(September 14, 2022 at 7:15 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Your analysis doesn’t explain why vast numbers of non-religious people are able to experience fulfilling, satisfying lives while being fully aware of their own mortality.
There is a big difference between simply knowing that one will die one day, and being fully aware of it. Our subconscious is hardwired to function as if death never occurs - I'll probably have to look up the article where I read that, but for now just take my word for it-.
Once you dig deeper to find out why these people led fulfilling lives, it's mostly due to luck -most of them probably didn't have some physical or mental disability, and/or were born to a rich family, and/or grew up in a favorable environment. Any advantage in life makes it easy for one to abstract away death and pretend it never happens -well, at least until it does happen. But what about people on the other side of the spectrum ? People who have a serious disadvantage in life, what would give them the inner momentum to move forward, under atheism or naturalism ?
Take a young woman with a congenital deformity who grew up in a capitalist society -like yours. I am sure she would have dealt with all forms of bullying and discrimination throughout her life, and if these traumatizing events happen very early in her life, they can severely affect her psychological makeup, and leave her vulnerable and directly exposed to the neurosis of thinking about death. If the woman in this example were religious, she can at least take comfort in knowing that an all-powerful being is with her in the face of an unforgiving society, and that He can offer her long lasting rewards for her deeds, however small and insignificant.
Absent religion, things are much more complicated for the poor woman, she is reduced to an inept element that is trivially easy to replace in a capitalist system, which is characterized by competitiveness and optimal allocation of resources.
In short, a person with a congenital deformity loses all forms of capitalist competition AND will never be allocated to any useful function at any level of society. So, what kind of consolation does your worldview offer to these people ?
(September 14, 2022 at 7:15 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: Have you ever met a woman? I only ask because you don’t seem to know much about them.
Boru
I know that being an experienced simp is something valuable in your culture. Well, not all cultures appreciate simps, you'll be highly revered in the country where I used to live, if you actually never got into a relationship - marriage notwithstanding, of course.
(September 14, 2022 at 8:32 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote: Not really much of a dilemma. All you have to do is create something that strikes such a chord with other people that they keep talking about it long after you're gone. You don't necessarily need a supreme being to help you do it.
Are you sure about this ? People still talk about Ted Bundy to this day, almost 30 years after his death. I think you misunderstood the OP and, mistakenly, thought that by transcending death I meant being famous among people. Well, no, not at all. People like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer are reasonably famous, but I think we can both agree that their deeds don't really transcend space and time.
People talking about you long after your death is definitely not a good metric of how meaningful your life was.