Life's "ultimate meaning", and the value of money

[Touchstone]

A common complaint I run into in forums like this one goes something like this:

If there is no God or supernatural, then we are just “physical stuff”, and life has no meaning!

When I (or someone who holds to materialism) looks quizzically at a comment like that, and says “No meaning? You must be kidding, right?”, the clarification is offered: no ultimate meaning.

I think an instructive system to look at in looking at this complaint, the complaint that life has no meaning or less meaning if God does not exist to “give it meaning” (don’t ask how that would work even if God does exist – that’s another thread), is our system of money, and valuation based on money.

Does our money have “ultimate value”? Even if one looks at a “gold backed” currency, a money system where cash is indexed to an assigned amount of gold or other precious metal (or other precious resource), money has no “ultimate value”.

And yet, it has value. Practical, effective, broad-scaled value. It’s the lifeblood of our economy, the mechanism that produces wealth, income, growth, distribution of resources, capital, labor, efficient marketplaces for connecting supply with demand.

How can that be, if money has no “real” or “ultimate” value???

It’s just paper, this $20 bill in my hand, after all (just like we as humans are “just chemicals”, perhaps). What gives?

Value is as valuation does. Meaning is as meaning intends. Money has value because it’s useful and valuable that it does. And, as if by magic, but just by the simple process of desires giving rise to convention, money has value, value we will work for, by the sweat of our brow, and expect others to accept as the means of trade for buying what we need and desire.

The connection, then is this: if you understand, and accept that money has value, real value in the practical sense, even though it has no “ultimate” value or “real” value in any cosmic sense, you have all the conceptual grounds you need to understand life as having real meaning in the most fundamental and practical sense, even and especially if life has no “ultimate” religious meaning once we posit that no God exists.

Imagine telling your neighbor:

*That $20 bill has no real value! Why would you suppose it has value, or carry it around? If it’s not issued in some ultimately authoritative sense, it’s not valuable at all!

*He’d look at you like you are crazy:

Hey, I can trade this thing for a case of Guinness beer down at the local market. And get some change back. There’s value for you, mate!

The theist who suggests that life does not have meaning in the absence of God is in this position. The currency of our lives is what we want it to be, and want we make it, individually, and collectively. Life is meaningful in God’s absence (and especially so in that case!) because we have resources like time and energy to invest, and life is the means of investing it. We have ambitions, emotions, goals and instincts we are born with, and which we develop as part of our nature. We are social species, and together, these produce all the real, practical meaning that is to be had.

Theists, do you suppose money, currency not backed by anything ultimate, has value?

Interested.

-TS

 

[The_Exodus]

touchstone:

The theist who suggests that life does not have meaning in the absence of God is in this position. The currency of our lives is what we want it to be, and want we make it, individually, and collectively. Life is meaningful in God’s absence (and especially so in that case!) because we have resources like time and energy to invest, and life is the means of investing it. We have ambitions, emotions, goals and instincts we are born with, and which we develop as part of our nature. We are social species, and together, these produce all the real, practical meaning that is to be had.

You are just assuming that life does, in fact, have meaning. You’ve not proven anything. The point theism makes is that without God, there is nothing to actually instill intrinsic dignity in the human person. They are just a various combination of matter and chemicals, no more quantitatively valuable than any other conglomeration. Their emotions are simply chemicals firing in an organ. You wouldn’t say this was" meaningful" if you saw it going on in a lab under a microscope. I don’t see why such chemicals reacting in a different environment would be any different.

It therefore falls to each individual to construct his own system of ethics, and, if one wants to give certain people value, and others less value, there is nothing anyone can say to justify their point over such a one. Slavery, for instance, or concentration camps, are not really wrong. They are just against the majority opinion, or “unfashionable.” Of course, you one can use force to make people change their minds, but your position is no more “right” or “objectively true” than theirs is. On atheism, might makes right.

touchstone:

Theists, do you suppose money, currency not backed by anything ultimate, has value?

