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Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I happen t

Really enjoyed this. I love how practical, humble, and respectful (even of religions, which I really appreciate) uncompromising nihilists tend to be. I happen to be a Christian, so I could go on all day about meaning, but if I could say one thing, it's this: We all die, and it's more than likely even humanity will die out as well (even if it's at the heat death of the universe). You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning, focusing instead on various ways of measuring subjective meaning. But at the end of the day, anything times zero is zero, which is fine if you're a nihilist, I guess. The focus in this framework is on you and your "meaning graph", but cool thing about knowing an ultimate God, is that he's a connection to your graph (both investing in your meaning, and pulling from your meaning via worship), that sticks in a way nothing else can. Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true; Romans 4:17 says, God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist." From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I".

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true Some Christians believe this. Some Christians don't. And some Christians believe something which technically agrees with this, but doesn't actually hold that knowing Jesus by name or having any contact with formal Christianity is essential, which makes it functionally more like the reverse ("people for whom nihilism is true don't know Christ"). Christians, even by the narrow creedal definition, believe lots of different things.
jackmott 10y ago
All of it is deluded.
pmarreck 10y ago
I think the (seeming) existence (or open question) of meaning hints at least at something "spiritual," but I think it's an extra stretch to paint it as some proof of theism and by association religious beliefs, some of which are (in a secular context) ethically debatable (but which are unable to be debated simply by nature of being deemed "sacred" and the debating of which is considered "blasphemy") Personally, I think "music" is probably the most succinct example that our existence may not be purely materialistic in nature (... as I crank up my techno of debatable quality lol) Laws have survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; medicine has survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; why would religious beliefs (if indeed they have something true and useful, nay, meaningful about the world to say) not potentially be made stronger by seeing "what remains standing" after fierce, intellectual, honest, secular debate? They could even start with "the puzzle of 'meaning'" and work from there. Sacrifice the more extreme/intellectually-weak beliefs to save the others, I say! ;) But beware, there is a rocky road there, which you elect to base religion on: a very interesting blog post linked directly off of this one (http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness) talks about "intense meaning" in the context of an affair.
- jonstaab 10y ago
  Funny to apply evolutionary principles to a critique of religion ;) But I do think you're making the incorrect assumption that religion hasn't already undergone that sort of strenuous debate. Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor.
  - sgk284 10y ago
    While religion in ancient Greece had great debate, anything that happened during and after the fall of the Roman empire had effectively zero critical thought to it for the next several hundred years. Christianity was ultimately thrust on western populations by force. It stayed there for generations until it became so engrained in European culture (and American culture, as a consequence) that nobody questioned it anymore until modern day. It is a coincidence of history that Greece happened to have a a Christian faction that was good at converting people right around the same time that that Roman empire was collapsing. Many other religions that tried to similarly gain traction were met with destruction before they hit critical mass, so you must be careful to acknowledge some survival bias here for your religion of choice. Christians, by pure chance, got the timing right.
  - pluma 10y ago
    > Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor. Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer was "problematic" for your well-being and status in society. Even today in the US politicians know they need to demonstrate their Christianity to become president -- I doubt we'll see an atheist, Jewish, Hindu or even Muslim president within my lifetime (I'm 31). Also, religious dogma largely lives separate from science and philosophy. It is true that many aspects of what "Christianity" is have been defined by consensus in the Vatican Council (including what scripture -- and which specific version of that scripture -- is considered canonical) and some Christian churches have been adjusting their dogma since (e.g. the CoE has become more accepting of homosexuality, the Catholic church has accepted evolution as factual). But saying "religion has undergone strenuous debate" is a very romanticized view of history. Not to mention that much of Christian theology/philosophy foregoes the possibility that any other religion might be true to the point where Pascal's Wager only works if you supply the premise "All other religions and sects are definitely wrong" (i.e. you can't accidentally insult the "True God" if you submit yourself to the Christian God and turn out to be wrong).
crusso 10y ago
Based upon how you used it, I doubt that you and I could even agree on something simple like the meaning of the word "objective".
- DigitalJack 10y ago
  What was the point of your comment?
  - crusso 10y ago
    In religious discussions, people go around in circles arguing within the narrow space of each person's belief system. When even simple terms like "objective" are used in radically different ways, the conversation is doomed from the beginning.
    - DigitalJack 10y ago
