The meaning of life.
Imagine you're in prison and you ask your cellmate "what's the meaning of us being here?"
If your cellmate is in any way philosophical, they'll ask you to clarify your question, as it is not entirely clear what you're asking. You're probably not, for instance, asking for the meaning of the words 'us being here'.
Let's say you attempt to clarify by saying "I mean, why are we here?" Well, the answer to that one is going to be quite straightforward: "we've all been found guilty of a crime".
Perhaps you want more, though. You ask "but what's the purpose of this - the purpose of our being here?"
Well, to this the answer is a little more complex, though not much. There are three purposes served by your being in the prison. First to protect innocent others from you. You're dangerous. You've proved that. Hence you need to be in the prison. Second, retribution. You did wrong of your own free will and thus you deserve to suffer the company of other wrongdoers. Third, rehabilitation. They're called 'correctional institutions' for a reason: part of their rationale is that by being in them one can learn the error of one's ways, reflect on it, and resolve not to behave in such a manner in the future.
I think the cellmate's answer is also the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?"
First, if you ask this question, what exactly are you asking?
Well, if asked to clarify you will probably say "I want to know why I am here?" However, the answer "your parents had sex" or 'your parents wanted a child, and so they had sex and here you are" will not satisfy you, will it? I mean, no one disputes these things, yet we still wonder "why are we here?"
So, the question presupposes a grander purpose than whatever your parents were trying to achieve. The purpose of you being here is not, then, conferred by your parents, but someone else. And so to wonder why you're here, is to acknowledge at some level that someone - someone a little grander than your parents - has put you here for some end.
If we assume that the person who has put you here for some end is a good person - and I think they demonstrably are, but for now let's just assume it - then we can safely assume that the end for which we have been put here is a good one.
Yet clearly the world is a dangerous place full of dangerous people. Why on earth would a good person put innocent people in it? Well, "they wouldn't!" is the obvious answer. So they haven't. But a good person has put 'us' here. Conclusion: we're not innocent. Good people do put people in prisons when justice calls for it. And wouldn't it be just to put dangerous people who have done wrong in a world along with other dangerous people who have also done wrong? I mean 'we' think it is just, because that's precisely what we do to people who freely do grave wrongs. We lock them in prison. We surely don't think that reflects badly on us? On the contrary: it is a good thing to do, for it protects others from those folk, it gives those folk what they deserve, and it may operate to help them mend their ways.
So, those who ask "what is the purpose of us being here?" already assume a divine purpose. And if they assume - as they should - that the god who confers purposes on our being here is good, then the divine purpose our being here serves can safely be concluded to be a good one. And I think it is a safe bet that it is justice.
And thus that, it seems to me, is the best and most plausible answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" The purpose of your being here is threefold. A) it is to protect innocent others from you. B) it is to give you your just deserts. C) it is to rehabilitate you.
Meaning of life: done.
If your cellmate is in any way philosophical, they'll ask you to clarify your question, as it is not entirely clear what you're asking. You're probably not, for instance, asking for the meaning of the words 'us being here'.
Let's say you attempt to clarify by saying "I mean, why are we here?" Well, the answer to that one is going to be quite straightforward: "we've all been found guilty of a crime".
Perhaps you want more, though. You ask "but what's the purpose of this - the purpose of our being here?"
Well, to this the answer is a little more complex, though not much. There are three purposes served by your being in the prison. First to protect innocent others from you. You're dangerous. You've proved that. Hence you need to be in the prison. Second, retribution. You did wrong of your own free will and thus you deserve to suffer the company of other wrongdoers. Third, rehabilitation. They're called 'correctional institutions' for a reason: part of their rationale is that by being in them one can learn the error of one's ways, reflect on it, and resolve not to behave in such a manner in the future.
I think the cellmate's answer is also the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?"
First, if you ask this question, what exactly are you asking?
Well, if asked to clarify you will probably say "I want to know why I am here?" However, the answer "your parents had sex" or 'your parents wanted a child, and so they had sex and here you are" will not satisfy you, will it? I mean, no one disputes these things, yet we still wonder "why are we here?"
So, the question presupposes a grander purpose than whatever your parents were trying to achieve. The purpose of you being here is not, then, conferred by your parents, but someone else. And so to wonder why you're here, is to acknowledge at some level that someone - someone a little grander than your parents - has put you here for some end.
If we assume that the person who has put you here for some end is a good person - and I think they demonstrably are, but for now let's just assume it - then we can safely assume that the end for which we have been put here is a good one.
Yet clearly the world is a dangerous place full of dangerous people. Why on earth would a good person put innocent people in it? Well, "they wouldn't!" is the obvious answer. So they haven't. But a good person has put 'us' here. Conclusion: we're not innocent. Good people do put people in prisons when justice calls for it. And wouldn't it be just to put dangerous people who have done wrong in a world along with other dangerous people who have also done wrong? I mean 'we' think it is just, because that's precisely what we do to people who freely do grave wrongs. We lock them in prison. We surely don't think that reflects badly on us? On the contrary: it is a good thing to do, for it protects others from those folk, it gives those folk what they deserve, and it may operate to help them mend their ways.
So, those who ask "what is the purpose of us being here?" already assume a divine purpose. And if they assume - as they should - that the god who confers purposes on our being here is good, then the divine purpose our being here serves can safely be concluded to be a good one. And I think it is a safe bet that it is justice.
And thus that, it seems to me, is the best and most plausible answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" The purpose of your being here is threefold. A) it is to protect innocent others from you. B) it is to give you your just deserts. C) it is to rehabilitate you.
Meaning of life: done.
Comments (95)
This doesn’t follow necessarily.
[i]Purpose:
The reason for which something is done or created, or for which something exists.
A particular requirement or consideration, particularly one that is temporary or restricted in scope or extent.[/i]
The purpose of you being here may simply be conferred by... the conditions of you being here. There need not be a particular end, nor someone who confers it on you. These are assumptions that any reason must be intentional, or pre-determined by a reasoning mind. But there’s no evidence for this.
Well, for me, human life's "meaning" (or purpose) seems to consist in some combination, or progression, of ...
Aboriginal dreaming
Laozi's wu wei
Hillel the Elder's "What is hateful to you, do not do to anyone."
Epicurus' ataraxia & aponia (re: "Tetrapharmakos")
Seneca the Younger's apatheia (via aretai "wisdom" "courage" "justice" "temperance")
Spinoza's scientia intuitive ("blessedness") ...