No. Money per money has no value in and of itself. It is only valuable because it can be used toward some end: i.e. physical pleasures, necessary survival, etc. On the other hand, if, on atheism, you want to give value to money - i.e. if you want to make it meaningful to you - you can. But, objectively speaking, there is nothing inherently valuable about money.

If atheism is true, everything is just a bare fact. Existence is just there. There is nothing instrinsically valuable or not about it. It’s like Sarte’s chair, sitting in the park. It is just there, and would have no value whatsoever. A conscious person may came along and decide to say something about it, but, objectively speaking, this would be totally absurd and meaningless. All that would be expressed is the individual’s viewpoint, or how he sees the chair. But, if reality is considered as a whole, there is not one “standard” or “objective” view point, since there is not one conscious, allknowing entity. Reality is just a brute fact. Existence precedes essence. What you see is purely subjective and meaningless, as far as objective reality is concerned.

 

[AntiTheist]

On the other hand, if, on atheism, you want to give value to money - i.e. if you want to make it meaningful to you - you can. But, objectively speaking, there is nothing inherently valuable about money.

Touchstone is pointing out that we all – atheist and theists alike – “give value” to money, which, as you note, has no “objective” or “ultimate” value in and of itself.

Therefore, Touchstone is saying, when theists claim that “meaning” is only real when it’s “objective” or “ultimate,” they’re overlooking the obvious fact that value is something that humans give to things, not a quality that things have in themselves, a fact that theists themselves demonstrate when they give value to money (while acknowledging that it has no ultimate value).

It’s an excellent, excellent analogy.

Another one that I like to use is my car: it has some value now. At a later point in time, it will have less value. One day, it will be scrap metal and have little to no value. And eventually, we will reach a point where my car no longer exists.

Does this lack of permanence, this lack of “ultimate value” mean that my car has no value right now? Does this mean that I have no good reason to paint my car, keep it running properly, and care about it?

 

[rwillenborg]

I had always thought that when theists said that such-and-such has intrinsic value, they meant that something has value OUTSIDE of the realm of human perception.
For example, theists would argue that my childrens’ lives have value. Even if I didn’t want them, and my husband didn’t, and they were wretched, and no one wanted them here on earth and they served no useful or positive purpose, that all of that was irrelevant, that their lives STILL have value, because, well, our perceptions are not what govern the universe. I thought when they argued that they were saying that there was a something or someone independent of humans, whose opinions mattered much more than ours, who would ALWAYS believe that the thing or person had value. And so, since this was an entity outside of ourselves who found value, the thing had value independent of people.
But it sounds like what you are suggesting (and please correct me if I’m wrong - the only reason I’m on at 4 am is because the insomnia has gotten to me AGAIN so I can’t vouch for how clearly I’m thinking) is that an intrinsic value is not necessary for life to have meaning, since even without this intrinsic value as determined by an outside entity, people and life in general do STILL have meaning. Am I understanding you correctly?
But see, I think what theists are getting at is that any value that is assigned by people can also be taken away by people, at their whim. So, even though you could say that life, or more specifically, a particular person’s life, has value because that person has emotions, ambitions and goals, the theist would argue that those qualities deemed worthy of preservation were deemed so by you (and others, surely), and that they just as easily could be revoked by you. In other words, whatever worth you, or anyone else, puts on human life, pales in comparison to the worth that was put on human life by the God that created it. At least, that’s what I always took away from what theists said regarding ‘intrinsic value’. So, even though human life (well, some human’s lives, I suppose) can and typically does have value outside of any belief, I think what theists argue is that there is a value on a MUCH higher scale to which they are referring.

Money does have value - it has value in that it serves a purpose. It gets a job done. I think when theists are arguing about the value of human life, they are specifically saying that the purpose that person’s life may have been assigned to, or the job that person does, is quite irrelevant to their intrinsic worth. I guess what I’m saying is that I think theists, when talking about value and intrinsic value are indeed talking about two very different animals.

