what is the point of life

LouTheWicked · Dec 8, 2005

myquestions said:
so what is your purpose of life if you don't belive in any god?

To just live how I wish. That doesn't mean I'll go around axe-murdering people or stealing though.

elman · Dec 8, 2005

LouTheWicked said:
To just live how I wish. That doesn't mean I'll go around axe-murdering people or stealing though.

Living to please self sounds good, but is not a wise choice.

Casstranquility · Dec 11, 2005

myquestions said:
i dont' get what the point of life is if we all die at the end anyway.

please help.

I don't know what the point of life is, I have trouble with that myself...but I think that it is to evolve spiritually in this interconnected world. Every life, every molecule, everything exists together to help us progress in our journey. And it is not the journey of one soul, but the journey of all. When one soul evolves, a part of the Whole does.

Have you ever watched the movie "It's a Wonderful Life"? I love that movie. The main character wished that he had never been born, and saw what life would have been like without him in the picture. The puzzle was missing a big piece, and it was him.
You fill one piece of the giant puzzle that is Life itself. I think that is our purpose, to be ourselves. To fill that place, and not by being a certain way, or doing a certain thing, but just existing the way that we know how.

I myself do not believe that we die, but even if we do, and there is nothing afterward, it is still true that the whole Earth and everything in it is interconnected, and that makes everything, including you, very important and needed!

-Cassie

CSMR · Dec 12, 2005

Eudaimonist said:
The point of life is found in life. Life is the point of life.
1) Developing your creative or productive talents, and using them in a noble way.
2) Developing your moral character. This might sound boring, and is often difficult, but it will serve you well throughout your life.

A tentative question:
If the comprehension of the criterion of nobility and morality to be found in life, and if so is there a criterion which determines whether this comprehension is good. Is this comprehension to be found in life? If we take life as a whole including all understandings to be found in it and ask: is there a criterion or morality and nobility that applies to life as whole - is the understanding of this criterion a part of life?

Eudaimonist · Dec 12, 2005

CSMR said:
If we take life as a whole including all understandings to be found in it and ask: is there a criterion or morality and nobility that applies to life as whole - is the understanding of this criterion a part of life?

I take it that you are asking me if we need a idea of the standard of morality in order to live a good life. IOW, do we need to understand what is good, and why, in order to live a good life?

If that is what you are asking, it's a very interesting question. I don't think we need to be philosophers to live a good life (though merely parroting moral behavior without any real comprehension of what it is for sounds clumsy and like a limited form of flourishing, though appropriate in youth), but I think we have a psychological need (I could call this a "spiritual" need) to connect to some vision of the good life, and this vision may implicitly contain the criterion you mention. (For Christians, this vision is the life of Jesus Christ, of course. I suspect this explains, in part, why Christianity has done so well as a religion.)

I suppose my answer is a tentative "yes", keeping in mind that I don't expect everyone to be a philosopher.

elman · Dec 12, 2005

Eudaimonist said:
I take it that you are asking me if we need a idea of the standard of morality in order to live a good life. IOW, do we need to understand what is good, and why, in order to live a good life?

If that is what you are asking, it's a very interesting question. I don't think we need to be philosophers to live a good life (though merely parroting moral behavior without any real comprehension of what it is for sounds clumsy and like a limited form of flourishing, though appropriate in youth), but I think we have a psychological need (I could call this a "spiritual" need) to connect to some vision of the good life, and this vision may implicitly contain the criterion you mention. (For Christians, this vision is the life of Jesus Christ, of course. I suspect this explains, in part, why Christianity has done so well as a religion.)

I suppose my answer is a tentative "yes", keeping in mind that I don't expect everyone to be a philosopher.

We do understand what is good. It is what is loving. We all understand that to be unloving is to be not good or evil. If we are to live a good life we are to lilve a loving life. Everyone knows that.

justcallmejamie · Dec 12, 2005

myquestions said:
i dont' get what the point of life is if we all die at the end anyway.

please help.

to get as close to Jesus as possible

Eudaimonist · Dec 13, 2005

elman said:
We do understand what is good. It is what is loving. We all understand that to be unloving is to be not good or evil. If we are to live a good life we are to lilve a loving life. Everyone knows that.

