RE: Life's meaning when you are an atheist - reality, struggle, etc.
December 11, 2015 at 2:25 pm
(December 11, 2015 at 11:09 am)Vic Wrote: Just don't give it the meaning of dishonesty by being purposefully obtuse and conflating two meanings of a word and you'll be fine.
If there is any reasoning to why you would go by train and not by foot, are you the one to choose?
Not really, IMO. The question always boils down to circumstances that make one choice or the other the correct choice (unless you just don't know enough) given your objectives, which themselves can be looked at this way. If you are going cross-country to visit your relatives for Christmas, take the train, as you probably don't want the journey to be several months long. If you want to re-create the Oregon Trail or tour the country, then going by foot could be an interesting and challenging endeavor.
Of course, what if you decided to go around deliberately choosing bad options in an effort to prove that you have the freedom to choose after all? I think that itself fills an unchosen (and poorly informed) objective. In fact, it changes the objective, defeating the purpose. No longer is the objective getting to your relatives' place, it is proving that you can choose the wrong choices. And you have to pick the right wrong choices to do that.
In other words, I don't think I can simply make my life's meaning whatever I choose. I have a nature. That's why I don't choose to make my life's meaning some random, incoherent thing. There are currents in my own mind I have to discover and work with. I can't just decide what makes me happy, but I can certainly find out.
