What is the point of life? (atheists only please)
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Original post by Woody1234
It's not a beautiful place though is it? There is one particular forum on the internet that shares videos of torture and cruelty. I advise everyone to stay away. It is sick. And atheists say this is just an undesirable trait of evolution. What sick people!
No, the universe is beautiful. Cold and terrifying, but really quite beautiful all the same. You don't have to appreciate every bit of it's content to appreciate it's form.
Original post by Woody1234
Not only that, you've completely failed to tell me why rape is wrong. If the goal of evolution is to ensure survival of the species, then doesn't rape support that? In that mean, more chance of conception?
Morality is not based on what is most evolutionary viable. Atheist morals are formed through debate and ethical philosophy. Rape is morally wrong because it violates another human, which has been generally accepted as wrong. Moral verdicts by philosophers are just as (if not more) viable than those from God. Why is God's morality objective? Why should we follow God's morality? Why should we be moral at all? These questions face religious morality as much as secular morality.
Original post by Woody1234
The whole atheistic approach is that morals are subjective, and that just doesn't sit right with me.
As Dawkins brilliantly pointed out, objective religious morality is atrocious. Morality should be subject, and should be subject to debate, scrutiny and delegation. The idea of following a supposedly objective morality from God does no sit well with me either. What gives God the moral authority to degree objective morality?
Original post by W-Three
Morality is not based on what is most evolutionary viable. Atheist morals are formed through debate and ethical philosophy.
Not sure about that. I mean, I can rational moral arguments but it's usually justification after the fact. Most of my moral judgements are instinctive.
Original post by W-Three
Morality is not based on what is most evolutionary viable. Atheist morals are formed through debate and ethical philosophy. Rape is morally wrong because it violates another human, which has been generally accepted as wrong. Moral verdicts by philosophers are just as (if not more) viable than those from God. Why is God's morality objective? Why should we follow God's morality? Why should we be moral at all? These questions face religious morality as much as secular morality.
As Dawkins brilliantly pointed out, objective religious morality is atrocious. Morality should be subject, and should be subject to debate, scrutiny and delegation. The idea of following a supposedly objective morality from God does no sit well with me either. What gives God the moral authority to degree objective morality?
As Dawkins brilliantly pointed out, objective religious morality is atrocious. Morality should be subject, and should be subject to debate, scrutiny and delegation. The idea of following a supposedly objective morality from God does no sit well with me either. What gives God the moral authority to degree objective morality?
Uh, because he's the creator? Can the potter not do how he pleases with the clay? Consider the relationship a human has with his dog. He tells him all sorts of commands and expects him to obey them. It's the same with us and God. God set the moral law and we ought to obey them. Of course God has also blessed us with free-will, which gives us the ability to go against a particular moral law. But there are severe consequences for those who do. As CS Lewis said, arguing against God is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. You cannot win. You cannot be right and him anymore wrong than say, a river can run higher than its source.
Original post by mmmpie
Not sure about that. I mean, I can rational moral arguments but it's usually justification after the fact. Most of my moral judgements are instinctive.
Which are not objective, they are subjective. Those morals are instilled in you while you grow up, and are shaped by you're experiences.
Original post by Woody1234
Uh, because he's the creator? Can the potter not do how he pleases with the clay? Consider the relationship a human has with his dog. He tells him all sorts of commands and expects him to obey them.
Why? On what basis is the creator allowed to do as they wish with their creation?
Original post by Woody1234
God set the moral law and we ought to obey them.
Why?
Original post by Woody1234
You cannot be right and him anymore wrong than say, a river can run higher than its source.
Why? Because he is God? Because he is the creator? That gives him no more moral authority over me than a rock. Unless we start with the basis that being the creator gives it moral authority of me. In which case, on what basis does this arise?
Original post by W-Three
Which are not objective, they are subjective. Those morals are instilled in you while you grow up, and are shaped by you're experiences.
Why? On what basis is the creator allowed to do as they wish with their creation?
Why?
Why? Because he is God? Because he is the creator? That gives him no more moral authority over me than a rock. Unless we start with the basis that being the creator gives it moral authority of me. In which case, on what basis does this arise?
Why? On what basis is the creator allowed to do as they wish with their creation?
Why?