Nietzsche's amor fati (the challenge of "eternal recurrence")
Zapffe/Camus' revolt (sisyphusian defiance-integrity)
Gramsci's "losing one's illusions without becoming disillusioned" (i.e. revolutionary solidarity against hegemonic forces)
Albert Murray's "struggling to give lasting form, however fleeting, to formlessness" (e.g. blues aesthetic)
Clément Rosset's jouissance, or beatitude ("approbation of the Real")
Thomas Ligotti's "Nihilism is as dead as god"
I.J. Good's "intelligence explosion" (i.e. technological singularity) – hoping IT retains in its source code Seneca's maxim: "Treat your inferiors in the way in which you would like to be treated by your own superiors."
John M. Smart's transcension hypothesis ...
:death: :flower:
When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun.' Groucho Marx.
If you have a good friend, you don't need to ask about the meaning of life...
This question is better avoided. It is both disruptive and corrupts the youth of Athens. It is asking why we are in Plato's Cave. It is too insulting to even consider much less ponder. It is better to imagine a glorious future of world peace. It avoids conflicts.
You’re going to have to be more specific...
If we are assuming an intentional purpose of an otherworldly origin, two more possibilities come to mind:
1) The purpose of you being here is to do a job. Some jobs are dangerous, e.g. those of soldiers, relief workers, firefighters, missionaries, explorers...
2) The purpose of you being here is to do something you enjoy. That may include some dangerous jobs as well as dangerous hobbies or pleasures - running the gamut from well intentioned to innocent to perverse to harmful...
Of course. Most questions invite all sorts of BS to avoid controversy and invite peace and love.. Seriously discussing the implications of Plato's Cave can even get you killed. Stick with BS. It is safer. From Plato's Cave allegory
[Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
... asks a Dunning-Kruger sophist with all "the answers" to anachronistic pseudo-questions. :sweat:
Wow! I do believe it has been over a decade since someone has asked the question in a thread!
:cool:
You don't know what friendship is.
And if the Earth was a prison or a rehab facility, wouldn't it be clear why we are being isolated, punished or rehabilitated here? What have we done? I don't remember anything from before my birth.
I didn't say this is a playpen world. I talked about dangerous jobs, hobbies and pleasures.
...used by some judge or another for punishment of our actions, protection of others from our actions, and for our own rehabilitation.
This all presupposes that the actions we're being punished for, that others are being protected from, and that we're being rehabilitated for, were taken - somehow - prior to life itself.
Gibberish.
At some level, when someone asks what something means, they're asking what it points to, e.g. "moon" points to that big round thing in the sky. That's the test I use. What does life point to? I can think of two choices 1) nothing and 2) itself. Either is fine, but let's go with 2 - the meaning of a life is the experience of that life.
What the question presupposes is that we are here, and that we are searching for meaning.
No, I don't see why one would expect it to be clear that we are being punished, or clear why. Ignorance of why exactly we are here is plausibly part of the punishment. To be punished one does not have to know 'why' one is being punished. And we - that is, we humans - sometimes punish people in a relevantly similar way. They used to give prisoners pointless tasks to do, for instance, and used to make sure the pointlessness was apparent (shot drill, the treadmill, etc.). Of course, it was not entirely pointless - the point of giving them pointless tasks was that by making them expend energy on something obviously pointless they would be harmed more than if they thought their activities were serving some purpose. Ignorance of why we are here could very plausibly function in the same way. Indeed, it is hard to think of another function for it that wouldn't imply a less than perfect purpose giver.
Where and who are these ‘innocent others’? In the case of jail, they’re the people who are not in jail. In the case of earth, they must be people who are not on earth. So - where are they?
I didn't say that it did. The question, as it stands, is vague and ambiguous. Hence the need to ask for clarity. But if it turns out that the questioner is asking - as they almost certainly are - what the 'purpose' of their being here is, then their question most certainly does presuppose that someone has put us here. For it is persons and persons alone who can confer purposes on things.
And because the answer "whatever purpose your parents were pursuing by trying to create you" is so obviously not going to satisfy the questioner, we can see that their question presupposes some kind of a divine purpose giver.
I could make the same point another way. I could just say "If God exists, then most likely the purpose of our being here is to protect others from us, to give us our just deserts, and to give us some chance at rehabilitation".
They are probably asking a bundle of closely related questions, one of which is a question about the purpose of our being here. It is that one to which I am providing a plausible answer to. The only plausible answer, I think.
So you ARE interpreting the question to presuppose an arbitrary assumption that someone has put us here, thereby limiting the scope of the question as stated.
But who says that purpose must be conferred by a person? There doesn’t appear to be any evidence supporting this. It’s simply how you’ve chosen to define ‘purpose’.
As an observation, given that the highly improbable event of us being here has occurred, it seems strange that you continue to appeal to probability, or what is ‘most likely’, for an answer as to why.
Quoting Bartricks
Sure. But there are more assumptions here that you’re reading into it. You’re assuming that ‘others’ exist, that God intentionally chose ‘here’, that we’ve somehow already done something ‘wrong’ prior to being born...
This whole argument just seems straw-like to me...
No, the question 'does' presuppose such a person. And it is not an 'arbitrary' assumption. It's what the question presupposes.
Quoting Possibility
Brian. Brian says so. I mean, what do you mean 'who says'? It is self-evident to reason. What, you think that there can be purposes without persons? For there to be a purpose, there has to be some 'end' that 'someone' is pursuing.
Anyway, like I say, the point is that 'if' God exists, then our purpose is as I described, or at least I can think of no plausible alternative.
Does God exist? Yes. I proved that a while ago. Here, in case you missed it:
A law of Reason is an imperative or instruction to do or believe something.
But imperatives require an imperator, instructions an instructor. And only a mind can instruct or issue a command. Thus this premise is true:
1. If there are laws of Reason, then there is a mind whose laws they are
It is also not open to reasonable doubt that there are laws of Reason. For if you think there are not, then either you think there is a reason to think there are not - in which case you think there are, for a 'reason to believe' something is an instruction of Reason - or you think there is no reason to think there are laws of Reason yet disbelieve in them anyway, in which case you are irrational. Thus, this premise is true beyond a reasonable doubt too:
2. There are laws of Reason
From which it follows:
3. Therefore, there is a mind whose laws are the laws of Reason
The mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason would not be bound by those laws, as they have the power over their content. A mind that is not bound by the laws of Reason is a mind that can do anything at all. Thus, this premise is true:
4. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnipotent
The mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason will also have power over all knowledge, for whether a belief qualifies as known or not is constitutively determined by whether there is a reason to believe it - and that's precisely what this mind determines. Thus:
5. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omniscient
Finally, moral laws are simply a subset of the laws of Reason (the moral law is, as Kant rightly noted, an imperative of Reason). And so the mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason will be a mind who determines what's right and wrong, good and bad. As the mind is omnipotent, the mind can reasonably be expected to approve of how he is, for if he were dissatisfied with any aspect of himself, he has the power to change it. And if this mind fully approves of himself, then this mind is fully morally good, for that is just what being morally good consists of being. Thus, this premise is also true beyond all reasonable doubt:
6. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnibenevolent.
