A life with the belief without God, with no ultimate purpose for myself, just an accident and I know this.
A life with the belief in God, purposeful, with an ultimate purpose.
A life with uncertainty and just stay apathetic, let the road of life take it’s course, w/e happens happens, you’re not in control.
0voters
This is a question I haven’t took much time to think about, but I feel we should, we all should. Gee, I hope I’ve given enough options, it was all I can think of that’s true.
I don’t care for the options, although I suppose I would be closer to the first than anything.
I think we create our own purpose within our own brains, even if that means accepting and interpreting a pre-existing idea. (such as conventional religion)
This is actually a question that I have been struggling with a lot recently. Like a lot. So my answer is ever-changing.
Right now, what I’m going to say is that I think there is a powerful argument (Aristotle) for the human person having intrinsic value. What I mean to say is that there doesn’t need to be a God for there to be purpose. Even if there is no God at all, there seems to be value in such activities as raising a child well, forming strong healthy relationships, nurturing the body, learning and understanding. I understand that many might argue that yes, that may be true but for those things to be ‘good’, their ‘goodness’ must inhere in some sort of higher power. That is my struggle. But I feel as though I have value. And that others have value. If anything there is that, the preservation and furtherance of our species.
Wow. And just as a further note on how confused I am I just went back and saw that I posted on a topic earlier today that said something like there can be no absolute moral truth without God. So basically I’m conflicted. But I think that’s better than being oh so sure of a flawed position.
Good post, and I agree with you. My point was with the answers that I don’t feel one can belief they have an infinite external worth if this universe is just chance and we will be gone forever sometime anyhow, nothing then will matter. I only feel this discovery affects my own self worth at least “some”. Although yes, you can be atheist and have purpose intrinsically, I agree.
A life which is the only real thing we’ve got and share, and which could be gone forever at any moment. In scientific terms we are incredibly lucky to be here, so lets make the most of every second of it, promote the intrinsic values of peace, brotherhood and liberty, and stop people stealing the finite, and thus precious lives of others through acts such as oppression, exploitation, cruelty and worst of all murder.
Okay. You left out a belief without God, with ultimate purpose, and myself not an accident. It’s beyond me how you made this mistake. If you’re going to continue to operate on the belief that there can be no purpose without a God, why don’t you come back to my The Meaning of Life thread and prove it?
But there is no ultimate purpose without a purpose like a God. Without God you were here by chance, a mere accidental enity, something that just happened.
So no there can be no ultimate purpose without some form of a God, There can’t be an ultimate purpose if there is no ultimate purpose. I think that’s pretty clear actually.
First of all, you’d have to prove that us being here accidentally and ultimate purpose are mutually exclusive. I think I’ll let that slide, and agree with you that they are. Next, you’ll have to prove that us not being here by chance requires a god. That for us to be here non-randomly there must be a god. Go forth, do it.
Here, you’re making the “pretty clear” mistake of assuming that ultimate purpose and God are synonymous, as in the second sentence you substitute the latter for former. Not so.
What? I have to prove that us not being here by chance requires a God? How? Whoever said we weren’t here by chance? How do I prove we weren’t? lol, I mean if I knew we were here other than chance, a creation, then I would know there was a creator, I would be able to prove God, so you ask the impossible here, and I can’t do the impossible.
Ok, well I agree there. I should have put an option that you believe in God but you don’t believe we have an ultimate purpose, my mistake, I see your point there.
What do you mean by ultimate purpose? What is the difference between ‘ultimate’ purpose and just regular purpose in life? I’m guessing you mean a purpose that is both eternal and objective – it’s an eternal end, a happily ever after, which is objective because it’s for everyone: what everyone is ‘supposed’ to do. Certainly the usual atheist materialist doesn’t believe in such a purpose, since at least it can’t be eternal (death is the end). But he might conceive of an objective purpose, or at least a purpose that he feels it would be good for everyone to take upon themselves as their purpose. Something beautiful that everyone should choose for themselves to go towards.
There is a lot of shades of meaning in purpose, and I feel that the word ‘ultimate’ muddies the waters somewhat.
The word ‘random’ is also abused a lot in these conversations. People should either not use it, or clarify the shade of meaning they are using. Do you mean random in a probabilistic sense, like possibilities being sampled from a distribution, or do you mean “without intelligent design”, or what? Something which is without intelligent design can still be highly deterministic and non-random in a probabilistic sense; natural selection is a prime example. Natural selection is not random, but depends very highly on the environment where it happens. That’s why evolution leads to adapted life forms and not just any old life form.
So Club what do you mean by random? or ‘by chance’ or whatever you’re using now…
What I’m saying is, for example. There’s a play with actors, but there’s no script. It doesn’t really matter what they do ultimately, even though the actors on stage may not like it(and for the sake of this analogy exclude an audience please ) I can’t see the connection that if the universe wasn’t meant to happen or not meant to happen, it just happened naturally, than we can’t ever contribute to it’s purpose because it ultimately never had one to begin with. If by chance the universe does have a purpose, then I can only wonder why it’s thinking or doing acts, and if it’s choosing to do something, I wonder if that’s not a supreme being of some sort. For us to be ultimately purposeful the universe would have chosen us to play a part of some sort. But if it never chose, it was just a happening, like me walking for no reason in a infinite space of nothingness, I can never go a a wrong way or right way, or no purposeful way.
Have I better explained this? Or is more questioning needed, ask away, but please make sure you’ve read what I wrote, I tried my best.
