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I don't understand what is hard to understand about the Chesterton quote. If someone thinks the answers to life and meaning and purpose lie within himself, he

I don't understand what is hard to understand about the Chesterton quote. If someone thinks the answers to life and meaning and purpose lie within himself, he effectively becomes his own god, and therefore effectively worships himself. Then he dies. What of his meaning and purpose then? If meaning and purpose lie within ourselves, then when we die, meaning and purpose die as well. But that would mean that there is no meaning and no purpose, for how can a being create itself before it has created itself? Therefore, if we have purpose, if life has meaning, it must come from without, not from within. This is not to say that we don't possess "seeds" of truth and meaning and purpose within us--but they exist only to point us toward the truth, to motivate us to seek answers. A search for truth that only looks within ourselves is doomed to failure, for we cannot provide answers that we do not have. And if we had the answers, we wouldn't need to search for them. Those who claim that the answers lie within ourselves are deceiving themselves and others with vague platitudes, merely taking a detour on the journey toward the truth--but how tragic a detour if time runs out along the way.

proksoup 10y ago
You think there are answers? The search for meaning is a poorly formed question. 42.
- alphapapa 10y ago
  > You think there are answers? Yes. > The search for meaning is a poorly formed question. "Why are we here? What are we meant to do? Where are we going next?" These are not poorly formed or useless questions.
  - proksoup 10y ago
    "Why are we here" and "where are we going" are vastly better questions than "what are we meant to do". Do you see the difference? "why are we here" can mean "how did we get here, how did we come to be here" ... but if it means "for what purpose are we here" than it turns problematic again, no?
    - proksoup 10y ago
      The search for purpose and meaning assumes there is one. It's hard to understand how one can ask that question with presupposing that there is some thing as an "objective meaning and purpose" and it's just really confusing to me. If you don't see how the pasting of that quote is confusing, that's what I meant by confusing. The search for reasons and hows and what happened and what's next seems a lot more interesting of questions, to me personally.
      - alphapapa 10y ago
        Well, whether "for what purpose are we here" is useful depends on the answer to "by what means did we get here" or "what caused us to be here". If we are here merely because of chance occurrences, then of course there is no objective meaning or purpose. But if we are here because something or someone put us here, then it's a good question to ask why we were put here and for what purpose.
        proksoup 10y ago
        Yes that's perhaps our disagreement as well, the odds of a being being involved.

proksoup 10y ago

You think there are answers? The search for meaning is a poorly formed question. 42.

alphapapa 10y ago
> You think there are answers? Yes. > The search for meaning is a poorly formed question. "Why are we here? What are we meant to do? Where are we going next?" These are not poorly formed or useless questions.
- proksoup 10y ago
  "Why are we here" and "where are we going" are vastly better questions than "what are we meant to do". Do you see the difference? "why are we here" can mean "how did we get here, how did we come to be here" ... but if it means "for what purpose are we here" than it turns problematic again, no?
  - proksoup 10y ago
    The search for purpose and meaning assumes there is one. It's hard to understand how one can ask that question with presupposing that there is some thing as an "objective meaning and purpose" and it's just really confusing to me. If you don't see how the pasting of that quote is confusing, that's what I meant by confusing. The search for reasons and hows and what happened and what's next seems a lot more interesting of questions, to me personally.
    - alphapapa 10y ago
      Well, whether "for what purpose are we here" is useful depends on the answer to "by what means did we get here" or "what caused us to be here". If we are here merely because of chance occurrences, then of course there is no objective meaning or purpose. But if we are here because something or someone put us here, then it's a good question to ask why we were put here and for what purpose.
      - proksoup 10y ago
        Yes that's perhaps our disagreement as well, the odds of a being being involved.