      This happens in politics too. And cross gender arguments. I don't think it's particular to religion, although I suspect the tendencies of religions to have a lingo makes it worse.
      - crusso 10y ago
        I agree. In any discussion where you have a great deal of difference between positions, you have this problem. The more emotionally charged or wound up in groupthink a person is, the worse it gets because the very language that could be used to bridge the gap provides less useful traction. It's not about higher-level concepts, it's about basic building blocks of communication. I didn't have much time for posting yesterday, so I was a bit too terse - but my intent in making the point that I did was to try to get the original poster to think about the very words that he was using. Often when I join in on heated discussions, I find that people are talking past each other. They throw out words that mean something to them that I don't think mean the same thing to other participants in the conversation. I normally encourage participants to slow down and either pick different words or settle on a common definition for some words that are causing the confusion. It's amazing how quickly some disagreements can effectively evaporate, or at least get whittled down to essentials, when everyone is communicating more effectively.
DigitalJack 10y ago
Well, barring space transit, humanity will be wiped out by the Sun long before the heat death of the universe, if not by some other catastrophe first. I am Christian as well, but I didn't think the article handled religion well. In Christianity, "God's chosen people" are the tribes of Israel, not Christians. In Christianity, the meaning of life is love, something you don't have to be a Christian to believe or understand, so you certainly wouldn't have to cling to Christianity to hang on to this meaning. Buddhism is about relieving suffering. Something that you don't have to believe in Buddhism to understand. You don't have to cling to Buddhism to believe that your meaning in life is relieving the suffering of others. Anyway, the paragraph about religion and meaning didn't ring true for me.
- tim333 10y ago
  If we can't build space transit in 100 million years we're not much of a species.
  - Natsu 10y ago
    We have a finite energy budget to get out of here, it's not too clear to me how much we can take with us.
    - johnmarius 10y ago
      Why?
      - smallnamespace 10y ago
        Because one of the main payoffs from getting here to the nearest habitable star system is that you're now closer to more habitable star systems. But if turns out that it's very very expensive to get from one star system to another, then that recursive payoff might be very close to zero.
        zardo 10y ago
rimantas 10y ago
One can find much more objective meaning to existence without outsorcing it to some imaginable friend. > Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, > nihilism is essentially true And folks who don't give a rat ass about what Christians believe do know that nobody has monopoly on meaning and don't see the need to reduce everything else to nihilism. It would be much nicer if religious people would only use religion to measure those who are part of it, not those who are outside.
- praveer13 10y ago
  >One can find much more objective meaning to existence without outsorcing it to some imaginable friend. Care to elaborate on this? I'm an atheist myself and I've been struggling with this a lot.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Aesthetics is one possibility. When someone straitens a picture frame they don't need that to last past the heat death of the universe for it to be worth it. Expanding this to say a painting or poem which also has a finite lifespan and you can even learn to appreciate a Mandala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala Keep going in that direction and a life well lived is it's own reward. And by well lived I mean occasional cliff diving not devoting oneself to charitable giving. There is a lot of pressure for 'success' but I suspect many people are happier with a career in dog grooming than they would be as CEO of IBM. High status can be fun, or endless drudgery.
    - virmundi 10y ago
      The issue is defining what it is to be "well lived". With out a sky daddy, you're pretty much unable to declare anything good or bad. Some men want to watch the world burn. Tell me why that is wrong? You will say that human life has value. I will ask, honestly, why? From a purely reductionist perspective it doesn't. It's all just atoms. I kill cockroaches without a negative thought. There is no reason to not have the same view of people in a purely materialistic worldview. Again, if one's aesthetics is gruesome, but enjoyable to that person, you cannot tell them they are wrong. You cannot interfere with them from an ethics perspective. They want to kill, steal and rape, you have to let them. Otherwise you're forcing an external model that you deem good onto them. We've already established that there is no actual good model. The result is that we must accept hypocrisy. We must all realize that might makes right. The most powerful, flawed group of people are correct. They are the law.
lsc 10y ago
>From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I". How does the one god have any more potential to create meaning than a pantheon of gods, or one of the many "we are all part of god" spiritual ideas?
- jonstaab 10y ago
  Another question for another day. Off the top of my head I can't think of a reason they wouldn't be able to create some form of objective meaning. My problem with lies more in the problems of evil, ontology, epistemology, and a compelling narrative to history.
  - lsc 10y ago
