"The Meaning of Life"

[Trillipse]

Now, this is by nature a well-worn topic. Can anyone give me their own take on why everything *is*. . . I come from a Methodist Christian family and for them, everything is pretty much sewn up. Most of the people I know take a passive materialist/humanist/atheist stance. I am caught between the two, and as such i am angst-ridden and clenchy. anyone got any good ideas? my philosophy degree didn't help much either, but i put all my *faith* in the answer bank... don't let me down...

[MargeB]

Take John Paul II, for example. He said, during his lifetime, that he more or less accepted Darwinian evolution and he went along with the modern concept of man and modern psychology. Modern psychology and Darwinian evolution LEAVE NO PLACE FOR CHRISTIANITY. They make a mockery of its very principles. And yet, he went on bleating about Jesus til his very death.

[Octavius]

Someone said once that if you spend too much time looking for the meaning of life, you forget to live it.

[MargeB]

"The unexamined life is not worth living." Socrates.

[Bob A Job]

What i believe is the Meaning of life:-

'Acceptance'

When you accept your life as it is NOW and not what you think it should be, you can really make a start on enjoying what time you have left.

Accept the fact that every human being is different, cherish those differences. If someone has a character flaw, forgive them, because we all have them.

Accept that people have different prioritys and beliefs, they will conflict sometimes. When they do stay calm and try to keep the peace.

Accept the fact that everything ends, Including your time on this earth.

Accept that there will be bad times as well as good times, keep your friends close and you will get through it.

Never hold a grudge, it only interferes with the rest of your life.

Never lie to those nearest, honesty will work out fine in the long run.

Never lie to yourself, if you know something is wrong, dont do it.

Always find time to say thankyou, especially to those who will not be with us forever.

 

As to "why everything 'is' " accept that we will never fully know.

[MargeB]

By the way, my Socrates quote was just being thrown into the melting pot, Octavius, I don't disagree with what you say, really. "Life is what happens to people while they are making plans for it." Maybe it's best just to live once in a while.

[MargeB]

I like your answer, Bob A Job, but there are two bits that I don't understand. I know what you are saying, but I don't 'get' them.

Accept that there will be bad times as well as good times, keep your friends close and you will get through it.

Never hold a grudge, it only interferes with the rest of your life.

I know what this means, when I try and take this pill, it keeps getting stuck in my throat.

[jno]

MargeB, I'm not sure I've followed your post, which seems muddled and repetitive (sorry, I don't mean your thinking but the actual posting - chunks of it appear more than once, and it's spread across two web pages as well). But basically I just don't believe that Christians, and other believers, have 'badly messed up their lives'. That seems to condemn millions of our ancestors to having been stupid and wasteful - rather the opposite of those Mormons who try to baptise everyone who ever died, to get them into heaven retrospectively - even if in fact they led good and useful and happy lives. That's because I don't think religion has the profound effect on daily living you say it does; believers and non-believers alike love their neighbours or don't, buy bread or don't, save for their old age or don't.

As for whether it is rational to believe in God - well, you'll know Pascal's wager: it pays to believe in God because if he exists you gain by getting into heaven and if he doesn't you've lost nothing. But while evolutionary science may have shown Genesis to be no more than symbolic, just one creation myth among many, has it actually disproved God's existence?

[El D]

Aha the old chestnut. I don't believe anyone has disproved my fairies either. Only if you open your eyes and look for them with faith will they be seen.

The fact that religion has no effect on the vast majority of people is because they are not truly religious. If you believed your everlasting soul was at risk you would simply never be as blase about keeping the faith. These days keep the bits they like and discard the bits they don't like or feel comfortable with and call it religion, in actual fact it's more of a social convention.

I have already explained Pascale's wager will not work.
Yes the nice Mormons, committing sacrilege on corpses to make themselves feel better. . . Doesnt the mere fact that according to your faith living a useful and happy life is worthless to your god point you in the right direction?

[jno]

The Mormons don't do anything to corpses. They just collect names and baptise them. They don't do it to make themselves feel good but to make the deceased feel good. If you aren't religious, this won't worry you, will it? If baptism is meaningless it can hardly be sacrilege.

[jno]

(Sorry to post in two parts El D - I accidentally got myself on to the previous page while writing and couldn't double check what you'd written)

As far as fairies go, you're welcome to believe in them. Proving they do or don't exist doesn't prove God does or doesn't exist - they're a parallel case but not actually connected.

You're right about people picking and choosing what they believe, though as I think MargeB was saying religion doesn't really involve 'choosing'; belief is more profound than choice and you can't easily change your mind. But as for being not truly religious - well, that depends. Most of the posts so far, including mine, have loosely assumed God = Christianity. But there are a lot of Christianities (not to mention Islam). Some Catholics believe they'll go to hell if they use contraception, and others don't. That doesn't mean the latter aren't truly religious - their belief in God is just as firm as the others' - just that they don't accept the teachings of the pope. This doesn't make them non-believers.

