Jaybees

Of course. Nor was it your fault that you confused mind with motive.

spin

How earnestly would you like a why?

What exactly is entailed in the classic "mysteries of existence"?

I don't give a fuck about atheists here, TedM. Why do you keep insinuating them? Why didn't you think of your last sentence here below and saved us both the tangent?

But you have some unstated scenario playing in your head for what the creation of a universe entails, which is not based on anything significant and will bias your views.

I guess you just want the bullshit for your sty of contentment. You've indicated that you can't pass the Nash test and therefore do not know whether your presuppositions about supernatural entities is delusion (or twaddle) or not. You can't answer a simple question like "why is green green?" yet you think you can get significant answers to the sorts of questions you have been trained ask. You know the sort of cliches that one gets asked at the door by ambulant evangelists, "why are you here?", "why is there evil?", "why isn't there peace love and understanding in the best of all possible worlds?" (They shuffle off after being invigorated by their spouting of such inanities and you think that's what this world is coming to.)

outhouse

no, thats code for imagination


and you only dodge questions regarding your creation mythology

TedM

Bye.

TedM

Earnestly because I have little interest in worthless knowledge or material pleasures of life. Life itself has little value if there is no reason for it. It would just be an accident and you and I would be no more important than a rock. And if we are important to someone else that's nice but it won't matter when we die. Legacy is of little importance, and taking care of the planet or our children's future is of little importance because life itself is of little importance. IOW the things people think are important just aren't if life is an accident.

Because I"m not only responding to you.

TedM

I feel I've been extremely forthright. Let those who have ears, hear.

outhouse

not really you have not.


you will not answer any question that you could be later cornered in. A position as a atheist you could never put me in.

maryhelena

Ted, I could cry reading these words of yours. Whether life is an accident or some divine creation or plan, is, ultimately of no consequence. It is the life we live, the life that we do have, that is relevant. And no, it’s not a question of how we live that life either that gives it value. Life has value because it just is - life. Life holds out no gifts or promises - just raw potential and the vagaries of chance. Our saving grace, so to speak, is not to look at the bright side of life and ignore its often cruel side - it is rather to look life in its often bloodshot eye and yet be able to hold back our frustrations - while finding some measure of contentment in our experience of it. What that contentment might be rests, of course, with each of us individually. And yes, there might well come a time when, through accident or illness, that we cannot be content with our living experience and wish for it to end. When our mental capacity and our dignity are impaired our dying days might well be a sad farewell to life. But, hopefully, we can end our days with a smile on our face for having lived life, for having witnessed it’s great potential - even if the fullness of that potential we only glimpsed in others. Perhaps that is where the contentment comes in - rare as it might be - one has seen life in it’s greatness - and that greatness has been allowed to trump it’s dark side. Actually, Ted, there is no other alternative worth living or thinking about. Life is what we have and we have to celebrate it through our tears.

How we find our contentment in life is, of course, a very personal matter. What grips us, what drives us, what fills us with awe, what brings us pleasure. Yes - those questions suggest that we are not islands but interconnected with others. We leave our mark on others just as they leave their mark on us. Perhaps when our own life is full of dark clouds we can still try and see the sun shining brightly for others? Not that we don’t matter - but life is not fair and others will have more fruit in their baskets than we do. We matter - primarily to ourselves. It is we that live that life and it is us, individually, that have to find a way to see life in it’s greatness - a miracle of nature or of the divine. Either way - life is the primary value for each and every one of us.

