It’s not… it’s a “natural” process… not to be mistaken for an “intelligent” process… It does not correct itself to better achieve it’s ultimate purpose… it’s purpose is the process itself…
I disagree… it does not “seem to have reason”… it’s just a process… we identify it based on the effect it causes… we have no reason to suspect that the effect was it’s “intent”… seeing as how it is non-conscious… it’s reasonable to say it has no “intent”… it just is…
Originally? there still is today!
plenty of insects and animals are self-destructive… and in a few thousand years they will be dead and gone… hell when the sun expands and the earth is destroyed… humans are the only likely survivors… all the other life forms are likely to die… lest we save them… in which case they survive by being useful to humans
that is if we don’t nuke ourselves to death first…
That’s the same thing… prior to any action there needs to be motivation… that motivation will be in the form of an objective… an ideal… a goal… even if it is originally as simple as “survival”… the means to that end can become extreamly complicated…
We’re not talking about “nothingness” nor non-existence… we’re talking about death… it is the state of “non-life”…
In a sense… yes. Reality does not love us… nor does it care about us… it just is… and we are no more special to it than anything else… and that is a frightening realization… we grow that much more aware of our own mortality and smallness… the fear of death/desire to live becomes that much more potent…
A human CAN… but not of our own natural volition… we are not “naturally” inclined towards suicide… it would require an external influence to guide us towards it… and a failure on our part to resist this influence… it’s all part of natural selection…
Then the reason god exists would be absurde… existence itself is absurde… there is no inherent need for existence… that anything exists at all is an absurdity…
absurdity
Fear of death = Desire to live…
What I am saying is that life is a purpose onto itself… there is no “other” reason for life… the most basic of all desires is that to live… it would be “illogical” to conclude suicide given a desire to live… you might very well conclude that there is no OTHER reason for choosing to live… but that hardly invalidates the reason that exists…
your reasoning seems to be:
All that is not eternal, is not worth striving for.
Life is not eternal
Life is not worth striving for.
In which case… I wholly disagree with your first premis…
Who or what would we be defying? ourselves?
I don’t know about you… but I need a reason to defy myself… not a reason NOT to…
the default is to desire life… I need a reason to reject this desire… not a reason to have it… since it’s inherent in me…
all you can do is say “it won’t last forever”… to which I can only respond “I still want it.”
you can keep asking why… and my answer will be the same… “it’s my very nature to want it”…
It’s an inherent desire… it does not come from something outside myself… it’s part of my very being…
You might ask how come I am this way… and I would once again direct you to natural selection as the answer…
Survival IS the purpose… I don’t understand why this is such a hard concept…
There is a primary “source” in each of us… an original motivation from which we operate… that motivation is survival… if we were to remove that motivation… it would be like pulling the plug… all motion would stop… there is no driving force OTHER than that one… ONE is enough however… there does not need to be ANOTHER
You are making “purpose” out to be something OTHER than motivation… in which case “purpose” is a meaningless term…
It’s an impossible question… What motivates me other than that which motivates me?
Hmm, well I think I’m understanding your standpoint better, though I can’t say I quite see your logic. It’s a strange philosophy, one I’ve never come across. I still have a few questions if you’ve no objections (I suspect I’m being thoroughly annoying, but you’ve got to bear with us simpletons ).
Perhaps you could point me towards some of these instincts. I’m obviously wholly ignorant on the subject. Instincts that were originally useful but later became destructive because of change of situation don’t count.
So by non-life, you mean not existing in this specific state that we are in now? Because obviously consciousness, or the force for consciousness, cannot ‘cease to exist’. Individual persona could dissipate, assuming it to be material, certainly, but the actual animating force for consciousness, this surely cannot ‘cease to exist’.
Does this mean, then, that, despite being an atheist, you consider religion a good thing, because it provides a helpful delusion which gives us strength and stops us from becoming miserable nervous wrecks?
But doesn’t the fact that we’re self-aware give us the freedom to realize our own pointlessness and so leave us with a choice? No, I suspect you’ll hold that we are total automatons, with no control over our own destiny, so that is a silly question.
So you don’t agree with Freud that there is a ‘death urge’ within us as well as a ‘life urge’?