    That's the thing; having a whole pantheon of gods, each of differing levels of 'goodness' neatly solves the problem of evil. (so does postulating one true god who isn't entirely good or entirely evil.) The problem of evil is only a philosophical problem insofar as you postulate a god of infinite ability, infinite knowledge and infinite goodness. Obviously, such a god contradicts the world as we see it. remove any one of those three pillars, and the contradiction goes away; Further, I think, once you start knocking one of those three pillars out, so that we get a god who matches observable reality, I question if that god can create any more meaning than the traditional "What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power" I mean, would you worship an insufficiently good god? one who intentionally chose some people for very good lives and others for very bad lives? My argument is that worshiping such a god would be either an act of fear or a grasp for power. What about an insufficiently powerful god? a god who really was doing his best?
    - thinkdevcode 10y ago
      Relevant quote: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus
pluma 10y ago
Meaning is something that is imposed by an observer. For something to have meaning, there has to be someone it has meaning to. Religions typically offer a supernatural observer (usually but not necessarily a creator god) to play that part. Atheists don't have the luxury of simply defining such an observer into existence, so they fall back to that which already exists or has a reasonable chance of existing if things go as planned: themselves, friends and family, their offspring, other humans, whatever comes after humans, maybe even some other species that is luckier than us and stumbles upon our remains. But because meaning is subjective, it is also contextual: ultimately everything may be meaningless because there is no absolute observer ("ultimately" kind of implies there is no observer left anyway), but in the meantime there are potentially billions of people whose lives you can affect -- and many billions upon billions more if we as a species survive that long. Talking about religions as if they were all the same or at least similar enough to lump them on a single pile is dishonest. That's often how apologists try to define their deity of choice into existence (drawing semantic arguments that define "god" in such a way it becomes a logical necessity) but there's no path from "there is something I shall call 'God'" to "everything in the Bible/Quran/Talmud/Necronomicon is true" short of circular reasoning ("because the Bible/Quran/Talmud/Necronomicon says so"), special pleading ("of course all the other religions are just superstitions") or "divine revelation" (i.e. non-repeatable personal anecdotes). Speaking of "the meaning of (human) life to a rock" would be patently ridiculous: rocks don't have a capacity to impose meaning on anything humans do and even if they did we wouldn't be able to tell nor have any incentive to care. Speaking of "the meaning of (human) life to Bob" likewise is only worth anyone's attention if we have any reason to actually care what Bob thinks. Even foregoing the impossibility of proving the existence of a god or gods (given how awkward they are to define consistently across religions and how being able to actually demonstrate their existence would by definition refute their supernaturality) why should anyone care what they think about life, human or non? Many religions like Christianity solve this problem by making their god vengeful. Don't do what Yahweh wants? Experience unpleasant things for eternity (whatever "experience" or "unpleasant" means in eternity). Do something he likes? Experience eternal bliss (whatever "bliss" means if it is eternal). Various sects disagree on the exact nature of the punishment/blessings and what is necessary to deserve them. Either way, you have to wonder what difference it ultimately makes: if we're talking about some kind of post-physical eternal state of "being" without bad things, what's the value of good things? If there is none, what difference does it make whether you're blessed, punished or simply cease to be? It almost seems like an elaborate con based on all living things' natural fear of death and non-answers ("What was before the universe?" -"Turtles." "What was before turtles?" -"Turtles were always there. It's turtles all the way back."). Also, with regard to the Christian god in particular: going by the Bible, Yahweh is not exactly the kind of character whose opinion I would value. The Old Testament is full of him commanding his followers to murder, pillage, rape and enslave others, not to mention the bloodshed and terror he allegedly inflicted directly. Even the New Testament paints a less than rosy picture of him. If Yahweh is real, he would be worse than all human tyrants of history combined and a perfect example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.
lisper 10y ago
> Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true If nihilism is "essentially true" (whatever that means) for "folks who don't know Jesus" (whatever that means) then it is essentially true for people who do know Jesus. We're all in the same boat. Whatever the objective truth is, it's the same for everyone. The only question is who is burying their heads in the sand, and whether or not that's a good thing, or if it even matters at all. (Personally, I think it does matter, but I can see how a reasonable person could disagree.)
- kordless 10y ago
  Burying heads in sand works when you can't take the data feed coming into said head. Christians make circular arguments to substantiate their beliefs, and those arguments are typically based on fairly trustworthy lessons. The only problem is, those circular arguments substantiate a singular all knowing god who is represented through the lense of a book a bunch of humans wrote 2,000 years ago. Marketing changes, but base concepts remain the same.
- jonstaab 10y ago
  All worldviews start with assumptions. Secular materialism relies on circular arguments as much as Christianity, they just explain less (see Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton). The only difference is that materialists often refuse to admit their assumptions - which is why, as a Christian, I admire nihilists - they're not afraid to admit their axioms and follow them to their logical conclusions.
  - lisper 10y ago