And let’s be very clear here - a person’s activities their interests, their ambitions and goals, DO have value. But I think what theists argue is that the value is arbitrarily assigned, and therefore, fleeting. Theists are trying to argue that human life has a FIXED and ETERNAL value and that each human life, regardless of that person’s ambitions, goals, whatever, is more valuable than anything else ever created.

One last point (I’m finally sleepy again,YEAH!) is that I think, as when people speak of love, there are different levels. I love pizza. I love my job. I love my children. Different loves. So different, as a matter of fact, that to use the same word on all of them seems dishonest. Likewise, I think when theists speak of ‘value’, they are speaking on different levels. But in the end, none of THOSE values matter, just like, when it came down to it the love I have for pizza or my job doesn’t matter in comparison to the love for my children.

 

[R_Daneel]

Slavery, for instance, or concentration camps, are not really wrong. They are just against the majority opinion, or “unfashionable.”

This needs a special response. Let’s start from the “selfish” point of view. Let’s say that the only “valuable” thing is one’s own well-being. A dumb person will therefore pursue his own self-interest, and disregards everyone else, or “steamrolls” over others. But this is not a good solution to maximize one’s own well-being. Actually it is a pretty lousy one.

A smart person understands that humans are both individuals and social beings. (This is just a biological fact.) A smart person is therefore willing to compromise, willing to engage in a give-and-take, and this way achieve a higher level of personal well-being, than he could if he acted in a comletely selfish manner. So the “slavery and concentration camps” will be considered sub-optimal or “really wrong”, if one wishes to act in a rational manner. Slavery has been pretty much “phased out” by now since it does not give an optimal solution, and not just for some esoteric “out-of-this-world” reason. This is usually not recognized, but true nevertheless. Yes, one can develop a nice, compact ethical system, based upon a few facts of biology and selfishness, and there is no need for the God-hypothesis.

What you see is purely subjective and meaningless, as far as objective reality is concerned.

If you say that the Universe does not care, if we are here or not, does not care, if we are happy or not, then you are right. If a huge meteor would hit Earth and all life would disappear, it would not matter in the “greater scheme of things”. But we do care, because we like to be well-fed, we like to be happy, we value health over illness.

Actually, atheists value these more than theists, since we consider this existence the one and only. It is theists, who are irrational, when they put any value on this existence, after all, for them, this is just a transitory “testing ground”, which is completely insignificant when compared to the “eternal bliss” they hope for.

 

[tonyrey]

1. Money has no intrinsic value or purpose: it is a human convention which serves as a medium of exchange for goods and services.
2. Life has intrinsic value and purpose as a source of opportunities for development, fulfilment and enjoyment.
3. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes its value and purpose are limited to this life on earth.
4. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes there is no necessary reason why a person should consider it valuable.
5. Many people commit suicide precisely because they believe life on earth is an accident and they have no reason for living.
6. The value of life diminishes if it is an unintended accident because love is doomed to frustration and much injustice is never rectified.
7. As Camus remarked, death is “le supreme abus” because it destroys everything and highlights the absurdity of life - according to the materialist…

 

[R_Daneel]

1. Money has no intrinsic value or purpose: it is a human convention which serves as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

True. But you did not tell us, what do you do with this “intrinsically valueless” human convention? Do you “value” it? Do you try to accumulate it and use it? Or do you just throw it into the trash, since it has no “intrinsic value”? I bet it is the former. So, where does that leave you? You don’t practise what you preach.

1. Life has intrinsic value and purpose as a source of opportunities for development, fulfilment and enjoyment.

That is not an “intrinsic” value. It is something we do with it.

1. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes its value and purpose are limited to this life on earth.

Correct. All the more reason to make it as pleasant and happy as we can.

1. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes there is no necessary reason why a person should consider it valuable.

Wrong. Contradicted by the general process of trying to make the life as good as it can be.

1. Many people commit suicide precisely because they believe life on earth is an accident and they have no reason for living.