I see your reasoning here. You presume that there can’t be an original purpose, because then that purpose would not itself be aiding in any purpose, and so would be purposeless (just like the ‘Instinct for Survival’). But by saying such a thing aren’t you proclaiming to be all-knowing; assuming that, above God, a whole new plain of understanding doesn’t appear, which opens new concepts beyond purpose, which we are currently unaware of. A problem lies in our lack of understanding of existence. You can’t really say anything about existence because you don’t understand it. A theist is the same. He can point back to God, but beyond that he is ignorant. To say that it is purposeless is to assume that every possible concept relating to existence is open to us. But our ignorance of existence obviously limits us.
So you don’t equate the fear of death with the fear of being nothing, just the fear of change?
Actually, my reasoning would be:
All that has no purpose is not worth doing.
Life has no purpose.
Living is not worth doing.
Now, I’m worried that we have different definitions of ‘purpose’. I would consider it only applicable to something which is a means to an end. For example, if a is a means of achieving b, then the purpose of a is the achievement of b. If we use your reasoning here, it would look like this:
Survival is a means of achieving survival. -
Obviously that’s a nonsense statement, and the term ‘purpose’ cannot be correctly applied to it. If a rock’s purpose were achieving ‘a rock’ it would have no purpose at all, for this is a misuse of language. You might object to my wording, so I’ll try another.
Living is a means of achieving life -
But that makes no sense either, for if something is the purpose of itself, like you have repeated, then surely it has no purpose - something cannot already be what it sets out to be, if it is, it cannot not set out at all. It has no end to achieve - it is ‘purposeless’. Perhaps your definition of purpose is different than mine, or perhaps I’m just being a moron.
Do you equate yourself with your instincts? This might be poor reasoning, but if you can think about your instincts, does that not indicate duality? To be able to think about something, the thinking asset needs to be separate from that which is thought about. This, then, means that, to think about your drives, your thinking element must be separate from your instincts. Something truly unified cannot think about itself, therefore, if you can think about your instincts, you must be separate from your instincts.
That might be bullshit, it just came to me. Sorry if I’m moving off the topic.
Ahh, I think I get what you mean. You are recognizing your own automatism. And, as an automaton cannot have free-will, you cannot ‘choose’ what you care about, etc. Is that right? Either that or you are again referring to your unity with this instinct, to which I would refer you to my previous point.
But our previously noted problem appears here. You have said that the ‘purpose’ of survival is survival itself. Let us look at the suitable dictionary definition for ‘motive’ - “the goal or object of a person’s actions”.
Again, we could re-adjust our terms to fit - “The goal of survival is survival”. Something cannot have itself as its goal. This is like saying, “my goal is being me”. You are already you. Hence, this is not a valid goal. Something cannot be its own goal / purpose.
I have another couple of questions to add:
Why does an atheist have children? Is it not a choice, but rather an automatism?
In accepting the tyranny of the instinct for survival, an atheist is doing exactly what he criticizes a religious person for doing, by giving up his freedom to God. Would you reply to this that freedom is impossible, we have no freedom and are only automatons?
I’ve probably already answered these for my self, but I want to get a very clear picture of your perspective so that I don’t fall into error.
Please… I’m glad to share my thoughts and have them intelligently challanged… that’s why I come here in the first place
Obviously any instinct which would cause immediate death… or death prior to becoming a parent would never have made it past one life cycle… but “moth to a flame” seems an obvious example of a destructive instinct… but this seems a bit irrelevant doesn’t it?
Well seeing as how I believe “the animating force” to be “natural processes” (such as laws of physics and chemistry)… I would have to agree…
HAHA… i’m not sure the alternative to religion is becoming a miserable nervus wrecks… but I imagine that is what it would feel like giving it up… until one realizes that nothing has actually changed… only your perception… and then you go on to be much like you were before… except… you don’t believe in god…
As for religion being a good thing… It CAN be… it certainly has been in the past… when people group together in larger and larger numbers… it becames more and more difficult to give them all a commonality… and religion certainly has managed that.
