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What is the meaning of life?

Frisco said:
This is one of the silliest, most misleading queries I've heard and read in my life, "What is the meaning of life?"

Human life is but a miniscule portion of life just on this planet, let alone throughout the universe. So, "What is the meaning of human life?" would be a little less silly a question, in my opinion.

"Life," in general terms, is all life everywhere. Each organism's "meaning" has to do with its relationship with its surroundings; it has to kill and assimilate something to survive, it has to procreate, etc.

If conscious, as in with a thinking apparatus, it has to filter its activities through some sort of acceptance schema, such as morals and/or faith. Organisms which do that will usually define "meaning" to their life through that moral filter.

The least silly, to me, would be, "What is the meaning of my life?" That is an individual organism seeking to live and work in concert with its organic environment. That's what works for this organism called "me," anyway. ;)
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This would be my answer as well. ;)
 
Fonseca said:
Care to try to not start a debate that will likely end with the thread being closed?
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+1

This thread is about each of us expressing an opinion as to the "meaning of life," not about requiring one another to prove anything at all, let alone the existence of God.

Perhaps another thread: "Does God Exist?" I'm sure it could remain civil with a bit of effort and thought and restraint as to the opinions of others. ;)
 
Pryomancer said:
Humans are ultimately insignificant, but humanity as a whole will never accept that.
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I completely agree with this statement. We make ourselves seem more important than we really are. I love discussing these kinds of things. It feels good to write all your thoughts down
 
zappa420 said:
There's no "meaning" or "reason" for life, it just is. By some crazy chance we are self-aware and intelligent beings and we should make every moment of it by doing whatever you want to do. you make your own reality.
i do not believe in the traditional afterlife, nor do i think that there is an afterlife at all, but who knows and no one can answer that question.
I think religion is the worst thing humans have thought of. it causes people to live a life according to someone Else's thoughts and ideas, it makes people look forward to an afterlife when they should be living life right now, because it's all that we know does exist. all religion should be outlawed, or at the very least they should have to pay taxes :P lol
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Very well put. Although I'm not sure it should be outlawed because I think chaos might ensue. For people in horrible situations (starving people in Africa...), religion gives people hope that their lives will improve or that they will have a pleasant after life. Although it may be false hope, its still hope nonetheless. If people absolutely knew 100% percent that God doesn't exist (which no one will ever know for certain), this world would be may more messed up than it already is. Society would probably be extremely unstable. The world's not ready to give up religion. It's kind of like Communism. It's interesting in theory but won't work in our barely advanced society. Maybe in the distant future but not in any of our life times.
 
2001_01b.jpg


Nuff said.
 
zappa420 said:
There's no "meaning" or "reason" for life, it just is. By some crazy chance we are self-aware and intelligent beings and we should make every moment of it by doing whatever you want to do. you make your own reality.
i do not believe in the traditional afterlife, nor do i think that there is an afterlife at all, but who knows and no one can answer that question.
I think religion is the worst thing humans have thought of. it causes people to live a life according to someone Else's thoughts and ideas, it makes people look forward to an afterlife when they should be living life right now, because it's all that we know does exist. all religion should be outlawed, or at the very least they should have to pay taxes :P lol
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Exactly...why do we think we're so important? 100 billion galaxies each with 100 billion stars...yeah we don't matter. Well...matter is all we are.
 
Well, "matter is all we are" triggers a lot of fun thoughts:

Matter thinks.

Matter discusses itself and its relationship to other globs of thinking matter.

Matter looks out at the universe and attempts to understand its relationship or role.

Matter seeks to live as long as possible.

Matter composes poetry and music.

Matter knows the differences between right and wrong, often disobeying its instincts, of course, running afoul of laws which matter has constructed to keep matter safe.

..etc.

We can counter all of that with the wars that "matter" unleashes, and other bad news. But that news would not be bad, it would not seem like something was wrong with it, unless "matter" had some spark of "the way things ought to be" inside of it.
 
That's great...but we still have no significance to anything else in the Universe. If life on Earth vanished...the Universe would not notice. We are important only to ourselves.
 
momoceio said:
That's great...but we still have no significance to anything else in the Universe. If life on Earth vanished...the Universe would not notice. We are important only to ourselves.
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We have no way of knowing that for sure.

However, if you want to, you can pretend like the living portions of the universe are somehow separate from the rest of it. But you know that is impossible; they are part of it, as a matter of fact, they seem to be the part of it that can detect the rest of it over time.

No organism can survive or even become an organism without the cooperation of its surroundings. Some feel that the Earth itself is an organism.

If we want to pretend like the only organism in the universe is the Earth, we can put forth a great argument as to how insignificant human beings and all other life on Earth is.

But it is turning out, as we look around with more powerful detection apparatus, that those in the early days of this sort of thought were correct when they declared that the universe is teeming with life.

Meanwhile, it was the church which was saying that Earth was the center of the universe and that no other life was out there. That went on and was believed for centuries.

Now they're having to change their mind about that.
 
^^^ Now they are having to change their minds about that???
Um they were proven wrong about that a long time ago so wouldn't they have changed their minds then?

