Mac

Excellent thoughts, and for me where I began my journey to agnosticism. I was raised protestant but without a lot of emphasis on religion in our daily lives. I was told about God and how to be good, and we went to church occasionally. Throughout grade school and Jr. High I came to realize that religion and Gods were simply creations of the human mind to help deal with the realities of life. By the time I was 16 realized that the only intelligent view of religion and a God is to say that I have no hard evidence to support that belief, and knowing how frail and error prone the human mind can be the creation of religions by humans seemed to be a normal process. I majored in psychology in college in hopes of learning about the deeper meaning of life, but was quickly dissilusioned as all the professors wanted to do was regurgitate what had already been said on the topic. Over the next few years I read every book I could find on religion, science, belief, etc. and finally came to a place of peace and acceptance on the subject. That being the I have no idea if there is a God or not, or what form he/she would take. That I can not live my life hoping that there is a God, or acting like there may be. This was hard to accept for many of the reasons that you have outlined. I can't tell you how many times I asked myself "what is the point", "what is the meaning of my life", etc. I have come to realize that it simply that your life has whatever meaning you give it. I too went through the process of being distraught over the ultimate futility of it all, until I realized that the point is not that I (or the human race) go on forever, but what we do while we are here...mostly because that is all that I can do. Once I knew and embraced that, a certain freedom came over me. A freedom to wake up each day and live my life as I see fit, and as if it were the last day of my life. Almost like permission to slow down and see the beauty and mystery in everything around me. I still ponder what may be, but first and formost I live the best life I can, and relish every moment of my time here.

debdodd

excellent Mac!

__________________
"Ubi dubium ibi libertas."

"We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again ....."

moorehurst

Is existence meaningless?

Answer: it is impossible to know. You might go to heaven or hell or purgatory or you might come back to life as another human being or as a little furry creature of the forest. Or nothing might happen, you might descend into oblivion.

Should you let this be the guiding creed of your earthly existence? I would suggest not. However if you believe in oblivion I suggest doing a bit of exercise and cutting down on the cigarrettes.

__________________
"It's the bally ballyness of it all that makes it all so bally bally."

Bertie Wooster.

Unbeliever

Well, I'm not postulating anything spiritual, any more than a sperm is spiritual. I just think that humans just happen to be the reproductive agents of this planet. And the universe is still in its infancy, it has some tens of billions of years left, at least. Life on Earth does resemble an antfarm right now, but that may not always be the case.

__________________
The need for critical thinking is becoming critical, I'm thinking.

"If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal."
Carl Sagan

"Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt."
Clarence Darrow( 1857-1938) American Lawyer

romansh

Hi phidelis

our son recently died... he of course will live on in my mind and memories. Of course this is not terribly satifying to me. I think more importantly is how I use our son's life, what choices I make because of him and how I use the skills I learnt because of him.

His, my, and our influence will diminish with time; like a pebble thrown in to a pond. But his and hopefully our influences will spread out like the ripples in the pond .... nudging ever more of us to make better decisions. Yes the ripples will fade, but so what?

all the best

Drizzling Blur

Awesome thread, firstly, i have just read the first page of the whole discussion and its really gone well, my two cents on the whole existence thing with a difference.

Well, how many actually do want you want do and what you wanted to do all the time ? How many put your points across in the discussion because you know if would make a difference to some one else and not mean any green bills either to your firm or your boss or to you ? How many of you still dont know what they're doing but go with the stream of people who live life through time tables hiding from their true self and running all the time scared to face the truth. How many of you people right on this forum think, you could've always done something different, probably ran backwards into the sea, well, come to think of it, is it atleast 0.05 % of the population of the world that does what it does because they love it ? I mean when your life is so externally controlled why cant you think that this life that you live is meaningless and is taking you nowhere, either in terms of relationships or interms of monetary benefits.

When you cannot decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, when your too scared to come out of the closet, when you know the whole world is watching you and this is the moment of the truth, what do you do ? Most of the times you back off, you're too scared to lay your thought process bare on the table for discussion, you're worried that this might label you into something you always want to be and ponder how will the real thing feel like.

My fellows, in short to live and not to do what you want to do makes your life meaningless, to live and knowing what to do and working your way towards doing it, will help you fight with mundane'ness and show a direction and get sense to your life, till the time you dont do it, your existence is meaningless.

Buddha

Great stuff.

silent_enigma

You know, a lot of Xian apologetics pushes the idea that unbelief is evil because it makes existence meaningless. But while I was a Xian and obsessed over bible study, it troubled me that even with a god and a "divinely inspired" religion, we are ultimately crap in god's eyes (based on a literal interpretation of the old testament and much of the new). The main bonus being that we can be another speck in some eternal kingdom.

It's depressing either way! Or not depressing. Depends on your personality.

Skepticologist

My all-time favorite cartoon is a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Calvin says something like, "We go through life looking for meaning. We look for meaning in everything we do and everything that happens".

Hobbes says something like, "But what if life is meaningless? What if nothing we do and nothing that happens has any meaning at all?"

And Calvin says, "Which would be worse?"

__________________
"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

Clarence Darrow

Drizzling Blur

^ I like Calvin and Hobbes too, nice one there.