True. It is their evaluation of their own life. (By the way, how does that jive with the oft-repeated idea that God does not put more “pressure” on us than what we are able to endure? But, don’t asnwer this, we don’t want to derail the thread. Just think about it…)

1. The value of life diminishes if it is an unintended accident because love is doomed to frustration and much injustice is never rectified.

More or less true. As they say: “life is a ‘female dog’ and then you die”. (The built-in censor forces the usage of the euphemism. But of course everyone will ‘translate’ it into the proper form. )

1. As Camus remarked, death is “le supreme abus” because it destroys everything and highlights the absurdity of life - according to the materialist…

And for the theist, life is nothing, but a temporary testing ground, which is valueless, in and by itself. Only the “hoped for” afterlife gives it a “retroactive meaning”.

 

[tonyrey]

1. Money has no intrinsic value or purpose: it is a human convention which serves as a medium of exchange for goods and services.

I don’t know what you’re talking about! Although money has no intrinsic value it has instrumental value…

2. Life has intrinsic value and purpose as a source of opportunities for development, fulfilment and enjoyment.

That is not an “intrinsic” value. It is something we do with it.

That is why precisely why it is valuable. If we couldn’t do anything with it it would be valueless!

3. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes its value and purpose are limited to this life on earth.

Correct. All the more reason to make it as pleasant and happy as we can.

“as we can” are the operative words - as you will shortly see…

4. If life is produced by valueless and purposeless processes there is no necessary reason why a person should consider it valuable.

Wrong. Contradicted by the general process of trying to make the life as good as it can be.

Wrong! Some people reject the value of life because they find it valueless…

5. Many people commit suicide precisely because they believe life on earth is an accident and they have no reason for living.

True. It is their evaluation of their own life.

Which contradicts your previous assertion.

6. The value of life diminishes if it is an unintended accident because love is doomed to frustration and much injustice is never rectified.

More or less true.

Far more than less! Few lovers want to be parted forever and many victims are never compensated.

7. As Camus remarked, death is “le supreme abus” because it destroys everything and highlights the absurdity of life - according to the materialist…

And for the theist, life is nothing, but a temporary testing ground, which is valueless, in and by itself. Only the “hoped for” afterlife gives it a “retroactive meaning”.

False. For the vast majority of theists this life is an opportunity for development, enjoyment and fulfilment. In the words of Keats it is “a vale of soul-making” in which physical beauty and pleasure are precious gifts from God. You are confusing Christianity with Manicheism - and Puritanism…

 

[R_Daneel]

I don’t know what you’re talking about! Although money has no intrinsic value it has instrumental value…

Very good. So even if something has no “ultimate” and “intrinsic” value, it still has value, so it is not “valueless”. That is the purpose of this thread to show that life is valuable for atheists, even if it has no intrinsic or “ultimate” value, just like money has no intrinsic or ultimate value (for both theists and atheists), and it still has instumental value.

It is frequently asserted by theists that it makes no sense for atheists to value life, since they deny the “ultimate” value for it. If this assertion would be rational, then theists would not value money, for the same reason. Yes, we are just a “bag of chemicals”, but that bag of chemicals is very valuable for us, even if (or rather especially because) it all ends after a few decades.

That is why precisely why it is valuable. If we couldn’t do anything with it it would be valueless!

Certainly, but that still does not make life “intrinsically” valuable. Just consider a very seriously retarded “person”, in persistent vegetative state. That person is not even aware of himself, and is unable to “do” anything with his life. As you said (well, implied, did not explictly say it), his life is “meaningless” and “valueless”, since he is unable to do anything with it. Guess what, I agree.

False. For the vast majority of theists this life is an opportunity for development, enjoyment and fulfilment.

Of course. But this “development, enjoyment and fulfillment” is not for its own sake for the theists. It is only a tool to “earn” one’s way to heaven. In and by itself one’s strive to achieve these goals is labeled “hedonistic”.

