the meaning of life
Feb. 13th, 2008 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eMet a nice old guy yesterday on the bus who started chatting to Margaret and me. He had decided to destroy a lot of his paintings that he'd made for his wife in retribution of the affair she was having with a younger man. Apparently his wife was a deeply religious woman so he couldn't understand what had gone wrong. He thought she needed to go to church more.
I gently pointed out that religion may be the problem, not the solution, and that everywhere in the world that religion is strongest, you'll find that violence, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, etc, are also strongest.
He acknowledged that much of the world's violence is religiously inspired, but asked, "If there is no god then what point is there?" I was trying to formulate a proper answer to this when I lost my opportunity as the conversation moved on.
It amazes me how many times I've heard religious people ask this question. They ignore the obvious answer, that life is for living. What else could it be for?
The weird thing is that although religion purports to give a meaning, when you lift the curtain of paradox and obfuscation you find nothing there. They will say that god has a purpose for us, but when you ask what that purpose is, after a few misleads and conjectures you generally find them happily stating that we can't know what god's purpose is. I don't understand how religious people are not unsettled by how lacking it is to say that if there is a god he has a purpose for us but we can't know what it is. What they are saying is that someone tells us that some unknowable being exists who has an unknowable purpose for us so that makes it all okay. That isn't a purpose. It is an absolute lack of reason dressed up to look like something meaningful might be lurking behind.
It seems to me that when you look at life with a clear eye you see that life itself has one major purpose: to perpetuate life. But we are subset of life that is intelligent, which has given us a second goal: to learn. Being part of a social species brings a third purpose: to care for one another.
Simple logic gives us the most noble triplet of reasons to exist:
I gently pointed out that religion may be the problem, not the solution, and that everywhere in the world that religion is strongest, you'll find that violence, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, etc, are also strongest.
He acknowledged that much of the world's violence is religiously inspired, but asked, "If there is no god then what point is there?" I was trying to formulate a proper answer to this when I lost my opportunity as the conversation moved on.
It amazes me how many times I've heard religious people ask this question. They ignore the obvious answer, that life is for living. What else could it be for?
The weird thing is that although religion purports to give a meaning, when you lift the curtain of paradox and obfuscation you find nothing there. They will say that god has a purpose for us, but when you ask what that purpose is, after a few misleads and conjectures you generally find them happily stating that we can't know what god's purpose is. I don't understand how religious people are not unsettled by how lacking it is to say that if there is a god he has a purpose for us but we can't know what it is. What they are saying is that someone tells us that some unknowable being exists who has an unknowable purpose for us so that makes it all okay. That isn't a purpose. It is an absolute lack of reason dressed up to look like something meaningful might be lurking behind.
It seems to me that when you look at life with a clear eye you see that life itself has one major purpose: to perpetuate life. But we are subset of life that is intelligent, which has given us a second goal: to learn. Being part of a social species brings a third purpose: to care for one another.
Simple logic gives us the most noble triplet of reasons to exist:
- to be life-enhancing
- to learn about ourselves and the world around us
- to care for each other
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no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 11:56 am (UTC)I've found it wonderfully comforting and nurturing and inspiring. Google "humanist symposium".
I recommend it to you and to anybody who might follow you and me on the path that leads to life and the celebration of life.
That's about as poetic as I get, but I wanted to affirm, even though it isn't needed, how much I admire you and think you've got a lot of the importsnt things right.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-14 01:03 am (UTC)I'll definitely check out the Humanist Symposium. I didn't know about it. It'll have to wait till I return to Australia though. Internet access is soooo expensive here in New Zealand.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-17 04:59 am (UTC)http://aloadofbright.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/the-credit-we-deserve/
The symposium main page is at
http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/04/the-humanist-symposium.html
for those who might be interested.