(May 23, 2018 at 4:09 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

(May 23, 2018 at 11:43 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Some of us believe the Christian life is better both personally and for society. YMMV

And I believe that when ice cream sales increase, so do accidental drownings.  I'm not, however, inclined to boycott the sale of ice cream therewith.

Do you feel that you fully understand the nature of meaning sufficient to make the claims you are making.  I'm skeptical.  What makes something meaningful, according to you?

(And no, I don't find the answer "God" to be sufficient.)

My 2 cents: This is not an argument, just an observation of the different worldviews. 

Meaning is tied to value and purpose. Value and purpose are relative to a person. There is only one transcendent person: God. Therefore God is the only one that can be the basis of transcendent meaning. Any meaning derived from a godless worldview is necessarily both fleeting and subjective. Fleeting and self-assigned meaning is not enough for a lot people. Some are not equipped to supply it or circumstances in their lives make it difficult to find it and it leads to all kinds of unhappiness.

(May 23, 2018 at 4:45 pm)SteveII Wrote: My 2 cents: This is not an argument, just an observation of the different worldviews. 

Meaning is tied to value and purpose. Value and purpose are relative to a person. There is only one transcendent person: God. Therefore God is the only one that can be the basis of transcendent meaning. Any meaning derived from a godless worldview is necessarily both fleeting and subjective. Fleeting and self-assigned meaning is not enough for a lot people. Some are not equipped to supply it or circumstances in their lives make it difficult to find it and it leads to all kinds of unhappiness.

That's ridiculous.  God is hardly the only transcendent x from which meaning in human lives is drawn.  We've been discussing a bunch of other transcendent x's for a couple of pages now.  

Why would meaning drawn from "other than god" be necessarily fleeting or subjective..and how does meaning drawn -from- god escape that even if god itself escapes?  Do gods escape, for that matter? There are alot of dead gods that used to mean alot to alot of people who don;t mean anything now.

I agree, however, that for some people, any number of things x just isn't enough.  God wouldn;t be close to enough for me, for example.  More depressingly, though...for people incapable of finding meaning in any given moment, why would they assume they;d find meaning in eternity rather than an eternity of meaningless moments? Perpetual unhappiness.

(May 23, 2018 at 6:46 am)pocaracas Wrote:

SteveII Wrote: I'm going to narrow it to the Christian God. So then it would be the case that:

1. The 40 or so authors of the Bible lied for reasons that are not only unclear, but incomprehensible

If there is no god, then.... is Drich lying about his experience? Are you lying about your experiences?
I don't think those writers would be lying as "intentionally writing something they knew to be wrong"... I think they were products of their time, descendants of believers who probably had their own experiences and interpret them as you find it written in the bible.

SteveII Wrote: 2. Jesus' take on the true nature of humanity was a lucky guess

Philosophy was a hot topic at the time of NT writing. It may have rubbed off into the authors... or into the Jesus person upon whom the story is based.

SteveII Wrote: 3. Billions of people have lied (sometimes for their entire lifetime) about some relationship with God and the effects it has on them.

You can speak truthfully and yet convey an erroneous statement.
That, of course, doesn't exclude charlatans who notice how people react to such statements and fabricate/exaggerate their own for profit. Profit at the expense of the gullibility of those Billions you speak of.

SteveII Wrote: 4. Billions of people have falsely bought what other have told them is true and what they themselves have intuitively believed to be true.

Think of the IQ scale. It is designed to fit everyone into a neat normalized bell-shaped curve with the 100 at the center. Half the population has an IQ lower than 100. The other half, higher.
Now consider that the majority of the lower half can easily be manipulated by someone with enough charisma. And a good deal of the other half can also be manipulated, but no so easily.

Human reasoning is stock full of pitfalls. We call them logical fallacies. The most common and easier to fall into is the ad populum falacy. Your quote here is a screaming example of it.

SteveII Wrote: 5. Million (if not billions) of supernatural-->physical events previously ascribed to God because of the context were just lucky deterministic coincidences that just so happened to perpetuate the "concocted...imagination"

Yep... and with the present day global population at all-time highs, but with access to cameras.... those events have suddenly mostly vanished! Odd!

SteveII Wrote: 6. Life has no ultimate meaning, purpose, or value.

Why do you need to preface meaning, purpose, and value with "ultimate"?

Human life generally has societal meaning, purpose, and value. Can't that be enough?

SteveII Wrote: 7. I don't think there is a good grounds for libertarian free fill--despite out intuition.

Do you mean "free will" and "our intuition"?

SteveII Wrote: 8. Our cognitive abilities were developed for survival--not truth. Calls into question...well...everything.

Indeed. In a society that praises some higher power, those individuals who follow along get a better chance at survival and breeding.

SteveII Wrote: 9. We continue to have big gaping holes in questions like:

   why anything at all exists

Must there be a reason?
Must it be the result of some entity's thought process as this "why" question implies?

SteveII Wrote:    the origin of the universe

None of us were there to witness it... That kinda makes it difficult...

SteveII Wrote:    why the universe is fine-tuned for intelligent life

Short answer: it's not.
Most of the Universe is far from forgiving to life at all, let alone intelligent life.

SteveII Wrote:    what is consciousness

That part of your mind that thinks and considers things?
I don't know... just throwing it out there...

SteveII Wrote:    abiogenesis

Again, no one was there to witness it happening.
Research is under way in that subject.