 

[The_Exodus]

Therefore, Touchstone is saying, when theists claim that “meaning” is only real when it’s “objective” or “ultimate,” they’re overlooking the obvious fact that value is something that humans give to things, not a quality that things have in themselves, a fact that theists themselves demonstrate when they give value to money (while acknowledging that it has no ultimate value).

It’s an excellent, excellent analogy.

You obviously have no grasp of the point I’m addressing. You need to read serious atheists like Sartre, Heidegger, Nietzsche, etc. You will have a better understanding of atheism if you read the literature of intelligent atheists.

Further, the question at hand is a foundation for objective meaning. If atheism is true, the foundation is subjective. If theism is true, the foundation is objective.

 

[The_Exodus]

This needs a special response. Let’s start from the “selfish” point of view. Let’s say that the only “valuable” thing is one’s own well-being. A dumb person will therefore pursue his own self-interest, and disregards everyone else, or “steamrolls” over others. But this is not a good solution to maximize one’s own well-being. Actually it is a pretty lousy one.

So Hitler, Stalin, Mao, were “stupid?” I suppose it takes an idiot to rise to political power and rule a country… The whole “smart vs. dumb” response makes no sense at all.

There’s no dancing around it. Morality becomes preference. In fact, your analogy can be applied the other way. It is extremely smart to eliminate all groups of people who pose a threat to one’s well being. Social darwinism - eliminating the weak so the strong can survive - is a sound, intelligent, logical position to promote the well being of the species.

 

[R_Daneel]

So Hitler, Stalin, Mao, were “stupid?” I suppose it takes an idiot to rise to political power and rule a country…

Referring to obvious psychopaths, sociopaths and tyrants as if they were the norm, only highlights your skewed view of reality. Ever heard of Godwin’s law? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law)

The whole “smart vs. dumb” response makes no sense at all.

Well, that is exactly your problem, spelled out. You don’t even understand what I am talking about.

The fact is that most people realize and understand (even if not consciously aware of) the fact that it is the best strategy to strike a good balance between cooperating and competing. That there is a long-term advantage to accept the fact that one cannot pursue one’s interest, if it runs into a conflict with the interest of others, and sometimes one must compromise to get an optimal solution. Dumb people don’t understand this.

There’s no dancing around it. Morality becomes preference.

I am not talking about “morality”. I am talking about strategies for maximizing one’s own well-being. I am talking about game theory, which is probably not your “forte”. Morality is exactly what your say, a preference, and thus a dumb and irrelevant concept. One man’s terrorist is another one’s freedom fighter.

In fact, your analogy can be applied the other way. It is extremely smart to eliminate all groups of people who pose a threat to one’s well being. Social darwinism - eliminating the weak so the strong can survive - is a sound, intelligent, logical position to promote the well being of the species.

Except it is not. Don’t try to argue as if you were a mathematician, who understands the subtleties of game theory. On the short run, such behavior does yield results, but the price is not worth it. On the long run, the attempt to eliminate the opposition simply does not work.

 

[Pieman333272]

I’ll only answer the OP Because the discussion already seems to have gotten heated.

In my opinion, the $20 (or other amount of money) does have value - material value, value for this world in the most basic essence. If Materialism (with objective morality) is correct (meaning, presumably, there is no God), the money has value - one might argue it is one of the most valuable things in our everyday lives. If dualism is right, however, it is only valuable on this earth - the material Universe, where we are born unto and die on. However, in the metaphysical essence - it is valueless. So, if my neighbor showed me his $50 Bill for some reason, I wouldn’t say “that’s valueless”. If, however, he gave me his $50 Bill, telling me he was dying from cancer and wanted it buried with him because of what he believes to be its spiritual significance, then I would tell him “that’s valueless” and explain why.

Very interesting topic!

 

[Touchstone]

You are just assuming that life does, in fact, have meaning.

