Open discussion of the Christian Why We're Here thread

[pocaracas]

I was writing this yesterday, but then gave up, because time... today, I noticed GC praising this reply by neo, so I figured I'd give it another go.

What if god never existed...

Then everyone alive now, in the past or in the future will die hopeless meaningless deaths.

I wouldn't see things that bleakly.
Hope is always there.... perhaps not hope in any eternal life, but hope that things will get better for everyone else... hope that your family can cope with your death and move on... hope that mankind will do this or that... I don't think I'll die hopeless.

Meaningless... what is the meaning of death? To give way to the younger generations? To stop taking up space and resources? To give yourself back into the great cycle?

I find it to be a sad mind that which requires an external super-entity to provide hope and meaning.
Kinda like Superman giving hope and meaning to everyone in Metropolis.... well... at least hope.

---

Our next question comes from Kit:

What if god never existed at all and early man concocted him from the imagination for the sake of comfort during a time of overwhelming uncertainty?

I'm going to narrow it to the Christian God.

So then it would be the case that:

1. The 40 or so authors of the Bible lied for reasons that are not only unclear, but incomprehensible

If there is no god, then.... is Drich lying about his experience? Are you lying about your experiences?
I don't think those writers would be lying as "intentionally writing something they knew to be wrong"... I think they were products of their time, descendants of believers who probably had their own experiences and interpret them as you find it written in the bible.

2. Jesus' take on the true nature of humanity was a lucky guess

Philosophy was a hot topic at the time of NT writing. It may have rubbed off into the authors... or into the Jesus person upon whom the story is based.

3. Billions of people have lied (sometimes for their entire lifetime) about some relationship with God and the effects it has on them.

You can speak truthfully and yet convey an erroneous statement.
That, of course, doesn't exclude charlatans who notice how people react to such statements and fabricate/exaggerate their own for profit. Profit at the expense of the gullibility of those Billions you speak of.

4. Billions of people have falsely bought what other have told them is true and what they themselves have intuitively believed to be true.

Think of the IQ scale. It is designed to fit everyone into a neat normalized bell-shaped curve with the 100 at the center. Half the population has an IQ lower than 100. The other half, higher.
Now consider that the majority of the lower half can easily be manipulated by someone with enough charisma. And a good deal of the other half can also be manipulated, but no so easily.

Human reasoning is stock full of pitfalls. We call them logical fallacies. The most common and easier to fall into is the ad populum falacy. Your quote here is a screaming example of it.

5. Million (if not billions) of supernatural-->physical events previously ascribed to God because of the context were just lucky deterministic coincidences that just so happened to perpetuate the "concocted...imagination"

Yep... and with the present day global population at all-time highs, but with access to cameras.... those events have suddenly mostly vanished! Odd!

6. Life has no ultimate meaning, purpose, or value.

Why do you need to preface meaning, purpose, and value with "ultimate"?

Human life generally has societal meaning, purpose, and value. Can't that be enough?

7. I don't think there is a good grounds for libertarian free fill--despite out intuition.

Do you mean "free will" and "our intuition"?

8. Our cognitive abilities were developed for survival--not truth. Calls into question...well...everything.

Indeed. In a society that praises some higher power, those individuals who follow along get a better chance at survival and breeding.

9. We continue to have big gaping holes in questions like:

why anything at all exists

Must there be a reason?
Must it be the result of some entity's thought process as this "why" question implies?

the origin of the universe

None of us were there to witness it... That kinda makes it difficult...

why the universe is fine-tuned for intelligent life

Short answer: it's not.
Most of the Universe is far from forgiving to life at all, let alone intelligent life.

what is consciousness

That part of your mind that thinks and considers things?
I don't know... just throwing it out there...

abiogenesis

Again, no one was there to witness it happening.
Research is under way in that subject.

I want to point out that the theory slipped into the question does not have any evidence to support it. It is pretty much just the entailment of the premise: God does not exist.

Not necessarily...
I think the concept of the divine took a while to develop... possibly first by coming up with the concept of the dead living on (my loved ones who die or my hopes of how things are after my own death) and then expanding that notion to include a realm where all the dead people exist... a ruler for that realm, etc, etc...

[Neo-Scholastic]

I was writing this yesterday, but then gave up, because time... today, I noticed GC praising this reply by neo, so I figured I'd give it another go.