    > Secular materialism relies on circular arguments as much as Christianity No, that's not true. See: http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/03/why-some-assumptions-are-better-than.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/03/why-some-assumptions-are-...
    - jonstaab 10y ago
      Really, only the last paragraph of that post are relevant here. Secular materialism and Christianits share reason in common. The difference between the two is their explanation of why it works, where it came from, and why it matters. That's where circularity starts to happen.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
To be frank: no. https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/3ghjwh/nondiscrimination_in_germany_leads_to_rehiring_of/ctz0lnu?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/3ghjwh/nondisc... >There are a number of readily plausible accounts of metaethical naturalism that are available to the atheist. See, for example, Firth 1952, Railton 1986, Boyd 1988, Brink 1989, Smith 1994, or Foot 2001. My point is not that any of these accounts are correct (although I think that some of them are fairly likely to be true). Rather, my point is that if they are false, they are not obviously false. This means that they present the atheist with plausible accounts of objective morality that feature only natural facts, overturning claim (c) and, therefore, claim (a) as well. >Claim (d) fails on two fronts. First, there are non-natural facts that can serve as truth makers for moral claims that are available to atheists and, second, any problem that the atheist faces with regards to these facts the theist faces just as badly. I take the first horn to be supported by the possibility of irreducibly normative properties, Platonic or otherwise, that are available to the atheist. Recent defenses of such views include Shafer-Landau 2003, Cuneo 2007, Wedgwood 2007, Enoch 2011, and Cuneo & Shafer-Landau 2014. >On the latter point, that the theist faces the same problems as the atheist when it comes to non-natural normative facts (if there are any such problems), I agree with Heathwood 2012 that there cannot be any coherent theistic moral constructivism which does not refer to some irreducibly normative properties. Properties that are equally available to the atheist.
zdean 10y ago
"You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning..." This depends on what you're trying to give meaning to. The 'god' perspective gives meaning to life (i.e., why are we here??). But why is it necessary to ask that question in the first place? Asking it implies that there is a meaning to life and you're trying to figure out what it is. It's not inconsistent to say that "life" doesn't have meaning (nor does it need to) but that "our individual" lives do have meaning. That meaning is defined for us by our genetic blueprint...it gives us the motive force individually to seek out the things that fulfill our individual lives. Once we die, the show simply ends.
anotherdev 10y ago
I'm seeing a recurring theme in this thread (and others) accusing Christians of using circular / irrational arguments to substantiate their beliefs. I'm a Christian and here is my assessment of the nature of faith. Everyone lives by faith. When you decide to get in an airplane, you go by faith that the plane is sound, the pilots are skilled, etc. Same idea with driving to work, picking a job, getting married, conducting an experiment. By virtue of the fact that no one knows the future, we all must at the most basic level, live by faith. Faith is commitment without knowing (with 100% certainty). Of course that does not mean faith has to be blind and irrational. You make observations about the world, hear testimony of people you trust, think through the issues and come up with your conclusions. Atheists weigh the evidence (e.g. if God exists, why is there so much evil? Or why does God not reveal Himself more clearly?) and don't see God. Theists weigh the evidence (e.g. why is there something instead of nothing at all? or observe the improbability for the conditions that allow life in Earth) and see God. Blanket accusations that theists having no rational basis for their beliefs are not fair. There is rational basis for either camp if one is open to honest researching and listening. Throughout the ages there were and are great rational thinkers who profess faith in God. (e.g. Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton) This is to say again, everyone lives by faith. I have great confidence that God exists, but can not 100% prove it. The atheist can not prove He doesn't. I concede that I could be totally wrong. A rationally honest atheist will concede the same about their own beliefs. So we all make a decision. Our death is the day of reckoning. Only then will there be the possibility to know for certain if what you have chosen to believe was right or wrong.[0] TLDR; In issues of existence of God, afterlife, etc and therefore meaning, we cannot know for certain either way. So make the best choice you know how and we'll all find out if we were right later. [0] Technically, in the case that I'm wrong (about the afterlife), we won't know much of anything.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  >Throughout the ages there were and are great rational thinkers who profess faith in God. (e.g. Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton) This form of argument could quite easily be used to justify other beliefs. Newton, for instance, was also a practitioner of the occult and alchemy. Pascal regarded medicine as unholy. Even purportedly rational thinkers have their blind spots.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true Some Christians believe this. Some Christians don't. And some Christians believe something which technically agrees with this, but doesn't actually hold that knowing Jesus by name or having any contact with formal Christianity is essential, which makes it functionally more like the reverse ("people for whom nihilism is true don't know Christ"). Christians, even by the narrow creedal definition, believe lots of different things.

