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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Nice guy?
Date: 2008-02-19 04:10 pm (UTC)You're talking about the guy who invented Hell and sentenced every man, woman and child ever born or ever to be born to an eternity of torment in it. -- unless they go through the precise mumbo jumbo jumbo his church orders.
If Jesus really is more than a syncretic mashup pulled off by 2nd century church fathers who loved nothing more than their own power and he really did exist, then he was a right bastard and our modern-day James Dobsons and Ralph Reeds are apples who didn't fall very far from the tree.
Re: Nice guy?
Date: 2008-02-19 05:04 pm (UTC)So atupid and so un-alive that I forgot to ask about NZ and how you're doing. Are you happy? You deserve it, and it's what I (and a bunch of other people)wish for you.
Re: Nice guy?
Date: 2008-02-19 07:53 pm (UTC)No not stupid. No apology needed.
And you are absolutely right about the Council of Nicea. What a bunch of bureaucratic hypocrites they must have been! As an example, leaving the warning about agriculture destroying ecology out of the bible -- that's what the whole expulsion from the garden of Eden by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge is about. They left out the bit that makes it clear it is about growing crops and livestock, because it was inconvenient. A friend of mine was researching the excluded books and was appalled to find that.
I'm not really here in NZ for a holiday, but to help a friend who is having problems. I must admit I'll be glad to get home. I miss the peace of living alone way out in the country. Being continuously around other humans is surprisingly stressful.
Re: Nice guy?
Date: 2008-02-19 07:42 pm (UTC)Most of the truly horrible Christians are not really Christian at all, but Paulian and don't realise they are followers of someone who I'm sure Jesus would been freaked out by.
Being a faulty human I'm sure Jesus had plenty of failings. I seem to recall it being reported in the bible that he cursed an entire town to hell... or was that that nasty worm Paul again? But in all, with his philosophy of non-violence and tolerance, Jesus (I actually prefer his real name: Joshua) was a pretty nice guy. Especially when you compare him with the norm of that day. Unlike most people back then he actually valued human life, which was an amazing step forward. If he was somehow teleported to the present I suspect he'd seem a little morally backward. The human race has become a far more moral and good bunch over the last 2,000 years.
Re: Nice guy?
Date: 2008-02-20 10:34 am (UTC)During your visit to NZ, even when the pressuress from being with the people around you are getting to be too much, be alive to those people (for them) and with those people (for you).
As if you'd ever do anything else.