Life is not “pointless”… it’s “life”… full of plesures and pains… and all sorts of experiences… it only lasts for a limted time, however… the question is… do we still want it or not? and instinctivly we do…
I fail to see how we could NOT have an influence over our own destinies… even if determinism was the case… after all… our actions DO determine our future… and we act according to who we are… so then who we are determines what will become of us…
we can argue about who or what makes us who we are for an eternity and be no wiser for it… so let’s not get into that one here…
obviously
Well… until I am made aware of such a plain… I see no reason to assume it exists… and even if it did exist… It could very well exist in this universe… and I would still be unaware of it… it need not exist “above god”… it merely needs to exist “above me”…
I am not saying anything about existence… other than it is absurde… ultimately… I am unable to fathom the purpose of existence… whatever purpose you posit… I will question the purpose of… and that will lead to infinite regression… which in itself is quite absurde…
In a way… it’s the fear of becoming a corpse… Don’t ask me what that feels like… because obviously… I don’t know… but it certainly would not feel like “life”…
how best to explain it… hmm…
If i tied two apples together and named this “unity” of two apples “dapple”… then “dapple” would cease to exist the moment I cut the string… it became something other than “dapple”…
But that’s the problem… Life is not something we “do”… life is what we are… and wanting to be “alive” is the reason we “do” other things… like eat, sleep, go to work… ect…
I understand it in the same way… this is not our problem…
Nope… you said “b is a means of achieving b”…
that’s like going to survival camp to learn how to survive… only to have the instructor come out and say “the best way of surviving is to NOT die!”… that’s a bit vague at best…
eating is a means to survival… sleeping is a means to survival… learning a useful skill is a means to survival… making friends is a means to survival… and so on…
“survival” is not a “means”… it’s an “end”…
Obviously… this is wrong… I am alive now… but unless I secure food for myself… I won’t be alive for as long as I would have been otherwise…
… I don’t know how to respond to that…
Among other things… yes. That’s why they are “my” instincts…
No… why should it?
You just made that up…
why do you think we call ourselves “self-aware”? (you guessed it) because we are aware of ourselves… being aware of myself does not mean I cease being myself… if that were the case then it would mean that “self-awareness” was impossible… and that you could only know what you USED to be… never what you currently are…
What if I were to think about my last thought? does that mean the thought was not mine?
I think that was a wild shot in the dark there… perhaps I failed to understand the concept… hard to say…
I disagree with calling it “automatism”… I am becoming aware of my own “nature”… and I find myself unable to wish for another “nature”… since I have no motivation to do so…
No… I said that the purpose life was survival…
But it can… if my goal is to “have this appartment look like x” and it already looks like x… then I would porform no action… if an earthquake were to hit… then i would have to act in order to restore x… right?
wrong…
If i were intelligent… and this were my sole purpose… then I would seek to glue and bolt and fortify this appartment against ALL known threats, PRIOR to the earthquake… first I might nail the items here and there… I might then create a matel box around the appaertment with no doors… I might then launch the metal box with the appartment into space… to avoid earthquakes and weather problems ect… I might then develope space travel in order to distence the metal box from the sun that would some day expand… I might then seek to exit the universe entirely to avoid black holes and other such problems… ect ect ect… I might even wish to master the universe itself in order to avoid any event from taking place which might disturbe the appartment…
The problem is that you are envisioning a static enviroment where there is no change unless we cause it… that is not the case… presurving what already is, is a much more difficult “purpose” in this universe than causing change…
shoot
Why does a christian have children?
because we’re stupid… and dont realize how much truble they are before it’s too late!
Simple answer is… we want there to be young people to take care of us when we grow old…
I would never criticize a person for giving up his/her “freedom” to god… I criticize them for giving up their freedom for a make believe character thay think is “god”…
Clearly I was confused in my last post. This might be nonsense because this topic is now so long I’ve forgotten where we were.
