Booko said:
I'm still wondering how I could prove that my mother loves me, logically speaking.
There are many things in life that we "know" that are "true" that do not admit to much examination using logic and empiricism.
Actually, it's logically very simple. You DON'T know that your mother loves you, because you can't experience your mother's heart and mind, which is what would be required for you to know this. What you do know is that your mother BEHAVES as though she loves you, and that you have taken this behavior as convincing evidence that she does in fact love you.
"Love" defines an attitude, and the behavior that follows from that attitude. Of the two, we can only personally experience the latter when the love in question is someone else's.
Logic is not limiting our ability to know the truth. It's just that sometimes the truth is that we can't know something. Note that the definition of knowledge implies direct personal experience of that which is being known. And we can't always have direct personal experience of that which we wish to know.
Booko said:
Why is it there are a few collections of "scriptures" that inspire millions over millenia to believe in them, yet philosophers, while they also contain a share of wisdom and have some influence on humanity, in no way approaches the influence of religions?
Some truths are very attractive, and some are not. Thus, we are far more willing to accept some truths (often even when they are not actually true) than we are willing to accept others (even when they are evidently true).
The willingness of people to believe that something is true is in no way evidence that what they believe to be true is actually true. All it's evidence of is that the proposition is attractive to them.
Human beings are frightened by what they don't know, because a human being's greatest survival mechanism is his ability to control his environment through his intellect. Human beings also have very powerful imaginations: so powerful in fact that we can imagine a reality so fully and clearly that it will become reality for us even though it does not correspond with actual reality. When we mix this very powerful imagination with our fear of the unknown, what we get is "God". "God" is the word we use to describe an anthropomorphized mystery that we fear, and that we want very badly to gain control of.
Thus, the frightening mystery of the volcano becomes the "volcano god" (as we anthropomorphize it), and then we try to control that mystery (now a humanized "god") by appeasing it with things that we humans find especially appealing: such as virgins. Which is why throwing virgins into volcanos (or similar sacrificial behaviors) has been such a popular human activity throughout human history. But of course this all says nothing about the actual existence of any volcano gods, except in the minds of frightened and highly imaginative human beings.
Later, instead of inventing a "god" to embody every different frightening mystery in our world, we created one "God" to embody them all simultaneously. And then we offer this mega-God sacrificial bribes in an effort to control it's behavior toward us (and subsequently control all those things that we don't understand how to control ourselves, and so fear).
This cessation of fear through the illusion of control is very attractive experience for we humans, who feel truly threatened by the fact of our own ignorance. And this is why the idea of bribing the gods to control the unknown is so appealing to us even though it's illogical and irrational.
Philosophers are trained to set aside emotions like fear, and focus only on the logical and rational aspects of human experience. And this is why the results of the philosophical endeavor are often not popular.