Why? Because he is God? Because he is the creator? That gives him no more moral authority over me than a rock. Unless we start with the basis that being the creator gives it moral authority of me. In which case, on what basis does this arise?
What are you talking about? Of course God has control. He's the creator and can do as he pleases. Just as if, say, I created a business solely on my financial backing, the business would be 100% mine. No man from the bank in a suit could come and tell me how to run it. You're just being silly now.
Original post by Woody1234
What are you talking about? Of course God has control. He's the creator and can do as he pleases. Just as if, say, I created a business solely on my financial backing, the business would be 100% mine. No man from the bank in a suit could come and tell me how to run it. You're just being silly now.
Does your inability to see any other point of view come naturally, or do you have to work at it?
Original post by Woody1234
What are you talking about? Of course God has control. He's the creator and can do as he pleases. Just as if, say, I created a business solely on my financial backing, the business would be 100% mine. No man from the bank in a suit could come and tell me how to run it. You're just being silly now.
I'm not talking about what he can physically do, but what he can morally do. You're missing a crucial point about 'Why' a creator should be able to have moral authority over it's creation, and why a bank could not tell you how to run it.
If we assume a God exists, and if we assume that it presents an object morality. The moral imperative to follow said object morality would be included in that objective morality, leading to a self-perpetuating objective morality.
Either purpose and morality is innate (such as a creator being allowed to do as they wish with their creation), in which case why would we need the objective morality of a God if it is already innate? Or objective morality is divine, in which case what moral imperative is there to follow God's objective morality over any others?
Also, I would argue that being the creator does not give you the right to do as you wish with your creation. A mother does not have the right to end her child's life, neither should the inventor of a life saving treatment have the ability to prevent it from being used.
This is one of the most irritating questions ever, we'll never know the answer to it! Because life really is pointless if you think about (obviously life is still fulfilling when you live it how you want to, but for life as a whole, we really don't do anything worthwhile?). Another question that really hurts my brain is 'how big is the universe.... whats outside of the universe?' So annoying!!! haha
Original post by Woody1234
Uh, because he's the creator? Can the potter not do how he pleases with the clay? Consider the relationship a human has with his dog. He tells him all sorts of commands and expects him to obey them. It's the same with us and God. God set the moral law and we ought to obey them. Of course God has also blessed us with free-will, which gives us the ability to go against a particular moral law. But there are severe consequences for those who do. As CS Lewis said, arguing against God is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. You cannot win. You cannot be right and him anymore wrong than say, a river can run higher than its source.
You do know, by preaching this to people, you are causing offence to others due to the fact you are basically calling out people who believe other religions, and people who don't believe, when you can't even prove the existence of God.
You can't win in an argument against God if he doesn't exist.
Propagate DNA
Getting laid
Original post by Woody1234
What are you talking about? Of course God has control. He's the creator and can do as he pleases. Just as if, say, I created a business solely on my financial backing, the business would be 100% mine. No man from the bank in a suit could come and tell me how to run it. You're just being silly now.
Oh please stop posting, the thread title clearly says atheists only, go preach in the christian soc
Original post by Sovvy
To reproduce, to continue the species, to provide the next steps for gradual evolution, to help the advancement of humanity, and most of all to make the most of it and to make your existance mean something. Thats what I'd say.
Why do we need to reproduce though? To create more pointless lives? Even if we gradually evolve and advance as a race, what's the point? We live, we die. We can make an impact on the world but in the grand scheme of things it won't change much, as depressing as it sounds, I don't think that humans, nor animals or anything really has a purpose.
There is no point to life. People may have there own subjective values about whether their lives have meaning, but objectively there is no point to life at all. Ultimately all human endevour is utterly futile.
This is a big subject; wrote the following on it:
Like many people, I spent a long time trying to decide on what I felt was the purpose of my existence. I've come across so many answers to this question that it took me a long time to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and find some robust reasoning upon which to grasp what seems genuinely true.
Firstly though, we have to guard against falling into a battle of semantics. 'Purpose', it's true, implies intention — some objective consciousness who stands to lose or gain from whether something accomplishes its purpose or not. Cars are designed to assist travel; food is designed to taste nice. Assisting travel and tasting nice can be said to be these things' purposes. They have purpose because they were consciously created with intention to afford some benefit.