First of all I need to ask, do you believe in free-will? Because it seems that you don’t, saying that, for a person to deny the instinct for survival, he would have to be pushed to it from something without, and could not make the choice to do so. Perhaps we would define free-will differently. But if you can’t deny your instincts, then surely they completely rule over you. You might again claim that you are your instincts, or such like. I suppose then we’d have to fiddle with the idea of free-will. Because, if we all have only one will, that being our instincts, then we all have only one shared will and can’t choose another one, so surely we don’t have free-will. (As it happens, I’m not sure I believe in free-will, but that’s another story). To sum up, If I can’t go against my instincts, I don’t have truly free-will. Is that incorrect?
Secondly, I’m assume I’m correct that you claim that the purpose of life is survival. Obviously I misunderstood you. If we change my statement to “life is a means of not dying”, does this seem more like what you believe. I’m still not sure about the logic of this deduction. Can we really consider ‘avoiding death’ as the purpose of life. Wouldn’t we be better to say, life is purposeless, but continuing life once it has started is a means of avoiding death. Ice in itself is not a means of avoiding water, but keeping the ice cold would be.
In your logic, life came from non-life as a means to avoid non-life. What? Again, I think maybe this confusion is my fault. I have always been considering somethings purpose ‘what it comes into being for’, as well as ‘what end it is a means to’.
If I asked ‘for what purpose did life come into being?’, how would you answer?
This may be my mistake. I suspect this is due to our differing perspectives, and me not taking into account how an atheist views phenomena. Would you say that nothing comes into being for a reason? I’m suspecting you might say that the creation of life was purposeless, but that once it is here, it has a purpose, though that purpose is impossible and absurd. I suppose it is the language element that confuses me. For example, a hammer appears for no particular purpose, but then a man finds it, uses it for hammering, and it now has purpose. I was taking why the life first appeared as an element.
Well this thread looks quite interesting but unfortunately for me it is too far progressed for me to read and understand the enormous volume of responses and counter-responses. In browsing though, this caught my eye:
I believe this is a common misunderstanding of Buddhism in general. It is at least not true of Mahayana Buddhism. The Heart Sutra states “Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. Emptiness is no other than form. Form is no other than emptiness.” The ‘material’ world in itself is no issue at all. In the mythic or metaphorical language of the tradition, people can walk through walls and fly over the landscape. The point is that the very dualities that we tend to assert between supposed dichotomies are actually quite questionable to begin with. If the Buddhist goal was to escape society and the material world, why would so many great teachers devote their entire lives to teaching others? Because they are too attached / not advanced enough? The cycle of reincarnation is seen as simply a fact of life - not a curse. Again, the great teachers of the tradition are said to voluntarily reincarnate in the way that they choose to. Whether a person takes this literally or metaphorically, the meaning is the same - whereas most people lead lives where they are victims of their circumstances, a realized teacher has some sort of command over their situation. As a simple exercise for instance you can look more closely at how you feel when you notice in yourself a general sense of alienation and victimization and then look at how you feel when you say to yourself “I choose to be here” and at least temporarily believe in that and act that way. The Buddhist religion is the opposite of ‘defeatist’ from any angle that I look at it. The most fundamental dichotomy that Buddhism proposes is that between ‘samsara’ and ‘nirvana’. The Buddhist path consists of a continual personal and subjective re-examination and re-evaluation of what exactly samsara and nirvana are.
Buddhism is just as often confused with atheism and nihilism as it is with theism and eternalism. ‘The Middle Way’ between these two alludes in some respects to the re-examination and re-evaluation process mentioned above. In the beginning the practitioner is simply told that a middle way between those ‘extremes’ is possible and is the best course. This is not strictly a philosophical position, but is a view that emcompasses lifestyle choices in general. “Don’t be a glutton, but don’t starve yourself either. This is sensible and will make you happier.” However as the practitioner matures and learns to make full use of his/her discriminating intelligence, they may gradually come to their own understanding as to what to accept (‘nirvana’) and what to reject (‘samsara’). Neither the path nor the ‘answers’ are the same for all people. And yet it is said that the final realization of Buddhahood has certain qualities that can be described. So there is in fact a goal (of sorts, since ‘letting go’ and ‘acceptance’ are major aspects of the path), a purpose, and in general the development of qualities such as the stability, clarity, and strength of the mind. Our minds, which we sometimes think of as our worst enemies, can instead become our greatest asset. Buddhism has nothing in common with defeatism (unless that means acceptance of the world we live in) nor suicide (unless that means abandoning unwholesome ways of living).
