Subject:
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Re: What is the meaning of life? (was: Does God have a monopoly on gods?)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 7 Mar 2000 07:46:18 GMT
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Viewed:
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1138 times
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Peter Callaway wrote:
> and all there will be to show for a lifetime of thoughts, experiences,
> opinions, relationships and good and bad deeds will be a handfull of ashes.
Kevin wrote:
> *I* won't be here any more, but I will live on in the memories of people
> whose lives I've touched, in my daughter's genes and any descendents she
> may have, in what I've written (however long that may last), in what
> I've built (ditto), etc etc. See, my take on "what we're here for" is
> "to leave the world better than I found it". If I can do that, (and much
> of what I do in life comes down to that), then I have something
> worthwhile to show for my life.
The religious point of view (Peter's) wants there to be a permanent result to a
life, in order for it to have meaning now. Kevin partially rebuts this by saying
that what we leave for other people is enough. Yet both of these approaches
focus on what is left after life. I believe there is no need to look before or
after life to justify it.
I approach this empirically. Nobody knows anything about a great beyond (I'm
aware people claim to, but what can you find out?) What you DO have is an
awareness of your self, of what you are. You have to ask What Am I? before you
can consider Where Am I Going? The basic fact is that I am a living creature,
and of a particular evolved type that uses its wits to stay alive. So I should
try to do just that. (Animals don't suffer from doubt about their place in the
world because they don't have our type of consciousness.) By and large, I have
to discover everything needed for my survival piece by piece (aided by example.)
Along the way, I recognize the things that I did well (within their type) and
this gives me a feeling of pride.
From a very early age I've felt that my own actions were their own reward. There
have been some really rotten years, when I suffered from confusion and
loneliness (we do need other people), but the preacher's alternative of
believing in some imaginary friend and talking to him only promised to undermine
the sense of self-suffiency I was trying to build. (This is why I believe
religion is harmful to children--it takes away their right to discover what they
are and own it, and instead makes them over as part of someone else's unending
plan.)
I have discovered that religion, practiced sincerely, corrupts the thought
processes, turns the mind inward (to ignore perceptions of reality) in an
attempt to sustain an imaginary conversation with a vague feeling of its own
making. Historically, every religion has been some mixture of this impulse with
some good ideas (or we'd all be dead.) On average, as a species, we are still
caught in this trap, where a religious impulse undercuts our chance to discover
what we are and what we can be (and be satisfied to be.)
I realize a lot of this will sound sketchy and (so-called) idealistic, but this
is after all just a few short paragraphs staking out an alternative.
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