[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Acrobat]

The original comment was  a guide to live our life by

If we accumulated all the historical and scientific facts, all we’d have is what is and what used to be.

There’s no guide to live our life by among them. In fact there nothing that says I should live at all, let alone how I ought to live.

If history and scientific facts are no guide than what is?

You could do a lot better than the Bible as a guide by which to live your life (such as 'Meditations' or the 'Analects). 

Maybe, maybe not.

It seems to me that a guide to life, should be modeled on a life worth being guided to.

I guess if we wanted the air of the life of a particular Roman Emperor the mediations might be a good start.

It seems to me that if we look out about the vast number of human lives, the sort that compose our societies, very few of these lives appear aspirational. we look out, and what we see is a flat field, of pointlessness.

The life of Dawkins, or most scientist, seem
no more worthy of pursuing than that of my local mechanic.

If all life looked like most life, then all guides to life, are roads to nowhere.

It seems to me that a guide to life, would require a life profound enough to aspire to. There is a sort of life I do find profound, it’s rare but exist, a life that posses some profound moral quality, the life of Franz Jägerstätter, of Bonhoeffer in prison, Aloyosha in the Brothers Karamazov, in the life of a slave elation in hymn, the life of my poor immigrant mother, a life lived in the depth of love. If there’s a guide to such a life, than that would be the only guide worth having.