I’m doing something different. I’m suggesting that “intrinsic” is a category error, when combined with “meaning”, just like “value”. Meaning and value are assigned by choice and convention. Gold isn’t “intrinsically valuable” and life isn’t “intrinsically meaningful(in some cosmic sense)”, not because neither are valued – manifestly, they are. It’s the concept of “intrinsic” or “ultimate” here that is bogus, meaningless. Meaning and value are just the terms we apply to mark what we have invested importance and priority in. The investments are real, effectual. But they are invested in the object by us, not intrinsic to it.

You’ve not proven anything. The point theism makes is that without God, there is nothing to actually instill intrinsic dignity in the human person.

I’m not offering a proof. I’m criticism the notion of “intrinsic meaning”, specifically the “intrinsic part”. It’s mistaken in its conception of what value and meaning are, and how they obtain.

They are just a various combination of matter and chemicals, no more quantitatively valuable than any other conglomeration. Their emotions are simply chemicals firing in an organ. You wouldn’t say this was" meaningful" if you saw it going on in a lab under a microscope. I don’t see why such chemicals reacting in a different environment would be any different.

If you were to watch a sperm combine with an ovum under a microscope, it would be chemicals being chemicals, but it would be meaningful and valuable to behold, all the same, as it may portend the birth and development of a very exotic organism, a human being. Ink splattered on a page may have little or no meaning to us, but printed words – say the Lord’s Prayer printed in a page of a Bible – as a different configuration of that same kind of ink on the page has a rich store of meanings we would assign to that. The meaning isn’t intrinsic to ink or page – it’s just paper and pigments – but the meaning obtains in the arrangement and configuration, patterns that correspond to concepts and ideas that are relevant and important to us as readers and observers.

It therefore falls to each individual to construct his own system of ethics, and, if one wants to give certain people value, and others less value, there is nothing anyone can say to justify their point over such a one. Slavery, for instance, or concentration camps, are not really wrong.

This commits the same error, conceptually as “intrinsic”, above, I suggest. It supposes some magical dimension of “really” or “intrinsic” for value that has not been established, even a little bit.

They are just against the majority opinion, or “unfashionable.” Of course, you one can use force to make people change their minds, but your position is no more “right” or “objectively true” than theirs is. On atheism, might makes right.

No, I think that’s a Catholic thing. One of my main moral criticism of the Church - it’s ground in morality and ethics in God’s power and sovereignty. A majority is a fearsome tyrant, ask a black person in the South for most of America’s history. Humans are social animals with a shared physiology and psychology. We have core impulses and responses that ground our basic “moral grammar”, and insofar as those are physiological, they are as objective as the length of a person’s foot. Individuals decided for themselves – demonstrably – but we live in a social context where social contracts and mores play fundamental roles in governing our actions, or at least society’s reactions to our choices.

No. Money per money has no value in and of itself. It is only valuable because it can be used toward some end: i.e. physical pleasures, necessary survival, etc. On the other hand, if, on atheism, you want to give value to money - i.e. if you want to make it meaningful to you - you can. But, objectively speaking, there is nothing inherently valuable about money.

Yes, and this is profound: it’s perfectly effective and actual as value in both an individual and social sense. The value is real, objectively real, once it is adopted by those who decide it is valuable. It’s not a subjective claim to say that money has real, objective value in a practical sense; it gets used to exchange and track value millions of times a day across the globe, even as we acknowledge there’s nothing “intrinsic” about money’s value itself. Value and meaning just denote our decisions and priorities about the resources and objects around us. To say my life is meaningful is to say I have decided that it is a priority to me, something to preserve, engage, and invest with goals and objectives.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

If atheism is true, everything is just a bare fact. Existence is just there. There is nothing instrinsically valuable or not about it.

Right. “Intrinsic” as theists use it here is a conceptual goof. An artifact of the magical thinking that anchors God as the grounds of the economy of value and meaning.

It’s like Sarte’s chair, sitting in the park. It is just there, and would have no value whatsoever. A conscious person may came along and decide to say something about it, but, objectively speaking, this would be totally absurd and meaningless. All that would be expressed is the individual’s viewpoint, or how he sees the chair. But, if reality is considered as a whole, there is not one “standard” or “objective” view point, since there is not one conscious, allknowing entity. Reality is just a brute fact. Existence precedes essence. What you see is purely subjective and meaningless, as far as objective reality is concerned.