Sent from Droid
 
G.Armour said:
^^^ Now they are having to change their minds about that???
Um they were proven wrong about that a long time ago so wouldn't they have changed their minds then?
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"Now" was taken too literally by you, apparently.

It was meant in the infinitive sense, as in "now that it's been long well-known.."
 
Ok, but u can understand why the church thought that though, right?
I was gonna go into a very lengthy post on this, but thought, why bother? No one knows the meaning of life and no one probably ever will.
Sent from Droid
 
Frisco said:
"Now" was taken too literally by you, apparently.

It was meant in the infinitive sense, as in "now that it's been long well-known.."
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However you used the present continuous tense "Now they're having ..." implying a current event instead of the the past perfect tense "Now they have had ...".

Just saying.
 
"Now" was taken too literally by you, apparently.

It was meant in the infinitive sense, as in "now that it's been long well-known.."
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However you used the present continuous tense "Now they're having ..." implying a current event instead of the the past perfect tense "Now they have had ...".

Just saying.
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Ok, now I get it.. So by you saying that your implying that its just a matter of time before they get proven wrong about something else?

Sent from Droid
 
Well, the church burned Copernicus to death because he reported his discovery of the Earth revolving around the sun, rather than the sun, and everything else in the known universe, revolving around God's Earth.

They keep having to give up more ground, and on several fronts, from biology to astrophysics and everything in between.

The latest strategy is to declare what scientific discoveries come along as the work of the hand of God. A holy version of the old, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" stance, it seems.

They may have it made on their "God creates a human being with an immortal soul at the instant of conception," though. A beauty of a belief which can probably never be debunked or even challenged beyond "I don't believe that, so leave me alone when I go to get my abortion."
 
Footprints in the Sand revisited


One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,
"You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during
the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one
set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most,
you have not been there for me?"

The Lord replied,
"Sorry, but you were bumming me out.
I went to get a beer and a have a smoke
until you cheered up."
 
Well, the church burned Copernicus to death because he reported his discovery of the Earth revolving around the sun, rather than the sun, and everything else in the known universe, revolving around God's Earth.

They keep having to give up more ground, and on several fronts, from biology to astrophysics and everything in between.

The latest strategy is to declare what scientific discoveries come along as the work of the hand of God. A holy version of the old, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" stance, it seems.

They may have it made on their "God creates a human being with an immortal soul at the instant of conception," though. A beauty of a belief which can probably never be debunked or even challenged beyond "I don't believe that, so leave me alone when I go to get my abortion."
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I may not go to church that often and may not pray that often either, but I'm firmly and strongly against abortion. I don't believe in it, never have, never will. What gives us the right to end someone's life before they even get a chance to experience anything? No no no.. and for those who argue for it.. well they might as well legalize assisted suicide and while we are at it, legalize murder.. Because that's what it boils down to, your killing an innocent baby, then I'd bet way over half the women that get it done has thoughts of suicide.

Sent from Droid
 
G.Armour said:
I may not go to church that often and may not pray that often either, but I'm firmly and strongly against abortion. I don't believe in it, never have, never will. What gives us the right to end someone's life before they even get a chance to experience anything? No no no.. and for those who argue for it.. well they might as well legalize assisted suicide and while we are at it, legalize murder.. Because that's what it boils down to, your killing an innocent baby, then I'd bet way over half the women that get it done has thoughts of suicide.

Sent from Droid
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So a child conceived to a raped, addict mother, and has some genetic disease which causes it to suffer terribly, and probably die before it's a year old, must not be terminated? Another problem I have with religion (not you personally) is it makes sweeping generalisations like abortion is always wrong. Context is a very important factor in any given situation.
 
I may not go to church that often and may not pray that often either, but I'm firmly and strongly against abortion. I don't believe in it, never have,
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So a child conceived to a raped, addict mother, and has some genetic disease which causes it to suffer terribly, and probably die before it's a year old, must not be terminated? Another problem I have with religion (not you personally) is it makes sweeping generalisations like abortion is always wrong. Context is a very important factor in any given situation.
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Ah but staying on the topic of religion, if every woman that ever got raped or anything of that nature hadve aborted, Jesus would've never been born. And to go further than religion. Alot of people that are here today, wouldn't be. And to think, if only your mom hadve aborted, we wouldn't be having this argument. See how screwed up it is? I mean, could you have even imagined your mom, or someone in your family doing it? And who are you to say the kid would have some kind of terminal illness and wouldn't live past its first bday? Are you God? Are the Drs God? No! Miracles do happen whether you believe in God or not! So the kid may die, then again it could outlive us all. But if aborted, it wont even have that chance. Now as far as rape victims, etc.. if they don't want the baby, there is always adoptions. There are alot of people that can't have kids and would be more than happy to take it and give it a good home..

Sent from Droid
 
Ok, but what if Hitlers mom had aborted...or Stalins...or Sadams...or Jeffry Dahmers...yeah.

That's now how I believe but going by your logic...
 
Oh. Mods should really put they deleted posts. Really screws with conversation flow... not to mention threads like this (in the lounge no less) are meant to de-rail here and there. It's the natural way of conversation...

Could you imagine in real life if every time you drifted off the original topic you got zapped in the face? :eek:

Just my opinion, but I think it's valid.
 
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