(October 24, 2021 at 1:17 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(October 24, 2021 at 6:18 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: … Whatever value worth or meaning it has is given to it by some other thing, some afterlife. One wonders why or how an afterlife would have meaning, or grant meaning to life, if life has no meaning itself,…
Well, @snowtracks, is not correct. The lives of the dead can have meaning. It’s just that people have to be alive to enjoy that significance. He makes the same mistake that nihilists do – confusing the enjoyments of life from any meaning(s) it may have. For example, married sex is pleasuarable. For some however, physical intimacy is interpreted as a sign of intangibles like commitment and affection within the relationship.
The meaning of a sign is found in the relationship between the sign and what the sign signifies. The meaning of a painting is not inherent in the canvas or colored globs; but rather, by reference to something external to it, i.e. the subject matter depicted. So when someone asks what the meaning of life is, he or she isn’t just looking to something within life that makes life worth living. Instead they are asking to participate in a relationship with something larger to which their lives refer.
Oh indeedly doodly yes, the lives of the deceased can have great meaning. The Mormon church baptises thousands of dead people by proxy so they can go to heaven. That's why they have the largest privately owned genealogical base in the world. A few years ago they went a little too far. They began baptising Jewish people who had died in the Holocaust. Jewish people found out and were livid, saying mean things to the Mormons. For their part, the Mormons promised to stop, so that's alright then. The late Queen Elizabeth The Queen mother has apparently been posthumously baptised.
From 2017:
"SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormons are posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims as well as grandparents of public figures like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Steven Spielberg, despite church rules intended to restrict the ceremonies to a member’s ancestors, according to a researcher who has spent two decades monitoring the church’s massive genealogical database."
https://apnews.com/article/salt-lake-city-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-ut-state-wire-992dd887f7b948d0a08055dff0363aa4
I'm obviously far too insensitive. I find the whole thing hilarious. Especially the news that the Mormons have baptised both Anne Frank and Adolf Hitler.
In my family, after our atheist relatives are cremated, their ashes are dug into the rose garden. My parents were both Catholic. Dad's ashes were scattered on his favourite river. Mum's will be taken to Canada and interred in Vancouver with her parents. We have all the paper work and a small tasteful plaque. (it was a quite immodest $5000) Covid19 prevented my brother from taking the trip.