My decisions are subjective (at least partly – some of my decisions appear to be brute imperatives imposed by my phyisology, and not subjective), but the consequences of those decisions are perfectly objective. If a trading partner and I agree that X has some value, and exchange goods accordingly, it is objectively “valued” when the transaction happens. It’s a fact – X was valued as the basis of exchange in transaction Y.

I suspect it’s this linkage that may be being overlooked, that subject decisions give rise to contracts, conventions and commits that are themselves facts, objective realities, thereby reifying value and meaning.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Money does have value - it has value in that it serves a purpose. It gets a job done. I think when theists are arguing about the value of human life, they are specifically saying that the purpose that person’s life may have been assigned to, or the job that person does, is quite irrelevant to their intrinsic worth. I guess what I’m saying is that I think theists, when talking about value and intrinsic value are indeed talking about two very different animals.

Indeed, and this is the central point I’m driving at in my post above. I believe a theist can see the practically folly in this complaint: On materialism, life has no intrinsic meaning!, by considering her own reaction to being told: The money in your bank account has no intrinsic value.

It should just produce a shrug. It’s demonstrably valuable in a practical, real world sense. You can buy things with it, you can trade if for just about anything you’d want, if you have enough of it.

How would this “lack of intrinsic” value be a problem, or a concern at all? So long as their exists the social trust and convention in the currency being used, it is, by definition, valuable in the most basic, real-world sense.

Similarly, then, the theist I expect can understand how facile this complaint is: On matierialism, life has no intrinsic meaning, where “intrinsic meaning” is just an alias for “God wills it”. It just elicits a shrug. Manifestly, people do invest and realize meaning in their lives, individually and socially, and this complaint is just as hollow as the complaint that “money isn’t intrinsically valuable”.

It’s a conceptual mistake that promotes God’s subjective will as the basis of meaning or value as “objective”. On theism, the meaning of life is perfectly subjective – life is valuable because God says it is, and has decreed it thus. On an objective reality, reality obtains independent of any mind or will. God’s will subjectivizes the whole of reality on theism – God created it all!

And this subjective reality is confused with “objective” because God is a “higher mind” and somehow that trips a bit of confusion, leading people to think that a reality that obtains from a “higher mind” is not just as subjective as a reality that is shaped by a “lower” mind.

-TS

 

[GreggAlvarez]

Odd round of arguments here. Atheists making claims on the “There is a God” position and theists making claims on the “There is no God” position. Obviously, whether or not there is a God (although I certainly believe that He does exist), there is value to our life and we want value in our life. We all want to make an impact in one way or another. We want to be able to say at one of the most important moments in our life (the hour of our death), “I am content with my life.” The other moment that can determine that contentment (which is beyond emotion) is Now.

When we make arguments about the aspects of humanity (in this case, value), it will go around in circles and very little (if anything) will be achieved. All I care to say is that we ultimately have ZERO value if we do not make attempt to pursue some kind of value beyond money (Money? Seriously?); that is to search for more answers beyond the sciences. People like Richard Dawkins seem to think that science is the ONLY truth and that faith lacks evidence and reasoning and blocks intelligence. He has never even heard of me, much less talked with me, yet he makes these absurd remarks about every person of every faith and his minions believe him and every word he says/writes. (All I can say on that is I at least worship a man whom I believe is God with all the evidence and reasoning I need, and then some, behind it; do not be afraid to ask me if you are curious). I can honestly say that something like Life is a hell of a lot more real to me than any fact and figure of science. To me, Truths outside the realm of materials eclipses the sciences. Love (friend to friend, child to parent, theist to atheist, husband to wife, etc…) makes everything that much more valuable. As former militant atheist, I had always cherished these things as we all should. And whether or not God exists, Life, Truth and Love obviously do exist and they are far more valuable than money (terrible argument) and material. If you deny this, well too bad for you. We have to realize this and the FACT (I could not care less about your opinion on this) that 95% of people have legitimate reasons and evidence to believe what they believe (or not believe) whether or not we like it and whether or not we believe it. (With that said though, I take the Christian bias that Catholicism is the fullness of the Christian faith. As a former atheist and still with the atheist mindset, I try not to be bias talking with my atheist brothers and sisters.) I say 95% as an estimation because I am sure there are atheists as well as theists who believe what they believe (or not believe) not based on their own inquiries.

