I don't believe that life has an objective universal meaning beyond our capacity, drive and desire to make meanings for ourselves....
Personally I don't believe there is an afterlife waiting for us humans. But if I were to imagine one, it would have some god-like entity running things. And if this entity was offering places to humans in 'his' other world then he must need something doing there. So if that's the case, to prepare for that here on Earth I think we'd have to show understanding, compassion and a hard work ethic. I reckon he'd want folk who'd worked to make their environment as good as it could be. Your life would become a C.V. you'd use for the opportunity to work for a higher power. I mean, if there isn't any gods there, just spirits wandering around, you'd have to wonder what the point in that life is and in turn what the point to that first life was! Something like that anyway! Like I say, I don't buy it
I think the meaning of life is to love and to be loved. This is our deepest human emotion, and is what makes us human (or inhuman if we don't have it). One of my favourite quotes from the Bible, though I'm no longer a Christian, is Corinthians 13:2: "If I have the gift of prophecy, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing." Also, one of my favourite songs is "Love is Stronger than Death" by The The, very moving, and a true sentiment I think.
The meaning of life is to do your best and then when you die, you leave an important legacy for those in your life. Legacy is eternal.
I'm not quite sure what you're asking, because rationalism is not anything to do with "authority", in fact it's quite the reverse - having the courage and the tools to question authority and to decide what is actually true based on a thorough survey of the evidence alone. But, if it turned out I was wrong and new evidence were to come forth demonstrating that the Christian god of the Bible (which is my particular cultural heritage) were real, how would I behave? I think that's what you're asking? Well firstly, if no evidence were to come forth I would behave exactly as I do behave - I would be a moral person because my evolved behavioural mechanisms have shaped me to be that way, I would try to do the best I could, I would be tolerant of differences in people and be happy that people have the freedom to behave in any way they want as long as they don't harm others, etc. If evidence were to come to light that the god of the bible was watching my every move and judging it against his rule book of how I should behave with a view to throwing me into eternal punishment if I set a foot wrong, then I would modify my behaviour. I would not try to do my best because I feel it is the right way to behave, instead I would try to do what this god wanted me to do because if I didn't he'd punish me. I'd follow his rules to the letter out of fear of him harming me. My moral sense as it currently stands would go out of the window in favour of fear and self-interest. I would not try to do what I felt in my heart was the best thing to do, I would try to do what I thought would please this god. I would probably be less tolerant of the way people behave if they did things which I thought might anger this god, in short I think I would be turned into a fearful lackey and a less moral, less good person than I currently know myself to be. Morality imposed through fear of punishment is no morality at all - and interestingly, isn't such a morality ultimately about selfishly avoiding pain and seeking comfort?
Gosh, that's a pretty big question Excuse me for trimming this down a touch...Work hard, play hard, spend time with family and friends, help put whenever I can. Career wise I'm looking at horticulture (still in the studying stages). I'd like to be one of those guys that goes into a messy area of green land, tidies up and tends to the plants I have a natural draw toward that sort of thing so I think it's a good way to go. Only natural through genetic means I reckon though, so it doesn't really matter as far as the afterlife goes
wow. i had no idea. its really great to talk about these things. i really feel i can get to know people on a much deeper level with convos like this. i hope you dont mind too much. you seem really cool about talking about it its really interesting to get a picture of how others imagine god to be like. its really different to my own understanding. i love talking to people about this. oh when i said about authority i was refering to where your decitions are based for example. a rationalist would based there decition on what they see and feel in a rational way a spiritualist basing there's on what most people understand to be called airy fairy or totally spiritual. a cultural person by means of up bringing and experience based. all of these i would call a place of authority.
i tend to ask big questions. just love getting to know people properly man i love your direction on work. i too love the green things. hopefully getting into carpentry next year when im fully qualified. horticulture is awsome. id love to learn more about that. maybe in my private study time at a later date
The study of religion is one of the most interesting anthropological subjects there is, it's a keen personal interest of mine, and something I've read and thought a lot about over the years. In my experience someone does not become an atheist lightly; it happens after a great deal of intellectual work, thought and study. Atheists are usually some of the most thoughtful and moral people, precisely because they have done most thinking about these matters rather than simply falling into the faith into which they were born and taking it unquestioningly as the truth without giving it a thought. (Whereas if they'd been born in Saudi, or in Africa, they would've ended up with an entirely different faith in a different god or gods, simply by accident of birth.) Sometimes it can take real courage to eschew the thinking of most of those around you, the cultural "authority" of the system in which you were brought up; in my case it didn't, because I didn't come from a religious family. But those of us with a naturalistic worldview are in something like a perhaps <10% minority worldwide; that's an awful lot of peer pressure to overcome! So yes, I really enjoy talking about it too I should also point out that I simply don't imagine god to be at all - to me it's a figment as unreal as Santa Claus or Apollo or Bacchus or Thor or the Flying Spaghetti Monster might be to you. So my response was (of course) something of a rhetorical device intended to demonstrate that religion does not make one moral and that morality can and does come about naturally and comes with a far greater sense of personal responsibility and conviction in the absence of a god and an afterlife. Different people create for themselves different ideas of god, and doubtless the god they conjure always represents the good, the moral, the right. So imagining a cruel, jealous, selfish god (the literal god of the old testament, perhaps) is not something most people do, at least not these days. This highlights the fundamental gulf of difference between the texts upon which the monothesitic faiths are based and the understanding of those faiths held by their proponents, another fascinating topic. I'll shut up now
To consider the meaning of life is such an open ended concept that there can never be any true answer; and as Deep Thought decided that the answer is indeed 42, is to allow the scientific empiricists who will always call for an answer to have one. The truth is most modern scientific explanations of living in an expanding or shrinking universe is just as fantastic as believing in god, whichever denomination you decide to answer. Again if the universe isn't expanding or shrinking we are living in paralell universes where the overiding force is gravity, or time and space mean nothing as we encounter worm holes or dark matter. Are mice and dolphins the most intelligent beings on this planet? To debate the none existence of god denies yourself something, which then needs to be replaced with another concept. Or are we acting out Plato's Allegory Of The Cave? Every culture and race throughout time have had a supernatural belief system, even the pursuit of sciences and experiments in whatever discipline are beginning to lean toward delivering answers that have a theological resonance, in that there seems to be a higher intelligent force at play. Or having 42 as the answer is the simple one, asking for the ultimate answer always returns a blank even after millions of years. Maybe we are living the ultimate Paradox, constantly internalising ourselves for the ultimate answer when there isn't one other than sacrifice or acceptance?
I think the mathematics of quantum theory (which I think you're referring to) requires a more fundamental level of randomness than hitherto imagined rather than delivering any hint of "higher intelligence"...