It is a conceptual truth that a mind who exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent 'is' God. Thus:
7. If there exists a mind who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then God exists
From which it follows:
8. Therefore, God exists.
There we go: a proof of God.
Thus, we're in prison.
We usually want prisoners to understand what they have done wrong so that they may learn from their errors. They know why they have been condemned to prison. So it seems more plausible that if we did something wrong before being born on earth then our earthly amnesia has other reasons than punishment; those reasons may serve the purpose of isolation (because we may be less dangerous for the outside world if we don't know about it) or they may serve the purpose of rehabilitation (so we may focus on earthly activities without being distracted or maybe even traumatized by what happened before). Amnesia might also be a natural consequence of moving to earth from another world; that would explain why we don't know where we came from even if we came here for a different purpose than imprisonment (for example to get a job done or enjoy something) or if we just accidentally got lost or stuck here. As if you fell asleep and entered a dream but forgot about the outside world.
I apologise and stand corrected. I missed your period on your OP.
That would only be if rehabilitation was the primary purpose. We can infer, then, that it is not. The goal of retribution - of harming a person due to the fact they deserve to come to that harm - seems to be as, if not more important.
When prisoners were made to do shot drill, it was not to reform them. It was to harm them. It was to fill their day with an arduous but obviously pointless task.
If God exists - and I have demonstrated above that he does - then we can conclude that our lives do have a purpose (for it seems entirely unreasonable to suppose that God would subject us to lives here for no purpose at all). Furthermore, the purpose must be a morally good one.
Why would an omnipotent, omniscience, morally perfect being subject us to lives in a place that is full of dangers, including dangerous people? Other people are immoral, aren't they? Have you met any saints? I haven't. Are you a saint? I'm not.
Well, a good person would want to protect genuinely good people from such folk, yes? From the likes of us. You don't have to be morally perfect to see the justice in doing that. And doing that - putting people who have freely done wrong into another place, away from those to whom they did harm and among those who have behaved in a similar fashion - doesn't imply that the person who does such things is not good.
And we know from our own rational intuitions that it is also good when those who have done wrong come to harm. So the harms that we risk coming to by being put here are also not harms that are necessarily bad. And as we know God exists and that our lives here expose us to such harms, we can conclude that the harms are deserved ones.
What about rehabilitation? Well, this seems the least important purpose that our lives have. When we ourselves incarcerate criminals, it is the other two purposes mentioned above that have priority - first and foremost we are protecting others (this is why we can sometimes justify incarcerating people who are not morally responsible for their behavior - they pose a risk to others). Second, we are giving wrongdoers what they deserve. The opportunity to reform is, well, frankly, not that important. A good person does not owe it to you to do anything to reform your evil behaviour. They might - out of kindness - try and do something. But they don't owe it to you. You misbehaved. That's on you. The good people you misbehaved towards don't owe it to you to reform you.
So, the third purpose our lives here serve - rehabilitation - is the least important and its total absence, if absent it were, would not reflect badly on God. But it is present - our evidence for that is the fact that we have faculties of reason that give us some awareness of how we ought to behave. We are aware, most of us, that there are ways we 'ought' to be behaving, character traits we 'ought' to be cultivating and so on. That - that awareness - is the evidence that our lives here serve a reforming purpose. But if that were the primary purpose of our being here, then it would be starkly obvious how we ought to behave - which it isn't - and furthermore there would be no need to expose us to the risks of harm that we are in fact exposed to.
But they knew why they were suffering, didn't they? They knew why they were sent to prison? The hardships in prison could motivate them to repent and avoid doing bad things again. It doesn't make much sense to punish someone by making them forget what they have done wrong, unless the suffering from such an amnesia also has some rehabilitative or edifying purpose.
There is a god. So there is a purpose in our being here. We don't know why we're here. That isn't likely to be accidental. What purpose could not knowing serve? Well, to harm us - to torture us. And as a good god wouldn't do that unless we deserved it, we can conclude that we deserve the suffering that befalls us here.
What you're doing is offering alternatives that are not plausible given God's existence. For any purpose other than the ones I have outlined, would be ones that God - being omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect - could have achieved much more efficiently and without subjecting us to any suffering and without making us ignorant.
See, the suffering of amnesia does seem to have an edifying effect on you. Suffering sucks, it makes you want to know what went wrong and rectify it.
As for your proof of God, I think laws of reason or logic follow from the law of identity or non-contradiction, which means that every thing is what it is and is not what it is not. I don't see why a mind would be needed for that, let alone a conscious mind.
Again, you're missing the point: it's not supposed to have an edifying affect. You keep assuming that my view is that rehabilitation is the main reason we're here. That's not my view. That's partly why we're here, but it's the least important purpose our careers here serve: we're mainly here to protect others from us, and to get our comeuppance.
Quoting litewave
Because the law of non-contradiction is an imperative of reason. So, I've shown that imperatives of Reason entail God. You've said "ah, but imperatives of reason do not entail God, because they're derived from an imperative of reason". That doesn't make sense as an objection to my argument. To put it another way, which premise in my proof do you deny?
If you think there is no God, then as well as being mistaken, the answer you must give to the "what's the purpose of my being here?" question will have to be "whatever my parents were trying to achieve by creating me".
I mean, how is it possible for your life to have any other purpose apart from that one? And of course if - as is likely - your parents were not actively trying to create you, but your existence was simply a foreseen byproduct of the sex they were having - then your life has no purpose at all.
Perhaps you think that 'you' can bestow a purpose on your life. But that's really confused. You did not create yourself or place yourself in this realm. So whatever purposes you may have, they're not going to become the purpose of your life here.
If I use a shoe to hammer-in a nail, that does not mean that the shoe's purpose is to hammer-in nails. It's purpose is determined by its designers and builders, not its users.
