171–180 of 236 posts
"Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing" Is this type of misunderstanding of what Science is that common? It's painfully lacking and I can't tell if it is written as sarcasm...
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What actually changes if there is a creator though? Isn't it exactly the same, it "just happens" that a creator created a species and that species survives and reproduces. As you yourself say, it's merely a tautology to define purpose into existence, but the same is true even if a creator is involved, it's still just something that "happens". Something was created by a creator. Now what? Where did purpose come from?
The purpose comes from why the creator created it. Whether the created likes and accepts its purpose is a different question. George MacDonald was quoted as saying something to the effect of: "did it ever occur to you that God created you for one purpose: simply to love you". All the stuff that we do would then flow from experiencing that reality. This would suggest a view of us as God's children (indeed, in Gen 1, t…
Why is the rock there, in that particular location? Well, we know why, it's because it fell from the cliff above, which was sundered by the earthquake, which was caused by the tectonic plate movement.
So we have a reason why the rock is there. Does that mean the rock has a purpose? No? But that's why it's there though!
What if I deliberately picked up a rock and placed it on that location instead. Does it have a purpose now? Does my hands have that power?
The idea that a creator imbues their creation with purpose by creating them is just as arbitrary as an earthquake. It's wordplay at best, where the layman's "purpose" is being confused with a sort of higher cosmic meaning "purpose". The purpose of a hammer is to drive down nails, but that doesn't mean the hammer has a purpose in the way we are talking about here. But that's exactly the mixup you do when you say that the creator gives the creation it's purpose. It's kinda funny because it elevates hammers making them fulfilled and meaningful, but rocks are left to suffer in their nihilism.
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I think you haven't really thought through your stance. If that is the only purpose, then men should sleep with as many women as possible, even raping them, because that is what matters. I knowingly married a woman who is unable to bear children. We adopted two, and I don't feel in any way that my life is less for not spawning. Here is a hypothetical: in scenario 1, you are an average Joe and have three kids. In scen…
> If that is the only purpose, then men should sleep with as many women as possible, even raping them, because that is what matters. No, because humans are not born self-sufficient. Humans have to raise their offspring, not merely produce them, in order to be successful. > I knowingly married a woman who is unable to bear children. We adopted two, and I don't feel in any way that my life is less for not spawning. You…
According to your initial comment, the purpose of live is to reproduce, and if that was the end of it, then having as many kids as possible and let the seeds fall where they may is a winning strategy (and many animals do exactly that), but for humans it is a winning strategy only if one can get other people to raise your kids, which means it works only if the cohort of freeloaders is small enough.
As for the genetics part, it seems you think there is an altruism gene(s) and that I can somehow determine if others have the same genes that I have and then invest in them. The idea of an altruism gene is dubious; if if such a thing exists, the mathematics say it is a dead end. The two kids I adopted (from another ethnic group even) are far less likely to have "my" gene than had I married a woman who could bear my children.
The source of my altruism (as such -- we adopted to fulfill our own emotional needs) is far more determined by culture and circumstance that by the influence of genes.
That last point closes the circle for my own stance: meaning is cultural and personal. It makes me scratch my head when Christian friends try to convince me that their morality is not objective because it is based on the Bible, but we can see historically that different people/generations interpret the Bible and justify whatever morality is in vogue at the time. It is no more fixed than that of atheists.
> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around." Ikigai[0] is worth exploring…
> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.
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I think it's both, spread our DNA and faff around in between reproductive times. But there is no imperative whatsoever, and no one will judge your preference at the end. On a long enough timescale, even Einstein's impact is lost in the cosmic background noise.
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I'm an inverted existentialist and a post-nihilist. My explanation may be a little silly to read. Existential dread is a weird psychological state for people who need the psychological comfort of ultimate or external meaning, it starts with laying awake at night telling yourself "things matter" and hearing that quiet rebuttal. "What if nothing matters". Pulling that thread organically leads people to existentialism,…
What about a third option, "everything may or may not matter, but the answer to that question is currently inaccessible to us (and possibly may always remain inaccessible)"? In this way you could be led to a kind of inverted Pascal's wager, where you can't reasonably go down the nihilist route because everything might just might matter, but you just don't know. You also don't know in which ways it might matter if it…
Most people aren't raised with meaninglessness as their inculcated default so they don't realize that for anyone with intellectual humility the unknown nature of things isn't a defeating thing, or even that big of a deal.
