If there Is no God, Heaven, or objective moral value, Why survive?

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Well, on one level, I can certainly offer my own experience. I don’t believe in God, and yet I don’t find myself lacking reasons to get up in the morning and make a productive use of my day. I don’t believe there is an afterlife, and despite putting up with the typical griefs and inconveniences of a typical life, I’m in no particular rush to return my consciousness to the oblivion pool that almost certainly awaits me after death. This may be my subjective experience, but I am speaking objectively about it.

I also don’t think there’s a single realm of knowledge that doesn’t have, as its bedrock premise, some self-justifying philosophical assumption. You can always attack such assumptions with an articulated objection, but that doesn’t mean we’re immediately obligated to take that objection seriously. 99% of the time, we don’t even notice that there is a self-justifying assumption at the heart of what we take as “fact.”

There are certainly people who would prefer to die by their own hand than face some imminent unpleasantness, and I think there are times when this is a justifiable act. But absent that, to question the point of survival seems incoherent to me. It’s its own point.

To put it another way, since I can’t well approach this from the POV of being a former True Believer - if it came to be known as scientific fact that God DID exist, and not only that, that there was a heaven and it was reserved for decent, moral people, that belief in God was optional rather than obligatory to attain it, and this heaven did match up to the idyllic, paradise that you’d hope to get as a reward for being a decent moral person, how would this change how I live my life now? I submit that it would not change it at all. Nor would I be in any rush to die and get a head-start on this eternity either. I still have business to attend to in this life.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
Is there any rational basis for survival?
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If Mary has no mother and never had a mother, what rational basis does Mary have for continuing her life; especially in the face of great potential suffering of Mary? Why should Mary survive? Is there any rational basis for the motherless Mary survival?

😊🤷:confused::rolleyes::cool::eek:
 
ASimon said:
Well, on one level, I can certainly offer my own experience. I don’t believe in God, and yet I don’t find myself lacking reasons to get up in the morning and make a productive use of my day. I don’t believe there is an afterlife, and despite putting up with the typical griefs and inconveniences of a typical life, I’m in no particular rush to return my consciousness to the oblivion pool that almost certainly awaits me after death. This may be my subjective experience, but I am speaking objectively about it.

I also don’t think there’s a single realm of knowledge that doesn’t have, as its bedrock premise, some self-justifying philosophical assumption. You can always attack such assumptions with an articulated objection, but that doesn’t mean we’re immediately obligated to take that objection seriously. 99% of the time, we don’t even notice that there is a self-justifying assumption at the heart of what we take as “fact.”

There are certainly people who would prefer to die by their own hand than face some imminent unpleasantness, and I think there are times when this is a justifiable act. But absent that, to question the point of survival seems incoherent to me. It’s its own point.

To put it another way, since I can’t well approach this from the POV of being a former True Believer - if it came to be known as scientific fact that God DID exist, and not only that, that there was a heaven and it was reserved for decent, moral people, that belief in God was optional rather than obligatory to attain it, and this heaven did match up to the idyllic, paradise that you’d hope to get as a reward for being a decent moral person, how would this change how I live my life now? I submit that it would not change it at all. Nor would I be in any rush to die and get a head-start on this eternity either. I still have business to attend to in this life.
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Thanks for your response, but i asked for a rational basis for why the human-race is trying to survive.
 
John21652 said:
I want to.
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Is that a rational basis, or a non-rational/emotional basis? That sounds to me like a genetic response rather than a rational reason. I did not ask, “do you have an instinct”.

I asked does the human race have a rational reason to survive.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
Is that a rational basis, or a non-rational/emotional basis? That sounds to me like a genetic response rather than a rational reason. I did not ask, “do you have an instinct”.

How can you tell that “I want to” is either a genetic response or an emotional response!
Is there a difference?
I asked does the human race have a rational reason to survive.
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You asked two questions.
The latter I took personally!:rolleyes:
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John21652 said:
How can you tell that “I want to” is either a genetic response or an emotional response!
Is there a difference?

You asked two questions.
The latter I took personally!:rolleyes:
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You have an instinctual desire for survival, everybody has. But we are also rational beings and most reasonable people act because they believe that they are reasonable for doing so. If i was born with an instinctual desire to attack people who do belay-dancing, i would not act on it because think that it would be irrational. I have my reasons for thinking that it is irrational, but thats irrelevant because i am not the one being asked the question. I am asking the people on this forum can they think of a rational reason for the human race to continue existing in the face of potential suffering and inevitable death. What rational basis do we have for prolonging the inevitable? What is life that we think it reasonable to live it?
 
You seem to be asking for a rational reason for the human race to want to survive. Then, when you get reasons why the human race might want to survive, you ask if those reasons are rational or emotional.