jackmott 10y ago

All of it is deluded.

pmarreck 10y ago

I think the (seeming) existence (or open question) of meaning hints at least at something "spiritual," but I think it's an extra stretch to paint it as some proof of theism and by association religious beliefs, some of which are (in a secular context) ethically debatable (but which are unable to be debated simply by nature of being deemed "sacred" and the debating of which is considered "blasphemy") Personally, I think "music" is probably the most succinct example that our existence may not be purely materialistic in nature (... as I crank up my techno of debatable quality lol) Laws have survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; medicine has survived secular debate and been made stronger by it; why would religious beliefs (if indeed they have something true and useful, nay, meaningful about the world to say) not potentially be made stronger by seeing "what remains standing" after fierce, intellectual, honest, secular debate? They could even start with "the puzzle of 'meaning'" and work from there. Sacrifice the more extreme/intellectually-weak beliefs to save the others, I say! ;) But beware, there is a rocky road there, which you elect to base religion on: a very interesting blog post linked directly off of this one (http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness http://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness) talks about "intense meaning" in the context of an affair.

jonstaab 10y ago
Funny to apply evolutionary principles to a critique of religion ;) But I do think you're making the incorrect assumption that religion hasn't already undergone that sort of strenuous debate. Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor.
- sgk284 10y ago
  While religion in ancient Greece had great debate, anything that happened during and after the fall of the Roman empire had effectively zero critical thought to it for the next several hundred years. Christianity was ultimately thrust on western populations by force. It stayed there for generations until it became so engrained in European culture (and American culture, as a consequence) that nobody questioned it anymore until modern day. It is a coincidence of history that Greece happened to have a a Christian faction that was good at converting people right around the same time that that Roman empire was collapsing. Many other religions that tried to similarly gain traction were met with destruction before they hit critical mass, so you must be careful to acknowledge some survival bias here for your religion of choice. Christians, by pure chance, got the timing right.
- pluma 10y ago
  > Jesus is probably the most discussed/doubted/critiqued figure in history - certainly we've had more time to find out his flaws and the flaws of his followers than we have of science. And yet he hasn't been relegated to the dust heap of history like Baal and Thor. Well, to be fair, Jesus was the central figure of the religion of the people you're talking about and for a long time outing yourself as a non-believer was "problematic" for your well-being and status in society. Even today in the US politicians know they need to demonstrate their Christianity to become president -- I doubt we'll see an atheist, Jewish, Hindu or even Muslim president within my lifetime (I'm 31). Also, religious dogma largely lives separate from science and philosophy. It is true that many aspects of what "Christianity" is have been defined by consensus in the Vatican Council (including what scripture -- and which specific version of that scripture -- is considered canonical) and some Christian churches have been adjusting their dogma since (e.g. the CoE has become more accepting of homosexuality, the Catholic church has accepted evolution as factual). But saying "religion has undergone strenuous debate" is a very romanticized view of history. Not to mention that much of Christian theology/philosophy foregoes the possibility that any other religion might be true to the point where Pascal's Wager only works if you supply the premise "All other religions and sects are definitely wrong" (i.e. you can't accidentally insult the "True God" if you submit yourself to the Christian God and turn out to be wrong).

crusso 10y ago

Based upon how you used it, I doubt that you and I could even agree on something simple like the meaning of the word "objective".

DigitalJack 10y ago
What was the point of your comment?
- crusso 10y ago
  In religious discussions, people go around in circles arguing within the narrow space of each person's belief system. When even simple terms like "objective" are used in radically different ways, the conversation is doomed from the beginning.
  - DigitalJack 10y ago
    This happens in politics too. And cross gender arguments. I don't think it's particular to religion, although I suspect the tendencies of religions to have a lingo makes it worse.
    - crusso 10y ago
      I agree. In any discussion where you have a great deal of difference between positions, you have this problem. The more emotionally charged or wound up in groupthink a person is, the worse it gets because the very language that could be used to bridge the gap provides less useful traction. It's not about higher-level concepts, it's about basic building blocks of communication. I didn't have much time for posting yesterday, so I was a bit too terse - but my intent in making the point that I did was to try to get the original poster to think about the very words that he was using. Often when I join in on heated discussions, I find that people are talking past each other. They throw out words that mean something to them that I don't think mean the same thing to other participants in the conversation. I normally encourage participants to slow down and either pick different words or settle on a common definition for some words that are causing the confusion. It's amazing how quickly some disagreements can effectively evaporate, or at least get whittled down to essentials, when everyone is communicating more effectively.

