Share your worldview?

[Nay_Sayer]

Wow. Thanks for the replies. 

The reason I didn't initially open it up to a group discussion is that the assignment is to interview one person. But I'd certainly like to get other thoughts if you'd like to share.  If so, below are the starting questions I was going to ask - on 4 general topics. If not, just ignore them...

Origin
How do you think we got here - how did humans originate?  FSM took from himself a single spiral and crafted it into what we know as DNA, We were supposed to come from dolphins but a slight error in wind speed caused the DNA to land in a great ape and the rest is history.

Where did the universe/world come from? Big Bang, God, other? FSM created the universe to share his endless love with his creations, us.

Meaning
What do you think the purpose of life is? To cherrish every moment and make the best of each second we get, To lend ease and comfort to those who cannot.

Does human life have meaning? If so, what gives that meaning? Same as above

Are humans more significant than other creatures? Are we special? Why? No, In fact, hamsters are the end goal, So sayeth the lord.

Morality
Why do we have moral ethics? Why do some things ‘seem’ bad (like murder) yes, Murder is bad? oops
Do good and bad exist? How do you determine what is good or bad? Yes, I let FSM guide me to the truth
Are good and evil subjective or universal/absolute? Absolute, as dictated by the holy of holy's FSM
If you don't believe in sin, do you ever feel guilty? I do believe in sin, don't presume my beliefs

Destiny
What happens to us after death? We are taught all humans will ascend into the great hall of judgement, There if deemed worthy you will enter the endless nirvana that has strippers, an endless buffet, doughnut rain, stripers, mansions for everyone and a beer volcano
Is there a heaven / hell?  yes
If so, how do you get there? Is there anything specific you have to do? The great nirvana is available to all who open their hearts to FSM, for he is the only way.  The great boiling awaits those who were dicks in life and those who followed the wrong idols.  Fret not, for no boiling is forever.

  Bold mine.

RAmen

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

Wow. Thanks for the replies. 

The reason I didn't initially open it up to a group discussion is that the assignment is to interview one person. But I'd certainly like to get other thoughts if you'd like to share.  If so, below are the starting questions I was going to ask - on 4 general topics. If not, just ignore them...

I. Origin
1. How do you think we got here - how did humans originate?
2.Where did the universe/world come from? Big Bang, God, other?

II. Meaning
1. What do you think the purpose of life is?
2. Does human life have meaning? If so, what gives that meaning?
3.Are humans more significant than other creatures? Are we special? Why?

III. Morality
1.Why do we have moral ethics? Why do some things ‘seem’ bad (like murder)
2. Do good and bad exist? How do you determine what is good or bad?
3. Are good and evil subjective or universal/absolute?
4. If you don't believe in sin, do you ever feel guilty?

IV. Destiny
1.What happens to us after death?
2. Is there a heaven / hell? 
3. If so, how do you get there? Is there anything specific you have to do?

Part I: Origin.

 (1) and (2). My understanding of how human life originated (or how life originates) is limited to basic biology and the theory of evolution; however, I do not know where the universe or world came from.  Perhaps this question is presently beyond humanity's capability to answer, as the answer may require a significant shift in humanity's present thought patterns and understanding of reality.  
 
Part II: Meaning

(1) and (2). IMO, the purpose of life and meaning will vary from individual to individual depending on the particular path that the individual has chosen.  For me,  I find purpose and meaning in life by trying to treat people as best as I can (as people and not as objects) and by embracing the fact that people are different and finding ways to constructively engage these differences.

(3).  Humanity is a lifeform among many and there could be many other awesome lifeforms in reality that are far beyond humanity ethically, technologically, and perhaps in other ways we cannot conceive; thus, given this possibility, humanity would not seem to be very special.  However, it would seem that if humanity is to survive and create a meaningful world, then it is essential that they learn to embrace themselves as a species and to value the uniqueness that they bring to this reality.  