Teleology[1] is one one of Plato's contributions and concerns itself with the study and explanation of natural phenomena in terms of what their purpose seems to be. Rain's purpose was to grow crops; fire's purpose was to cook and warm things. Children often investigate the world in this way, part of their natural tendency for anthropomorphism — the projection of humanity into non-human things. Adults, who are more used to arbitrariness in nature, do not usually consider natural phenomena in terms of their purpose.[2] A mountain merely exists as a result of prior causes — it doesn't have any true 'purpose'.
Most people reading this will probably accept human life likewise to be the product of natural prior causes (as opposed to having been designed with intention by an objective consciousness). So why would it make sense to ask a question like, "what is the purpose of humans?" We wouldn't do so of a mountain — we agree that such a question doesn't make sense — so why of ourselves?
Among non-theists, the most popular suggestion I've heard is that our purpose is to survive and replicate (or one or the other, depending on whom I speak to). There is nothing much underpinning this argument. In order to decide purpose, there must be some perspective we can consult in order to identify whether meeting the purpose or not produces a meaningful effect. The car owner is affected by whether the car meets its purpose or not; the food eater is affected by whether the food meets its purpose or not. By surviving and replicating, presumably we are meeting nature's need, but this is false; nature does not care whether we survive and replicate. Nature is totally oblivious.
Nature has no perspective and has not provided us with any purpose. The reason we have survival and reproductive desires is down to circumstance — these instincts were a prerequisite for us to exist in the first place. Now that we do exist, we can dismiss them as natural bias. Indeed, survival and replication are just two behaviours nature gives us, and for what reason should we single them out? Saying we exist to survive and reproduce is no different to saying we exist to eat or sleep — they're just two behaviours that have contributed to our existence today.
Another popular suggestion is that our purpose is to be happy, live hedonically or accomplish some personal ambition. If this were truly so, it would be a perfectly rational decision to kill oneself and save oneself the trouble. This isn't to say that these purposes aren't legitimate, only that they lead to a conclusion that seems contrary to other beliefs we're likely to hold, and in that case must be critically examined and some beliefs dropped in order to alleviate the contradiction. In this scenario, the only reason you need to achieve this purpose is because you are alive, permitting us to simplify matters.[3]
So, being that we have eliminated intended purpose and subjective purpose, if we're to have anything to call a purpose, we need to decide it for ourselves. In order to do this, we need to discover something that is existentially worthwhile — by which I mean it must have some external significance. It must, in some sense, matter whether or not we meet our purpose, or else it's simply trivial and not purposeful. Another way of saying this is that it must matter from some external perspective.
The only external perspectives we know of are other conscious creatures on Earth — humans and animals. What matters to humans and animals, who exist independently of you? What matters to these creatures whom your life can either benefit or not? What matters to them, of course, is the happiness and well-being of themselves and their loved ones. In a phrase, what matters to them is their quality of life, which is dependent on these things.
Having reached this point, the immediate conclusion to be drawn is that the only real meaning available is to commit actions that benefit others.[4] By benefitting others, you seal for yourself indisputable meaning for your existence, etched singularly into the fabric of the universe for eternity. By affecting the experience of others, your life can unequivocally be said to have mattered — mattered to the degree that your actions impacted events for others in universal history.
In a word, our purpose is compassion.[5] Personal ambition, selfishness, greed — we can recognise these as dead ends, only mattering for the brief time you're alive. Being a slave to one's ego rears its head as probably one of the lowest achievements available for a person; in universal time, it will have made no difference whatever, save to benefit a single person in the ancient past.
Taking matters into our own hands now, the wider adoption of compassion could affect our politics and push us towards the creation and governance of a fairer, more equitable society that neither seeks to punish criminals for faulty beliefs, corroded values and poor will power (none of which can easily be said to be a criminal's 'fault'),[6] nor tries to particularly benefit those individuals whose beliefs, values and will power have led them to success.[7] Likewise, countries' international relationships could be strengthened if they were not concerned solely with benefitting people born in their own nation,[8] as decided by imaginary lines determined by historical political disputes, often outside of living memory.
Once a person has identified a purpose for themselves, nothing is more powerful a motivator — purpose is felt in their bones. My ambitions in life, my politics, my actions, my career — all these follow from an understanding of what is meaningful in life. Humans have a desire for meaning, a desire for their life to be worth something. Don't let society lump its irrational views on you about what constitutes meaning — governments and corporations are more than willing to influence you on this matter. Think critically, and see if we come to the same conclusion.
