Reason of Life

[Deathconciousness]

ive found that life has what ever meaning i wish to have for it, and i have found that people provide meaning for me.

theres other sappy b/s i could say but id rather not get trolled.

[Rikaninja]

Glad to see everyone enjoying talking about this. My most popular topic.

[yungerkid]

@tsukatu: i don't see how those two are incompatible. you could say that the "but it does have meaning" part is incompatible, but meaning is different from purpose. my life has meaning. it just doesn't have a purpose or a reason behind it. thus, i wish to leave existence. of course, you could argue that this is a purpose, but it's not really a true purpose. it is a wish.

[Deathconciousness]

So what you're saying is that meaning is what you attribute to your life, and purpose is what someone else attributes to your life?

i would somewhat agree with that.

[blue_tetris]

I can appreciate the difference between meaning and purpose. It's sorta like the difference between means and ends. Meaning is what you've got; purpose is where you're going.

[Yoshimo]

My purpose, serve God almighty. My meaning? I don't know, live a good life, I've always wanted to live in antarctica away from civilization, but I can't do that!

[Rikaninja]

Nothing's Impossible! Or so they say @ Bionic Cronic

[Yoshimo]

I think it's impossible 'without civilization'. I would have to severely modify the climate of the area to provide fruits and vegatables, or else I would die of malnutrition. I could eat penguins for meat, though. I could, however move to a lush forest with natural orchards and live there indefinatly, but I've always had an attraction to all things cold, I guess I'm just a cryophelic.

[yungerkid]

blue_tetris hit the nail on the head. and i think that purpose is much, much more important than meaning.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

blue_tetris hit the nail on the head. and i think that purpose is much, much more important than meaning.

I can kind of understand the difference, but I'm still not sure where you're at. You say your life is dedicated to 'going out of existence', but you haven't done that, so I don't see how you could be as dedicated as you claim.

[Rikaninja]

Nice thinking maestro. That's really putting yk to the test.

[isaacx]

I am a Christian, so I believe the purpose of my life is to serve God. I don't believe in luck.

yup, my purpose as well, though i'm starting to doubt that

[blue_tetris]

blue_tetris hit the nail on the head. and i think that purpose is much, much more important than meaning.

I can kind of understand the difference, but I'm still not sure where you're at. You say your life is dedicated to 'going out of existence', but you haven't done that, so I don't see how you could be as dedicated as you claim.

He's clearly not trying hard enough. I make my purposes a little more remote so that I can explain why I haven't attained them, instead of facing constant cognitive dissonance.

[yungerkid]

it's not that i'm not trying hard enough. i'm doing my best as i type this to achieve that goal. it's just that i'm not capable of going out of existence because i don't know how to evade the afterlife. my immediate goal is to learn as much about how reality works as possible, so that i can be equipped if an opportunity ever presents itself. because i'm really not sure that it's possible to evade the afterlife. or, if i discover that there is no afterlife, things will all of a sudden become extremely simple. once i've learned enough about reality, i'll evaluate the best way to go out of existence, and then i will be capable of achieving my higher goal. then, and only then.

edit: btw, i am a Christian, but i don't believe my purpose is to serve God. before i go on, i would like to note that being a Christian and not having service as your *true* purpose are not incompatible. anyway, in my system, reality is all centered around myself. all of my actions are ultimately centered around myself. in my opinion, in an ideal world, everyone would be centered completely and ultimately around themself.

[blue_tetris]

Have you told friends and family members about your goals? I think you need to strengthen your real-life connections with people so that they can help you.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

it's not that i'm not trying hard enough. i'm doing my best as i type this to achieve that goal. it's just that i'm not capable of going out of existence because i don't know how to evade the afterlife. my immediate goal is to learn as much about how reality works as possible, so that i can be equipped if an opportunity ever presents itself. because i'm really not sure that it's possible to evade the afterlife. or, if i discover that there is no afterlife, things will all of a sudden become extremely simple. once i've learned enough about reality, i'll evaluate the best way to go out of existence, and then i will be capable of achieving my higher goal. then, and only then.

edit: btw, i am a Christian, but i don't believe my purpose is to serve God. before i go on, i would like to note that being a Christian and not having service as your *true* purpose are not incompatible. anyway, in my system, reality is all centered around myself. all of my actions are ultimately centered around myself. in my opinion, in an ideal world, everyone would be centered completely and ultimately around themself.

You're a Christian but you believe in a self-centered universe and you're questioning the afterlife? You can't do that!

[Keron]

... i would like to note that being a Christian and not having service as your *true* purpose are not incompatible.