Part III: Morality

(1). IMO, morality/ethics assist humanity in peacefully coexisting with one another.

(2) and (3). IMO, culture and upbringing will play a big role in determining what is good and bad (evil).  However, IMO, it appears that there are certain areas of the human experience that people seem to value across cultures, such as valuing human life, goodness over badness, justice/fairness, honesty and truth-telling, and individual freedom.  Thus, IMO, a human act could be rationally deemed good or bad based on whether it upholds or violates any of the principles listed above. Hence, it would appear that there is a combination of subjectivity and universality when it comes to matters of determining what is morally good and bad.

(4) IMO, provided that one has empathy and adheres to a peaceful and humane ethical system (regardless of whether it is secular or non-secular), then one will experience a combination of positive and negative emotions.



Part IV: Destiny

(1) Philosophically speaking, I do not know what happens to lifeforms once they experience death. Perhaps the answer to this question currently transcends god beliefs and scientific theories and requires more evolved thought patterns, which humanity may attain given enough time?

[Whateverist]

Wow. Thanks for the replies. 

The reason I didn't initially open it up to a group discussion is that the assignment is to interview one person. But I'd certainly like to get other thoughts if you'd like to share.  If so, below are the starting questions I was going to ask - on 4 general topics. If not, just ignore them...

Origin
How do you think we got here - how did humans originate?
Where did the universe/world come from? Big Bang, God, other?

Meaning
What do you think the purpose of life is?
Does human life have meaning? If so, what gives that meaning?
Are humans more significant than other creatures? Are we special? Why?

Morality
Why do we have moral ethics? Why do some things ‘seem’ bad (like murder)
Do good and bad exist? How do you determine what is good or bad?
Are good and evil subjective or universal/absolute?
If you don't believe in sin, do you ever feel guilty?

Destiny
What happens to us after death?
Is there a heaven / hell? 
If so, how do you get there? Is there anything specific you have to do?

If you're young and uncomfortable so far from the familiar, I'll understand.  Otherwise I hope you'll weigh in with your own thoughts if any of these responses inspire you.

Origins:

I know humans are classified as apes and some would say are best thought of as a third chimp species along with Pan trogodytes and Pan paniscus.  But we have our very own scientific classification, Homo and who am I to argue?  Before that we were definitely still mammals, but life is always evolving.  Go back far enough and presumably we come to an inorganic/organic transformation.  Some think something greater must have caused that to happen but here atheists are pretty much in agreement that there was no creator.  While no one has yet duplicated that transformation in the laboratory, we pretty much all assume it happened naturally without any tinkering by a mega-being.  But exactly how remains a mystery so far.  (I can live with mysteries .. and do.)

The known universe is thought to have come from one singularity.  Like some but not all others here my hunch is energy/matter/space/time has always existed in some form.  But it is currently unknowable whether there is anything beyond that one singularity or not.  For some questions you just have to accept not having access to the answers and this is definitely one of those - at least so far.


Meaning:

This is too complex to do justice to in this format.  Just know that what people call meaning is enjoyed by people of your faith and people of other faiths as well as by people like me who reject the supernatural.  


Morality:

The subject bores me.  In my eccentric opinion it is a subject for child rearing and human development.  At some point it isn't really useful to dwell on it as adults.  Feel free to join the legions (including the majority of atheists) who disagree with me on that point.  

Just to be clear, I'm not saying it ever becomes unimportant.  But at some point we become as expert as we need to be.  There is no need (and likely no way) to create a moral decision tree in advance to handle all of life's decisions.  Besides, simple rule following is not the fullest expression of moral development.  Far from it.


Destiny:

My thinking about destiny is likewise eccentric but this time I come down closer to you faithful.  To be fair, I'm probably not thinking about that word the same way most xtians and atheists do because I don't think there is anything inevitable about ones destiny.  But I don't think all pathways are equal for me.  Rather, I think there are optimal choices for each one of us which we have to discover.  We don't arbitrarily decide them or, if we do, we're doing it badly.  

