The Meaning of Life

[Sage]

You're all talking about life, but what actually is it? I mean, a car can be perfectly designed but still won't do anything without fuel and batteries. What's our battery? What makes us tick? What gets our hearts to start beating?

Food fuels us, but where does our electricity come from?

[ACAMS]

SEX, DRUGS & ROCK and ROLL...........and robots

[Hydro]

i'll agree with that last one...

[Urjak]

I don't see why we need our own "electricity". You are comparing a car to a living thing, two very different objects. I am not saying we don't have our own kind of "electricity, I'm saying just becaused a car needs it does not mean we need it. :)

[Hydro]

our brains/neurons use electricity to transmit signals, much like old telephone lines.

[System32]

Don't blood cells kinda become non-living? They don't have a neucleus, so that means no reproduction, and the don't feed.

[Naryar]

They do feed on the nutriments around them in the bloodstream. All cells need an energy source.

[man manu]

Our lecky comes from respiration yes?

[roboman2444]

our brains/neurons use electricity to transmit signals, much like old telephone lines.

that is why you can easily do brain wave stuff.

[frezal]

Alright, I'm back home now.  I'll try to get to that reply I promised in the next day or so.  I'm a bit too tired to be digging up Hitler quotes right now.

[Urjak]

Sweet. Keep this thread alive. :D

[Clickbeetle]

I know we're talking about viruses now, but this is still fairly recent...

(Sorry for the confusing quote format; GTM doesn't do nested quotes apparently.)

I think that is a rather pessimistic look at life on Earth.  In no way does life "suck".  Life is amazing (in the true sense of the word)!  Sure, there are a lot of horrible things that occur (genocide comes to mind), but to say that life sucks doesn't sit right with me.

I just mean that there is a lot of stuff in life that sucks.  I was paraphrasing an argument against God that I've heard on several occasions.  (Incidentally, I don't agree with it.)  Namely that if God is perfect, then life should be perfect, but it's not.

The story of the forbidden apple (or pomegranate, depending on who you ask) doesn't sit well with me, either.  What kind of tyrannical dictator would set up such a trap?  God created Adam and Eve with the "flaw" of curiosity.  He then tells them that they can eat from any tree, except that one.  Of course with the inherent flaw of curiosity, the built in desire to learn, they'd go for the apple (and since God is all knowing, he knew they would before he even made such "flawed" beings).  Then, like a true fascist, God punishes them and all of their descendants by making them feel pain, shame, and marked them with original sin.  If what God did wasn't evil, what is?

It wasn't a trap and God is not a fascist... in fact, quite the opposite is true.  God gave man the choice whether or not to obey him.  If he didn't put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden and tell Adam and Eve not to eat from it, there would be no way for them to disobey, and they would be forced to love God without even knowing there was an alternative.  God could have easily just made us his loyal slaves... but he didn't.  At the risk of ruining his own creation, God gave us the choice of obedience.  Last I checked, not too many evil dictators will do that.

Going off on a tangent here, God is still giving us that choice.  People often wonder why God doesn't just reach down and smite the bad guys with a lightning bolt.  Or why Jesus hasn't returned yet.  Well it all makes sense if you consider that he's giving us as much time as possible to repent.  He wants to smite as few people as possible.

What makes you believe it was the Christian God that created all?  Why do you subscribe to this supernatural being, and not Zeus, Thor, Mithra, Horus, Krishna or any of the other gods?

I'll admit it, that's a difficult question.  Mostly because I don't know much about other religions and can't make informed statements about them.  But there's a couple of reasons why I think Christianity is "the right one".  Quickly: One, the Bible was written over hundreds of years by several different authors who sometimes had no contact with each other, yet the message remains consistent throughout.  Two, after Jesus was crucified, the disciples were scattered, disheartened, and depressed.  It doesn't make sense for them to be so enthusiastic about the idea that he rose from the dead if he didn't really do it.  And three, Christianity actually changes lives.  Maybe I'm biased, but I haven't heard many stories of addicts and criminals repenting and finding a better life and staying that way after coming to faith in some other religion.

