oriecat

Do you therefore posit that man has a special purpose, over and above all of the other species of life and creation on this earth and in the universe? What is that purpose? Why would your creator create so much else and not give it also a purpose?

diana

In your leisure time, please answer Shadowy Man's question.

d

Phanes

You're equivocating between two notions of "purpose." If by purpose you mean "created towards some desired end" (like a hammer's purpose is to hit nails), then you are right: humans weren't created for some divine plan. Of course, God doesn't have a purpose under this definition either.

But when you say "Life has no purpose," you seem to mean "Life has no meaning (or worth)," which does not follow from the absence of God. Meaning is not some intrinsic property of a thing; it is a relation between an object and some being. Like Theli said, there is no value without a valuer. If people value life, life has value. God is not necessary.

post-it

If man serves no purpose, then no greater value can be set upon the life of a man, thus the murder of a man is no mor wrong than crushing stone. Right and wrong can't exist in a universe without purpose. But right and wrong applies only to humans, thus we have admitted that man must have a purpose for existing greater than that of non-human matter.

If there is no creator god, and this isn't really an argument for that as much as an argument that man has assumed that there is a creator by placing value on life, then it also goes to support that there is no real value to human life given no belief in a creator.

There can be man's self assigned value that we give ourselves which is only a false belief, since in that light there is no purpose for man to exist and there is no value in man's existence.

In a world without a creator, murder can't be wrong.

post-it

I don't mean purpose as in "worth", all effects in the universe have worth, but may not have purpose of existence. example:
A rock has worth if it is used by a snake as shelter, but that doesn't mean shelter was rock's purpose, thus snakes could do without rocks and find shelter some other way. The distruction of rocks as shelter has no value (right or wrong) to snakes.


The object of purpose can't give itself value since it is only an effect of cause, the value is only to the creator of the object. Creator God is necessary for value and purpose.

post-it

Great question, but the question and answer is beside the point. It only needs to be established that man's life has no value without purpose even if that purpose is unknown.

Quote:

Why would your creator create so much else and not give it also a purpose?

If it can be established that one object (man in this case) has a purpose then all other matter in the universe could be said to have a purpose. An argument could be put forward that says the creator created the rest of the universe in order to establish the existence of man on planet earth under these exact laws of the universe.

post-it

That would imply we believe someone created god or that we believe that God has a purpose. I don't think those questions are relevant to man's purpose. If we are trying to discuss the purpose of the computer as an invention, it can't be arrived at by looking into the purpose of man as a human.

Theli

Now you are using some strange ambiguity, whereas you first refer to man as mankind and then as "one man". A person finds purpose for himself and his own life. Even if that entails worshiping god, it is still a purpose chosen by the man himself. And if you are still trying to argue for some objective cosmic valuesystem, where some things just are more valuable than others regardless of what we think. As far as I know there is no such thing. If you find people lacking value to you, that evaluation doesn't have to be true to other people.
And I don't think "wrong" is judged by value alone.
Would it shock you to learn that right, wrong, value and purpose are human inventions. And they don't exist independent of us. Since we live and operate by those concepts, then they do exist. But not outside our own minds.
Hello! I'm over here! Do you see me?
It seems like you are reciting some text completely unaware of my replies. You still haven't explain how a person cannot value things. I can very much value things, and after that the things do have value for me. It's not as if value is something inherit in the things themselfs.
Remeber the hamster and the gold...
Why is murder wrong with a creator, then? If a creator means for me not to kill, then he will create me in a way that I won't kill.
If you say that the reason I can kill and go against my creators wish is "free will", then the value and the choice is in my hands. Just like I've been saying all along.

Family Man

First, while design implies purpose (and we're assuming there is a design here, though I don't believe that), purpose doesn't imply design. A person or an institution can have a purpose that is self-designated. Your argument simply doesn't follow.


A grand, but ludicruous statement. Life is of value in and of itself, perhaps more so because it is the only one I've got. If I permit others to kill willy-nilly, then the odds increase that my own life might be taken. Obviously, it is to my benefit to restrict people from killing others. Why you think the way you do is, well, unexplained at the moment.

Of course it can. As long as we can put value on our lives and possessions, we're going to come up with means to protect them. That's where right and wrong comes from, not some god that is only believed by a fraction of the world. By your reasoning, the Japanese (who don't believe in your god) should have murdered themselves out of existence years ago.

post-it

Value place on man by man is just a belief with no foundation, we just have to ability to believe that man has value, but that doesn't mean it is a fact.

Murder could be wrong with the acceptance of the existence of a creator in that we now could establish that we could have purpose of existence. And should want to keep that existence going by saying it is wrong to kill other men without a justifiable reason.


Your belief in value in other lives has no bearing on whether value truly exists or not. Again, value by man about man is at best only a "belief", not a fact.