I hope that by writing this I will help to convince others to think similarly, and by doing so influence people to adopt a disposition of greater selflessness. The two things the world needs most are compassion and rationality, and we should do our best to promote these. Seeing as we've happened upon the opportunity to, let's live meaningfully — the alternative, it seems, is to squander life in vanity.
Notes
Taken from my site (http://journalofinterest.com/essays/meaning-of-life/)
tl;dr: compassion.
Like many people, I spent a long time trying to decide on what I felt was the purpose of my existence. I've come across so many answers to this question that it took me a long time to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and find some robust reasoning upon which to grasp what seems genuinely true.
Firstly though, we have to guard against falling into a battle of semantics. 'Purpose', it's true, implies intention — some objective consciousness who stands to lose or gain from whether something accomplishes its purpose or not. Cars are designed to assist travel; food is designed to taste nice. Assisting travel and tasting nice can be said to be these things' purposes. They have purpose because they were consciously created with intention to afford some benefit.
Teleology[1] is one one of Plato's contributions and concerns itself with the study and explanation of natural phenomena in terms of what their purpose seems to be. Rain's purpose was to grow crops; fire's purpose was to cook and warm things. Children often investigate the world in this way, part of their natural tendency for anthropomorphism — the projection of humanity into non-human things. Adults, who are more used to arbitrariness in nature, do not usually consider natural phenomena in terms of their purpose.[2] A mountain merely exists as a result of prior causes — it doesn't have any true 'purpose'.
Most people reading this will probably accept human life likewise to be the product of natural prior causes (as opposed to having been designed with intention by an objective consciousness). So why would it make sense to ask a question like, "what is the purpose of humans?" We wouldn't do so of a mountain — we agree that such a question doesn't make sense — so why of ourselves?
Among non-theists, the most popular suggestion I've heard is that our purpose is to survive and replicate (or one or the other, depending on whom I speak to). There is nothing much underpinning this argument. In order to decide purpose, there must be some perspective we can consult in order to identify whether meeting the purpose or not produces a meaningful effect. The car owner is affected by whether the car meets its purpose or not; the food eater is affected by whether the food meets its purpose or not. By surviving and replicating, presumably we are meeting nature's need, but this is false; nature does not care whether we survive and replicate. Nature is totally oblivious.
Nature has no perspective and has not provided us with any purpose. The reason we have survival and reproductive desires is down to circumstance — these instincts were a prerequisite for us to exist in the first place. Now that we do exist, we can dismiss them as natural bias. Indeed, survival and replication are just two behaviours nature gives us, and for what reason should we single them out? Saying we exist to survive and reproduce is no different to saying we exist to eat or sleep — they're just two behaviours that have contributed to our existence today.
Another popular suggestion is that our purpose is to be happy, live hedonically or accomplish some personal ambition. If this were truly so, it would be a perfectly rational decision to kill oneself and save oneself the trouble. This isn't to say that these purposes aren't legitimate, only that they lead to a conclusion that seems contrary to other beliefs we're likely to hold, and in that case must be critically examined and some beliefs dropped in order to alleviate the contradiction. In this scenario, the only reason you need to achieve this purpose is because you are alive, permitting us to simplify matters.[3]
So, being that we have eliminated intended purpose and subjective purpose, if we're to have anything to call a purpose, we need to decide it for ourselves. In order to do this, we need to discover something that is existentially worthwhile — by which I mean it must have some external significance. It must, in some sense, matter whether or not we meet our purpose, or else it's simply trivial and not purposeful. Another way of saying this is that it must matter from some external perspective.
The only external perspectives we know of are other conscious creatures on Earth — humans and animals. What matters to humans and animals, who exist independently of you? What matters to these creatures whom your life can either benefit or not? What matters to them, of course, is the happiness and well-being of themselves and their loved ones. In a phrase, what matters to them is their quality of life, which is dependent on these things.
Having reached this point, the immediate conclusion to be drawn is that the only real meaning available is to commit actions that benefit others.[4] By benefitting others, you seal for yourself indisputable meaning for your existence, etched singularly into the fabric of the universe for eternity. By affecting the experience of others, your life can unequivocally be said to have mattered — mattered to the degree that your actions impacted events for others in universal history.