"Doing God's Will" can be a pretty dangerous statement.  So much evil has been done for that cause.  On the Muslim side of the fence, there was the Armenian Genocide, the genocide going on in Sudan, the September 11th hijackings, and a whole lot of violence in between.  On the Christian side of the fence, there was the holocaust (Hitler was raised a Roman Catholic, and used Christianity to rally people together), the genocide in Rwanda, the genocide in Bosnia, and a whole lot of violence in between.  

All of these atrocities were backed by passages out of their respective holy books.  While the more sane members of the religion tend to dwell more on the cheery and uplifting passages, it cannot be denied that the justification is there.

True.  Religious teachings, like anything else in the world, can be misinterpreted.  It's hard to know God's will and some people get it grossly wrong.  That's why I chose not to get into that particular issue.

While organisms do serve as nutrition for other organisms, that doesn't mean that we serve a purpose other than spreading our DNA far and wide.  In fact, many organisms are intentionally eaten so that they can better spread.

Supporting higher forms of life really isn't the purpose, though.  If I was eaten by a bear, my purpose on Earth wasn't to become brunch for a bear.  My purpose was still to spread my DNA (which means I would have failed as I have no children.  That's beside the point, though).  The bear evolved in such a way to take advantage of my slow running speed and small physical stature to eat me, and thus increase its chances of having [more] babies.

Is not the purpose of food to nourish?  So if you become food, your purpose is to nourish the organism that eats you, so that organism can reproduce.  I won't belabor the point, though, since "The Meaning of Life" is no more to be food than it is to reproduce.

Survival of the Fittest explains domesticated pets perfectly.  We used cats for ridding our homes of pests.  Cats used us to get a warm home and guaranteed meal.  We were mutually helping each other to survive.  While things have changed a bit, the premise is about the same.  Cats relieve stress, which helps us avoid heart and other health problems.  We still provide them with a warm home and meals.  Thus, mutual survival.

We used dogs to help us hunt, navigate, and to give us company.  Dogs used us for protection, guaranteed meals, and a warm home.  Mutual survival, again.  Now, it's about the same.

Yes, domesticated pets were originally bred for that purpose.  But what about now?  What about all these "purebreed" cats and dogs people can enter into contests and such?  Some modern pets would be very unfit for life in the wild.

No, because I don't believe they have those purposes.  I think you're treating pets as if they are material things that are here for the purpose of entertaining us.  While it's fun to pretend that cats sit on our laps because they love us, the truth is that they are just wanting some warmth, and our laps happen to be a very good, and comfortable, source of that.

Yes, but a wild cat won't sit on your lap no matter how warm it is.  We've bred modern cats so that they will, and serve the purpose of comfort.

We are simply animals, so our existence is the same as any other animals.  Just because our nervous systems are more complex, that doesn't mean that our biological instincts are any different from the days of Lucy and before.

Technically, humans are animals, but our existence is vastly different from other animals.  I don't think I need to make a list of human accomplishments to make that point.  And while our biological instincts may be the same, we have higher thought processes that can (and often should) override those.  When confronted with a plate of food, for instance, we can choose whether or not to eat it.  An animal guided by pure instinct will just gobble it up as long as it's hungry.
 

Dolphins, great apes, bears, octopods, and many other animals are also highly intelligent.  While they may not be as smart as us, they are certainly intelligent.  And any species (including species outside of the animal kingdom) can change the world for better or worse.  It'll take longer, but you mentioned nothing about time being a factor.

I didn't say intelligence is unique to humans.  Intelligence and self-awareness, however, is.  As I said before, we have the capability to ignore our instincts.  Also, while it's true that any species outside of its native range can have drastic global effects, none of them could do damage on the scale humans are capable of.  Imagine if we did not restrain ourselves from exploiting the environment as much as we wanted (which is to say, restrain ourselves from obeying our instincts).  Whole biomes would collapse.  The ozone layer would vanish.  The Earth would turn into a radioactive oven.  I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up killing everything bigger than algae.