I think a little deeper understand of how and why loving behavior is good would be better, but I never intended to imply that all Christians merely parrot moral behavior. If you understand what is good, that's great.

Danhalen · Dec 13, 2005

myquestions said:
i dont' get what the point of life is if we all die at the end anyway.

please help.

I don't get what the point of death is if we have to live in the first place anyway.

ggd316 · Dec 13, 2005

"God" does not give anyone a meaning in life. Many people say that God has a plan for everyone. Except for stillborns, many homeless people, the thousands of infants god supposedly killed in the Old Testament, the millions of people he supposedly killed during the Flood, or the citizens of Sodom and Gommorah.

We make our own meaning in life by setting goals for the future. When we were little kids we thought our meaning in life was to be a fireman or a cop, but as some of us got older we lost that goal and it was replaced by something else.

Then we die. We go through decomposition and become soil, then plants, then herbivores, then carnivores. Humans are no more important than any other animal. The meaning of our death is so there can be a continuation of life.

Eudaimonist · Dec 13, 2005

ggd316 said:
Humans are no more important than any other animal.

To whom? Before or after death?

rosenherman · Dec 13, 2005

There is no point in life. Nobody asks to come here, we're all stuck so we make the best of it. If you can help somebody, good for you. If you hurt someone, you're an SOB and somebody's gonna kick your ass for it eventually.

justcallmejamie · Dec 13, 2005

rosenherman said:
There is no point in life. Nobody asks to come here, we're all stuck so we make the best of it. If you can help somebody, good for you. If you hurt someone, you're an SOB and somebody's gonna kick your ass for it eventually.

how incredibly uplifting to read this morning..

SpaceMan · Dec 13, 2005

The point of life is to seek and embrace personal growth; otherwiseyesyou are spiritually/emotionally/intellectually still-born the moment you come into the world, and you'll leave it in the same manner (IMO, of course)

myquestions · Dec 14, 2005

to get as close to Jesus as possible <--then why dont ppl just devote time to jesus, like why do we need to go party's, parks, etc?

myquestions · Dec 14, 2005

SOB what is a SOB?

Eudaimonist · Dec 14, 2005

myquestions said:
SOB what is a SOB?

son of a (female dog)

Jesus_Fan · Dec 18, 2005

http://freewebs.com/redxstar88/

Freodin · Dec 18, 2005

The point of life (well, one of them) is the ability to be able to ask "What is the point of life?".

If you die tomorrow, and your existence ends completely - what is the point NOW? It is to live now.

And if your die tomorrow, and receive a new eternal existence at the right hand of your chosen god - what will be the point?

I liked the quote about life being a journey, not a destination a lot. It fits, for when you have reached a destination, what possible point could you have left? And Lo! this is not different for Theists or Atheists.

Received · Dec 18, 2005

The point of life is to find a point to life and run with it. Nothing more, nothing less. The thought of an afterlife is useful in allowing us to tolerate this one by virtue of its injustices and difficulties; we think there will be something that will teleologically justify the nonsense we find here today. Nevertheless without this belief there still is every reason to live; this is because life is every snippet of meaning you extract from the world around you, not something after death. When all is happy in the present, when all is at least meaningfull or seen as capable of being meaningful in the near future, when there can even be meaning from suffering ascertained from what torments life brings before us, who is unwilling to live? No-one. As Camus has preached, it is only when the absurd brings itself before us that suicide is considered a worthy thought. With this feeling of absurdity and the conviction that this life is followed by no future life, there is justified reason to consider suicide. But I doubt anyone in such a situation would have a clear conviction that there isn't life after death. All are ambivalent, save a handful; we cannot know for a good reason, whether or not the gods exist above us. Life is -- now, and will always be qualified by the present; a failure to perceive a metaphysical reason for such nowness existing is not sufficient to negating this nowness, unless one considers it as his own existential meaning and therefore, through having no answer, plummets into absurdity, and, as said, where the absurd is, there follows inclinations to suicide. Who can blame such people? The greatest person isn't the one who never has such thoughts, for these thoughts are almost absolutely involuntary; the greatest person is the one who has these thoughts and still, through scorn towards existence (another Camusian idea), trudges on. Why? Through a commitment to the idea that life is worth living, that it has or will eventually have meaning.

what is the point of life

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