[hawkharris]

I went to a debate about the existence of God a few months ago. Dan Barker, an atheist who has contributed to the Daily Show, had the winning quote:

"There is no meaning of life -- and that's a great thing: it means that there's meaning in life."

The quote is poignant regardless of your religious affiliation. Barker was saying that the meaning of life is intensely personal. Each of us invents it through our own experiences.

[attemptone]

Your comment and that talk reminded me of a philsophy lecture I had about Nietzsche and the reason behind the "Übermensch".

Nietzsche feared that the progression of atheism would lead to broadly accepted Nihilism. Which would have the implication of anarchy and moralless behaviour. So he imagined the "Übermensch", a person who choses his own meaning and own morals, free from any moral commitment society has placed upon him.

[deckiedan]

Do I understand you correctly:

- "meaning" or "purpose" in life is whatever we feel "meaningful" or "purposeful".

- those feelings are derived through our upbringing, culture, biochemical quirks, etc.

Therefore if we could find whichever set of chemicals or brainwashing techniques made us feel 'meaningful', then that sense would allow just as valid and 'meaningful' an existence as any other?

Isn't that merely hedonism, just with 'meaning' as the ultimate pleasure?

[joeguilmette]

Of course it's hedonistic. But what is wrong with that? I would go so far as to posit that all actions, charitable or otherwise, are driven by the self serving goal of personal satisfaction.

If it brings you joy to help others then it becomes a bit of a semantic and meaningless debate as to whether your intentions are noble or not.

[baddox]

It's important to be careful with our definitions. Hedonism in everyday language refers to minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure, with those two words defined imprecisely. The fact that people may derive utility from experiencing pain, both directly (enjoying pain signals themselves) or indirectly (choosing to suffer pain for some "greater good," like a sacrifice for a family member), is usually ignored in the everyday definition of hedonism. Of course, if we define hedonism to mean "people should do what they decide is the best thing for them to do," then it's a fairly obvious thing to support, mainly because it's impossible for a human to do otherwise because of the definitions of "should" and "best."

[joeguilmette]

In common terms I assume people to mean that an action was taken simply to experience pleasure. It's generally used negatively to imply that there is an emptiness and a selfishness driving the actor which I tend to dispute.

I think that your second definition is both easy to support and reduced beyond usefulness. If one experiences pleasure from pain (BDSM, piercing, tattoos, or as you mentioned sacrifice) then there is no paradox, no need to ignore these situations and no need for an alternate, even more vague definition.

[baddox]

Under your proposed definition that includes sacrifice and enjoying pain, how is it possible for anyone to not be practicing hedonism? It's by definition impossible to make a choice that is not your preferred choice.

[deckiedan]

This is the thing - without an external (to ourselves) frame of reference, all actions are equal. Killing someone, or ignoring a beggar on the street, or kissing a friend, are all equal. Whichever gives us pleasure is the best to do.

We can easily argue that we only do that which brings us pleasure with the understanding that acting on our personal morals even against our purely animal bodies gives us a greater or 'higher' pleasure...

I think this is the kind of hedonism being proposed as normal/natural/good by some people here.

I believe that there is a moral code outside of our limited personal experience, and that most of us have some sense of that. Most of us instinctively feel that killing someone is "bad", and helping an old granny across the street is "good".

Not all do, and in a purely hedonistic amoral philosophy, it's right and proper for a psychopathic sadist to hurt others, if that gives them the greatest pleasure. And then it's purely right and proper for society to stop them. But both the sadist and the society are of equal "rightness" in this wordview.

And I reject that. I believe there are moral and immoral actions. And no matter how we feel, or what we believe, there is an absolute "good" and "bad".

There's also an awful lot of gray areas. And most of us are far too judgemental and see things from our own perspective.

[joeguilmette]

You can't imagine, drawing on all your life experience, one taking an action that does not bring them pleasure?

[xj9]

Life, as you experience it, is nothing more than a wash of chemicals acting on your brain. Even if you don't imbibe anything specifically intended to alter your brain chemistry, trying to change your thought patterns and behaviour to match some "meaningful ideal" or lifestyle does so anyway.

We're all just looking for the s/meaning of life/brain chemistry that makes us happy/g.

[return0]

Arent we already doing that? Isnt 'meaning' just a word, a product of the human brain? Plus many people under hallucinogenics report experiences with various intensities of 'meaning'

[jqm]

Indeed. Likewise diseases like Williams Syndrome and Epilepsy make us realize "meaning" might be somewhat subjective.

I saw a program some years back, I can't remember the name of it, but it discussed how meaning or significance is given biologically. Apparently there is a "significance" filter in "normal" people. Upon looking at a picture of their mothers face for instance, normal people have a reaction. Autistic people do not. There are other conditions somewhat related to epilepsy in which everything sets off the "significant" trigger. The program speculated this is the source of the religious-epileptic connection. Sorry for the rough paraphrase... I can't remember the details.

[deckiedan]

If I understand the argument, then yes. And it seems rather tragic to me. One of the philosophical benefits to faith in God is that 'meaning' actually is more than just another 'meaningless' chemical reaction. There actually is a reason to live beyond just trying to stay happy.

I do believe in God, I do believe there is more to life than keeping the chemical state of my body such that I feel happy and fulfilled. I do believe that my life can have a purpose. I've tried, and failed, to find a reason to without a deity who gives a metaphysical meaning to it all. I stand in awe of atheists - I simply don't have the strength to live without the faith and relationship with God that I believe I have.

