Open discussion of the Christian Why We're Here thread

[SteveII]

Go to any graveyard and look at any gravestone over 100 years old. The memories of that person do not exist in anyone anymore. That person has no current value or purpose because IMO, those are perceived qualities about a person. He certainly isn't perceiving that anymore. No one else alive remembers him. Any value he had to his family or society is long forgotten. In fact, it might have been the case that society would have been better if he were never born.  How is that transcendent meaning? 

I don;t have to perceive my own value to -be- valuable..so I don;t know why I;d have to be alive to have been or still be valuable.  Perhaps the people in those graveyards aren;t as forgettable as you're imagining, to say nothing of whatever they accomplished in life? 

That's just on an individual scale, and transcendence already expresses itself.  We're not at the point of entire families or projects or societies or cultures or civilizations or..for that matter..the totality of the human race and experience.  

Even the "bad examples" are transcendent precisely for having been bad examples.  

It;s transcendent in every way that any god has ever been, at least.  I don;t see the problem..perhaps you prefer some other transcendent thing or person, but okay..and so what? 

Sure, you don't have to perceive your own value to be valuable. But you do in order to perceive that your life has meaning. Otherwise it is just hope that something you do has some lasting value (and therefore meaning) in some sort of backward causality way. Say you live in a little insulated mountain town and a mudslide wipes out the whole town and everyone in it--erasing any effect that hundreds of people had on the greater world. They have no transcendent value/purpose and therefore meaning on the world.  Or say a 10 year old child dies. What meaning will survive the memory of loved ones?

If God exists, we were made for a purpose and have value to an eternal and omniscient God. From that comes a meaning to life that transcends all time and avoids the problem of relying on yourself and others to provide subjective meaning. 

Firstly, the one doesn;t follow from the other in the slightest, but if meaning something to someone else qualifies as transcendence to you then I;m not sure why you just poo-pood entire graveyards full of people who just as easily mean something to someone else.  In what way do you avoid relying on others if you rely on god..are you god....and how is gods perception of your value supposed to be anything other than subjective in the same way? 

We are not using 'transcendent meaning' the same way. I am defining it as meaning that is "beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience". You are defining it as whatever meaning you can squeeze out of life that last for some period of time afterwards. You cannot have transcendent meaning without a transcendent entity that values you either for what you are or for what you did. In a godless world, everything you could possible describe as having meaning/value/purpose is subjective and relatively fleeting--lasting as long as your effect does. 

They would fine meaning because God made them, has a purpose for them, loves them and eternally cares what happens to them. They have value.

That;s just a small sliver of all potential or possible meaning and value..and I see nothing there that a human being can;t provide, or that would require a god...or even that you can demonstrate -is- provided by a god. 

Sure humans can provide that. Not everyone has someone to provide it though. Whether you believe in God or not, it is incontrovertible that the belief of a loving God that cares for you because you have intrinsic value has an effect on the one that believes it. So, in that way, there is nothing that could replace that effect in the same way. 

Some of us just don;t have to appeal to heaven to be loved or have value..don;t know what else to tell you, if you didn;t already know that...and ofc what you wrote really doesn;t have anything to do with what you quoted.
: shrugs :

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I will add this, though..that even from the standpoint of belief in some god..like yours..for example..such an unappreciative appraisal of this life you've been given and all the wonder and meaning and value that can be drawn from it seems......odd.  I don;t have any trouble seeing the value in this life, you seem to think it;s some sort of impossibility.  I really don;t know what could explain such a difference between us.  While you contend that meaning is derived from your god..I contend that meaning transcends -all- gods...each one being a tiny speck in the larger pool of how we express that much greater set.

Sure, there is tremendous value in this life. That's not the point. A godless worldview has a gap in it the shape of enduring/transcendent value/purpose and therefore meaning.  This is important to a lot of people. Glad you have come to accept your gap. But it is a gap nonetheless.

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Go to any graveyard and look at any gravestone over 100 years old. The memories of that person do not exist in anyone anymore. That person has no current value or purpose because IMO, those are perceived qualities about a person. He certainly isn't perceiving that anymore. No one else alive remembers him. Any value he had to his family or society is long forgotten. In fact, it might have been the case that society would have been better if he were never born.  How is that transcendent meaning? 

My husband showed me round a graveyard here in Edinburgh and told me about all the famous names and what they had done.

We then went off to the economist Adam Smith's grave and showed me all the coins that American tourists chuck through the gates to land on it. Some of them come to Scotland specifically to see the grave.

Of course, none of these people would have been able to make all the contributions that they had without all the other people no one remembers. No one remembers everyone that allowed Einstein the chance to do the work that he did but without them we wouldn't have any of his research.

Your example is to confuse subjective utility and value with existential meaning. Your method of showing value can never apply to all people, so therefore under your system all people do not have meaning. Example, a tribe of people where the last generation never interacted with the outside world. The tribe get's wiped out by disease. Under your theory, those people had no value past their deaths and therefore no meaning that survived them. Any meaning (derived from value and purpose) they thought they had before they died was illusory. This is the logical conclusion of a godless worldview.