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Realising that you are a product of accident or chance is not depressing or a dark and empty way of life. It's quite incredible. You are born out of stardust,

Realising that you are a product of accident or chance is not depressing or a dark and empty way of life. It's quite incredible. You are born out of stardust, your life in its beginning is indeed free of any deeper meaning and true purpose. You are a brain fighting for survival, against the monstrous odds. What you now choose to do with that shell is up to you. You can train that brain, you can choose habits that are good or bad, and you can decide how to apply the bag of random accident that is you and your life to deliver on a purpose. You may have certain privileges over others to help you on your way - richer family, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. can all make certain doors open or shut for you - but your meaningless life, born with no purpose, is yours to shape as you see fit. You don't need God to find purpose. In fact, defining your life as being in service to a deity narrows your potential. You might be happy with that, and I won't try and convince you otherwise. But your stance that not grabbing life for what it is and needing to believe in God to give yourself a sense of meaning and purpose - that's the dark and depressing version of the story for many of us.

coldtea 6y ago
>Realising that you are a product of accident or chance is not depressing or a dark and empty way of life. It's quite incredible. You are born out of stardust, your life in its beginning is indeed free of any deeper meaning and true purpose. You are a brain fighting for survival, against the monstrous odds. I see this argument used, but it always feels forced to me, trying to make lemonade from the lemons given. Or stardust, in this case. I don't think it's necessarily "depressing", but neither it's "incredible". It is what it is. >You may have certain privileges over others to help you on your way - richer family, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. can all make certain doors open or shut for you - but your meaningless life, born with no purpose, is yours to shape as you see fit. Well, in this version, you still age, decline, and die forever anyway, so one can argue there's no much meaning into this "shaping". Temporary struggle (and often hard struggle) for no great reward, just ultimate old age and death.
trevyn 6y ago
A touch that I think would help this argument: It was evolutionarily beneficial for our brains to demand a sense of purpose or higher meaning, which explains why we consider these questions important, which explains why we have generated fantastical narratives to fulfill these desires for purpose/meaning, and continue to use these narratives even after we have created new narratives that have better predictive power — because we haven’t explained the feeling in a way that resonates. I mean, maybe it was just important for the brain to have a model of threats. Once we created models of obvious threats, the human capacity for abstract thinking generated abstract super-threats and then began to model such potential threats in the manner to which it was accustomed — via personification in the beginning, and then mathematically. Really, physics replaces God as the dominant belief system because physics is scarier than God.
Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
> You don't need God to find purpose. Yes you do, or at the very least some higher axiomatic meaning that people refer to by "god" and you demonstrate it with your own post: it's just that instead of using the word "god", you use the words "stardust" or "good habits". Implying that stardust is somehow a good thing (which is your own interpretation, which you assume for some reason is obvious to everyone else? Why exactly is stardust a cool thing, and not a dead meaningless dreadful thing?), and that "good habits" is a meaningful thing to pursue. Those become your deities. There is no difference except for which words are used. The stardust itself doesn't give you any meaning. It is you that fill those words with meaning. People do exactly the same thing with the word "god".
- jamienicol 6y ago
  That's quite the reach. I didn't read their comment to mean stardust is a good thing. It's neither good nor bad. In any case, remove the sentence about stardust from their reply and their point still stands.
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    If you remove all the words that give meaning from their post, it will just become something like: "I do this thing, it's very important, and this thing, it is awesome, and this thing, and you should all do the same - but I have no idea why I do them, they are just good". - Which doesn't make a better post. It makes it a statement of someone who is not aware of their deeper inner workings. It doesn't remove "god/meaning/stardust" from the equation, it just makes it look like the person is not aware of where their meaning comes from.
    - jamienicol 6y ago
      And if you define "god" to mean "whatever gives your life meaning" then of course God gives your life meaning. But it's a completely meaningless statement.
- Firadeoclus 6y ago
  You are quite right about stardust and good habits. It seems to me, though, that many people use "god" (and especially "God") to refer to something quite different from "some higher axiomatic meaning". If that's all we're talking about then there are barely any true atheists.
lowtech 6y ago
Not trying to derail from the quality of posts, but I think this panel[0] makes a valid point in this context. [0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/438/013/8ad.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/438/013/8ad...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

coldtea 6y ago

>Realising that you are a product of accident or chance is not depressing or a dark and empty way of life. It's quite incredible. You are born out of stardust, your life in its beginning is indeed free of any deeper meaning and true purpose. You are a brain fighting for survival, against the monstrous odds. I see this argument used, but it always feels forced to me, trying to make lemonade from the lemons given. Or stardust, in this case. I don't think it's necessarily "depressing", but neither it's "incredible". It is what it is. >You may have certain privileges over others to help you on your way - richer family, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc. can all make certain doors open or shut for you - but your meaningless life, born with no purpose, is yours to shape as you see fit. Well, in this version, you still age, decline, and die forever anyway, so one can argue there's no much meaning into this "shaping". Temporary struggle (and often hard struggle) for no great reward, just ultimate old age and death.

trevyn 6y ago

A touch that I think would help this argument: It was evolutionarily beneficial for our brains to demand a sense of purpose or higher meaning, which explains why we consider these questions important, which explains why we have generated fantastical narratives to fulfill these desires for purpose/meaning, and continue to use these narratives even after we have created new narratives that have better predictive power — because we haven’t explained the feeling in a way that resonates. I mean, maybe it was just important for the brain to have a model of threats. Once we created models of obvious threats, the human capacity for abstract thinking generated abstract super-threats and then began to model such potential threats in the manner to which it was accustomed — via personification in the beginning, and then mathematically. Really, physics replaces God as the dominant belief system because physics is scarier than God.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

> You don't need God to find purpose. Yes you do, or at the very least some higher axiomatic meaning that people refer to by "god" and you demonstrate it with your own post: it's just that instead of using the word "god", you use the words "stardust" or "good habits". Implying that stardust is somehow a good thing (which is your own interpretation, which you assume for some reason is obvious to everyone else? Why exactly is stardust a cool thing, and not a dead meaningless dreadful thing?), and that "good habits" is a meaningful thing to pursue. Those become your deities. There is no difference except for which words are used. The stardust itself doesn't give you any meaning. It is you that fill those words with meaning. People do exactly the same thing with the word "god".

jamienicol 6y ago
That's quite the reach. I didn't read their comment to mean stardust is a good thing. It's neither good nor bad. In any case, remove the sentence about stardust from their reply and their point still stands.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  If you remove all the words that give meaning from their post, it will just become something like: "I do this thing, it's very important, and this thing, it is awesome, and this thing, and you should all do the same - but I have no idea why I do them, they are just good". - Which doesn't make a better post. It makes it a statement of someone who is not aware of their deeper inner workings. It doesn't remove "god/meaning/stardust" from the equation, it just makes it look like the person is not aware of where their meaning comes from.
  - jamienicol 6y ago
    And if you define "god" to mean "whatever gives your life meaning" then of course God gives your life meaning. But it's a completely meaningless statement.
Firadeoclus 6y ago
You are quite right about stardust and good habits. It seems to me, though, that many people use "god" (and especially "God") to refer to something quite different from "some higher axiomatic meaning". If that's all we're talking about then there are barely any true atheists.

lowtech 6y ago

Not trying to derail from the quality of posts, but I think this panel[0] makes a valid point in this context. [0] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/438/013/8ad.png https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/438/013/8ad...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]