[El D]

So by your logic then I would be perfectly rational believing in fairies? God and fairies are both connected - noone has ever seen/heard/proved they exist to an objective audience. Merely stating the fact that they have not been disproved does not equate to a rationale for belief.

How will baptism help the deceased? I would prefer not to have some cult have me associated with it on principle, although you are correct in stating it will not effect me at all.

Such believers are not catholics then, as catholics take their lead from Rome. Under the catholic religion they would go to hell or purgatory or wherever.

[jno]

El D, I must admit I'm not quite sure of the mechanics of how post-death baptism gets you into heaven. If it works with me, I won't complain. If it doesn't work, I won't complain. Pascal again, I suppose.

I'm not sure whether Catholics who use birth control are really Catholics or not. Certainly, no pope has ever told them they aren't and kicked them out. Churches try to reform sinners, not expel them. But some Catholic ABer might be able to comment on that.

I repeat that God and fairies aren't connected. If God were proved to exist, it would say nothing about whether fairies did or not, and vice versa. You might as well say 'If you believe in the dodo you must believe in the ivory-billed woodpecker' - both being non-existent (because extinct) birds. But they've just found some ivory-billed woodpeckers... and yet dodos are still extinct. They're parallel cases, but they're not connected.

[MargeB]

Catholicism sees many forms of contraception as 'abortion', since some pills and mechanical devices rely sometimes on defeating not conception itself, but the very early stages of human life. As such, the Catholic Church would 'anathema sit' anyone carrying out such acts and see them as automatically excommunicated. I'm not a catholic myself, so would welcome comments from the better informed.

[MargeB]

Rereading your question, Trillipse, I find it kind of funny, since I came through almost an identical situation. At the sharp (your) end, it is pretty angst-ridden, I didn't find that very pleasant. Think about your mind and brain. It's a big neural network, and also a kind of hierarchy. Much of what it has worked out kind of comes from the top down: 'meaning of life' and 'religion' have network links to all kinds of things like 'social responsibility', 'motivation', 'opposite sex', 'ethics', 'relationships with others'. In one fell swoop, you have started flicking switches at the very top. This is pretty hard on your poor brain, it now has to start working to rearrange stuff. I have friends who were in the same situation, and the same happened to them. Far from religion being 'segregated' in peoples lives and minds, it infiltrates most things. You may want to do some self-help courses to add a bit of order and direction in your life.

On a different note, I remember listening to this great tune at the time, by one of my favourite bands:

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/the-offspring/the-meaning-of-life.html

[El D]

They are not connected spiritually but they are in terms of requirements for belief. Your example is flawed, of course because both birds can therefore be proven to exist.

Consider, if I had postulated an extinct bird on the basis of a theoretical approach which had yielded certain results, yet a fellow scholar of mine postulated, based on the same available evidence, that the bird was in fact a different species, people would be free to make their own mind up, yet rationally equally entitled to believe in each species. The same applies to god and fairies. While you are correct in stating that the proof of one does not disprove or prove the other, belief in one entitles said person to belief in the other on the same grounds, yet how many people believe in fairies. Logical questioning leads to certain factors such as societal conditioning and the human selfish dynamic and again, this can only add to the doubt surrounding both fictional creatures.

[Octavius]

MargeB, you are kinda twisting the facts.  Abortion??

The church views fucundity as a gift. Quote "The view of the Catholic Church on contraception is that one should abstain from sex, unless it is for the purpose of procreation.  Using a condom prevents procreation and the Church therefore see this as morally wrong."

"The state has a responsibility for its citizens' well-being. In this capacity it is legitimate for it to intervene to orient the demography of the population. This can be done by means of objective and respectful information, but certainly not by authoritarian, coercive measures."

Just to be clear, I m a catholic and my views are not that of the Church, I believe contraception should be used and do not think sex is just for procreation. I do however, still see no contradiction in the views of the Church in terms of morality.

[MargeB]

Octavius, I'm not sure what you're saying in your post. Catholic definitions of 'abortion' and 'contraception' do give rise to an overlap of these two things in reality.

Catholicism says that human life begins at conception. Many contraceptive pills have a failsafe mechanism, and the IUD (coil) has a primary mechanism, that are designed to get rid of a fertilized embryo. This action is regarded by catholicism as abortion.

So, Octavius, where is the twisting of facts?

[MargeB]

I am just pointing out the facts as I see them, I definitely do not subscribe to catholicism.

Always good to read El D's posts. Ah, the sweet smell of logic.

[MargeB]

Octavius: "I do however still see no contradiction in the views of the Church in terms of morality."

I don't know what you're referring to here. Do you think that contraception is congruous with Catholic moral teaching?

[MargeB]

I found this relevant, and the 'suing' bit highly amusing:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=32830