In a word, our purpose is compassion.[5] Personal ambition, selfishness, greed — we can recognise these as dead ends, only mattering for the brief time you're alive. Being a slave to one's ego rears its head as probably one of the lowest achievements available for a person; in universal time, it will have made no difference whatever, save to benefit a single person in the ancient past.
Taking matters into our own hands now, the wider adoption of compassion could affect our politics and push us towards the creation and governance of a fairer, more equitable society that neither seeks to punish criminals for faulty beliefs, corroded values and poor will power (none of which can easily be said to be a criminal's 'fault'),[6] nor tries to particularly benefit those individuals whose beliefs, values and will power have led them to success.[7] Likewise, countries' international relationships could be strengthened if they were not concerned solely with benefitting people born in their own nation,[8] as decided by imaginary lines determined by historical political disputes, often outside of living memory.
Once a person has identified a purpose for themselves, nothing is more powerful a motivator — purpose is felt in their bones. My ambitions in life, my politics, my actions, my career — all these follow from an understanding of what is meaningful in life. Humans have a desire for meaning, a desire for their life to be worth something. Don't let society lump its irrational views on you about what constitutes meaning — governments and corporations are more than willing to influence you on this matter. Think critically, and see if we come to the same conclusion.
I hope that by writing this I will help to convince others to think similarly, and by doing so influence people to adopt a disposition of greater selflessness. The two things the world needs most are compassion and rationality, and we should do our best to promote these. Seeing as we've happened upon the opportunity to, let's live meaningfully — the alternative, it seems, is to squander life in vanity.
Notes
1.
Teleology was subsequently influenced by Aristotle, and later by Saint Anselm c. 1000 CE. It continued to influence philosophy up until the times of Kant and Hegel, though is now considered old-fashioned.
2.
We often still see intention where there is none; this is the origin of superstition.
3.
The suggestion that the purpose of life is to live for oneself is criticised further in Man's Final Triumph over Nature. 'Rational suicide', as I called it, would seem to be the appropriate response to such a scenario, being that it is hard work to be happy (or to live pleasurably), and most people only succeed at it partially. Better is to remove the requirement for it.
4.
Astute readers might recognise that this is just a macro version of living to benefit oneself. In this case, by removing all consciousness everywhere, we also remove all requirement for benefitting them. Being that this is impractical, I dismiss it, though should circumstances change, it could be considered.
5.
There's a risk of conflating 'purpose' and 'meaning' in this essay, though I think they're sufficiently close to use them similarly. If treated distinctly, it'd be enough to say that the only meaning to be had is in benefitting others.
6.
I wouldn't advocate a lack of consequences for criminals, only that consequences be grounded in what is known to be to the benefit of society, not simply consequences for the sake of them (wasting money and harming people).
7.
People still require incentive to work and so on, but after a certain point money fades from primary concern. Indeed, the very value of money itself goes down; £1 more an hour for a rich person accomplishes little, but for a poor person accomplishes much. There is no strong argument to have exceptionally rich people when one's goal is to govern in the interests of society as a whole.
8.
Our inability to do this is what is principally responsible for our failure to act in response to global warming. It is in our best interest to act together, but we do not, because (as in the Prisoner's dilemma) each nation is individually incentivised not to bother to act if all the other countries do decide to act.
Taken from my site (http://journalofinterest.com/essays/meaning-of-life/)
tl;dr: compassion.
(edited 10 years ago)
Our life can have whatever meaning we want to give it. Possibly the best meaning to have is to be a part of causation; to have as many effects on future generations as possible. If you can die knowing that the world is a different (and preferably better) place because of your actions, you can enter the oblivion happily. You live on through your actions (cheesy but true). There may be some nihilists who argue that ultimately, nothing matters. In 10 to the power of 100 years time there will be no trace of what once was. But now, for this brief time, the universe is becoming conscious. A small part of the universe (me) is able to, at this moment, think about the universe and then communicate its speculations to others pieces of the conscious universe (you) over tsr. We might as well take advantage of what we have, and impact on the future of the universe's consciousness, and in that way, we can have some sort of, very weak, 'immortality' (more a memory, but hey). To be the most beneficial, you need to help as many others as possible. Be happy along the way, and have offspring so that they too can help spread consciousness across the universe.
Live long and prosper
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