SteveII Wrote: I want to point out that the theory slipped into the question does not have any evidence to support it. It is pretty much just the entailment of the premise: God does not exist.

Not necessarily...
I think the concept of the divine took a while to develop... possibly first by coming up with the concept of the dead living on (my loved ones who die or my hopes of how things are after my own death) and then expanding that notion to include a realm where all the dead people exist... a ruler for that realm, etc, etc...

These are the issues I see if the premise there is no God is true because these are the reasons people believe in God. In many of your responses you reiterate the theory that was slipped into the question. Your answers are fine and reasonable if there is no God. However your answers are insufficient to overcome belief of a cumulative case for God based on these issues. I'm not being argumentative, just a fact that alternative, unevidenced theories that could never be tested of how we came to our beliefs lack the explanatory power of taking people, their experiences, and their word at face value--be it the biblical accounts or a friend who experienced a profound change of heart and now has a newfound joy and purpose that others simply want to experience.

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(May 23, 2018 at 5:15 pm)Khemikal Wrote:

(May 23, 2018 at 4:45 pm)SteveII Wrote: My 2 cents: This is not an argument, just an observation of the different worldviews. 

Meaning is tied to value and purpose. Value and purpose are relative to a person. There is only one transcendent person: God. Therefore God is the only one that can be the basis of transcendent meaning. Any meaning derived from a godless worldview is necessarily both fleeting and subjective. Fleeting and self-assigned meaning is not enough for a lot people. Some are not equipped to supply it or circumstances in their lives make it difficult to find it and it leads to all kinds of unhappiness.

That's ridiculous.  God is hardly the only transcendent x from which meaning in human lives is drawn.  We've been discussing a bunch of other transcendent x's for a couple of pages now. 

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? 

Quote:Why would meaning drawn from "other than god" be necessarily fleeting or subjective..and how does meaning drawn -from- god escape that even if god itself escapes?  Do gods escape, for that matter?  There are alot of dead gods that used to mean alot to alot of people who don;t mean anything now.

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. 

Quote:I agree, however, that for some people, any number of things x just isn't enough.  God wouldn;t be close to enough for me, for example.  More depressingly, though...for people incapable of finding meaning in any given moment, why would they assume they;d find meaning in eternity rather than an eternity of meaningless moments?  Perpetual unhappiness.

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.

(May 23, 2018 at 5:17 pm)SteveII Wrote:

(May 23, 2018 at 5:15 pm)Khemikal Wrote: That's ridiculous.  God is hardly the only transcendent x from which meaning in human lives is drawn.  We've been discussing a bunch of other transcendent x's for a couple of pages now. 

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?  

Quote:

Quote:Why would meaning drawn from "other than god" be necessarily fleeting or subjective..and how does meaning drawn -from- god escape that even if god itself escapes?  Do gods escape, for that matter?  There are alot of dead gods that used to mean alot to alot of people who don;t mean anything now.

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?  

Quote:

Quote:I agree, however, that for some people, any number of things x just isn't enough.  God wouldn;t be close to enough for me, for example.  More depressingly, though...for people incapable of finding meaning in any given moment, why would they assume they;d find meaning in eternity rather than an eternity of meaningless moments?  Perpetual unhappiness.

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.

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.

Why would i give a shit if a god remembered me . Or why would it be the case that a god would even spare you a second thought . And even if no remembered you .you still existed .

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Another question is valuable to who ?

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And i agree living forever could prove just as futile as living 8 seconds .There is nothing about immortality that grants valuable

(May 23, 2018 at 11:59 am)Whateverist Wrote:

(May 23, 2018 at 12:52 am)Godscreated Wrote: There is only one God and He is not part of those religions. None of the gods of those religions has ever tried to show me anything at all. That being said they are and always will be false.

GC

Wow, I did not realize we had on these boards an actual god whisperer.  Gods who show the guy who goes by GC here are genuine.  Those who fail to make themselves known to GC are fakes.  Yep, GC is just that important.  A regular celebrity.

 I'm important enough that the God of creation revealed Himself to me and brought salvation to me.

GC

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(May 23, 2018 at 6:16 am)Khemikal Wrote:

(May 23, 2018 at 12:52 am)Godscreated Wrote: There is only one God and He is not part of those religions. None of the gods of those religions has ever tried to show me anything at all. That being said they are and always will be false.

GC

You should understand why I don;t believe in your silly religion, then.  Tell god to show me something next time you two talk.  

Otherwise, I can only conclude that you'll always be false.

You think you are prepared for what God might show you, no one can know exactly how He might answer. I asked Him.

GC

Quote:Some of us believe the Christian life is better both personally and for society. YMMV

Then those people are morons

If it turns out that I die and then some weird being hands me a score card, that would add absolutely zero meaning to me or my life. If it then hoists me off to some place or other based on my score, then that is just the whims of this being. I don't care what value I have to this being, either. I'd consider it to be a dickhead.

(May 23, 2018 at 5:17 pm)SteveII Wrote: 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.

Meaning/value is entirely subjective. If someone can't find meaning in life without it meaning something to an external being or being a dress rehearsal for some other life, then fine. That doesn't stop other people finding meaning in their lives, or even finding meaning in that theist's life, even though they can't find it themselves.

It seems to be part of the binary religious thinking. Something has eternal/external meaning, or it has no meaning. There's absolutely no reason to make this dichotomy, and even theists do not act this way in day to day life (except maybe monks, nuns etc.)