Clearly there is an emotional component to wanting to survive. In a way, that’s the whole point. Everything we do in this world is about affecting changes in our consciousness. If you say you have a reason for survival that has nothing to do with affecting any sort of change in consciousness or emotional state, I don’t even know what that means, or what that could mean.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
You have an instinctual desire for survival, everybody has. But we are also rational beings and most reasonable people act because they believe that they are reasonable for doing so. If i was born with an instinctual desire to attack people who do belay-dancing, i would not act on it because think that it would be irrational. I have my reasons for thinking that it is irrational, but thats irrelevant because i am not the one being asked the question. I am asking the people on this forum can they think of a rational reason for the human race to continue existing in the face of potential suffering and inevitable death. What rational basis do we have for prolonging the inevitable? What is life that we think it reasonable to live it?
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Wow, now you are adding in a whole lot more detail.
Your first statement goes a long way to answering your own question. Unless, of course, you can somehow disassociate “instinctual” from “rational”. If you don’t/can’t then someone could argue that instincts are always rational. Therefore, the instinct to survive, which you say we all have, is the rational reason the human race keeps on keeping on.

In your opening post, you asked **“Why survive?”. **The answer to that is, using what you have given us, it is rational to survive!

In the post I am answering now, you asked “What is life that we think it reasonable to live it?” My answer to that is “it’s fabulous”. Perhaps the majority of people feel it is pretty Ok and so they prolong life. Breeding is instinctual also and therefore, must be rational (unless you can demonstrate otherwise) and it must be good, so people do it.

In your original post you referred to “potential suffering”. It would be a safe bet that more people see “potential non-suffering” than those who see “potential suffering”, so the former breed and don’t shoot themselves along the way. Thus, the human race keeps on keeping on.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
Is there any rational basis for survival?
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You’ll find that most thought that is labeled as “rational” still has some component or motivation that can be labeled as “irrational.” For example, I could ask is there a rational basis for taking the shortest path from point A to point B. Some one might say that efficiency is the rational basis. I believe that many would accept such an answer but it may just veil other motivations s including feeling impatient and wanting to get something over with as soon as possible.

Studies of people with a certain type of prefrontal lobe damage to their brain have shown something relevant. The type of damage I’m talking about results in the persons abilities to have feelings and emotions to be muted. Test of intellect among a set of people that have had this type of injury showed that their intellect was intact. They could analyze and deliberate over a given problem for a long period of time and produce reasonable outcomes for their decisions. But without having feelings about these outcomes there was nothing motivating them to be in favour of any specific decision and thus a decision may at times never be made.

In general you’ll find that many life forms that can think have a bias towards not wanting to die. There may be layers of intellectualized reasoning layered on top of it, but if you peel away enough layers you will eventually get to a point where there is some emotional or unreasoned bias expressed.

I’d go as far as to say that our motivations and the incentives that drive us are primarily irrational. The pathways we choose in life to acquire those incentives or to follow the motivations are mapped out by our reasoning which will contain some elements of the motivations that drive them and some elements of rational thought. .
 
From the point of view of an individual the value of life is a rational basis for life - even if it is irrational to believe its value is subjective! People do the right things (in this case stay alive) for the wrong reasons - or for no reasons at all… 🙂
 
John21652 said:
If you don’t/can’t then someone could argue that instincts are always rational.
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Thats nice. So where is the argument?
John21652 said:
In your opening post, you asked **“Why survive?”. **The answer to that is, using what you have given us, it is rational to survive!
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Why is it rational for the human race to survive?
John21652 said:
In the post I am answering now, you asked “What is life that we think it reasonable to live it?” My answer to that is “it’s fabulous”.
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Why does that make it reasonable? Thats just an emotional response. Its fabulous for you in particular; emotionally speaking. I have not yet seen a rational response to my question: why is it rational for the human race to survive.
John21652 said:
Perhaps the majority of people feel it is pretty Ok and so they prolong life. Breeding is instinctual also and therefore, must be rational (unless you can demonstrate otherwise) and it must be good, so people do it.
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Why is instinct rational?
John21652 said:
In your original post you referred to “potential suffering”. It would be a safe bet that more people see “potential non-suffering” than those who see “potential suffering”, so the former breed and don’t shoot themselves along the way. Thus, the human race keeps on keeping on.
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I think people continue in spite of suffering because of their emotional attachments to things. I am asking is there a rational reason for the human race to continue living and surviving.
 
Do people just want to survive, I thought they want to be happy, not just survive.
 
You said:
*That seems reasonable to me but I don’t know whether it is considered rational. *
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It depends whether rational is equated with logical. Some emotions are rational because they are essential elements of our nature. For example, love and compassion can be both rational and emotional…
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