Why?  I agree that we should intentionally try to kill off any species, and that we should keep our pollution to a minimal, but that doesn't mean that we have to prevent species from going extinct.  If a species can no longer cut it, it's their time to join the 90% of creatures that ever existed.

Earth supported life just fine before us.

The Earth has always had the metaphorical bumper sticker that says, "Adapt or GTFO!"  If they aren't surviving, perhaps it's because they're not the fittest.  If we can't adapt to life without them, perhaps we're not so great after all.

That's just callous.  Suppose rice were threatened with a new disease that was wiping it out.  Would you condemn it to extinction then, and cause mass starvation all across Asia?  That seems to go against your belief that the meaning of life is to procreate.  By preserving the Earth's ecosystems, as opposed to ruining them, we increase humanity's own survival.

Why would that be depressing?  Why must you serve a tyrannical space dictator by worshipping and preventing weaker species from going the way of the dodo?

Because if the purpose of life is to procreate and nothing more, there is absolutely no reason for our ability to override our instincts.  We might as well live as animals, mating with as many people as possible and killing our rivals.  There is no reason for creativity.  Art, entertainment, love, it all just gets in the way of our primary purpose.  Nothing we do matters except how many kids we can overpopulate the Earth with.  No kids, you might as well be dead.  Everyone on this forum, in fact, is wasting their time with meaningless distractions when they could be out raping women!

If you don't think that view of life is depressing, man, you have problems.

Whether or not Jesus actually existed is debatable, but due to the needlessly complicated (and utterly false) story moving him from Nazareth to Bethlehem, I'll concede that the Jesus in the Bible is at least partially based on the life of a man of that time. Anyways, biologically speaking, their purpose was to spread their seed.  Just because Einstein was a whiz at physics, that doesn't mean his biological urge to have lots and lots of sex went away (though shackin' up with his cousin probably helped).

Einstein's sexual behavior has nothing to do with anything; I was just using him as an example of someone important who didn't have any kids.  The same with Jesus.  Even if you don't believe he was God, you would have to agree that he was important.

Why must one fulfill his/her biological purpose in order to be significant?  Besides, Einstein did quite a bit to further our species by expanding our knowledge in physics.  We've been able to survive because of our expansive knowledge, and expanding it further will only help us survive better.  Besides, his work in relativity may someday save our sausages.

That's exactly my point!  You don't need to fulfill your "biological purpose" in order to be significant.  That is the Meaning of Life I'm getting at--significance beyond simply reproducing.

You forgot something!  Our sun might also swell up into a nice red giant.  Or we could get swallowed by that red giant that's heading this way.


We have always had the same amount of energy.  Energy, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed.

But energy can be lost as heat.  Things always move from a higher energy state to a lower state.  Entropy is always increasing, and the only way to decrease it again is to put energy into it (thus increasing entropy somewhere else.)  My point is that, one way or another, Earth and probably the entire universe will eventually cease to support life.

If we are here to serve a fascist and to prevent dud species from dying out, how will that matter once "the universe runs down"?  And what do you mean by that?  Do you mean once the universe is no longer inhabitable by us?


You want to live under a ruthless dictator who demands that you worship at his feet, despite providing no evidence to his existence, or suffer the consequences of eternal punishment?  To me, that would be bleak.

It matters if you believe in an eternal afterlife.  Only in the context of eternity does anything at all have any meaning whatsoever.  If you die and that's it, that's all she wrote, then the Earth might as well explode tomorrow for all the difference it makes, because it's going to end anyway someday, and it won't matter how many children you have or how fit your DNA is.

I could say more about God and how the concept of him being a cruel dictator is a gross misconception, but I've already talked about that and I'm really tired now.  I'll probably wake up and notice a bunch of mistakes in this post... meh.

[Naryar]

Well Click i have also several questions...

-I am an agnostic, because i have absolutely no clue about God existing or not. Because... how can we know ? A book or what someone told you ? How do you know that is true ?

- Converting because of the promise of a happy eternity in paradise is a purely egoistical reason. Do you think Christians have to be like that ?

-And why the hell an all-loving god and someone who gave us the choice of freedom would sent us to hell if we don't believe in him, that looks to me like something very cruel ?