How? I'm really curious about this—Christ Himself embodied servitude, helping everyone wherever He went, and sacrificing Himself to help mankind. Serving others is the ultimate task that Christians can possibly do in their lives.

[yungerkid]

@b_t: "help"? O_o. err, no. what would that gain me?

@maestro: i'm questioning the afterlife, yes. all Christians are allowed and encouraged to think freely about and question the faith. i still believe in the afterlife. i also believe in a self-centered universe. i'm not too sure how that reconciles with my faith; it is a recently-adopted view, and i have had more important issues to deal with lately. i'll get back to you on it lol.

@keron: loving God is a Christian's true purpose. serving people stems from that purpose, but is not the true purpose of a Christian.

[Rikaninja]

You seem a little, uh... Upset. Maybe you need to calm down:
*Deep breaths*!

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

Okay, I'm gonna be honest here: I think you're full of shit, yungerkid.
I don't understand what motivates you to pursue your purpose, what in your experience convinces you that it's true, why it is you think doing any of the things you do (such as eating, or posting on a forum about all of this) gives you any progress whatsoever toward this goal, or how at all you think these beliefs don't horribly clash with Christian doctrine.
Again, my proposed theory is that you're full of shit, or at the very least schizophrenic.

[yungerkid]

thank you for your opinion and your honesty, tsukatu. i will start off by restating my purpose. my purpose is to leave existence (in all realms at once). so, what motivates me to pursue that purpose is a personal decision partially based on a whim and partially based on reason. the reason behind it would be that leaving reality is the most stable choice i could have for my future. i would not have to face eternal slavery in Heaven or eternal torture in Hell, i would not need to face an afterlife at all, and i would not need to face anything in the future. i also think reality is a flawed place. flawed not as in changed from its natural state, but flawed as in unbalanced toward me. reality is unfair and will not always react the same way toward me. i don't need to put up with that. this motivates me toward my more immediate purpose: to gain as much knowledge and mental capacity as possible. once i can learn more about reality, maybe i'll figure out something that will change my mind. i don't really care what i discover, so long as i find the truth.

technically, nothing in my experience convinces me that this is the best way to go. i'm basing the decision on a theory that i developed in my head. so it's not based on inductive reasoning from experience. most of the things i do currently are for my immediate purpose. my immediate purpose, when fulfilled, will bring me closer to my ultimate purpose. eating is necessary. posting on this forum is good for my mind, but is not the most efficient way to build myself. its main contribution point comes from the fact that it is dynamic; it is not just me writing essays alone. i can hear others' opinions, notice things that i would not have noticed on my own. that is why this forum is important.

most of my beliefs do not clash at all with Christian doctrine. i think some do. but truth is truth, and i arrived at my beliefs through proofs. there must be a way to reconcile the two somehow. as i said earlier, i am still working on developing my belief system.

[jean-luc]

thank you for your opinion and your honesty, tsukatu. i will start off by restating my purpose. my purpose is to leave existence (in all realms at once). so, what motivates me to pursue that purpose is a personal decision partially based on a whim and partially based on reason. the reason behind it would be that leaving reality is the most stable choice i could have for my future. i would not have to face eternal slavery in Heaven or eternal torture in Hell, i would not need to face an afterlife at all, and i would not need to face anything in the future. i also think reality is a flawed place. flawed not as in changed from its natural state, but flawed as in unbalanced toward me. reality is unfair and will not always react the same way toward me. i don't need to put up with that. this motivates me toward my more immediate purpose: to gain as much knowledge and mental capacity as possible. once i can learn more about reality, maybe i'll figure out something that will change my mind. i don't really care what i discover, so long as i find the truth.

technically, nothing in my experience convinces me that this is the best way to go. i'm basing the decision on a theory that i developed in my head. so it's not based on inductive reasoning from experience. most of the things i do currently are for my immediate purpose. my immediate purpose, when fulfilled, will bring me closer to my ultimate purpose. eating is necessary. posting on this forum is good for my mind, but is not the most efficient way to build myself. its main contribution point comes from the fact that it is dynamic; it is not just me writing essays alone. i can hear others' opinions, notice things that i would not have noticed on my own. that is why this forum is important.

most of my beliefs do not clash at all with Christian doctrine. i think some do. but truth is truth, and i arrived at my beliefs through proofs. there must be a way to reconcile the two somehow. as i said earlier, i am still working on developing my belief system.

Are you Gnostic? That is, do you believe in the Demiurge?

Your description very much sounds like you're seeking escape from the flawed reality - in other words, you're seeking Gnosis.