Yes, I have become aware that the comment on Buddhism was misguided, as not all forms of it have escape as their only aim. Mahayana is a version that I plan to look into.
Back to my previous post, I’ve realized something that needs adding. Man Man P, you seem to consider ‘life’ and ‘the maintenance of life’ as the same thing. Because when you say - the purpose of life is to avoid death - what you mean is - the purpose of maintaining life is to avoid death. Are the two, then, the same thing, and is their purpose the same? I’m not so sure.
The purpose of maintenance of a car is to keep it running. But the purpose of the car itself is to facilitate travel. The two purposes are distinct. If the car is not used for travel, then maintaining it becomes pointless. There seems to be both ‘inherent purpose’, that which a thing was created for, and ‘circumstantial purpose’ (for want of a better term), that which a thing already existing is used for. So, for example, a man takes a rock and uses it to hammer something. ‘Hammering’ is not the rocks inherent purpose, but rather its circumstantial purpose. If we take a proper hammer however, that was created for the purpose of hammering (If we take the hammer as a whole rather than as its parts), it does have a clear inherent purpose.
I am an atheist, and might be what you call a ‘‘moral atheist’’. I think morals are meaningless and useless. And I can prattle and philosophise about the meaningless constructs of the meaningless construct, but, all in all that don’t mean diddly-squat to the guy with gun in his face or a hot poker in his belly due to my direct or indirect actions. I don’t love the guy, I frankly don’t care about the guys fate, but I care about my own and I might one day be that guy and people lead by example, and I’m setting one with so-called morality. It’s the exact same thing as the seemingly circular pointlessness of evolution.
I think that everything is meaningless, and from that I can exist as the evolutionary and societal robot that I can never help but be. The only remotely ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘decent’’ thing I can do is not have kids.
That some actions clearly result in misery and suffering is enough of a “justification” to be moral for me. That I don´t require some all-seeing eye to care about such suffering in fact gives atheist morality more intrinsic worth. Even if there were a God, knowing exactly what he wants in every moral situation is an entirely additional (unbridgeable?) problem.
I don´t understand the monopoly God has to have on “meaning”. What would make God´s existence so meaningful? Existence itself is all I need to stir me into action. Morality is crucial to making the most of what we have, this giving it a meaningful purpose.
What´s God´s reason for existence? We, too, are able to make plans and values. More importantly, moral actions can only occur within a shared world; thus, whether God can be moral seems more contentious.
Beauty, taste, merit, etc., are similarly “meaningless”, but that would hardly stop us from feeling lost or unsatisfied when passing views about them.
I don´t think there´s any objective good or bad, right or wrong, or ultimate goal. Our intelligence and empathy allow us to determine these for ourselves. Unlike any other animal, we can take the reigns of our evolution. You can see this as teleological, but that implies predetermination, a view I, despite erring toward determinisn, reject competely. Our destiny exists only insofar as we control and blind nature dictates (sets the background, rules, and limits). I don´t see how your third paragraph about “oneness” is exclusive to theists, because it sounds to me just like evolution. I think morality is simply that by which humans can maximise social cohesion. The primitive “morality” of animals rules because they haven´t the intelligence to operate otherwise. Sure, the biological mechanisms responsible for our behaviour may seem disturbingly out of synch with artists´, philosophers´, and particularly theists´ appeals to other-worldly natures or causes which (held by some, are needed to) give “meaning” to these marvellous experiences and emotional intoxication they bring, but why must our rich and complex lives entail some grand metaphysical background in order to not lose meaning? Essentially, our experiences should not be affected in the slightest. Given their uncertainty, dabble lightheartedly in metaphysical speculation. In this case, however, what we see is one group (theists) concluding that another group´s (atheists) mode of living is meaningless and inferior. So I´d say that your belief is wrongfully giving us an air of irreverance.
Overall I think your criterion for moral meaning is too high; within which, atheists are doomed to failure, hence my feeling that it´s your standards being too high, rather than our´s being too low.
