Of course, the so-called meaning and value are also defined by our wisdom. The final outcome may even be another situation, that is, meaning may exist, but it is far from our wisdom to define and understand.

I think I may have gone too far. As I mentioned at the beginning, philosophy was born to answer the essential questions of everything in the universe. Look, as long as we have wisdom and curiosity to explore the world and ourselves, we must answer the essential questions of everything in the universe. The answer to this question is different from that in physics. What philosophy seeks is a truth, which is the meaning hidden behind mathematics. Even philosophers themselves can't tell what this truth is. The truth can be known, but it is not necessarily a well-known truth. If a person drinks water, he knows it very well. Even if physics finally sums up the universe into a set of mathematical formulas, they still can't answer what the meaning of the universe and even human existence is.

You see, philosophy is born to answer the essence, which is the essential meaning that our wisdom can accept. Philosophy exists to answer a series of essential questions such as who we are, where we come from, why we exist in the world, what we should do, where the world comes from, where the world goes, and why the world exists. This kind of question is meaningless. Even now, philosophy has basically given up answering such unrealistic questions. But when philosophy was born, it was born like this. Philosophy exists because of thought, and thought creates thought. At present, philosophy exists to create a scientific world outlook and methodology, and through the guidance of a world outlook, adopt a methodology to see through the essence of various problems we are facing. So the pursuit of philosophy has not changed. It pursues the essence and the unchangeable essence and meaning behind the superficial phenomenon.

In fact, we can say that philosophy was born to give us some spiritual dependence and sustenance. In a sense, even if you have some scientific world outlook summed up by modern philosophy, we can't prove that you are spiritually superior to a religious believer. In a sense, what philosophy does coincides with religion. In fact, religion itself is a philosophy. The reason why I want to forcibly separate the two here is because they have different pursuits. The pursuit of philosophy is to get the final answer, the essential answer. Religion is relatively simple. Leave the answer to God. You just have to believe in God. You see, this is also a world outlook and method.

In fact, an ardent modernist Scientologist is not much better than a real religious fanatic. It is an unshakable trust and a philosophical world view. Claiming to disagree with others is a common problem of human beings. Of course, this is determined by nature.

Maybe when philosophy was born, it was just to find some meaning for everyone's life, but so can religion.

Mr. Feng Youlan said: "Religion is also related to life. There is a philosophy at the core of every great religion. In fact, every major religion is a philosophy plus a certain superstructure, including superstition, dogma, ceremony and organization. This is what I call religion. "

What Mr. Feng said is so incisive that I can't say it so well. However, after my repeated nagging, maybe you can understand some differences between philosophy and religion more deeply.

At the beginning, we could even say that philosophy and religion had some common pursuits, but later they parted ways. But it seems that at least one axis in the three-dimensional coordinate system is still in the same direction.

In any case, religion is much simpler than philosophy in seeking its own existence and liberation. You already know the origin of philosophy and why it exists. So now you choose philosophy or religion?

Even if you choose philosophy, I still think you should try to understand religion.

Philosophy, why it is philosophy and why it can only be philosophy, will be discussed in the next section.