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The meaning of life is to populate the universe

nazariusk.posterous.com

11–20 of 29 posts

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#13
post #9
post #8

The meaning of matter is to vibrate really really fast. That is its purpose. There is no other.

Or to become energy...

The meaning of energy is to be a natural demarcation between living (smart matter) and non living (dumb matter). This is its purpose. There is no other.

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#14
One thing that I don't get is what was before and what is the source of Big Bang. So Big Bang, boom, expansion, star/planet formation, red shift, evolution, selfish gene, humans - I get. But where did the Big Bang came from? Fluctuation from nothingness? Why? From something else? Why? Something existed before and produced the Big Bang? Where this thing that existed before came from then? Doesn't make any sense.

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#16
post #14

One thing that I don't get is what was before and what is the source of Big Bang. So Big Bang, boom, expansion, star/planet formation, red shift, evolution, selfish gene, humans - I get. But where did the Big Bang came from? Fluctuation from nothingness? Why? From something else? Why? Something existed before and produced the Big Bang? Where this thing that existed before came from then? Doesn't make any sense.

I suggest directing some of your curiosity towards Google. This topic has been discussed many times before. In short: Your notion of "cause and effect" is not necessarily meaningful or applicable to all aspects of nature. Time could have been created in the Big Bang.

Also, it's possible that the entire process was continuous... the closer you rewind towards the big bang, the longer it takes to rewind just a little bit further.

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#17
post #14

One thing that I don't get is what was before and what is the source of Big Bang. So Big Bang, boom, expansion, star/planet formation, red shift, evolution, selfish gene, humans - I get. But where did the Big Bang came from? Fluctuation from nothingness? Why? From something else? Why? Something existed before and produced the Big Bang? Where this thing that existed before came from then? Doesn't make any sense.

This may be a meaningless question. If the very moments of creation of the universe are indeed the moments of creation of spacetime, what does "before" mean? Moreover, if the universe is "existence," how could we begin to perceive, imagine, or study existence without existence?

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#18
I'd have to take the Nihilistic stance that life is without any objective meaning. It appears to me that any meaning, morals, or values that somebody claims are inherent to the universe are merely their own human abstraction; this post included. Yet, that shouldn't (and doesn't) stop anybody from prescribing meaning to things and living "full" lives and achieving happiness. There are two facts that I strongly believe in: We're stuck being humans, for better or worse, and the universe will continue to be indifferent.

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#19

I'd have to take the Nihilistic stance that life is without any objective meaning. It appears to me that any meaning, morals, or values that somebody claims are inherent to the universe are merely their own human abstraction; this post included. Yet, that shouldn't (and doesn't) stop anybody from prescribing meaning to things and living "full" lives and achieving happiness. There are two facts that I strongly believe…

A decent summary, but I'd still suggest anyone who relates to this answer to read Nietzsche (specifically, The Gay Science and probably Beyond Good and Evil).

Re: The meaning of life is to populate the universe

#20
I'm sorry but without concrete definitions this entire discussion is stupid. (Retroactively defining words to make your position tautological is not valuable either.)

The entire article consists of a remark that life is a self-replicating chemical reaction.

A more interesting question to debate might be whether this replicating property is an acceptable definition for life, (i.e. can there exist systems that aren't replicating but can be considered life, and how might these arise independently of replicating life?), or what happens when you apply various definitions of life to other systems than the physical universe.

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