If I Can Dream

There must be lights burning brighter somewhere
Got to be birds flying higher in a sky more blue
If I can dream of a better land
Where all my brothers walk hand in hand
Tell me why, oh why, oh why can't my dream come true
Oh why

There must be peace and understanding sometime
Strong winds of promise that will blow away
All the doubt and fear
If I can dream of a warmer sun
Where hope keeps shining on everyone
Tell me why, oh why, oh why wont that sun appear

Were lost in a cloud
With too much rain
Were trapped in a world
That's troubled with pain
But as long as a man
Has the strength to dream
He can redeem his soul and fly

Deep in my heart there's a tremblin question
Still I am sure that the answer gonna come somehow
Out there in the dark, there's a beckoning candle, yeah
And while I can think, while I can talk
While I can stand, while I can walk
While I can dream, please let my dream
Come true, ohhhhh, right now
Let it come true right now
Oh yeah

(sorry Elvis - Alfie now owns this song....http://www.fairsharemusic.com/release/storyteller-19 -
US downloads available from this UK charity related site)

Steve Weiss

What would a non-objective truth be? All truths are objective, meaning that they conform to the facts of reality and the methodology of reason. What could "objective truth" mean in the mouth of a believing Catholic? Resurrection, virgin birth, transsubstantiation, walking on water, etc. are objectively true? By what standard?

spin

It was a trick question. You are admitting that the truth and knowledge are unimportant to you. The trappings that you give to the situation merely make you look different from anyone who is not ruled by reason and moderation. You could be seeking nirvana, 72 virgins, redemption, Valhalla, the promised land, the next bardo, righteous vengeance. It doesn't matter. You're not qualitatively different, are you?

You reify life (like everyone before you) and thus talk nonsense. I've asked you many times now, what is the reason for green. It makes just as much sense as your notion of reason for life. The term "life" is a means of objectifying some commonality between all things that live. Then you can say cockroaches have it. What's the meaning of life in your opinion for the cockroach? A cockroach does what a cockroach does. You can weave that into some giant ritualistic tapestry of fantasy. How does the happy little dysentery bacterium fit into that rich tapestry that gives you such comfort? What's the meaning for its "life"?

Life has no value in any meaningful linguistic sense. Talking about the meaning of life is pure sophistry. You live. Meaning? You breathe. Meaning? You form dubious opinions. Meaning?

What you've got was thrust upon you by your parents, who each supplied 50% of your DNA, though as usual the woman, your mother, did all the work. You exist because of them and you are who you are because of them and all those who came before them. They are mainly responsible for your wisdom and stupidity. Your overburdening need for purpose beyond the fact that someone way back came down from the trees and started a chain of events that led you to asking vain questions here is a reflection of your intellectual heritage. You have evolution written in your genome. You carry around the evidence of self-organization in that four-letter coded double helix. You can turn your back on such evidence and yearn for some trite meaning of life to help you sleep better.

However, beyond such signs of alienation, we generally care for our children (though there are some whose alienation is so strong that they have had that care stolen from them) and want the best for them. At times we find ourselves instinctively helping other people for no apparent gain. It has nothing to do with any intellectual or religious motivation. It is what we do. Many of those who fought for civil rights were non-religious people. People who fought against slavery did so when the bible supported slavery. The movement that won women's suffrage involved the notion that it was what had to happen. It was neither intellectual or religious. You don't have to be gay to know that everyone has the right to choose the life they want to lead without fear of repression. It is only alienation that prevents people from feeling the obviousness of that.

Your fight is with everyday alienation. People learn to loathe what is different. Politics lives on division. People are pitted against each other. They fight for jobs against other people. They fight for a better place in the pecking order. They fight for those pennies. Nevertheless religion binds them together in one big happy family, a bit like Yugoslavia under Tito. (His death unleashed the unresolved alienation.)

I'd rather we dealt with the alienation than worried about keeping primitive religions in operation as a band-aid measure. Worrying about such meaningless notions as the meaning of life keeps you focused on the symptom and not the cure. Your negativity and fear are unhelpful. You prefer to live with ideas that you know may be delusional. That's useful, isn't it?

Nothing matters when we die. We are dead. What matters is when we live. You need to stop wallowing in self-pity. We die. Get over it. It's a natural result of being a complex package of energy: it doesn't hold together that long. Once you get over it, then you decide what you feel right about doing while you're alive. I seriously recommend you read a short book by Seneca called "The Brevity of Life" (here for example). It might help you shed some of the futile thoughts.

Perhaps you should take note of how someone like Shakespeare signals asides.