If you're Gnostic, do you believe in the Demiurge as an evil, or merely flawed god? Do you believe in a deity embodying good as well as the Demiurge? do you believe in Jesse Christ as a representative (or a personage) of the Higher God?

(You comment on your believes not clashing with christian doctorine, so I suspect if you are Gnostic then you come from one of the sects that believes in Jesus Christ as a power for good, not as the embodiment of the Demiurge, since that would make Jesus evil, which clearly clashes with Christianity)

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

leaving reality is the most stable choice i could have for my future. i would not have to face eternal slavery in Heaven or eternal torture in Hell, i would not need to face an afterlife at all, and i would not need to face anything in the future.

• "Not need to face anything in the future" suggests that you understand that removing yourself from reality means that you're eliminating a future for yourself, and you call this "the most stable choice [you] could have for your future." This is the same logical error a computer might make if given the task to protect humanity should it decide that it's much easier to protect humanity if humanity no longer exists. It's an indication that you're missing something critically important and obvious; I would argue that it's the most perfectly ignorant response to your condition possible.
• Heaven is supposed to be eternal bliss, with all of the upsides and more to existing, with none of the downsides. This also seems so basic to me that it feels strange to have to mention it: what possible reason could you have to try to escape an existence that gives nothing but ultimate, constant enjoyment, as defined objectively by an omniscient and omnipotent overdeity? And your concern couldn't possibly be that it's "unstable" (indeed, that'd just be stupid; good thing you didn't say that) because God could obviously eliminate any of the risk involved in living in an "unstable" existence, provided even that you don't trust God (an omnipotent entity, remember) to make a stable reality, or at the very least a stable Heaven.
• I can't think of anything more insulting to an omnibenevolent being than to try your damnedest to escape being caught in the clutches of what it has objectively established as its greatest gift possible to you (which is saying a lot for an omnipotent being; compare with "the most expensive gift that an infinitely rich benefactor could possibly give you"). It's doing you a tremendous service on the existential scale, and if your "reasoning" involves turning that down at any point, you've done something horribly, horribly wrong in your reasoning. Catastrophic failure in thinking detected. Abort! Abort! Abandon train of thought immediately!
• Provided that what draws you to non-existence is that it's nothingness, consider that the only thing to which nothingness is preferable is a somethingness that is purely negative. For example, suicide is only a good idea if continuing to live will cause only pain. Delivering yourself to non-existence is suicide on an existential scale, and so the only point at which leaving existence should be preferable is when you are in Hell. So what you should be focused on is getting to Heaven.
• You are for some reason deciding that your thought patterns themselves are outside of reality. If existence is flawed (including, as you suggest, "realms" like Heaven and Hell), and your brain / soul / whatever is inside of existence, then naturally any thought or any bit of rationale you might have is also entirely unreliable. Non-existence is, by definition, unobservable and generally lacks any way whatsoever to discuss it other than mentioning that it isn't anything we can talk about. This means that reason doesn't apply to it, and the problem here is that you're trying to reason your way into it. It's as difficult a task as logically disproving logic itself, or otherwise one that I would argue is impossible.
  If you are a Christian, you believe that your soul is eternal and that it will be sorted into one place or another for all of eternity after your physical body is dead. If you are a Christian, then you believe that the one doing the sorting is omnipotent, and therefore makes no mistakes -- absolutely no one will slip through the cracks into non-existence because it's not possible that a perfect entity would make a mistake. Being a Christian and knowing the very first thing about Christian doctrine, you should immediately realize why your goal is both blasphemous in the extreme and 100% guaranteed to fail.
  On the other hand, I as an antitheist have it easy. I believe that if I should want to escape existence, all I have to do is die.

i also think reality is a flawed place. flawed not as in changed from its natural state, but flawed as in unbalanced toward me. reality is unfair and will not always react the same way toward me. i don't need to put up with that.

This much I agree with. Quite simply, this is an explanation of entropy; the universe's definition of perfection is different from a human's, and so a human must constantly work against the natural progression of the universe in order to be happy.
What I don't understand is why you would think that nothing is better than something. This goes back to the issue I mentioned earlier about concluding that the best way to protect something is to destroy it: what makes you think that non-existence is better, especially if your conception of existence includes a perfectly loving God and Heaven? (I'll give you a hint: you are actually incapable of having any reason to believe this, so the answer should look something like, "I'm sorry, I am mistaken.")

this motivates me toward my more immediate purpose: to gain as much knowledge and mental capacity as possible. once i can learn more about reality, maybe i'll figure out something that will change my mind. i don't really care what i discover, so long as i find the truth.