No, I don't think it does. When you are in a prison, and you ask your cellmate, "why are we here?" that begs the answer: because somebody else put us here. The reason, however, that the question begs that answer, is because you and the person you are speaking to understand the full context of the prison, and more importantly, understand how that environment relates to reality outside of said environment.
If you suddenly found yourself in a room from which there was no escape, you might be able to infer how you got there from seeing others forcibly put in similar rooms. However, if the explanation for why they were forcing people into confined spaces was because they were forced to do so by others who were themselves forced to do so, that would not neccesarily beg the answer "I am here for a grander pupose."
Well, the analogy clearly fails here, because if I allowed myself to get arrested and put in to prison for my own benefit, say, because i intended to help facilitate my accomplice's jailbreak, or because i was homeless, hungry, and needed healthcare, then the question "why am I here?" could be relevantly addressed by saying "I am here because of my own motives."
Okay, I will assume it- but i expect you to demonstrate it at some point or that leaves a pretty large gaping hole in your argument.
Only assuming the person that put you here is able, which you haven't demonstrated.
I can think of some reasons. 1. To contain and control the wrongdoers (think prison guards) 2. To rehabilitate the wrongdoers. 3. Because "innocence" implies a lack of wrongdoing, which typically implies that there is wrong doing to be done. You mentioned that "You did wrong of your own free will" which implies that at some point the wrondoers were innocent.
No, not neccesarily. To be alive is to do. At the most basic level, your body "does" keep you alive by pumping blood, processing nutrients, bringing oxygen to your blood cells, etc. That's without you conciously "doing" anything. When you "do" things, you assume a purpose. To eat is to keep yourself alive, even if you don't conciously intend to. When you eat because you're hungry, you are, at least on a subconcious level, eating to quench a desire. A desire has a purpose, namely to propell you towards an end.
All these things are quite easily recognizable, but when you ask, what's life's purpose, you can't really give a reasonable answer other than "to create more life." However, when we begin to abstract, and ask " what's the purpose of that?" We go down a seemingly never ending road, because one can always ask "whats the purpose of purpose?"
So, at some point, one wishes to have a purpose that ties all the other ones together. But just because one wishes, does not gurantee that one will get. If there is a purpose that ties all purposes together, than either it will be unobtainable, or obtainable. If unobtainable, than one might ask "what's the purpose of my pursuing this unobtainable purpose?" But if obtainable, one might ask "what is the purpose of obtaining this purpose, since i will then have no more purpose?"
In conclusion, existence does not beg a divine purpose, neither does the question "why am i here?" Just because the question cannot be reasonably answered does not imply a transcendent, divine answer. That simply exchanges one mystery for another.
No, I don't see how that's true at all. Almost by definiton, your shoe's purpose is to hammer in nails. If your end is to hammer a nail, that implies that your actions serve a purpose: "I am hitting this nail to hammer it into something." Then it's use in that context is hammering in nails, no? So, in that moment, that is the objects 'purpose' relative to you. Why do the designers of the shoe have the sole ability to 'determine' the shoe's purpose? If someone shapes inanimate material into a certain form, and it turns out to be usable in a myriad of ways, even thought the shaper only inended one, how does that change its usefulness? And if it's 'purpose' is somehow detached from its 'usefulness' then I don't see what is meant by 'purpose' in this instance.
What if the devleopers of the shoes developed them to be good for eating? How would that be their 'purpose' just because that's what the designers intended? They would still be inedible, and thus unusable.
Yeah, I guess I don't see the point in punishing someone by making them forget what they have done wrong unless this also has an edifying effect.
Quoting Bartricks
I deny that it requires a mind for a tree to be a tree. It seems that a tree can be itself without needing a mind for that. Actually, it seems necessary that every thing be identical to itself, because what else could it be identical to? Minds can only contemplate the consequences of the necessary law of identity but they are not needed to ensure that which is necessary anyway.
Again, you earlier appealed to the law of non-contradiction. But that law is an instance of the very laws whose existence entail God's existence.
When someone provides you with an apparently deductively valid argument for a given conclusion, then you need either to locate a fallacy in the reasoning or you need to challenge a premise. Otherwise you're just demonstrating dogmatism.
If you use a shoe to hammer-in a nail, then 'your' purpose in using the shoe - so, the purpose of your action, not the shoe - is to 'hammer-in a nail'. But the purpose of the shoe, rather than your action involving it, is not to hammer-in nails, but to encase a foot.
Quoting I don't get it
Well, if that is their purpose - to be eaten - then that is their purpose. Something can be very badly designed, can't it? And when is that? When it is not suitable for the purpose for which it was made.
So, it is not in dispute that there are purposes. We have them. Minds, that is, mint purposes. And it is when we create something for a purpose, or put something somewhere for a purpose, that the thing in question can then be said to have a purpose, namely the purpose for which it is made or put there.
Others can use those things for different purposes. But then the purpose for which they are using it attaches to the action or project that they are engaged in, not the thing that they are using for that purpose.
As such, there are two options where our lives here are concerned. Either there was some purpose for which our being here was designed to serve - which would require that some mind created us for a purpose - or we were created for no purpose whatsoever. And of course, it is possible to be created by a mind, yet for no purpose whatsoever (being created by a mind is necessary, but not sufficient for one's life to have a purpose).
If God exists, then we are here for some purpose. For God is all powerful and perfectly good, so it is unreasonable in light of those facts to suppose that our lives here serve no purpose of his. And given the nature of our existence here - an existence fraught with danger and surrounded by immoral folk and the immoral natures that we ourselves seem to possess - it is reasonable to infer that the purpose our being here serves, is as I described: to protect others from us, to punish us, and - least importantly - to reform us. I don't think any other purpose can reasonably be imputed to God (which is not to say that there could not be one, just that - given the information available to us - it would not be reasonable for us to infer it).
If God does not exist - and I have provided a proof of his existence above, so this point is going to be moot - then the purpose our lives serve would be determined by those who contrived to create our lives. Which, normally speaking, is going to be our parents.
Of course, this means that under those circumstances most of us have lives of no purpose whatsoever, or lives whose purpose is, to say the least, utterly mundane.
Well, that's your problem and not evidence that retribution is not a purpose that God has. You're not God.
This has been the problem throughout - I have described the second purpose, central to justice being done. And that purpose is retribution. To harm us for what we have done. Not to improve us, not to help us, not to teach us anything, but because we deserve it - deserve to be harmed. Harmed, not benefited. And you are simply ignoring this and persisting in thinking that the only rationale for harming someone is to help them. This is patently false.
