The difficulty of talking to Atheist

[Eudaimonist]

Because you won't exist anymore. Is that really that difficult to follow?

It's easy to follow, but it's a non-answer. It doesn't do anything to support the claim that there is no meaning to values when one lives a finite lifespan.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Colter]

No, why would an atheist have to concede "ultimate meaninglessness"? That makes no sense to me at all. Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if someone erected a statue of me that was somehow able to survive the eventual destruction of the Earth and solar system? Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if that statue somehow continued to exist for billions of years, floating in the cosmic dark, up until the end of the universe itself? Would my immoratilisation in this statue make life any more meaningful for me?

If you were following along in my discussion with the Scottsman you would recall that he claimed that in death his work on earth to save the world from religion would live on in posterity and that constituted meaning. My counterpoint was that eventually he will be forgotten and the earth destroyed by the sun. The crowning glory of Atheism is death. It's like Lucifers fate "there came to be no truth in him."

 

[Colter]

It's easy to follow, but it's a non-answer. It doesn't do anything to support the claim that there is no meaning to values when one lives a finite lifespan.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Because there is no retrospect for the dead. The context is about what a certain philosophy holds for the individual. True, nothing good is lost for the emergence of the Supreme, but for the individual who rejects salvation they no longer exist as a personality reality.

 

[Eudaimonist]

Because there is no retrospect for the dead.

And...? What does that have to do with the issue of meaning?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Colter]

And...? What does that have to do with the issue of meaning?


eudaimonia,

Mark

I think you are just being argumentative. Meaning doesn't mean anything to the dead.

 

[Eudaimonist]

I think you are just being argumentative.

No, there is a serious point. I get to that below.

Meaning doesn't mean anything to the dead.

That's true, but it does mean something to the living, and there is no ghost after death to cry: "Boo! Hoo! My non-existence has no meaning!"

So, your point that death is non-existence falls completely flat for me. The meaning of living beings exists right now! It doesn't cease to have meaning now just because death may arrive one day. And after death arrives, it is a non-issue.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Colter]

"The pursuit of the ideal — the striving to be Godlike — is a continuous effort before death and after. The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life. Real religion does not foster moral indolence and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon one as a result of passing through the portals of natural death. True religion does not belittle man’s efforts to progress during the mortal lease on life. Every mortal gain is a direct contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of the immortal survival experience.

It is fatal to man’s idealism when he is taught that all of his altruistic impulses are merely the development of his natural herd instincts. But he is ennobled and mightily energized when he learns that these higher urges of his soul emanate from the spiritual forces that indwell his mortal mind.

It lifts man out of himself and beyond himself when he once fully realizes that there lives and strives within him something which is eternal and divine. And so it is that a living faith in the superhuman origin of our ideals validates our belief that we are the sons of God and makes real our altruistic convictions, the feelings of the brotherhood of man.

Man, in his spiritual domain, does have a free will. Mortal man is neither a helpless slave of the inflexible sovereignty of an all-powerful God nor the victim of the hopeless fatality of a mechanistic cosmic determinism. Man is most truly the architect of his own eternal destiny.

But man is not saved or ennobled by pressure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolving soul. Pressure may deform the personality, but it never stimulates growth. Even educational pressure is only negatively helpful in that it may aid in the prevention of disastrous experiences. Spiritual growth is greatest where all external pressures are at a minimum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Man develops best when the pressures of home, community, church, and state are least. But this must not be construed as meaning that there is no place in a progressive society for home, social institutions, church, and state." UB 1955​

 

[Colter]

No, there is a serious point. I get to that below.



That's true, but it does mean something to the living, and there is no ghost after death to cry: "Boo! Hoo! My non-existence has no meaning!"

So, your point that death is non-existence falls completely flat for me. The meaning of living beings exists right now! It doesn't cease to have meaning now just because death may arrive one day. And after death arrives, it is a non-issue.


eudaimonia,

Mark

The context is about what a particular philosophy means ultimately to the individual irrespective of the contributions to meaning that he or she might leave behind for the living to utilize. Further, the contributions made to our meanings now, made by those in the past, can only be a transient experience for us living in time, for those meanings are ultimately worthless to the individual if they don't save us from death.

"Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit." UB 1955​

 

[Colter]

No, I came to this forum years ago, as a Christian.



But I don't have to do that. I could just emulate you and claim special exemption.

Why did you leave Jesus?

 

[JGG]

I think you are just being argumentative. Meaning doesn't mean anything to the dead.

So, life has no meaning unless it's eternal?

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

Scarcity is a basic economic concept. If you find a diamond in the desert, you have something of value. That's life in the temporary view.

If you find a diamond in a desert made of diamonds, on a continent made of diamonds, on a planet made of diamonds, in a universe made of diamonds, you have something utterly worthless. That's life in the eternal view.

Eternity doesn't bestow value on life. It completely cheapens and degrades it.

 

[Colter]

So, life has no meaning unless it's eternal?

Ultimately yes. All of our work on behalf of the progressive growth of self would be extinguished by death, cessation of existence, personality obliteration.

 

[Ken-1122]

Ultimately yes. All of our work on behalf of the progressive growth of self would be extinguished by death, cessation of existence, personality obliteration.

Life has meaning now. Even if I am not remembered after death, the fact that life has meaning now is valuable. Otherwise, why read a book, go to a movie, get married, have children if it means nothing when you die?

Ken

 

[Colter]

Life has meaning now. Even if I am not remembered after death, the fact that life has meaning now is valuable. Otherwise, why read a book, go to a movie, get married, have children if it means nothing when you die?

Ken

I keep using the word "ultimately", is that not showing up in my posts?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

If you were following along in my discussion with the Scottsman you would recall that he claimed that in death his work on earth to save the world from religion would live on in posterity and that constituted meaning. My counterpoint was that eventually he will be forgotten and the earth destroyed by the sun. The crowning glory of Atheism is death. It's like Lucifers fate "there came to be no truth in him."

Yes, I was following. Hence my response:

No, why would an atheist have to concede "ultimate meaninglessness"? That makes no sense to me at all. Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if someone erected a statue of me that was somehow able to survive the eventual destruction of the Earth and solar system? Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if that statue somehow continued to exist for billions of years, floating in the cosmic dark, up until the end of the universe itself? Would my immoratilisation in this statue make life any more meaningful for me?
​

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Why did you leave Jesus?

Nice dodge with a loaded question!

 

[Archaeopteryx]

I keep using the word "ultimately", is that not showing up in my posts?

It is, but it merely exposes your all-or-nothing thinking. It's not an argument for anything. It just shows that unless you have it all, literally, you won't be satisfied with anything.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

I keep using the word "ultimately", is that not showing up in my posts?

It sure is, and you have it exactly backwards. It's your view of life that renders it meaningless and worthless, not ours.

Again, life in the temporal view is precious precisely because it is scarce, fleeting and unique. Meaning, likewise, is bestowed on experiences, events, moments, meetings etc. - all of which are necessarily temporal.

Life in the eternal view cannot appeal to any of this. The endless continuation of consciousness is nothing but a banal fact of existence, no more profound than the freezing temperature of water. Nothing in the limitless sea of eternity can possibly be isolated for its significance or value. It is its own form of supernaturalistic nihilism.

This is all to say nothing of the fact that there is absolutely no good reason whatsoever to suspect that consciousness can survive death in the first place.

 

[Colter]

Yes, I was following. Hence my response:
No, why would an atheist have to concede "ultimate meaninglessness"?

I suppose he doesn't have to, he could remain pig headed.

That makes no sense to me at all. Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if someone erected a statue of me that was somehow able to survive the eventual destruction of the Earth and solar system?

No

Would my life be "ultimately meaningful" if that statue somehow continued to exist for billions of years, floating in the cosmic dark, up until the end of the universe itself?

No

Would my immoratilisation in this statue make life any more meaningful for me?

No

 

[Colter]

It is, but it merely exposes your all-or-nothing thinking. It's not an argument for anything. It just shows that unless you have it all, literally, you won't be satisfied with anything.

There is either life or death, God either is or he isn't.