Well no, you have to care what the truth is, because you said you're trying to find a way out of reality. If it turned out that the truth involves you being schizophrenic, then obviously your existential goals would need to change. So if you really didn't care, you wouldn't have mentioned any of this "leaving existence" shit in the first place, and you only would've said "I want to learn more about reality." And that would be totally respectable, and I would completely encourage you to join the effort to formally study the workings of reality if I didn't know that you had baseless pre-conceived notions about non-existence (something you couldn't possibly have any insight into at all).

technically, nothing in my experience convinces me that this is the best way to go. i'm basing the decision on a theory that i developed in my head. so it's not based on inductive reasoning from experience.

Please stop making a mockery of the word "theory." What you have there is nothing at all close to a theory, but a notion, an impulse, a musing, an afterthought. Things that randomly pop into your head that you refuse to critically evaluate are not things you should form your life around, much less the entirety of your existence (assuming you think existence is anything more than life).

truth is truth, and i arrived at my beliefs through proofs.

Ha!
You... you couldn't have. Not only did you just say that you've used no sort of reasoning whatsoever to come to your conclusions, but it's also impossible for logic to address non-existence. You're looking at instant and total failure the moment you start thinking what sort of reasoning you might have in a proof, much less what you're even proving to begin with!

as i said earlier, i am still working on developing my belief system.

BAM!
That right there (particularly the word "developing") should tell you that what you're doing is a crock. Objective truth is not going to come from tossing words around without considering them, and neither will it be arbitrarily decided. You at least have an excuse to believe something that someone else tells you because you don't know that they might have arbitrarily invented it, but when you're completely aware that your belief system was arbitrarily decided one day (because you're the one who did it), then you have no excuse whatsoever to believe it!

most of my beliefs do not clash at all with Christian doctrine. i think some do.
there must be a way to reconcile the two somehow.

No, there mustn't. For example:
I am an undead mongoose.
I am the prefix "nano-".
There must be a way to reconcile the two!
Bullshit, right? Being able to think of two things doesn't mean they have to work together in the slightest. In your case especially, you are directly contradicting Christian doctrine, and therefore the two couldn't possibly be complementary.
You believe that God made an existence that combats human efforts, that Heaven is slavery, that God is imperfect enough to leave holes in reality by which a soul can escape judgment and hurtle itself into oblivion, and most importantly, that being in His presence is something to be avoided at all costs.
How fucking dare you call yourself a Christian?

But hey, I got some news for ya, yungerkid. You just done something awful powerful; you've just irrevocably damned yourself to Hell eternally, regardless of how good a life you live, how much faith you have, or how much forgiveness you seek. Do you know why? It's because you have just now committed the unforgivable sin, right here on this very messageboard.
Mark 3:29: "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."
And you, my friend, have done just that: you have claimed that you know better than God.
Oh yes, yes you have. God loves you huggy bunches and wants you to be with Him in Heaven. You have given Him the finger, denounced His Heaven as slavery, and committed your life to finding a way out of the existence He has chosen for you.

See you in Hell, kid. :)

[jean-luc]

And your concern couldn't possibly be that it's "unstable" (indeed, that'd just be stupid; good thing you didn't say that) because God could obviously eliminate any of the risk involved in living in an "unstable" existence, provided even that you don't trust God (an omnipotent entity, remember) to make a stable reality, or at the very least a stable Heaven.

Note that the fundamental belief of Gnosticism is that God is flawed, and thus he either cannot or will not protect us from the reality which He failed to make perfect.

Mark 3:29: "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."
And you, my friend, have done just that: you have claimed that you know better than God.

Put frankly, this is entirely dependent on whether or not your God exists. if Youngerkid is right, he's going to be the only one of us to come anywhere near achieving Gnosis (the knowledge of, and thus salvation through, Bythos, the true god), I'd reckon. Certainly closer than you - your attitude will keep you locked in this feeble imitation of the higher plane forever.

And a friendly reminder on tolerance: You know why there are very few Gnostics in the modern age?
because they were virtually all brutally killed during the crusades.

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Hesitate to hand out damnation, Tsukatu. Are you prepared to stand before the judgement bar of God?

Judge not, that ye be not judged

---

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Think about that. What would Jesus do? And not in the bumper sticker sense. Really think about that.
I have no respect for hypocrisy in the name of God.

[Condog]

Hesitate to hand out damnation, Tsukatu. Are you prepared to stand before the judgement bar of God?

Judge not, that ye be not judged

I think is has been firmly established that suki's not at all concerned about this, since he doesn't believe in god.