If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Edwardo Piet]

I wouldn't say life is meaningless so much as that meaning isn't arbitrarily assigned by some outside force.  We are free to assign our own meanings as we see fit.

Aside from emotional meaning life is meaningless. Subjective self-assigned meanings are only meaningful because they feel meaningful. Subjectively meaningful, to the subject.

However if it feels meaningful and adds subjective purpose to one's life who cares if it's "really meaningless" or whatever?

[Thumpalumpacus]

My life isn't meaningless.

Just because meaning isn't intrinsic doesn't mean it isn't present.

Not to mention that I don't see much meaning in groveling. Indeed, the Abrahamic faiths, and many others as well, stress the unimportance -- meaninglessness -- of this life, and only promise meaning in the next.

I was under the impression that in the Abrahamic religions what you did in this life determined your fate in the next....?

But it's not just "what you do". It doing things in a very specific manner, no matter what it is you wish to do, for fear of losing out in the afterlife. You're right that "what you do in this life" is important to them -- and that "what you do" is obey the religious authorities insofar as what they define as sins.

How meaningful is that existence?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Subjective self-assigned meanings are only meaningful because they feel meaningful. Subjectively meaningful, to the subject.

Become a parent ... you'll see directly that self-defined meanings can have objective consequences.

[Edwardo Piet]

Oh, I believe in objective morality in one sense: but I don't believe it in another sense.

I believe in epistemically objective morality once something like "mitigating suffering is moral" has been defined to be moral. But I don't believe in ontologically objective morality because it is completely meaningless. If absolute morals "exist" (whatever that would mean) that say "murdering is moral" that wouldn't actually make it moral. If whatever god says is moral is moral and god says kill everyone and cause as much suffering as possible... that won't make it moral, and in fact, if it is already agreed upon a reasonable premise such as "mitigating suffering is moral" or at the very least "not causing needless suffering is immoral" then it is epistemically objectively immoral to do what god says in the same sense that it is unhealthy to eat poisonous food provided that "not poisoning ourselves" is part of our definition of health.

Once we agree on reasonable premises such as "needless suffering is immoral" then we can at least in principle be objective about that even if we cannot in practice.

Sure, there will always be the contrary people who say "I don't think causing needless suffering on purpose is immoral at all" but those are the same people who would say "personally I don't think not poisoning onself should have anything to do with what we call health" if it were not so readily agreed upon (and hopefully reasonable agreements about morality can be agreed upon in future too like with health.,.. when people agree that causing needless suffering is immoral just as much as needlessly poisoning oneself is immoral then that's a big step in moral progress).

Just as I believe in epistemologically objective morality but not ontologically objective morality I'm similar with free will: I believe in compatabilist free will but not incompatabilist free will. Although I think calling compatabilist free will "free wilL" is actually misleading and unhelpful.

So yes I take this approach often, I de-equivocate the different senses of something because many people conflate them.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I wasn't talking about morality, but meaning. The meaning one assigns to one's life can be (and is, in my view) entirely subjective -- but it can have objective consequences.

[Edwardo Piet]

Yes. I guess I consider objective consequences of meaning to tie in with the morality of consequentialism. Any meaning beyond our own self-interest I consider to be moral when it isn't aesthetic.

[Arkilogue]

I was under the impression that in the Abrahamic religions what you did in this life determined your fate in the next....?

But it's not just "what you do". It doing things in a very specific manner, no matter what it is you wish to do, for fear of losing out in the afterlife. You're right that "what you do in this life" is important to them -- and that "what you do" is obey the religious authorities insofar as what they define as sins.

How meaningful is that existence?

To know that the are consequences both good and bad for our actions? Very meaningful.

To have them dictated to you without explanation or understanding....not very.

[Thumpalumpacus]

But it's not just "what you do". It doing things in a very specific manner, no matter what it is you wish to do, for fear of losing out in the afterlife. You're right that "what you do in this life" is important to them -- and that "what you do" is obey the religious authorities insofar as what they define as sins.

How meaningful is that existence?

To know that the are consequences both good and bad for our actions? Very meaningful.

And how is that exclusive to the Abrahamic faiths?

To have them dictated to you without explanation or understanding....not very.

... or evidence, for that matter ...

[Arkilogue]

To know that the are consequences both good and bad for our actions? Very meaningful.

And how is that exclusive to the Abrahamic faiths?

To have them dictated to you without explanation or understanding....not very.

... or evidence, for that matter ...

It's not.

I see a guilt/shame/death/Stockholm syndrome cult...several of them.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hence my.point being directed at the three faiths that are most familiar to readers here.