But of course I don't believe there is anything whatsoever which is 'supernatural' .. so no heaven, hell, judgement or afterlife.  Life is where it's at, right here and right now.  This is what counts.  If you're going to live a good life you do it in the light of what it actually is, not as a byproduct of a fantasy.  And you only get this one shot at it so make it count.

[Cyberman]

Everyone seems to have this all pretty well covered. I'd just like to add that anyone truly interested in evolution, particularly as it pertains to humans, really ought to check out AronRa's latest and ongoing series of videos, "The systematic classification of life". Each is around ten minutes long; he's up to episode 21 now and only just taking us out of the Permian period.

[haig]

Origin
How do you think we got here - how did humans originate?
There is nothing to think about really. The evidence is overwhelming to the point that evolution is a fact. We evolved. Homo Sapiens really started about 200,000 years ago. A visit to the Hall of Human Origins in New York at the Museum of Natural History, and a book by the curator of that museum called "Masters of the Planet" will enlighten you.

Where did the universe/world come from? Big Bang, God, other?
Big Bang for sure, estimated some 14 billion years ago. More scientific evidence for the Big Bang is being discovered every year, and there is no First Cause involved, there is no supernatural intelligent designer. Just a magnificent event that set things up. We continue to shape our understanding of this event through science.

Meaning
What do you think the purpose of life is?
Why does life have to have a purpose? Yes we are an intelligent species but we are a species like any other species. Do all the dogs in the world follow a common purpose in their lives? Human beings all have different purposes in their lives.

Does human life have meaning? If so, what gives that meaning?
All humans have meaning in their lives, but the meanings are not consistent. I enjoy my family immensely, and my personal meaning is to make sure my children are looked after, after I am gone. I also yearn for knowledge, and will continue to learn new things every day until I die. I am proud of who I am, I love life, and I feel awe everyday to be in a world where natural beauty is all around us. As an atheist, I feel in total control of my actions, and I feel empowered to achieve my goals in my life. 

Are humans more significant than other creatures? Are we special? Why?
We are obviously more intelligent then other creatures, and that has us believing we are more significant. But in reality our self centered significance and intelligence may ultimately destroy us. We continue to advance technology at a speed that is faster than our collective will to use that technology safely for the betterment of all life on our planet. I guess that is a little doomsday philosophy, but I must admit I worry about the future of my grandchildren.

Morality
Why do we have moral ethics? Why do some things ‘seem’ bad (like murder).
Do good and bad exist? How do you determine what is good or bad?
Of course we have moral ethics, we are a social animal. Morality is a product of our co-existence. We have rules that we need to abide by in a community.
Let me ask you a simple question. If you woke up tomorrow and decided that you no longer believed in god, would your moral values change? I don't think so.
Morality has absolutely nothing to do with religion. Religion lays claim to moral values when in reality it just provides a social gathering where groups can focus their morality, nothing more.

Are good and evil subjective or universal/absolute?
Good and evil are subjective.

If you don't believe in sin, do you ever feel guilty?
The concept of sin suggests a god hanging around somewhere so I reject that concept. Atheists feel guilt about things, it has nothing to do with religion. Sometimes our actions may not be consistent with our moral values and guilt can result.

Destiny
What happens to us after death?
Our cells, atoms, recycle in the biosphere. There is no conscience that survives us. There are no souls. There is no supernatural.

Is there a heaven / hell? 
Absolutely not, though I will admit that when my wife is pissed at me, I am in my own sweet hell  

If so, how do you get there? Is there anything specific you have to do?

Living our lives to a grandiose plan of some religious ideals, is an affront to our intelligence, our ability to reason with the evidence before us.
Once those shackles are released, life becomes much more simple, more rewarding. You only have one life to live, don't waste any of it focusing on things you perceive will get you to a favorable after life, unless those things also give you what you want in your life. Just a tip: the after life will not be there.