DigitalJack 10y ago

Well, barring space transit, humanity will be wiped out by the Sun long before the heat death of the universe, if not by some other catastrophe first. I am Christian as well, but I didn't think the article handled religion well. In Christianity, "God's chosen people" are the tribes of Israel, not Christians. In Christianity, the meaning of life is love, something you don't have to be a Christian to believe or understand, so you certainly wouldn't have to cling to Christianity to hang on to this meaning. Buddhism is about relieving suffering. Something that you don't have to believe in Buddhism to understand. You don't have to cling to Buddhism to believe that your meaning in life is relieving the suffering of others. Anyway, the paragraph about religion and meaning didn't ring true for me.

tim333 10y ago
If we can't build space transit in 100 million years we're not much of a species.
- Natsu 10y ago
  We have a finite energy budget to get out of here, it's not too clear to me how much we can take with us.
  - johnmarius 10y ago
    Why?
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Because one of the main payoffs from getting here to the nearest habitable star system is that you're now closer to more habitable star systems. But if turns out that it's very very expensive to get from one star system to another, then that recursive payoff might be very close to zero.
      - zardo 10y ago

rimantas 10y ago

One can find much more objective meaning to existence without outsorcing it to some imaginable friend. > Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, > nihilism is essentially true And folks who don't give a rat ass about what Christians believe do know that nobody has monopoly on meaning and don't see the need to reduce everything else to nihilism. It would be much nicer if religious people would only use religion to measure those who are part of it, not those who are outside.

praveer13 10y ago
>One can find much more objective meaning to existence without outsorcing it to some imaginable friend. Care to elaborate on this? I'm an atheist myself and I've been struggling with this a lot.
- Retric 10y ago
  Aesthetics is one possibility. When someone straitens a picture frame they don't need that to last past the heat death of the universe for it to be worth it. Expanding this to say a painting or poem which also has a finite lifespan and you can even learn to appreciate a Mandala. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala Keep going in that direction and a life well lived is it's own reward. And by well lived I mean occasional cliff diving not devoting oneself to charitable giving. There is a lot of pressure for 'success' but I suspect many people are happier with a career in dog grooming than they would be as CEO of IBM. High status can be fun, or endless drudgery.
  - virmundi 10y ago
    The issue is defining what it is to be "well lived". With out a sky daddy, you're pretty much unable to declare anything good or bad. Some men want to watch the world burn. Tell me why that is wrong? You will say that human life has value. I will ask, honestly, why? From a purely reductionist perspective it doesn't. It's all just atoms. I kill cockroaches without a negative thought. There is no reason to not have the same view of people in a purely materialistic worldview. Again, if one's aesthetics is gruesome, but enjoyable to that person, you cannot tell them they are wrong. You cannot interfere with them from an ethics perspective. They want to kill, steal and rape, you have to let them. Otherwise you're forcing an external model that you deem good onto them. We've already established that there is no actual good model. The result is that we must accept hypocrisy. We must all realize that might makes right. The most powerful, flawed group of people are correct. They are the law.

lsc 10y ago

>From what I can see, He's the only thing/idea/person that has the potential to provide any kind of objective meaning, so however delusional religion may appear (and I'll admit lots of it is deluded), there's only one God, and he is "the rock that is higher than I". How does the one god have any more potential to create meaning than a pantheon of gods, or one of the many "we are all part of god" spiritual ideas?

jonstaab 10y ago
Another question for another day. Off the top of my head I can't think of a reason they wouldn't be able to create some form of objective meaning. My problem with lies more in the problems of evil, ontology, epistemology, and a compelling narrative to history.
- lsc 10y ago
  That's the thing; having a whole pantheon of gods, each of differing levels of 'goodness' neatly solves the problem of evil. (so does postulating one true god who isn't entirely good or entirely evil.) The problem of evil is only a philosophical problem insofar as you postulate a god of infinite ability, infinite knowledge and infinite goodness. Obviously, such a god contradicts the world as we see it. remove any one of those three pillars, and the contradiction goes away; Further, I think, once you start knocking one of those three pillars out, so that we get a god who matches observable reality, I question if that god can create any more meaning than the traditional "What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power" I mean, would you worship an insufficiently good god? one who intentionally chose some people for very good lives and others for very bad lives? My argument is that worshiping such a god would be either an act of fear or a grasp for power. What about an insufficiently powerful god? a god who really was doing his best?
  - thinkdevcode 10y ago
    Relevant quote: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