I would say empathy and practical outcome are enough to justify moral behaviors and position. If for example, by nature we strive to survive within a social setting as a first premise, considering the context from that point it’s easy to see how and why moral behavior came about and even why we value it.
I’m not suggesting an objective morality per say, but I believe it exist in no less than an intersubjective setting stemming from objective conditions met.
It depends on what they are saying by it being wrong. If your first premise is what we aim for by our nature, it’s easy to apply ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in terms of outcome v.s. goal.
This is a matter of opinion on your part per your definition, I reject the idea that purpose must be instilled by any outside being. By your definition I will also add that ‘God’ himself will have given false meaning to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. It can only be coherent from within the context of conditions already in place. An infinit regression in all cases make morality incoherent and meaningless. Even in the case for God…
Then by your standard, the meaning and purpose God gives has no more meaning and purpose then that which we give ourselves. Again, infinit regression makes all things void, even God’s made up morality…
If your going to deny the first casuse so to speak, you have no leg to stand on…
I once asked another person on this subject if he felt God made up morality or if the system had some sort of stand alone use. What do you think? Do you think God just made up morality or are there conditions present in the context of our existence that give rise to it’s use?
I’m a compatibilist. The person could make the choice, but that doesn’t mean it’s something he want’s to do. Our decision making has relative features.
It’s not free will if it’s without reason… It would be random, not free-will at all. Part of being a biological creature means we have a nature, one that by our very existence goes hand in hand with what we are.
You can go against it, but you may not want to…
What is “truly free-will”? By nature I want to live, so I choose to do so. That is freedom of will. Again, you can go against your instincts, it just so happens you may not want to… The way I see it, it’s not a matter of rather we have free-will, but rather, how does it work.
Who said God has nothing beyond him? Your thinking of the hypothetical idea of our God as first mover and absolute. This is not an idea I can understand, because then he would have ‘nothing’ beyond him, and I see no reason to believe in ‘nothingness’.
I was posing the question to mad man, who claimed that someone can’t choose to kill themselves, they can only be pushed into it from without. Such is a claim that we can’t go against the Instinct of Survival.
I’d also recommend anyone approaching this thread to read the whole thing through rather than replying to my first post, as we’ve come along way since then, I’ve had some of my misconceptions knocked down and have posed new ones in an attempt to understand better.
I know who you was talking to, I just wanted to share my opinion. But more or less, I don’t think he is suggesting the idea quite the same way you are stating it. If I choose death for whatever reason, it doesn’t mean I didn’t wan’t to live. Only that something factored into the event that possibly left me with hard, or even pore choice options.
To me it seems he is suggesting that the choice is something they would rather not have to make. Your ‘will’ while I believe it is free to ‘want’, doesn’t mean your free to act. I think he is suggesting that the want to live is there even in the face of other choices.
Basically, it seems that the claim is, the instict is ever present even if we make choices that go against it. To me that isn’t the same as saying ‘we can’t go against it’ just that ‘we can’t stop it from being there’. Or maybe I’m wrong, I find out when he replies I suppose…
At some point you have to run into first cause. It’s an incoherent idea to suggest an infinite cycle of life with no starting point. I couldn’t even fathom such a thing. It denies any use of our language to reconcile the concept.
When you get to a first cause, you get to the problem of false meaning again per your theory. Your taking concepts outside of the context they exist in…
That makes no sense to me… Obviously people CAN make the choice to end their own lives…
What I was trying to say was that the survival instinct was the primary driving force in all of us… obviously anyone who “pulls the plug”, so to speak, on that drive will end up dead… WHY some people do so is an issue for psychologists to figure out… but I’m guessing the primary reasons are a lack of hope or a belief in a better after-life…
As for a belief in free will… No… I don’t believe in free will… I believe in an ordered and intelligible universe… it’s a weak belief and I only hold it for one reason only… So that there is reason to investigate and uncover the mechanism behind all things…
If I were to believe in free will or some other such non-ordered thing I might have to conclude that some things are “random” or “unknowable” given my own ignorance… and thus to abandon my quest of understanding them… and that would be a horrible thing.
