Life Isn't Meaningless

• The quote below postulates the equation between ethics and the question of meaning - I think you should first define what you understand as meaning for us to discuss its relations to ethics:Quoting Lif3r

  but it certainly isn't an excuse to ignore the ethics or fundamental principles of the reality that you

• By the following quote I assume you mean "try no to kill each other" is a given postulate of existence shared by all humans. Reading between the lines in regards to my previous question - it looks like you equate between meaning and such postulates. Well I will have to say that given human history I would say the postulate should be - try no to get killed whenever possible. Humans have (and do) kill when they can do it with impunity:Quoting Lif3r

  Try not to kill each other and gravity.

• The following quote is the same as saying the propose of blue is being blue, you can also say the purpose of human is being human, the purpose of meaning is meaning, etc...That brings back the first question - define what is meaning, so we can discuss your view:Quoting Lif3r

  Existence cannot exist without existing and so it must exist in order to retain it's significance of existence which is to... you guessed it... exist. That's the purpose of existence itself to it's very root.

Because reality isn't fully consistent in tangibility, life has no foundation in existence or serves no purpose

2.) Because we are tiny we can't be significant in existence

The shorthand is the Butterfly Effect. A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine.

The abstract concept that life has meaning even in intense suffering (some label this religion) allows very large groups of people (Ants and Apes) to coordinate their efforts to overcome the environment.

Your example actually demonstrates that belief that life has meaning is superfluous, from an evolutionary perspective, to large groups coordinating their efforts to overcome the environment.

Ants and apes evolved to coordinate their efforts to overcome the environment.

Ants and apes don't have the belief that life has meaning.

Life is full of meaning. From my childhood atheists pushed idea of endless universe and how tiny Earth was compared to cosmos. While human life was just product of evolution and had no meaning. Well. These days we've got simulation hypothesis which finally can scientifically reverse this trend and make Life full of meaning again.

No further explanation is required. Ants and apes don't have beliefs about the meaningfulness of their lives.

Even people base truth and falsehood to some small measure on feeling. A bacteria bases its will to live or "purpose" on whether it feels like it ate enough. If a person suffers X amount they stop feeling like life has purpose. Do you see what I mean?

“Such, in outline, even more purposeless, more void of meaning, [than Faustus’ cyclical creation myth] is the world which Science presents for our belief.” - Bertrand Russell, A Free Man’s Worship.

The savage, like ourselves, feels the oppression of his impotence before the powers of Nature; but having in himself nothing that he respects more than Power, he is willing to prostrate himself before his gods, without inquiring whether they are worthy of his worship. Pathetic and very terrible is the long history of cruelty and torture, of degradation and human sacrifice, endured in the hope of placating the jealous gods: surely, the trembling believer thinks, when what is most precious has been freely given, their lust for blood must be appeased, and more will not be required. The religion of Moloch--as such creeds may be generically called--is in essence the cringing submission of the slave, who dare not, even in his heart, allow the thought that his master deserves no adulation. Since the independence of ideals is not yet acknowledged, Power may be freely worshipped, and receive an unlimited respect, despite its wanton infliction of pain.

No further explanation is required. Ants and apes don't have beliefs about the meaningfulness of their lives.

Ants and apes evolved to coordinate their efforts to overcome the environment.
Ants and apes don't have the belief that life has meaning.

But even here he does not say that life has no meaning.

He bitches about the truth of man's life as seen from the scientific point of view,

but no where does he say that it is not worth living

or that it is without purpose.

Even people base truth and falsehood to some small measure on feeling. A bacteria bases its will to live or "purpose" on whether it feels like it ate enough. If a person suffers X amount they stop feeling like life has purpose. Do you see what I mean?
— christian2017

No. Can you be clearer about your line of reasoning, as I was above?

1. Having beliefs about the meaning of life requires higher cognitive faculties with a sense of self and abstraction, evidenced in complex language skills (i.e., a grammar).
2. Ants and apes don’t have these things.
3. Ergo...

"Life is meaningless" is something people like to say to one another on these two (and probably more) principles:

1.) Because reality isn't fully consistent in tangibility, life has no foundation in existence or serves no purpose

2.) Because we are tiny we can't be significant in existence

And I disagree.

Reality exists. I don't give a damn if it is all an illusion in the mind or if I am linked to a computer or if my reality is different than yours or from the reality of dimension pi zeta^3649. I wake up everyday and it's the same reality, and sure things around me change, and I change, but to the basis I know that I exist and I know that this is my reality because I experience it day in and day out.

Sure it's interesting to think about, the idea that there is more to reality than meets the eye and that by further understanding and investigating this we can come to more conclusions, but it certainly isn't an excuse to ignore the ethics or fundamental principles of the reality that you or I are experiencing right now. Try not to kill each other and gravity. Simple concepts that most humans have evolved and inherited to comprehend as valuable for existence. Utilized to survive and to become increasingly more aware of existence. The basic guidelines of existence are explanatory from our predecessors of knowledge and from our further personal witness of social and physical phenomenon. We may not understand all of reality, but we comprehend the one we perceive enough to be able to recognize it. I think therefore I am. Lot of words to further explain essentially the same thing.

And

Just because biology of earth is a small fraction of a small portion of the universe does not mean we are insignificant. Life is significant because it exists. Everything is significant because it exists. Existence cannot exist without existing and so it must exist in order to retain it's significance of existence which is to... you guessed it... exist. That's the purpose of existence itself to it's very root.

Even if life has meaning, this meaning simply floats away into nothingness with the cessation of life which as we all know is a certainty

Now is filled with meaning.

Now is a temporal concept. What does it mean to say that the now is, as you say, filled with meaning? I thought we were discussing people and the desire for meaning to life and not a subdivison of time, the now?

Also, what you say seems to go against the grain for death seems to be peoples' primary reason for the perceived meaninglessness of life.

it's actually eternity that people are clamoring for.

One need not follow that line of logic, or 'logic', that even if death is the end of life then there really is no meaning.

You know very well that an afterlife is....

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief.

A strange mystery it is that Nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking Mother. In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.

That wasn’t the issue. You said you had never met an atheist that says life has no meaning. I showed you one. I could show you other too (Rosenberg).

But you can't tell me what I know.

But you can't tell me what I know. — Coben


Of course not. Sorry if anything I wrote sounded like I did.

You know very well that an afterlife is essentially thrusting the begging bowl of desire in eternity's face.