It is undeniable that we have retributive intuitions. Why is it worse, for instance, for something bad to happen to an innocent person as opposed to a guilty one? Why do we have a presumption of innocence rather than a presumption of guilt? Well, it reflects the fact that - to most of us - it is much worse to mistakenly punish an innocent person than it is to not punish a guilty one.
Well, that only makes sense on the assumption of retributivism.
And it is undeniable that we ourselves lock criminals in prison for the three reasons I outlined. They're not hospitals, are they? That is, they're not treatment centres. Not primarily. They serve a retributive purpose.
So, retributivism is a thing. And as God is the source of all moral norms and values, we can conclude that God himself has retributive attitudes, for that is what our rational intuitions express.
All one has to do is join the dots. We are immoral, yes? None of us is a saint. And we're surrounded by other immoral people. And we're in a dangerous world. And God exists. What gives? Well, we're in a prison, that's what gives.
Of course, God is behind things. One cannot arrive at the conclusion that we are living in a world in which processes of natural selection are operating without making appeal to some imperatives of Reason. For one cannot make any argument for anything without doing so, as arguments themselves are essentially appeals to Reason.
And imperatives of Reason cannot exist unless God does. Thus God exists. But only those who have already undertaken to listen to Reason will arrive at that conclusion and believe it.
And if God exists, then this world and our lives in it have a purpose. It is a penal colony. Thus, we are in prison serving life sentences. Literally.
No it couldn't, for that would require that you created yourself for that purpose, yet self-creation is not possible. It is hubris to think that you can give your life a purpose.
Quoting I don't get it
I did demonstrate it. Imperatives of Reason exist. Imperatives of Reason are the imperatives a mind - Reason - is issuing. That mind, by dint of being the source of the imperatives of Reason, will be omnipotent and omniscient. And given that he possesses those properties, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that he will be morally perfect too. Thus, the mind whose imperatives are the imperatives of Reason is God.
That's confused. Designs express purposes. That is, the very concept of a design presupposes a purpose.
If this world is designed, then there is a purpose behind it. If there is no purpose behind it, then it is not designed.
Quoting matt
You're confused. Those who proffer purely evolutionary explanations of the natural world are not showing how the world is, in fact, designed. No, they are attempting to show how the natural world can come to have the 'appearance' of design without actually being. That's why such accounts are commonly seen as challenging the argument from design.
Those who make them are quite right. If - if - such processes are the whole explanation, then of course there is no design, no purpose behind it all. There is just the mere appearance of it, and our tendency - adaptive no doubt - to impute it.
See, this is where i don't follow you. When we create something for a purpose, how does that something now have a purpose? If it's literally just inanimate matter, how can we impart purpose to it? It's not a mind, so it can't "mint purposes."
Look, i don't see how if i made a shoe, and you found a plant shaped exactly like a shoe, that served as a better shoe than the one I made, that my made shoe would have more purpose than your found shoe. They're both being used in the same way. How does one's intentions change that? Does the shoe I made magically contain some sort of essence, some sort of 'shoeness' because I made it?
How does that make sense? The purpose 'attaches?' Have you been misspelling 'porpoise' this whole time?
I don't see how a purpose can attach to anything. And what is your evidence for this? It seems completely arbitrary to me.
I don't see how that follows at all. We could just be a byproduct of something actually important, like the woodchips from some divine birdhouse that is being made. You yourself refered to the "immoral natures that we ourselves seem to possess." If we do, how can you take God's 'perfect goodness' and infer anything from it at all? It seems like any value judgement you might make would be wild speculation. Just because he is all powerful does not mean that we are important enough to be punished. We might be way to insignificant to warrant amy effort on God's part.
Well, when we say 'this has a purpose' that is elliptical for "this was created for a purpose".
What is confusing you is the ambiguity of the word 'has'. The claim that "this object has a purpose" is ambiguous between "this object has ends it is trying to pursue" and "this object has been created for an end". It is the latter idea that we are expressing when we say "the purpose of a shoe is to encase a foot". And this is also what we are wondering about in respect of our lives here when we wonder "what purpose does my life have?" For we are not wondering about our own ends. After all, if 'that' is what one is wondering about, then the question "what is the purpose of my life" would be better answered by a psychologist than a philosopher.
When someone asks or wonders "what is the purpose of my life?" they are not wondering what intention their life has. Lives - as opposed to the livers of them - do not have intentions. They are wondering to what end their life was created to pursue. This is obvious to any competent speaker of English.
Purposes can explain things. Why is the bin outside my house? Well, I put it there becuase I want my rubbish collected. There, an explanation of something's location - the bin outside my house - in terms of my purposes.
Now, we can say, quite correctly, that the purpose of the bin being outside my house is to be collected by rubbish collectors. That doesn't mean that the bin itself has desires and wishes for its contents to be collected by rubbish collectors. Someone who is six may think this, simply due to not having undersood that sentences can have more than one meaning. Perhaps you are six.
When we talk about a purpose 'attaching' to something, we once more are not being literal - purposes don't waft about getting stuck to stuff. We mean - if we wanted to be technical - that the thing in question features as an object of an intention.
Going back to shoes. A shoe and an identical naturally occurring thing, differ in that one was designed for a purpose and the other was not. The fact that they look identical and that you are using them for the same purpose, does not mean that they both 'have' a purpose.
Imagine that the shoemaker writes on the shoe - because the likes of you need as much help as you can get - 'put foot in here' around the opening. Now imagine that the shoe plant also has strange markings around its opening that look, to competent English speakers, like the words 'put foot in here'. Is that a helpful instruction? It isn't, is it? It is in the context of the shoe-maker's shoe - because in that object's case those words express the purpose of a mind, namely the mind of the shoemaker. But in the plant-shoe case, they do not - they're just patterns that happen, by luck, to appear to competent English speakers to be an instruction.
Anyway, not sure why I am bothering as I am sure you're going to play the 'idiot's veto' again and claim "me no understandy".
There's what something was designed for - that's the object's purpose, if purpose it has.
Then there's what you end up using it for. That's the purpose 'to which you are putting it', rather than its purpose.
If you read Othello and find it hilarious, that doesn't mean it's a comedy.
Well, you don't see because you're not trying hard enough. God is all powerful and morally perfect. If we're woodchips from his birdhouse, then we can reasonably infer that he would make sure those sentient woodchips have a blissful existence. (Why? Because. He's. Good. And. Not. A. Git.)
