Meaning of life???

[sox-and-the-city]

HELLO PEOPLE COULD YOU LOT MAKE A NEW THREAD TO DISCUSS THIS, AS THIS THREAD IS ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE AND NOT DOES GOD THINKS OF US!!!

PLEASE TAKE THIS SOME WHERE ELSE THAT IS NOT IN THIS THREAD!!!

Erm...

:tongue::tongue::tongue: Didn't i JUST say that?? :tongue::tongue::tongue:

[princealbertofb]

Here, my fellow men, is a bit of the MEANING OF LIFE::
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Obama's first speech as President

Barack Obama's inaugural speech...
God (or any other high entity) bless America! mile:

[XRIMO]

I thought for sure that I had responded to this thread when it was created, but apparently I haven't.

So for me the meaning of life is quite simple:

To live and find happiness.
To have fun and make friends.
To remember those who have lived, and hope for the future.
To strive to make my dreams a reality.
To help the ones whom I hold dear.

No one but myself can find meaning in my life. Just as you are the only one who can find meaning in yours. It is not something you let someone else decide.

[Fromgenesis]

I thought for sure that I had responded to this thread when it was created, but apparently I haven't.

So for me the meaning of life is quite simple:

To live and find happiness.
To have fun and make friends.
To remember those who have lived, and hope for the future.
To strive to make my dreams a reality.
To help the ones whom I hold dear.

No one but myself can find meaning in my life. Just as you are the only one who can find meaning in yours. It is not something you let someone else decide.

That seems fine if you are the result of chance development (evolution) as your life will have no meaning - There is no reason for your existence. You may create your own goals to guide your life, but it has no intrinsic value.mile: If you are however the result of a Creator's actions, your meaning depend on Him. This idea is however repugnant nowadays as we want to be masters of our own universe, and not responsible to such higher authority to whom we are responsible.
It is a bit like you building a house and the house deciding what its purpose is.

[marshlander]

That seems fine if you are the result of chance development (evolution) as your life will have no meaning - There is no reason for your existence. You may create your own goals to guide your life, but it has no intrinsic value.mile: If you are however the result of a Creator's actions, your meaning depend on Him. This idea is however repugnant nowadays as we want to be masters of our own universe, and not responsible to such higher authority to whom we are responsible.
It is a bit like you building a house and the house deciding what its purpose is.

How do you get from natural selection, which is not a completely random process (although the twists and turns of this evolution could often have produced different results), to an assertion that the life of an individual has no meaning? That is less an argument than a set of assumptions!

If there is a purpose to life it is to fulfil the drive to perpetuate itself. Ideas, even totally irrational ones, also exhibit this characteristic. The strongest survive the longest, but certainly do not pass down the ages unaltered.

The conscious mind is programmed to look for patterns. Recognition of patterns is a major part of the survival process for everything from the single-celled organism through to the entire cosmos. I suspect you would have a tough job on your hands trying to convince, for example, a new mother that her life has no meaning when she has her newborn child in her arms.

I don't follow the simplistic God/house analogy at all. Without the process of natural selection I would not be living in a house. I would be sheltering under a tree or hiding in a cave. Over time the most effective ideas for living in a safe and warm environment have survived resulting in the gradual understanding of building technology.

Sure, I build a house for a purpose. The dynamic of the house is to decay. If my drive to stay there is stronger, I fix things.

[Phil]

That seems fine if you are the result of chance development (evolution) as your life will have no meaning -

Troll worthy comment!

[fjp999]

It is a bit like you building a house and the house deciding what its purpose is.

Sure, I build a house for a purpose. The dynamic of the house is to decay. If my drive to stay there is stronger, I fix things.

[COLOR="Red"]OMG, the RATH OF SWEETS is about to come down on all us OTers!!!

Sorry FG but I really dont understand some of the things you write... It is so weird because I can usually get most concepts but I read and read and re-read some of your statements and they such seem to be in a foreign language... very odd

Marsh, over here ya can just buy another house for under $1,000... seems to be the wave of the future in the ObamaNation [/COLOR]

[marshlander]

OMG, the RATH OF SWEETS is about to come down on all us OTers!!!

:biggrin: I hope not, that's a scary thought! As it happens I thought I stayed on-topic (Meaning of life???) pretty well, considering the strength of the urge to follow FG's bait.

I'm still waiting for him to respond to sweetlad's request and take his discussion to a new thread, although if this were my thread I would probably not have wanted to keep the discussion quite so narrow.

Marsh, over here ya can just buy another house for under $1,000... seems to be the wave of the future in the ObamaNation

Tempting thought, a house of my own

[fjp999]

Tempting thought, a house of my own

They are called fixer uppers and the killer is that the feds will give you money, loans or whatnot (depending on your income), to fix it up. Lets all gay-up Detroit!

*I was really speaking about myself being so OT

[Fromgenesis]

How do you get from natural selection, which is not a completely random process (although the twists and turns of this evolution could often have produced different results), to an assertion that the life of an individual has no meaning? That is less an argument than a set of assumptions!.

Maybe my argument should have been more comprehensive. The theory of evolution postulates that nothing exploded and by chance/random (one in a trillion,trillion, trillion etc) the correct “ingredients” came together to form a living organism – life “evolved” – hence evolution. This was the context in which I used the reference to evolution, the idea of evolution versus creationism.
Putting it more plainly then, if something happened with no purpose, it has no purpose. I was not discussing the process of evolution from very basic structures to more complicated structures etc.

I don't follow the simplistic God/house analogy at all.

What I was referring to is that if there is a Creator, the creation cannot give meaning to itself other than what the creator intended. Sorry, I do think in very simplistic terms.