Sarcastic or not, I believe that your previous remark was quite rightful, and that life does have a purpose than just serving nature as being top of of the food chain.Originally Posted by 0=2
Sarcastic or not, I believe that your previous remark was quite rightful, and that life does have a purpose than just serving nature as being top of of the food chain.
Congratulations. Does that make death easier for you?
Nice as pointed optimism chained to lofty ideals on human "morals" are... the fact remains atrocity still occurs, and writing it off as different from utopia is only a moralists stand-point, and the moralists happiness in such a situation is terribly tied to his or her surroundings.
I'd suggest a more vertical alignment so that you don't sink quite as easily when Guantanamo touches home.
Making death easier for me? How does living your life to the best with sense of morals make death easier? Pure fear is what affects a person's perspectives about death and living your life with morals doesnt affect the fear that arises from death.
Life,,life,,life
It is to born on this a wide theater..to began your role as a great man and to die or leave this world as a greatest man,,
My opinion is, that the meaning of life is to simply give it a meaning. Make it worth living.
On a larger scale considering science and evolution etc I agree life could be seemingly pointless but the meaning I place on my own life is that I should use whatever time I have on doing things which make me happy. I like to think that their may be a God but I don't follow religion and I don't really believe in one as such. It's a nice idea and who really knows.
Thomas Hobbes considers "a man's present means to obtain some future apparent good," where he's aim of every activity is to obtain happiness and its good, avoiding evil and fear which is the recognition that good may not be attainable.
In this logic, it is true that we hope that everyday we may gain maximum amount of happiness and beneficial goods. The line "make most of everyday" is relevant, which links to gain happiness, how everyday we must be willing to make the effort to attain so.
Aristotle believed in Teleology of Nature, a study of the purposes things serve. He believed that in order to understand why the things they were, we must have a solid understanding of what purpose they were created to serve.
In order to reveal the meaning of life, it is true that we must reveal the purpose of life first, which requires us to understand what purpose mankind was designed to achieve.
cyclical.
exactly.
to you.
bolding mine. go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume and check out design argument.
a meaning for life is found through experience. probably important that our reasoning and terminology in this thread subscribe to experience
Of course the meaning of something and its purpose to serve something is cyclical. That is the point. To know the meaning of, we must firstly know its purpose. However we cannot discover the meaning first and purpose second. The order is what is important. To know the meaning of life, we must know what purpose it is there to serve.
So you think I am the only one who thinks figuring out what belongs to the spirit and what to the mind is difficult? I ask you, how do you differentiate between the two, when we think, does it come from the brain, mind or heart?
Thanks for sharing information about Hume, but I have to disagree with his thoughts.
1. " Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and "purpose". "
This experience Humes talks about I see is strictly is based on our daily lives in our physical world. Experience as what we perceive by our physical senses, in concrete substances in our world. As God, the designer is above all physical layer, it is not easy for us to sense Him in this world, therefore we cannot include Him directly to our everyday experiences, which is the reason why it SEEMS that God accounts for a small part of our experiences.
2. "Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall"
Supports my idea that it is not easy for us human to recognise God into being in our experiences, especially to the non religious. We human are so used to recognise what we can directly relate to, see the organic and human made in this world, and failing to receive the message from God spiritually. I think that we fall for the easy, the obvious, and ignore the difficult and the unobtrusive.
3." Who is designer's designer? "
The religious believe that God is the beginning and the end, the alpha the omega, the first and the last. What it comes down to is really faith. He alone is the Creator, the infinite of light and hope.
I would like to add, the religious improves their belief with God through experiences that relate with Him spiritually. It doesnt recover the idea that these experiences help us to understand the meaning of God in any way.
Having life experiences doesnt necessarily mean that we gain more understanding about life at all. The experiences may teach us a thing or a two about the way we SHOULD live our lives, however it may not contribute at all to our understandings of our purpose in life. If we miss this vital knowledge, we miss the knowledge of meaning of life altogether.
Last edited by skasian; 01-23-2009 at 12:40 PM.
no it isnt, skasian, that is NOT the point. when you dont know something you should simply say "i dont know this". your arguments are always revolving around cyclical arguments that dont explain anything at all. " im hungry because i wanna eat", yeah, great one sherlock. the meaning of life, the purpose of life, same thing, this isnt about etymology.