Then everyone alive now, in the past or in the future will die hopeless meaningless deaths.

I wouldn't see things that bleakly.
Hope is always there.... perhaps not hope in any eternal life, but hope that things will get better for everyone else... hope that your family can cope with your death and move on... hope that mankind will do this or that... I don't think I'll die hopeless.

Human life generally has societal meaning, purpose, and value. Can't that be enough?

Let's not confuse hope with enjoyment. Sure you can enjoy life but that in itself isn't meaningful. You can build stuff but it will all fall to ruin eventually. You can hope our ancestors will carry on, but then they will die too, if not now, then eventually when the universe itself dies. If human existence is extinguished by death and all our legacies erased by time then there isn't anything to hope for beyond that boundary.

[The Grand Nudger]

All that you build will fall to ruin regardless of whether or not theres punch and pie in the sky.  I don;t know, I can;t see the sense in invoking the legacy of our descendants on the one hand and complaining about the futility of it all on the other.  

Yes, we all die...including christians.  To my mind, that makes life more precious, not less. For a guy who contends that atheism is the nihilistic position...your assessment of life seems awfully bleak to me.

[Silver]

Indeed.

Regarding how we only have the one life to live, it should be lived to its fullest. Not squandered to a primitive mythology that irrationally demands only living a certain way for the supposed hope of an existence after death.

[pocaracas]

I was writing this yesterday, but then gave up, because time... today, I noticed GC praising this reply by neo, so I figured I'd give it another go.


I wouldn't see things that bleakly.
Hope is always there.... perhaps not hope in any eternal life, but hope that things will get better for everyone else... hope that your family can cope with your death and move on... hope that mankind will do this or that... I don't think I'll die hopeless.

Human life generally has societal meaning, purpose, and value. Can't that be enough?

Let's not confuse hope with enjoyment.  Sure you can enjoy life but that in itself isn't meaningful. You can build stuff but it will all fall to ruin eventually. You can hope our ancestors will carry on, but then they will die too, if not now, then eventually when the universe itself dies. If human existence is extinguished by death and all our legacies erased by time then there isn't anything to hope for beyond that boundary.

That seems to be a very distant and pointless barrier to look into any "beyond".
Why should I care about it? Why should I have hope towards such a state that is pretty much meaningless to me as a human on this planet?

I understand that many people would want to have such hope... and it is a fact that many (such as yourself, I suppose) do, regardless of the existence of the god.
But why reach for something like that? Were you sold that concept of everlasting life in some form and are now unable to think of existence without your conscience permeating it forever and ever?
Is that what hope is all about? Hoping that we go on forever and ever?

[The Grand Nudger]

I suspect that people who seek fulfillment in death have very little of that in life.

[I_am_not_mafia]

My entire life is spent trying to find meaning. Especially as I don't have children. This is why science is so important to me. My contributions can outlast me. I peronally suspect that the desire to find a meaning in our lives that outlast us derives from the drive to reproduce.

[brewer]

Let's not confuse hope with enjoyment.  Sure you can enjoy life but that in itself isn't meaningful. You can build stuff but it will all fall to ruin eventually. You can hope our ancestors will carry on, but then they will die too, if not now, then eventually when the universe itself dies. If human existence is extinguished by death and all our legacies erased by time then there isn't anything to hope for beyond that boundary.

So you need the fantasy mental crutch to give your life meaning. Got it.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Let's not confuse hope with enjoyment.  Sure you can enjoy life but that in itself isn't meaningful. You can build stuff but it will all fall to ruin eventually. You can hope our ancestors will carry on, but then they will die too, if not now, then eventually when the universe itself dies. If human existence is extinguished by death and all our legacies erased by time then there isn't anything to hope for beyond that boundary.

So you need the fantasy mental crutch to give your life meaning. Got it.

Personally I am OK with that. If there is no meaning in life except that which you give it then whatever makes them happy. It's when they impose their personal meaning onto others that annoys me.

[The Grand Nudger]

Children are pretty consistent source of meaning (and jaw grinding frustration)..but I like to try and make things better apart from my kids (and yes, for them) as well.  

If I sat wallowing around in futility and wishing for some eternal afterlife I;d begin to think that I wasn;t living right, and that some of that wallowing or groveling time might be better spent on the life I have rather than the life I seek to secure in the murky hereafter.