Are you having a blissful existence? Even if you are, it won't last long. Only a matter of time before you walk into a door or are done an injustice or get a toothache or find something hard to understand.
So, we're not woodchips from a divine birdhouse, then.
We're in a dangerous world surrounded by dangerous people. God did that to us, or allowed it to happen. One of the two, for he's omnipotent. And God is good, so he wouldn't have done or allowed that for a laugh, for then he'd be a git. So, it has a purpose and the purpose must be good.
When does a good person put people in a dangerous place surrounded by dangerous people? Why, when those people pose a danger to innocent others, deserve to be trapped in a dangerous environment surrounded by dangerous people, and when there's a slim possibility that they might reform their ways, that's when.
So, if God exists we're in a prison doing bird, not chips from a divine birdhouse. And he does exist. So we are doing bird.
It is an answer. What do you want? An address that isn't here? No. 73, Not Here Street, Notheresville, in The Other Place.
I deny this premise:
4. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnipotent
I don't think that instructions or commands of a mind constitute the laws of reason, as you put it. The laws of reason are constituted by the necessary law of identity (the principle that every thing is identical to itself), not by a mind. A mind can follow or contemplate these laws but not create them. And a mind itself is bound by the law of identity (and hence by the whole reality that is based on this law) because it must be identical to itself; what would be a mind that is not a mind? Even if you constrained the concept of omnipotence with the laws of reason, it is not clear whether there is an omnipotent conscious mind. You might say that the universe is omnipotent but is it conscious or is it a mind? If it's not a conscious mind, what does omnipotence even mean? Same for omniscience or omnibenevolence.
That doesn't make sense - by premise 4 it has already been established that the imperatives of Reason are the imperatives of a mind. What premise 4 says is that the mind in question is omnipotent. So if you're disputing it, you need to dispute that the mind is omnipotent, rather than dispute that the mind's imperatives are imperatives of Reason.
So, if you want to deny that the imperatives of Reason are the imperatives of a mind, you need to dispute an earlier premise than 4. Which one?
Note, the law of identity is an imperative of Reason- so once more you are appealing to the very kind of thing that the argument demonstrates requires God.
But which country has a justice system where the prisoner is denied knowledge of what he has been condemned for, even for the sake of causing him additional suffering by this ignorance? It seems that retributivist intuitions usually involve a desire to let the enemy know why you cause him suffering.
What do you mean by "imperatives"? If a mind is reasonable, it follows the laws of reason. It doesn't create them.
No such place, so, still not an answer.
Quoting Bartricks
For all we know, on the cosmic scale, the universe has the attributes of a mind.
You have asked me a silly question. You have asked me where people who are not here, are. Well, not here. That is an answer. You question is silly and reflects a lack of understanding on your part. But my answer is an answer to it. And you should count yourself lucky that I gave it, given how silly the question was. Now don't pretend you want more specifics, because clearly you don't and it wouldn't really matter what I said, you'd still just scoff. Like I said, they are at 73 Not Here street, Notheresville, in The Other Place. Why not send them a letter?
Quoting Wayfarer
Not sure what that means or how it is relevant.
It's called 'The World'. You're living in it. See my case for details.
That's flagrantly question begging. I provided a proof of what you have just flatly denied. So, you need either to locate a fallacy in the reasoning expressed by the argument, or you need to deny a premise. Specifically, you need to deny premise 1 or premise 2 and provide your reasons for doing so, for I defended both of those premises.
An imperative, incidentally, is just fancy for a command.
And yes, of course 'being reasonable' involves following the imperatives of Reason (or acting in ways that comport with them). That's irrelevant, for my argument is about what the imperatives themselves are (in terms of composition, not content), it is not about what it is to be reasonable.
Imagine I give you an argument that demonstrates strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries. YOu then reply "being a strawberry jam eater just involves eating strawberry jam, not making the stuff". Well, er, yes. How is that relevant - how does that challenge my case that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries? And then you follow that with nothing more than a flat denial that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries.
That is what you have done. I have provided an argument that appears to demonstrate that Reason is a mind and that the mind in question will have the attributes of God, and will thus be God. And you have now just pointed out that being reasonable involves following the imperatives of Reason and then asserted - on the basis of no evidence at all - that the imperatives themselves are not a mind's creation.
Typical of you: when caught out, resort to insult.
If you have caught me 'out', where was I 'in' previously. Please answer fully. I have follow up questions.
Where? You just asserted, even before your premise 1, that only a mind can create laws of reason. And I say that the law of identity and all logic that follows from it are not creations of a mind but necessary facts because, as I pointed out, there doesn't need to be a mind to ensure that a tree is a tree. You think that without the existence of a mind, a tree could be a dog? That a mind issues an instruction to the tree to be identical to itself? No, the mind can only observe the necessary fact that a tree is a tree and not a dog. A tree that is not a tree just cannot exist.
No. I'm going out of my way to get things. Just not without skepticism. You really seem to think that you can just post a controversial piece, and then be blown away every time someone challenges you.
Yes. Everyone on this philosophy forum is unaware of basic things, like an argument, or an answer, because they challenge your beliefs. You're like a Baptist kid who goes to a Catholic school and is just AMAZED that other people have different ideas.
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Yeah. Because the entire planet is one country. Try to keep your head in reality, you snobbish ad hominem-slinging armchair philosopher.
This is the problem with this whole argument. You are defining the question "What's the point of life?" as a question that assumes that life is created. As you yourself said: "So, those who ask "what is the purpose of us being here?" already assume a divine purpose." A lot of people are "wondering about our own ends" when we ask that question. Many people don't want a predetermined purpose. Many attempt to create their own purpose. I am aware you disagree with this view, but you don't invalidate it by simply defining the question in a different way than it is often meant.
And then there is always the question "why should I follow that purpose?" If somebody else creates a sentient creature with a certain purpose, it seems inevitable that the creature and creator will disagree on "ends." My point here is that I don't see how the creator is really determining the creation's purpose/s at that point. That would be more like failure to determine the creature's purpose.
Funny that we're arguing about purpose. You seem to have missed the whole goddamn purpose of this forum.
[quoteGod is all powerful and morally perfect. If we're woodchips from his birdhouse, then we can reasonably infer that he would make sure those sentient woodchips have a blissful existence.][/quote]
No we CAN'T. You yourself mentioned that we are not morally perfect, so it does not seem like we can reasonably infer anything about GOD'S morality.
That makes no sense at all. I think we can safely say that you're never going to get it.
It doesn't make any sense? But which premise do you deny?