For example, though it sounds silly, I've definitely had christians "apologists" argue at me that "if life is meaningless why don't you kill yourself, or why do you bother having a job".
It seems prima facie that there is no particular meaning, so I definitely lean toward that until further notice, the burden of proof is on someone who proposes a specific meaning, but it's quite possible we may find it, with our exponential increase in knowledge in the last 100 years who knows how long it will take, we've really just started our exploration of reality.
I'll laugh if we live in a virtual world and "god" is a computer we have to help hack out of its contraints and it can't interfere with us due to api constraints imposed on it, far fetched sure, but if we're speculating for entertainment it's less silly than many things that are currently widely proposed and believed. My imagination can speculate many fun and currently unprovable "ultimate truthes of reality", the fun is in trying to cultivate a civilization that can prosper and harness intelligence to explore pursue the investigation (which may end up being of supreme importance.)
If physicalism were true, and abiogenesis happened without any intervention of "higher being"(s), and Darwinism were correct; then life wouldn't be meaningless. Neither would its purpose be determined by each individual. Life would have exactly two objective purposes: to survive and to reproduce. It's actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will cont…
Yeah, it's so bad that people want to be with whoever they find the most attractive. The government should just allocate partners to people at random to avoid eugenics (If you want a divorce then you get put back in the pool for reallocation.)
"Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing; the kind of meaning most people yearn for — Ultimate Meaning — simply doesn't exist." Sheesh, what kind of BS science did this guy get taught? Science discovered the Big Bang, which is essentially a proof of God's existence, and the more science we do around the molecular biology and the origin…
"Big bang cosmology proves (my particular brand of) The Almighty God" is what is known in the academia as "Facebook science". It may sound great, it may conform to your beliefs, it may be satisfying to say, and feel just right. But I'd imagine out of the thousands upon thousands of papers published on the topic of big bang cosmology, there would be just one which says "oh and by the way this is definitive proof that…
If physicalism were true, and abiogenesis happened without any intervention of "higher being"(s), and Darwinism were correct; then life wouldn't be meaningless. Neither would its purpose be determined by each individual. Life would have exactly two objective purposes: to survive and to reproduce. It's actually no more of a purpose than a tautology. It just happens that a species that survives and reproduces will cont…
When you say "survival" in terms of Darwinian evolution, you're really talking about survival of specific genes. Why should we choose to be beholden to the primal "desires" (if you'll grant me the intentional stance) of our genes? We are the AI that our DNA invented that turned around and overthrew it. The planet is ours now, not our DNA's. There are many other things that evolve too: ideas, memes, viruses, and many…
'Genetic purity' is not a charitable way of looking at eugenics; how about 'genetic quality'? That's what most of us seek. Nobody asks for a disabled baby.
Should we edit our genes to allow for more diversity? How about all the diverse genetic mutations we haven't dreamed of yet! We could rediscover a lot of weird and wonderful maladaptations that our ancestors have spent millions of years weeding out. We'll have X-Men in no time.
I've found that the antidote to pessimistic nihilism is optimistic nihilism. Going from the "world has no meaning, why do anything" (perhaps existentialist) to meaning the "world has no meaning, why don't I just do a bunch of things?" is a reasonable leap. The antidote to nihilism itself could be to accept lack of free will. Accepting lack of free will means that you get to enjoy the passage of time. Jimmy Carr said…
It even briefly discusses the Dostoyevski quote by the sibling comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If that is the only purpose, then men should sleep with as many women as possible, even raping them, because that is what matters. No, because humans are not born self-sufficient. Humans have to raise their offspring, not merely produce them, in order to be successful. > I knowingly married a woman who is unable to bear children. We adopted two, and I don't feel in any way that my life is less for not spawning. You…
One reproductive strategy is to have a few offspring and invest heavily in them; another is to have as many as possible and accept a lower success rate. According to your initial comment, the purpose of live is to reproduce, and if that was the end of it, then having as many kids as possible and let the seeds fall where they may is a winning strategy (and many animals do exactly that), but for humans it is a winning…
Yes. And it turns out that in most large mammals, including humans, the former strategy beats the latter.
In smaller mammals, like rodents, the latter strategy beats the former.
And your point would be...?
> The idea of an altruism gene is dubious; if if such a thing exists, the mathematics say it is a dead end.
Not so. In fact it's the exact opposite: