Amos

Good point and that is why nausea is the visible smoke of Existential torment.

The best way to ignore the influence of God on our life is to be a cold Catholic and nobody can do this better then Catholics. To become an Existentialist is to aggravate the fire [within] that you are trying to quench.

Amos

"Knock-on effect" is a new one to me but I think it is like a domino-effect. Yes, that has to be true because our actions are influenced by our thoughts and by our surrounding. What I wanted you to know is that in my view our actions also reshape the destiny of our children because their soul is inherited through us and it is by their soul nature that their life is predetermined. In case you missed it, our soul nature is retained in our subconscious mind.

Yes and we are responsible for our actions and held accountible if we violate our freedom to act as responsible individuals.

Our soul nature is the knowldge that we inherited from our ancestors. For Hardy is was like a Yew-tree, in the Bible it is a fig tree, for Methuselah it was his age, for Joseph it was towards Bethlehem and for Jesus it was the father as in "the father and I are one."

Our soul nature is the home base of our angels, it is where we are omniscient, eternal and therefore least hu-man but wo-man instead. Therefore, yes, it has something to do with our human condition because it is the cause of our human-ity being conditional (an illusion).

Yes we are finite beings *and* we are eternal beings because these two cannot be conceived to exist without the other. In our soul we are eternal and in our ego we are finite. Both will find its end when we die so eternity has nothing to do with longevity. Eternity makes reference to the origen of our perspective which can come from the bottom of our soul or from the blank slate that be started on. "Freedom," then, is not ours until we know and understand the very depth of our soul (which is the "depth, width and breadth of the Lord our God").

Perhaps so Luise but please don't take what I write as the final end of Sartre's ideas. What I remember most is his "theory of negation" and since this is a direct clash with my ideas I began to negate much of what he wrote.Maybe he didn't quite go that far but there was a division in their train of thought that included a return to the mystery of religion.

Amos

In Christendom the end of religion is heaven on earth which is much the same as Nirvana in Buddhism. For example, in Catholicism the Christ-mass is equal to the final round of samsara in Buddhism. An "end" like this is not found in Existentialism and the reason why I say that it is much better than Christian fundamentalism is because with the absense of heaven the condition we call hell is also not available to them (the implication here is that the'd all go to hell too).

So what Existentialism calls "the end" is really our defeat wherein we accept the unknown element of life and learn to cope with it as knowledge that can never be ours. I find this tragic and would much rather that we ignored it all together.

For sure, except that we are much more discreet about it. The flip side of this is that we get more opposition from fundamentalism (rational religions).

Sorry, that was a nasty play on words because "man as man" is eternal and in eternity tomorrow never comes. The 'apparent' human reality is not real except for humans who therefore will die.

The absense of the absurd is to know our own soul wherein we are God and therefore omniscient. Someone here will know more about the division in Existentialism but I remember there was a movement that returned to include the mystery of religion. It was just presented to us like this in a lecture and I found this very interesting.

DOLBAC DENIS

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Hmmm...here's something I've always wondered about : How can life be called meaningless just because there is no God?
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For athiests, this is indeed a very hard question to answer.

It is religious vanity which complicates the answers, reality is much simpler, we are just passing by, our origin are combinations of amino acids, and we shall give them back after some transformation during our anyway futile life.

Question about Sartre's going back to catholicism was raised again, but I cannot find it. Sartre had no interest in catholicism which he rightfully considered a retarted belief, but he was under the influence of his secretary/guru who was a young mystic/perverse who certainly played with the idea to inflence Sartre on religious beliefs.
People getting old are sometimes unpredictable and disappointing.
We had Mitterrand (French president) he was certainly a rationnal skeptic, atheist all along his life, when his cancer became aggressive, he consulted astrologists and did not oppose to have religious funerals.
I have warned my relatives to hang the priests who could come around to give me some last sacrament, but who knows !!!

mimi

I've always thought that the 'nausea' came from a preoccupation with death rather than anything else. Maybe not death itself, but the meaninglessness it assigns to life, raising metaphysical doubts, etc...kinda like the equivalent of Camus' absurdity.

So my answer to he question would be, life is rendered 'meaningless' when atheists deny God, religion, afterlife, onmiscience etc. because at the end of the day, when you're dead and gone, there's nothing left. There was no real goal/aim/purpose/pearly gates as are associated with theism.

I've always agreed with this, and still do, except it stops short of explaining what meaning life does have, if it's not theistic. People have trouble with this. I guess the idea of meaninglessness doesn't quite sit right in our goal-oriented world.

The realisation of true freedom cannot come without some trepidation. It's similar to when a prisoner is released after 30 years in the slammer. The lack of direction, the profusion of choices, must be overwhelming. Some flourish, some break down.

Personally, I love it, but it's hard to remember on a daily basis (especially when you're studying twenty hours a week and working twenty two hours a week just so you can become a low-paid architect after 7 years of hard slog. Me, pessimist? Never!)

Amos

But who is the "we" that does this giving back and to whom is it given back is really what the question was. Both the "we" and the "who" are part of us and through our understanding of this combination has man gained dominion as an animal . So yes, to be in charge of our amino acids and direct them towards a brighter future is really what life is all about.

Amos

40 Years or midlife (38 to be exact) is the right time for realization. To be a slave of our dominant ego for half of our life is long enough to realize that it can also be of service to us.

mimi

"The right time"? What the hell is that??? The realisation I am talking about has nothing to do with ego - it is the realisation that nothing supernatural binds us, that we are free. Hence my prisoner analogy.

DOLBAC DENIS

Man domination over animal is the result of chances and necessities.
Ref midlife life, this is a very machist statement, females have a life expectation superior by 8 years. Second critic but not the last nor the least, you seem to completely ignore people like Liberians who to-day have a life expectation probably below 40 male or female.

Amos

Sure but would that be the same for unbelievers or were they always free? Most Catholics I know do not feel bound by the supernatural but do the things they do because they think that tradition is important.