Hey, try not to play the "idiot's veto," okay?
1. We are immoral.
2. Therefore we can't know that God is good.
That, so far as I can tell, was your argument. But the conclusion doesn't follow and is false anyway as God is by definition good.
Here's an argument of a similar nature:
1. I like coffee.
2. Therefore we can't know whether bachelors have wives.
Wrong. I was saying that we can't know what God would do. If we are not good, and God is perfectly good, drawing conclusions about "what God would do" seems unreasonable.
First, from the fact we are not morally perfect, it does not follow that we cannot know with a high degree of certainly that a morally perfect being wouldn't do certain things. After all, we know we're not morally perfect - yes? To know that is to know that one falls short of a standard - a standard one has some awareness of. Second, you don't have to instantiate a moral virtue to be able to recognise one. That's as stupid as thinking that you can't recognize a good drawing from a bad one unless you're an excellent draughtsperson. I know Leonardo da Vinci is a great draughtsperson and that some six year old is rubbish despite the fact my own skills are closer to the six year old's than Leonardo's. So that's mistaken inference no. 2. And then there's the fact that you don't have to know precisely what moral perfection involves to know what it doesn't involve. I, for instance, don't know how many grains of salt there are in my house. But I do know that there are more than six, and less than five billion trillion. You, presumably, think otherwise. You think I can't know those things unless I know precisely how many grains of salt there are in the house. Which is, well, just very silly but typical of the youtube educated.
So, God is morally good. And we know enough about what moral goodness involves to know that it doesn't involve being a sadist or unconcerned about the welfare of others. If your case against me depends on the ludicrous claim that 'for all we know' being morally perfect may well involve being a sadist or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others, then you've failed to touch it. YOu might as well just say - as you know doubt do when any case escapes your understanding and seems to be leading to conclusions you dislike - "how do we know anything".
And God, being morally good, wouldn't let us suffer for no reason. And thus our lives must have a purpose. And the only plausible reason a morally perfect, omnipotent being would let people suffer in the way that we do, would be for the reasons I have given. For we ourselves do precisely this - we ourselves incarcerate and bring harm to those whom we judge to have done wrong of their own free will. And we do this precisely because our own reason tells us that this is a just thing to do. And as our reason is the means by which God communicates his own attitudes towards such matters to us, we now know that God has done this to us.
I wasn't being that skeptical about it. I agree that we can vaguely understand morality without being able to act it out. I just think something like GOD is probably going to be too far out of reach for us to attempt to predict his actions. I have to admit, I didn't word that as well as I could.
This is where i fundamentally disagree with your whole argument. I don't think you have any basis to believe this. I'm not just trying to be agnostic, however, maybe there's just something I'm missing here. I'm not trying to claim that we can't know anything about God or morality, I'm just saying that when you say "God does this in this manner" it seems impossible to say that with really any understanding. It doesn't make sense to say "God would never put innocent people with dangerous people, because I wouldn't do that and I understand morality." You act like I'm stupid and don't know anything when I say "God could put innocent people with dangerous, corrupt people, because his understanding or his morality is perfect and your's is not" but then you turn around and say
So when you claim ignorance, it's suddenly a valid position.
So contrary to what you assert, you are playing the radical sceptic card. You are proposing that, as far as we can know, being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others might constitute a moral virtue in God. That's absurd - as absurd as thinking that 'for all we can tell' it might constitute one in us. Even if it is possible, it is not remotely reasonable to believe it. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that being good does 'not' involve being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of innocent or guilty others. Therefore, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that God is not wholly unconcerned for our welfare, not if we're innocent anyway. and thus we can conclude that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not woodchips from God's treehouse. I now fail to see how you can't see this. Your proposal - that, for all we can tell, we might be woodchips from God's treehouse - has been demonstrated to be false beyond a reasonable doubt. And invoking - in an ad hoc manner - scepticism about what goodness in God might consist in is just silly and doesn't begin to raise a reasonable doubt about my thesis or do anything at all to restore credibility to yours.
So are we just woodchips from God's treehouse? No. God is good and omnipotent, and good people are not indifferent to the fates of innocent sentient creatures, or guilty ones.
We can know this by reflecting on the nature of goodness, but we can know it by reflecting on God's omnipotence as well. Our actions often have foreseen but unintended consequences. But that's because we do not control all of the consequences of our actions. God, by contrast, controls them all. Everything that happens either happens because God causes it to, or God intentionally permits it. Nothing that happens that God causes to happen is anything God is indifferent towards. For if God were truly indifferent to it, it would not occur. And when it comes to what God permits, rather than what God positively causes, he would only permit indifferent events - that is, events towards which he is indifferent - when doing so is a consequence of our free will being exercised. And he is not indifferent to that, even if he is often indifferent to what we do with it. But anyway, the world we live in is not a world we ourselves have freely created or freely placed ourselves in, and so the world we live and the fact we live in it has to be concluded to be God's doing, not ours. And as nothing God positively does is anything he is indifferent to, we can once more conclude that our being here is not a mere foreseen but indifferent consequence of something else God was doing, but is instead fully intended by God.
Thus, once one acknowledges that an omnipotent and good being exists, there is no reasonable way to escape the conclusion that our lives here serve a purpose, and a good one at that.
Quoting I don't get it
Yes, because all you're doing is pointing to a metaphysical possibility, not providing evidence that it is true.
There's what is possible, and there's what is actually the case. It is metaphysically possible that Elvis shot Kennedy. But it would be wholly unreasonable to think Elvis did it simply because no contradiction is involved in the idea. Brute possibilities are not evidence. They are the last resort of someone who has run out of evidence.
Similarly, as all things are possible with God (for all things are possible with an omnipotent being), it is indeed metaphysically possible that our lives here serve some purpose other than the one I am defending. I have at no point denied the possibility. What I have done is show that it is reasonable to suppose that our lives here serve the three purposes I described, and entirely unreasonable to think otherwise, at least after being confronted with the evidence.
For an analogy: a detective provides you with some very good evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. You reply: for all we can tell, Elvis might have done it.
Is that reasonable? No. Yes, it is metaphysically possible. And no amount of evidence that Oswald did it will establish the matter with 100% certainty, for deception can never be entirely ruled out. But is it at all reasonable stubbornly to stick with the absurd Elvis thesis on no better basis than that it 'might' be true? No, that's not reasonable at all - it's dogmatic and silly.