[brewer]

psalm, I don't think I can improve on these responses, I'd just be repeating for the most part.

What do you think of them so far? Is it what you expected (or were told to expect)?

[GrandizerII]

Ok, finally free for the day ...

Origin
How do you think we got here - how did humans originate?
Where did the universe/world come from? Big Bang, God, other?

Ok, it's really important to be clear about the level of analysis employed to answer such questions. Answering these questions from the perspective that we're familiar with - "first-person" perspective that perceives a flow in time from past to present to future - is one way of treating them. Another way is by looking at reality at a really "high" level.

Going with the former:
As human beings, we exist through the process of biological evolution (descending from ancestral apes millions of years ago), a gradual process that continues to this day and that elegantly explains the variation of life on earth.

As for life itself, it seems plausible that it came about eventually as a phenomenon resulting from certain activities occurring in the nonliving world a long time ago. You see, life is not something for which you need an off/on switch to control; life, in terms of its origin, is really "non-life" evolving in a complicated manner over time. And no surprise there. In a vast universe with lots of galaxies, lots of stars, and lots of planets, there are bound to be planets (like ours) on which the right "ingredients" for life emerged at the right time, gradually interacting with one other in the right way to give "birth" to rudimentary life, which in turn gradually becomes more and more complex over time (through the aid of biological evolution).

As for how this universe came about (again, from our familiar perspective), let's be clear that when we say "universe", we tend to mean this local universe which we observe. If so, the answer is that the universe seemed to have emerged from the Big Bang "singularity", but we don't know that for sure. We only know that the expansion of this universe started with the Big Bang, but as for the start to its existence, no one really knows.

That said, let's shift our analysis to a "higher" level, and let's look at the universe and the wider world (the whole cosmos, including multiverses and all that) from a bird's eye perspective of an imaginary "outside entity". Note that this view that I'm about to describe, though consistent with modern cosmological science, is not based on conclusive evidence and is mostly speculative, but this nevertheless seems logical, so why not. By changing our level of analysis, we conceptually change the structure of the world. And in this case, rather than seeing a world full of changes and events (in which time clearly flows), we now observe a "zoomed out" cosmos, where universes, multiverses, and multiverses of multiverses are clearly seen, and everything is fixed and static. Every moment in time is but a frozen picture frame telling its own story, connected to other frames in a logical manner. This is an eternalistic high-dimensional block of reality (in which time doesn't really flow, no changes/events occur, and causality isn't really a thing). And if you look closely, you will see moments in time very close to the supposed moment when the Big Bang of our universe purportedly started, but possibly no moment depicting the start of the Big Bang itself. This might explain why all sorts of things start to break down when we try to go all the way back to the very "beginning" of the Big Bang (because the event never really happened!).

Now, if it isn't clear by now what I'm trying to get at, the answer to the question of how this world came about is (if the above view is correct)that this world has always been. The world didn't come from anywhere. It just is, with every moment in time being eternal, and every physical possibility being actualized (in different universes and multiverses). And this may be so, because something logical must exist instead of nothing at all, or instead of something else that is illogical, and this is the only logical way that this "something" (the cosmos) can be.

Meaning
What do you think the purpose of life is?
Does human life have meaning? If so, what gives that meaning?
Are humans more significant than other creatures? Are we special? Why?

Ok, now this is where I'm going to suck really bad with my answers, mostly because this set of questions and the next sets don't interest me that much. But let's give it a go, anyhow.

The purpose of life is ... well, what purpose? Not sure there logically has to be one. I don't think the Principle of Sufficient Reason is at all logically mandated, and I'm not about to change my view on this. Things just are. No ultimate purpose or anything of the sort. Nevertheless, one could still assign purpose to one's own life, and this is often done subconsciously, determined by the kinds of experiences one goes through.

Same thing with meaning, whether or not meaning is different from purpose.

