How long will Christians wait for Jesus?

[SteveII]

1. Khem and I are going back and forth in another thread on this. I intend to reply to him tonight, but in general Naturalism teaches that we are the product of time and chance (evolution). That process cannot endow us with intrinsic (defined as belonging naturally, essential) value any more than anything else that evolved. I am not saying that we don't have value, but rather that the value comes from things we can do and not simply because we exist. 

One wonders why intrinsic meaning is endowed, in your estimation.  If our meaning comes from the things we can do..is there something that believers can do that non-believers can't?  OFC not.  How, then, would your beliefs afford you greater meaning?  They wouldn't.  Are the things we can do not a product of evolution?  Then clearly it can endow us with intrinsic value, as expressed, by you.  

Doesn't intrinsic value/meaning/purpose have to be endowed by an intentional act of the will? With a naturalistic worldview, our value/meaning/purpose does come from what we can do, but since what we could do has shifted quite a bit in our evolutionary history, it is self-assessed. Anything that is self-assessed cannot be intrinsic can it? 

I believe our value/meaning/purpose comes with being intentionally made in the image of God. 

If God exists, he created us for a purpose and gives us intrinsic (defined as belonging naturally, essential) value/meaning/purpose.

-not defined as being given or granted, or endowed...you rail against such endowed meaning as "subjective".  So what value or purpose could they have in reference to your claims of the relative value placed upon you in your belief system compared to a naturalist framework?  I do think it's ironic, btw, that your definition of endowment explicitly references what belongs naturally.  As a final comment, on how loaded just this one excerpt was, nothing that you stated after "if god exists" -actually- follows from the statement "if god exists".....so, perhaps you should be questioning the ability of a god when it comes to intrinsic meaning or purpose?  The way you describe the thing you seek naturalism provides almost by fiat, while your affirmation of faith, here, does no such thing.  

When I say "...naturally, essential", I mean always had, built-in, not separable. 

I will adjust my phrasing in the future. 

For example, take a block of wood. It has the properties of wood (fiberous, organic, brown, hard, etc.). If a craftsman take the block of wood and transforms it into a chair, it now has the new properties and purpose of being a chair. If it had grown into something that looks like a chair, we could not call it a chair and it would not have those properties and purpose of being a chair. 

It would have had the properties and purpose of whatever part of the tree it was cut from.  Different properties and purpose does not mean -no- properties and purpose.  If it makes sense to say it has a purpose as a chair it makes just as much sense to say it has purpose as a tree trunk.

I took it already to be a block of wood in my example, but if you were to back up a step, it would have the properties of being part of a tree. It lost the property of tree-ness when it was cut up. I don't think it every had a "purpose" (a reason for being) unless it was designed.