pluma 10y ago

Meaning is something that is imposed by an observer. For something to have meaning, there has to be someone it has meaning to. Religions typically offer a supernatural observer (usually but not necessarily a creator god) to play that part. Atheists don't have the luxury of simply defining such an observer into existence, so they fall back to that which already exists or has a reasonable chance of existing if things go as planned: themselves, friends and family, their offspring, other humans, whatever comes after humans, maybe even some other species that is luckier than us and stumbles upon our remains. But because meaning is subjective, it is also contextual: ultimately everything may be meaningless because there is no absolute observer ("ultimately" kind of implies there is no observer left anyway), but in the meantime there are potentially billions of people whose lives you can affect -- and many billions upon billions more if we as a species survive that long. Talking about religions as if they were all the same or at least similar enough to lump them on a single pile is dishonest. That's often how apologists try to define their deity of choice into existence (drawing semantic arguments that define "god" in such a way it becomes a logical necessity) but there's no path from "there is something I shall call 'God'" to "everything in the Bible/Quran/Talmud/Necronomicon is true" short of circular reasoning ("because the Bible/Quran/Talmud/Necronomicon says so"), special pleading ("of course all the other religions are just superstitions") or "divine revelation" (i.e. non-repeatable personal anecdotes). Speaking of "the meaning of (human) life to a rock" would be patently ridiculous: rocks don't have a capacity to impose meaning on anything humans do and even if they did we wouldn't be able to tell nor have any incentive to care. Speaking of "the meaning of (human) life to Bob" likewise is only worth anyone's attention if we have any reason to actually care what Bob thinks. Even foregoing the impossibility of proving the existence of a god or gods (given how awkward they are to define consistently across religions and how being able to actually demonstrate their existence would by definition refute their supernaturality) why should anyone care what they think about life, human or non? Many religions like Christianity solve this problem by making their god vengeful. Don't do what Yahweh wants? Experience unpleasant things for eternity (whatever "experience" or "unpleasant" means in eternity). Do something he likes? Experience eternal bliss (whatever "bliss" means if it is eternal). Various sects disagree on the exact nature of the punishment/blessings and what is necessary to deserve them. Either way, you have to wonder what difference it ultimately makes: if we're talking about some kind of post-physical eternal state of "being" without bad things, what's the value of good things? If there is none, what difference does it make whether you're blessed, punished or simply cease to be? It almost seems like an elaborate con based on all living things' natural fear of death and non-answers ("What was before the universe?" -"Turtles." "What was before turtles?" -"Turtles were always there. It's turtles all the way back."). Also, with regard to the Christian god in particular: going by the Bible, Yahweh is not exactly the kind of character whose opinion I would value. The Old Testament is full of him commanding his followers to murder, pillage, rape and enslave others, not to mention the bloodshed and terror he allegedly inflicted directly. Even the New Testament paints a less than rosy picture of him. If Yahweh is real, he would be worse than all human tyrants of history combined and a perfect example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely.

lisper 10y ago

> Christians believe that for folks who don't know Jesus, nihilism is essentially true If nihilism is "essentially true" (whatever that means) for "folks who don't know Jesus" (whatever that means) then it is essentially true for people who do know Jesus. We're all in the same boat. Whatever the objective truth is, it's the same for everyone. The only question is who is burying their heads in the sand, and whether or not that's a good thing, or if it even matters at all. (Personally, I think it does matter, but I can see how a reasonable person could disagree.)

kordless 10y ago
Burying heads in sand works when you can't take the data feed coming into said head. Christians make circular arguments to substantiate their beliefs, and those arguments are typically based on fairly trustworthy lessons. The only problem is, those circular arguments substantiate a singular all knowing god who is represented through the lense of a book a bunch of humans wrote 2,000 years ago. Marketing changes, but base concepts remain the same.
jonstaab 10y ago
All worldviews start with assumptions. Secular materialism relies on circular arguments as much as Christianity, they just explain less (see Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton). The only difference is that materialists often refuse to admit their assumptions - which is why, as a Christian, I admire nihilists - they're not afraid to admit their axioms and follow them to their logical conclusions.
- lisper 10y ago
  > Secular materialism relies on circular arguments as much as Christianity No, that's not true. See: http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/03/why-some-assumptions-are-better-than.html http://blog.rongarret.info/2015/03/why-some-assumptions-are-...
  - jonstaab 10y ago
    Really, only the last paragraph of that post are relevant here. Secular materialism and Christianits share reason in common. The difference between the two is their explanation of why it works, where it came from, and why it matters. That's where circularity starts to happen.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