We can all “deny” our instincts GIVEN cause… but that’s the trick… we NEED a cause… SOMETHING has to motivate this denial… and that something is not an instinct…
But you keep doing this odd seperation of “instincts” and the ego… while I see them as ONE…
No instinct “rules” a person… they ARE the person… just like reason is a part of you… emotions… sensations… memories… ect…
these things make up who we are… you cannot seperate us from them without creating something very different…
Indeed I might
Erm… that made little sense…
We all have instincts… but we do not all have the exact same instincts… and we do not all have the exact same experiences… so we do not all have “one shared will”…
Keep in mind that being an atheist… I have no god and thus no reason to try and make all forms of life equally perfect at the “task” that is survival… Humans for example sometimes commit suicide… ants will eject a perfectly capable member of their hive if one were to spray it with a certain oder… and countless other such “imperfections” exist in various life forms…
No… not at all…
The purpose of life is survival… I mean this in the sense that “survival” is the goal that all forms of life have. That is the direction in which life will go… towards survival…
But “Life”, the phenomena, is not a means to anything… for that to be the case life has to have been “created” with a purpose in mind.
I do not know of any master plan for the universe… much less what role life is to play in that plan…
This leads back to the absurdity of existence… if you posit a god that created life for a certain purpose then the purpose of that god would be in question… and the purpose of his purpose and so on and so forth… for “purpose” to be a meaningful word we need to allow for “means” to be an “end” onto themselves… at some point in our explinations we are forced to simply say “there is no purpose”
You are confusing the word “life” here… “life” as a phenomena has no purpose (external)… but life itself has a purpose (inherent) which is survival…
No… life did not create itself… life was created by the universe… a product of a natural process…
Life is dynamic… it moves and it acts… it’s actions are guided by it’s purpose (inherent) which is survival…
the actions of life come into being for the purpose of survival… and survival is also the end to which it’s actions are a means.
But life itself has no purpose (external)…
For the same purpose that existence exists.
You seem to have a fair understanding…
Life as an “element” or “phenomena” has no purpose… but it does have an inherent purpose…
Your hammer example would be better made if you had said “a rock appears for no purpose, but then a man finds it and builds a hammer with it”… was it the rock’s purpose to become a hammer, then? or is it still without purpose?
Indeed!!
You just made my point!
Life was built from parts and by a process which inherently had no purpose in mind, or rather a “circumstantial purpose”… but then life (as a whole) suddenly HAS a clear inherent purpose… and like all things in this world… the purpose of life is in it’s process… the purpose of life is to live… to survive… the purpose of gravity is to be gravity… the prupose of existence is to exist… all things do what they do because that is what they are… and it is necessarily their purpose to be what they are…
To cut to the chase here… let me just say that you are assigning purpose from a human perspective… which is why we are failing here…
In your world view god made man in his own image and so it seems natural to assume a human perspective when asigning purpose… but in my world view… “nature” created all things in it’s own image… and thus all things, like in nature, have the purpose of being what they are… or IOW they have no purpose outside of the “inherent” nature of themselves… and in the case of life… it’s nature is to seek survival…
It’s really late and I’m afried I might have made some mistakes in this post… but I’m too tired to find them right now… I’m also very busy as I am about to get married soon… so please bare with me… thanks in advance.
I’m a theist, but I think an atheist can be moral. Not to the same extent as a true theist, though. There are a greater number of theists in prison, but prisoners tend to be uneducated. Not to correlate theism with a lack of education, but to correlate a lack of education with criminal behavior.
It’s your everyday sort of immorality where I think atheists have a shortcoming, because I imagine they think they can get away with little things. But then you have to consider all of those who call themselves “theists” who are just trying to make a buck as well…
One thing I don’t understand is atheist childbirth. How could you be so cruel as to bring a child into the world, knowing the truth? Either they’ll be a crazy, revolting piece of meat living a half-assed lie, or they’ll know that their existence is meaningless. Since, apparently, we theists created God and the afterlife because we can’t cope with the alternative, how can you possibly know that your child will be able to cope?
Of course, the theist could give birth to an atheist child as well, but at least they would believe that the child was wrong, and that their suffering has a purpose. You might think they’re wrong, but at least they can be excused on account of insanity, right?
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Haha