Are humans more significant than other creatures? Only according to our egocentric human views. Ultimately, we're not that special. We're just really, really, really tiny parts of this really, really, really huge world.

Morality
Why do we have moral ethics? Why do some things ‘seem’ bad (like murder)
Do good and bad exist? How do you determine what is good or bad?
Are good and evil subjective or universal/absolute?
If you don't believe in sin, do you ever feel guilty?

We have moral ethics because the human world would be a complete disaster otherwise. We wouldn't have survived as a species if we all thought there was nothing wrong with killing people and such. Not that the human world is perfect. It's not. But we're here, and that is something we should all be thankful for.

Good and bad exist, conceptually. And, as human beings, we tend to make good use of these concepts. So even with morality, still no need for God at all.

As for how we determine what is good or bad, we don't often do it consciously, so it's really hard to pinpoint exactly how we determine good and bad. Not unless perhaps you do some deep reading on ethics and such. Something which I currently have no time for, at the moment. People who opine that it's all subjective may have a point, but a lot of philosophers of ethics do argue for objective godless/secular morality, so I don't know. But again, no God is needed for morality to be a thing, and we don't even need a solid moral basis in the divine to live a fairly adequate moral life. So it baffles me when theists insist we need God for morality. For what exactly do we need such an entity?

Destiny
What happens to us after death?
Is there a heaven / hell? 
If so, how do you get there? Is there anything specific you have to do?

What happens to us after death is that we most likely cease to exist as "us" (that is, if we adhere to the conventional notion of the "self"). And so no, most likely no heaven or hell either.

[GUBU]

I'm taking a class on Christian apologetics - and as part, I need to find a non-christian to interview. Figured I might find one or two here...

Anyone willing to share with me their viewpoint on the big questions - where we came from, morality, destiny, and the general meaning of life? No debate, just a chance for you to speak your mind.

If you are, reply or send me a private message - and we can find a time to chat or skype.

Let me guess you get credit if you can show conversions or presecution* against you. It is coming that time of year that fundie bible college students have to submit their practicals for credit.

*persecution in this case not immediately proclaiming the op as the best thing since sliced bread.

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I’ll give it what it wants, what it really really wants! I’ll give it what it wants, what it really really wants! It wanna.. it wanna... it wanna...

As an atheist (take notes), my world view is sad and void. I believe in eating bebitos. (Write this down) I’m mad at the god, which is why I pretend to be skeptical. My values? None. Since there is no hell, I’m free to kill all I want! Because, that’s what everyone naturally wants to do, and they just don’t do it, because of their god.

My favorite color is black, like my soul. My hair is black, my clothing is black, my men have all been black. My car is also black, but it has a few white scratches. Does that mean something? I’d like to say my coffee is also black and strong like my soul and them men... but it’s sweet and creamy, like my women.

I’m also on drugs and worship Satan.

You forgot to mention that you use your beautiful body to lead us poor weak willed men astray.

[The Grand Nudger]

Dance puppets!

[brewer]

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I’ll give it what it wants, what it really really wants! I’ll give it what it wants, what it really really wants! It wanna.. it wanna... it wanna...

As an atheist (take notes), my world view is sad and void. I believe in eating bebitos. (Write this down) I’m mad at the god, which is why I pretend to be skeptical. My values? None. Since there is no hell, I’m free to kill all I want! Because, that’s what everyone naturally wants to do, and they just don’t do it, because of their god.

My favorite color is black, like my soul. My hair is black, my clothing is black, my men have all been black. My car is also black, but it has a few white scratches. Does that mean something? I’d like to say my coffee is also black and strong like my soul and them men... but it’s sweet and creamy, like my women.

I’m also on drugs and worship Satan.

You forgot to mention that you use your beautiful body to lead us poor weak willed men astray.

Isn't that what a muse is supposed to do? Wait, maybe that's siren. (pulls wax from ears)