To be frank: no. https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/3ghjwh/nondiscrimination_in_germany_leads_to_rehiring_of/ctz0lnu?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/comments/3ghjwh/nondisc... >There are a number of readily plausible accounts of metaethical naturalism that are available to the atheist. See, for example, Firth 1952, Railton 1986, Boyd 1988, Brink 1989, Smith 1994, or Foot 2001. My point is not that any of these accounts are correct (although I think that some of them are fairly likely to be true). Rather, my point is that if they are false, they are not obviously false. This means that they present the atheist with plausible accounts of objective morality that feature only natural facts, overturning claim (c) and, therefore, claim (a) as well. >Claim (d) fails on two fronts. First, there are non-natural facts that can serve as truth makers for moral claims that are available to atheists and, second, any problem that the atheist faces with regards to these facts the theist faces just as badly. I take the first horn to be supported by the possibility of irreducibly normative properties, Platonic or otherwise, that are available to the atheist. Recent defenses of such views include Shafer-Landau 2003, Cuneo 2007, Wedgwood 2007, Enoch 2011, and Cuneo & Shafer-Landau 2014. >On the latter point, that the theist faces the same problems as the atheist when it comes to non-natural normative facts (if there are any such problems), I agree with Heathwood 2012 that there cannot be any coherent theistic moral constructivism which does not refer to some irreducibly normative properties. Properties that are equally available to the atheist.

zdean 10y ago

"You've pretty much rejected the possibility of true objective meaning..." This depends on what you're trying to give meaning to. The 'god' perspective gives meaning to life (i.e., why are we here??). But why is it necessary to ask that question in the first place? Asking it implies that there is a meaning to life and you're trying to figure out what it is. It's not inconsistent to say that "life" doesn't have meaning (nor does it need to) but that "our individual" lives do have meaning. That meaning is defined for us by our genetic blueprint...it gives us the motive force individually to seek out the things that fulfill our individual lives. Once we die, the show simply ends.

anotherdev 10y ago

I'm seeing a recurring theme in this thread (and others) accusing Christians of using circular / irrational arguments to substantiate their beliefs. I'm a Christian and here is my assessment of the nature of faith. Everyone lives by faith. When you decide to get in an airplane, you go by faith that the plane is sound, the pilots are skilled, etc. Same idea with driving to work, picking a job, getting married, conducting an experiment. By virtue of the fact that no one knows the future, we all must at the most basic level, live by faith. Faith is commitment without knowing (with 100% certainty). Of course that does not mean faith has to be blind and irrational. You make observations about the world, hear testimony of people you trust, think through the issues and come up with your conclusions. Atheists weigh the evidence (e.g. if God exists, why is there so much evil? Or why does God not reveal Himself more clearly?) and don't see God. Theists weigh the evidence (e.g. why is there something instead of nothing at all? or observe the improbability for the conditions that allow life in Earth) and see God. Blanket accusations that theists having no rational basis for their beliefs are not fair. There is rational basis for either camp if one is open to honest researching and listening. Throughout the ages there were and are great rational thinkers who profess faith in God. (e.g. Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton) This is to say again, everyone lives by faith. I have great confidence that God exists, but can not 100% prove it. The atheist can not prove He doesn't. I concede that I could be totally wrong. A rationally honest atheist will concede the same about their own beliefs. So we all make a decision. Our death is the day of reckoning. Only then will there be the possibility to know for certain if what you have chosen to believe was right or wrong.[0] TLDR; In issues of existence of God, afterlife, etc and therefore meaning, we cannot know for certain either way. So make the best choice you know how and we'll all find out if we were right later. [0] Technically, in the case that I'm wrong (about the afterlife), we won't know much of anything.

cholantesh 10y ago
>Throughout the ages there were and are great rational thinkers who profess faith in God. (e.g. Blaise Pascal, Isaac Newton) This form of argument could quite easily be used to justify other beliefs. Newton, for instance, was also a practitioner of the occult and alchemy. Pascal regarded medicine as unholy. Even purportedly rational thinkers have their blind spots.