[baddox]

Are you saying that you express belief in God not because you actually believe God exists in a factual sense, but because you are unable to handle believing that God does not exist? If that's what you're saying, it seems a bit odd, even from a religious perspective. I believe that the major theistic religions teach that God (or gods) actually exist, which is to say their teachings are not just helpful but also true.

[deckiedan]

I actually do believe in a factual God.

I was brought up in reasonably traditional Christian family(in the faith sense, rather than the cultural one), but always given the choice & encouragement by my parents to explore and find my own answers.

As a teenager, a lot of my friends at church were very strict hard-line evangelicals, and a lot of their attitudes irritated the crap out of me. However, my atheist, agnostic, new-age and Buddhist friends consistently were supportive and friendly to me. I felt far more at home in that environment than amongst those who (ostensibly) shared the same faith as me.

I became very disillusioned with the church, and investigated the beliefs of my friends, co-workers, and what I believed, trying to figure it out. I came to a personal belief that either

a) there is a personal/relational God, not a vague force, nor some angry judgemental law-stickler

or

b) there is no God, the limit of existence is physics. Love, relationships, meaning, etc. are all merely chemical reactions inside the 'clockwork' (for lack of a better term) bodies that we, by some weird happenstance believe that we have/are.

All the other alternatives (dualism, polytheism, paganism, Confucianism, Buddhism, etc) seemed to be either total nonsense, or wishy-washy without real answers (apologies to anyone of those positions - I'm speaking of my feelings at the time).

So with those two positions, I found that I couldn't accept that everything was meaningless - or in a "positive" light, that everything was equally meaningful. That my parents loving me was as "meaningful" as someone else's parents abusing them out of some misguided sense of discipline.

I couldn't make myself believe that. So I believe that there is some kind of moral framework that makes love "better" than hate. That makes everyone alive actually of worth, rather than simply an arrangement of atoms of equal value to a chair, or pile of primeval slime.

Either there is some kind of external person that gives meaning and relational value to people, and to the "higher" concepts of love, faith, hope, trust, acceptance, loyalty, or else there was nothing. Men who run away with younger women who meet their sexual desires could be complemented on having found satisfaction, rather than accused of disloyalty - for loyalty would be nothing more than an outmoded evolutionary advantage for helping survival.

So, I found a faith. I asked God - if he/she/it were there, what the hell the point of it all was, and if he/she/it did exist, how I could actually do something worth while with my life, and I believe they answered me.

I've been working unpaid the last 8 years for a charity (OM), raising my own sponsorship from friends/family/churches to work with this God, who I believe is trying to save humanity. I believe I have a relationship with him, that my life has purpose, and that there is a reason to exist: God loves us, but allows us to have free will (under the restrictions of physics, etc...) so that we can have a free relationship with him, un-coerced. I believe he loves me, that I love him, and that the best thing I can do is introduce others to him.

So, that's my story...

[tshaddox]

> "There is no meaning of life -- and that's a great thing: it means that there's meaning in life."

I find statements like this meaningless regardless of how many deities exist.

[Uncompetative]

That is so much shorter than what I posted on Derek Siver's site it is embarrassing:

Born at the end of the '60s just before Christmas I was named after a saint. Later I found out that Santa Claus was largely invented by Coca-Cola to sell sodas and all the unlikely, but commonly held, beliefs that he was omniscient and omnipresent for at least one night of the year was seriously undermined.

Then it was only a short jump to realise that Jesus was probably all made up too, that he wasn't the son of God and, by extension, there might well not be a God.

I became a devout atheist at the age of seven - by 'devout' I mean that were there to be a Rapture as some believe that there will be, I will consider the 'proof' of the second coming to be symptomatic of hallucination, possibly a spiked water supply, and refuse to believe in God because I prefer to live my life that way without one.

The question "What is the meaning of life?" had no easy answers in 'forgiveness', or 'love thy neighbour', or the promise of an afterlife for those who did good deeds as if we were on Santa's omniscient list of good children to recieve presents. So I used logic and logic alone to arrive at the definitive objective answer no matter how it may seem uncomfortable to my sensibilities to reveal it.

The truth is, that to ask this question objectively you have to necessarily be totally objective about life and to be objective about anything you have to be outside of it with a detached point of view. With 'life, the universe and everything' with a whole 'philosophical universe of discourse' included in the set of things being considered I had to immediately dismiss all instrinsic attempts at an answer as not definitively objective due to their lack of detachment and inescapable subjective bias.

Realising that I needed to be outside the 'universe of discourse' to properly pose the question I saw what the difficulty with answering this had been all this time...

...'meaning' is part of the 'universe of discourse' and it not available if outside of it.

Consequently, all claims to a definitive meaning of life are erroneous in logic as an objective answer cannot be found. It is not so much that life is meaningless and we should all be nihilistic atheists, but that we are free to live any way we please as there is no wrong answer - as there is no definitive objective ULTIMATE answer!

Every way you wish to give your life meaning is equally valid for your life, with the caveat that this is an ephemeral guideline you choose to adopt not an eternal truth - actually, I like the way this same argument was presented "in reverse" by Mr Sivers as whenever I have posted about this in various fora in the past I have felt that I've come across as overly alienating by hitting them with the cold truth first instead of pandering to their intimately held, but unfortunately subjective, beliefs. Putting it all the other way around encourages more people to read on and seems more life affirming - even if I know, in truth, that life is without extrinsic meaning.

[thinkalone]

Snopes on the Santa/Coca-Cola myth: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp