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You are asking the wrong questions. Its related to my title about it being sad and making life pointless if there is no afterlife or God.
I suspect BCD understood your OP and was relaying that seeing life as pointless, because of no afterlife, is a byproduct of having an expectation of being more significant than we actually are.
I would also hold that religion has done a lot to instill that notion. So it's probably not surprising for former theists to find the notion of no afterlife, or immortality of some sort, to be disappointing.
Why do humans think they are that significant or they should be? Isn't that just ego?
Why demean the product of our consciousness by saying "just ego"? Our ability even to ask these questions is unique enough amid the dearth of such abilities that assuming it has no significance whatsoever strains probability.
Quote:
Why do people think that the universe owes them something beyond this life?
Why does it have to mean we are owed anything? Why does it not mean we have a purpose instead?
Isn't it sad that our existence is meaningless? That there is no afterlife, no god, and no real meaning to our lives? Eventually the whole earth and every remnant of human life will be gone with noting to show for everything we've done, everything we've created, everything we've passed on here. It's all for nothing. I don't think about it often, and enjoy my day to day existence, but it is still sad. Obviously one of the major reasons religion was created in the first place.
I don't believe any of that. I think all of that is just your opinion. There might be other people who are of the same opinion but that's all it is. A sad opinion. So ..... if I was going to feel sad about any of it then it would be to feel sad for people who feel that kind of depressing worthlessness about themselves and the universe.
Why demean the product of our consciousness by saying "just ego"? Our ability even to ask these questions is unique enough amid the dearth of such abilities that assuming it has no significance whatsoever strains probability.Why does it have to mean we are owed anything? Why does it not mean we have a purpose instead?
If you shrink the entire universe to the be the size of the earth, then the earth would be 20 million times smaller than a hydrogen atom.
That is our place in the universe and that is how meaningful, purposeful and significant we are. Our egos should reflect our reality.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jman07
Isn't it sad that our existence is meaningless? That there is no afterlife, no god, and no real meaning to our lives? Eventually the whole earth and every remnant of human life will be gone with noting to show for everything we've done, everything we've created, everything we've passed on here. It's all for nothing. I don't think about it often, and enjoy my day to day existence, but it is still sad. Obviously one of the major reasons religion was created in the first place.
Why is it sad? When we die, we become worm food.
I think that is awesome! All my bio-degradable body parts will eventually feed some other living organism. Which will feed some humans somewhere down the chain.
A few billion years from now when our sun goes boom and collapses, creating a black hole the solar system will get sucked into, every single atom in my body will still exist, just like it has always existed since the universe began.
I think that is awesome! All my bio-degradable body parts will eventually feed some other living organism. Which will feed some humans somewhere down the chain.
A few billion years from now when our sun goes boom and collapses, creating a black hole the solar system will get sucked into, every single atom in my body will still exist, just like it has always existed since the universe began.
I think that is awesome!
There is no way you truly think that is awesome. You and I both know it to be the truth, but (presumptuously, on my part) neither you nor I think it is awesome. Unless you're as delusional as the theists you commonly denigrate on this forum. I can say the prior sentence (clause, actually--not even a sentence) with confidence because I know what makes humans tick, psychologically (and very generally)--and it is not the idea that their multiple steps of organic/atomic decomposition involve being food for worms and then atoms to be interchanged with all the generic-and-uncountable/untrackable atoms of the universe. Never has a depressed human received a psychological boost by thinking in these terms.
The continued reproduction/replication of human life is predicated on self-deception (or collectively effective mass delusion). Nihilists are 'righteously' but unceremoniously impotent.
Location: In a little house on the prairie - literally
10,202 posts, read 7,922,771 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Marcinkiewicz
There is no way you truly think that is awesome. You and I both know it to be the truth, but (presumptuously, on my part) neither you nor I think it is awesome. Unless you're as delusional as the theists you commonly denigrate on this forum. I can say the prior sentence (clause, actually--not even a sentence) with confidence because I know what makes humans tick, psychologically (and very generally)--and it is not the idea that their multiple steps of organic/atomic decomposition involve being food for worms and then atoms to be interchanged with all the generic-and-uncountable/untrackable atoms of the universe. Never has a depressed human received a psychological boost by thinking in these terms.
The continued reproduction/replication of human life is predicated on self-deception (or collectively effective mass delusion). Nihilists are 'righteously' but unceremoniously impotent.
Why would one not think it is awesome.
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss
I'm not sure why you suggest I am as delusional as the theists. We are part of nature; that is factual. As such, why can we NOT understand that part of nature that is us? No woo involved, just reality, and accepting that reality, makes one filled with wonder. Again, no woo required.
Your reference to a depressed person getting a psychological boost is hardly definitive; it is your opinion, and relates to one can only assume that some of religion get into prayer mode thinking it may help whatever their situation may be. Fine, as long as they are doing no harm, ala Benny Hinn, let them. But you are only surmising that those that find peace in nature are not similarly enhanced psychologically, and actually enhanced physically due to their communing in real nature. Contemplating the wonder that they will have an eternal life, just not in the manner that religions teach.
Yes. I would indeed be "Sad" as any who have the staggeringly marvellous universe that we live in to know about and not think it "Awesome". Which doesn't go as far as "worshipful" of course, since all our propitiation by prayer, adoration, faith - belief in this, that or the other thing, tithes or sacrifices, wouldn't make a molecules' worth of difference to it (1).
Which is why I call myself a naturalist materialist humanist skeptical agnostic atheist. Not every time, of course, and not a Pantheist.
(1) anti -theist apologetics caveat - so far as we know, as regards sound logical assessment of all the valid evidence.
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 06-27-2016 at 04:02 AM..
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