-And also why an atheist that contributed to humanity's good would go to hell and a tyrant would go to paradise if he repents ?

-About the paradise... You say it is ever-lasting joy. But this isn't human ! Human nature is both experimenting joy and suffering (i am really simplifying). While we all crave for happiness, paradise looks like too much... that might turn us insane, or just drugged people just acting on instinctive urges to find pleasure. You must know that something pleasurable is much more pleasurable if you lacked it for some time.

-About immortality... The human mind has limits, and especially that we all grow bored of something while experimenting it for a long time. No matter how long it takes, one day or a hundred years, but you WILL most probably grow bored of that endless cycle. There are a lot of theories about the final boredom of eternity and IMO they have very good reasons to support them.

So according to my theory, the paradise would be full of drugged "junkies" always seeking for pleasure (first step, the newcomers) or bored people (second step, after many and many years of paradise). What's the point of that if God wanted humans to be both happy (that the second doesn't have) and gave us freedom (that the first doesn't have)?

I'd rather live longer on this world and age slower (not more than a couple hundred years though) and then fade into nothingness if i die.

That is all.

[Weirdo]

I don't believe in a god, or an afterlife. Clickbeetle says that the world may as well end tomorrow if there is no afterlife, because we'd be getting nowhere.

Well maybe he's right. Maybe life is meaningless.

For many people, thats a very bleak and depressing veiw. So, thats why I think we have to create meaning for ourselves. We have to succeed in doing what we want, be happy, tell each other how successful we've been. If we can't do that, then lifes meaning is lost to us. But only because, perhaps, life has no real meaning. Like I said, we create meaning for ourselves.

[Urjak]

On your arguments about the rice plant Clickbeetle, if you were to save these rice plants, you would instead be killing off another species, the disease. Now, assuming it is a bacteria, or if you consider viruses living, then you will probably be killing another living thing off becasue it must have mutated, perhaps to only affect rice plants. Now, without human intervention, the disease would be "the most fit" and survive, while the rice either built up an immunity or perished. Thus, with human intervention, you may be saving one species but kill off another.

[frezal]

@ Click--I'll provide you with a response in the next day or so.  I don't want to not address any of the points you raised, so I'll need some time to write up a good response.

On the topic of Hitler:
While he did not attend church regularly, he very much considered himself a Christian, and believed (at least on a public level) that he was doing the work of God.  Here's a quote from a speech he gave one April 12th, 1922:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

If that's not sufficient, read Mein Kampf.  It's riddled with references to his Christian faith.

[Jack Daniels]

"Be not fond of that dull Blueish Yellow light form the human world. That is the path of thing accumulated propensities of violent egotism come to revive thee. If thou art attracted by it, thou wilt be born in the human world and have to suffer birth, age, sickness, and death; and thou wilt have no chance of getting out of the quagmire of worldly existence. That is an interruption to obstruct thy path to liberation. Therefore, look not upon it and abandon egotism, abandon propensities, be not attracted towards it; be not weak."  -The Bardo Thodol

Live life to your fullest. Your body is a gift, use it and care for it. The reward of the afterlife may be given to those that make the best of their worldly existence. Be peaceful, love others, love yourself. Build and create to your hearts content for no-ones benefit but yourself and those you love.

I am not religious in any specific degree... but i read alot. Recently i read the Tibetan Book of the dead (the bardo thodol) and it was terrific.

[SpyGuy]

The meaning of life:

Whatever you choose to do with the one you have, regardless of sex, race, or religion.

[Naryar]

the one

I really hope you mean by that "your life" and not more...

[philetbabe]

If that's not sufficient, read Mein Kampf.  It's riddled with references to his Christian faith.

if  Hitler used christian faith to support its mad ideology, it  is demagogy and is not the fact of a religious man trying to act in conformity with his religion.

i do not agree with you, and in fact, i don't know why do you support such a thesis which shows a real  unknowledge of both chrisitan and nazi thoughts.
You've perhaps read mein kampf and the bible, but, indeed, you did not understand much from, at least, one these book to look so confuse about their respective ideology.