"So you think I am the only one who thinks figuring out what belongs to the spirit and what to the mind is difficult? I ask you, how do you differentiate between the two, when we think, does it come from the brain, mind or heart?"
excuse me? when have i said that?
putting words in my mouth doesnt validate your argument, sorry.
there is a great difference between mind and spirit. im sure you are familiar with freud, so you should start reading that maybe, if you want a materialistic aproach to the subject. id, ego and superego, theres a great difference between the three of them, and you can even link those three to the superior triangle of the sephirot tree, kether, binah and chokmah, if youre willing to take a deeper and more philosophical aproach to the subject.
im not trying to win a contest on who gives the longest and most eloquent speech, so if you want to find out all these things you arent sure of, go seek for youself.
I find myself repeating for your own sake. Meaning of Life and purpose of life are NOT the same thing. You can understand the meaning of something by knowing the purpose it serves first, but not the other way around. If the two things were the same, you wouldnt have this restriction. Take the discovery of the fire, a caveman has to know the purpose first to know the meaning, not the otherway around.
"Im hungry because I wanna eat" and "I wanna eat because Im hungry", is different to what I said, see the difference.
Since when was my argument revolving around cyclical arguments that dont explain anything at all? If you dont understand something I express, then please ask what you dont get.
Look at your last posts, when I said
"It is unclear where the borderline lies between the mind and the spirit"
you said "to you" as if I am the only one that cannot create a borderline between the two. If I have misunderstood your remark, then I apologise.
hi...i don't think there's a responsibility to create meaning. If there's no meaning - which I believe - why infer anything from this meaninglessness. This meaninglessness is a bald, unworkable fact, to be accepted and then walked away from; I don't see why it must be the premise of a new argument. Once meainglessness is accepted, any further conversation about meaning is out of place. I think it's better just to talk about motivation, personal desire - whatever. But the acceptance of meaninglessness - meaninglessness is incapable as a foundation for anything.
What in the world does not have a meaning. Everything that is designed to have function has a meaning. Its simple as that.
skasian. again, your wording is flawed. you assume meaning bc you assume a design. a meaning for life other than living and dying probably doesnt exist in my opinion, but nonetheless, unqualified premises such as the design argument or a creator are no way to reach a suitable answer to the title of this thread.
anyhoot, i wanna rebutt your rebuttal of hume argument against design:
hume
you1. " Design accounts for only a tiny part of our experience with order and "purpose". "
without experience and our senses we have no knowledge to speak of. to conclude that something beyond our realm of knowledge is responsible for our being here is really saying nothing in the realm of knowledge because you cant even have an infinitesimal idea of anything that isnt sensed, experienced, or rationally deduced.This experience Humes talks about I see is strictly is based on our daily lives in our physical world. Experience as what we perceive by our physical senses, in concrete substances in our world. As God, the designer is above all physical layer, it is not easy for us to sense Him in this world, therefore we cannot include Him directly to our everyday experiences, which is the reason why it SEEMS that God accounts for a small part of our experiences.
hume
you2. "Furthermore, the design argument is based on an incomplete analogy: because of our experience with objects, we can recognise human-designed ones, comparing for example a pile of stones and a brick wall"
no. the design argument is a weak weak analogy. you cant just use the inability of human recognition of the divine to support a designer. again, your really saying nothing here except that you have some 6th sense which can recognize design where others cannot.Supports my idea that it is not easy for us human to recognise God into being in our experiences, especially to the non religious. We human are so used to recognise what we can directly relate to, see the organic and human made in this world, and failing to receive the message from God spiritually. I think that we fall for the easy, the obvious, and ignore the difficult and the unobtrusive.
hume
you3." Who is designer's designer? "a bible quote has no place in this argument. its an appeal to an unreliable authority. unreliable bc bronze age superstition in a highly illiterate portion of the middle east is laughable in comparison to modern day theory of the universe and our world.The religious believe that God is the beginning and the end, the alpha the omega, the first and the last. What it comes down to is really faith. He alone is the Creator, the infinite of light and hope.
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