I think there is no amount of evidence I could show you that would convince you that our lives have the purposes I described. For whatever the quantity I provide, and whatever its quality, it is going to remain metaphysically possible that they serve another purpose, or none at all. And that, it seems to me, is, for you, sufficient to make it perfectly reasonable to reject my conclusion. Which is, of course, wholly unreasonable of you. But then unreasonable people abound here, do they not? This is a world full to the rafters with them. It's almost as if it was a place God was putting them!
To paraphrase Empodocles and Yeats, there's an oracle of Reason, an ordinance of the God, eternal and bound by broath oaths, that says when a soul foreswears Reason to follow its own path, it must wander, for thrice ten thousand seasons, away from the abodes of the blessed, and be born again in a multitude of mortal clothes. The air will drive it into the sea, the sea will spew it onto the dry earth, the earth will hurl it into the blazing beams of the sun, the sun will fling it back into the eddies of the air. Each will pass it to the other, but all will reject it. We are such exiles, wanderers from the God and the Good. And though we are fated to spend lifetimes searching through these hollow and hilly lands, the day will come when we'll find our way back to the orchard and the stream of forgetfulness where it all began, and then we can wander once more in its long dappled grass and pluck, till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.
I have issues with B. The universe/god/one-true-mind is not revenge-based.
You have provided no argument. Why would God harm us unless for retribution? Any other good goal could have been achieved without the harm (he's omnipotent). And if he just likes harming us for it's own sake, that's incompatible with being good. Retribution is the only plausible explanation.
On certain occasions — birthdays, anniversaries, dinner parties, the end of the year — it's customary. Underlying that custom is an important purpose: appreciation. We give people gifts to show them that we are grateful for them and value the role they play in our lives."
Our purpose comes from that which we are grateful for.
No question was posed. I did not ask for speculation on the meaning of life, but offered reasons for thinking it has a purpose, namely retribution, protection and reform. But rather than engage with that case proof180 expressed contempt for the very project of trying to find life's meaning and then proceeded to list a load of cereal packet proposals. But you think it's an arm pumpingly great answer. Hmm.
A) it is harmful to put people in an environment in which there are dangerous people and diseases and such like. If a parent put their child in a lion pit you wouldn't exonerate the parent on the grounds that carnage was due to the lions.
B) the world is not our creation. We are placed in it with scant knowledge of it. And we are born helpless. These things were God's doing. So either he's a total git - which by definition he is not - or these things are good. How could they be good? Well if they are our just deserts. Therefore they are.
. Meaning is a dance, not a rock. Meaning is music. You will find it only if you create it. Remember it.
. Millions of people are living meaningless lives because of this utterly stupid idea that meaning has to be discovered. As if it is already there. All that you need is to just pull the curtain, and behold! meaning is here. It is not like that.
. So remember: Buddha finds the meaning because he creates it. I found it because I created it. God is not a thing but a creation. And only those who create find. And it is good that meaning is not lying there somewhere, otherwise one person would have discovered it -- then what would be the need for everybody else to discover it?
. Can’t you see the difference between religious meaning and scientific meaning? Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity; now, do you have to discover it again and again? You will be foolish if you discover it again and again. What is the point? One man has done it; he has given you the map. It may have taken years for him, but for you to understand it will take hours. You can go to the university and learn.
. Buddha also discovered something, Zarathustra also discovered something, but it is not like Albert Einstein’s discovery. It is not there that you have just to follow Zarathustra and his map and you will find it. You will never find it. You will have to become a Zarathustra. See the difference!
. To understand the theory of relativity, you need not become an Albert Einstein, no. You have to be just of average intelligence, that’s all. If you are not too much retarded, you will understand it.
. But to understand the meaning of Zarathustra, you will have to become a Zarathustra -- less than that won’t do. You will have to create it again. And each individual has to give birth to God, to meaning, to truth; each man has to become pregnant with it and pass through the pains of birth. Each one has to carry it in one’s womb, feed it by one’s own blood, and only then does one discover.
. Now, you ask me: Why can’t I see any meaning in life?
. You must be waiting passively for the meaning to come ... it will never come. This has been the idea of the past religions, that the meaning is already there. It is not! Freedom is there to create it, energy is there to create it. The field is there to sow the seeds and reap the crop. All is there -- but the meaning has to be created. That’s why to create it is such a joy, such an adventure, such an ecstasy.
Well, top marks for a) contradicting yourself within two sentences and b) pronouncing rather than arguing.
What is it with you people? You seem to think you already know the meaning of life. No proper investigation. No reasoned reflection. Just pronouncement, as if the world and its purpose is in your gift. You won't learn anything if you start out thinking you know it all.
The contradiction first: you have said life has no meaning and then you have said it has a meaning. Good job!
And the rest is just more of that stuff creeps say to try and impress people in bars. Again, my b/s detector is giving a 'pure' reading.
First, what on earth does it mean to say that life's meaning is to give it meaning? That's a meaning, right - a purpose. So who gave it that purpose? You? How? Did you create my life? No. So how did you give it that purpose? did you create your own life? No. So how did you give it that purpose. Think. It. Through.
So, no, life's purpose is not to give it a purpose, for if that were life's purpose then we wouldn't have to, becasue it'd already have one. Plus you'd owe us an account of how it got to have that purpose (you pronouncing that it does ain't that account).
And you cannot give your life a purpose, for it's already too late as its up and running already. Your life's purpose is the sole preserve of its creator, not you.
. You seem to be a scholar ...
. If you cling too much to logic you'll never be able to be part of the living process that this existence is. Life is more than logic: Life is paradox, life is mystery."
. I want you to understand this ... Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved ...
. Your thinking about life is just like the thinking of a blind man about light. You go on thinking ... but you'll never reach the truth. Because to know it ... you need eyes, not logic ... my friend ...
. I'm in this forum to show you ... the truth ... slowly slowly ... you'll get it ...
. I'm here ... to show you that your so called philosophy is like a blind man on a dark night, searching for a black cat wich is not there.
. So ... only ... stupid people, really mediocre people ... the so called intelectual, but never intelligent people ... such as sages or zen masters ... are keen on philosophy ...
. Philosophy should be called Foolosophy, the art of the idiots ...
. The mind is a great philosopher ... But ... Life is not a philosophy ... Life is a reality. And philosophy is an escape from reality. Philosophy means thinking ... And ... Life is - there is no question of thought ...
It's helpful to achieve these ends to wrap yourself up in the garb of some eastern religion or tradition (but not essential), as people will think you are in touch with the ancient wisdom of people who knew less about the world than a contemporary 10 year old.