Take what you want from this or dismiss it.

 

[tonyrey]

Although money has no intrinsic value it has instrumental value…

Life is valuable for everyone whether its value is recognised. I guess most atheists regard it as instrumentally valuable even though they think it is not designed to be valuable but some atheists recognise its objective value, i.e. value that is not just in the mind.

It is frequently asserted by theists that it makes no sense for atheists to value life, since they deny the “ultimate” value for it. If this assertion would be rational, then theists would not value money, for the same reason. Yes, we are just a “bag of chemicals”, but that bag of chemicals is very valuable for us, even if (or rather especially because) it all ends after a few decades.

People can impose value arbitrarily on almost anything even if has no objective purpose but rational values are based on purposes related to physical, intellectual, moral, social, personal and spiritual development.

That is why precisely why life is valuable. If we couldn’t do anything with it it would be valueless!

Certainly, but that still does not make life “intrinsically” valuable. Just consider a very seriously retarded “person”, in persistent vegetative state. That person is not even aware of himself, and is unable to “do” anything with his life. As you said (well, implied, did not explicitly say it), his life is “meaningless” and “valueless”, since he is unable to do anything with it.

I did not even imply it because I don’t believe it! I don’t believe your physical state is the sole criterion of the value of your life and that you cease to be a person or lose the right to life if you are retarded, disabled or comatose. Atheists diminish the value of life by confining it to its material aspect - in contrast to Milton’s “He also serves who only stands and waits…”

For the vast majority of theists this life is an opportunity for development, enjoyment and fulfilment.

Of course. But this “development, enjoyment and fulfillment” is not for its own sake for the theists. It is only a tool to “earn” one’s way to heaven. In and by itself one’s strive to achieve these goals is labeled “hedonistic”.

You are mistaken. Christ’s teaching and healing of the sick clearly demonstrate that He valued this life for its own sake as well as a prelude to the next. You are hedonistic only if you put your own pleasure and interests before everything else.

 

[The_Exodus]

The fact is that most people realize and understand (even if not consciously aware of) the fact that it is the best strategy to strike a good balance between cooperating and competing.

That still doesn’t make an action any closer to being “right” in and of itself. It is “right” only accidentally (in the philosophical sense), and not essentially; only because so and so thinks it is, etc.

daneel:

I am not talking about “morality”. I am talking about strategies for maximizing one’s own well-being.

Well being meaning what…? You’ve not cleared the waters or made any point whatsoever. You’ve simply pushed the question back. Now, “well being” is the subjective term.

daneel:

Except it is not.

You simply fail to understand the philosophical implications of what you’re saying. Again, read serious atheist literature, and perhaps you’ll understand the ramifications of atheism a bit better. Try Sartre, for example. Or Nietzsche.

 

[The_Exodus]

Meaning and value are assigned by choice and convention. Gold isn’t “intrinsically valuable” and life isn’t “intrinsically meaningful(in some cosmic sense)”, not because neither are valued – manifestly, they are.

This is not manifest at all. Do you not know a whole school of thought (all atheistic) are nihilists? Are you blind to the fact that a great wave in moral philosophy for the past 150 years would flat out disagree with you and find your claim absolutely unjustified and ridiculous?

The most intelligent atheists see that life does not have meaning. This is because on atheism “existence” is a bald term. It has no character, in and of itself. Now, certainly you can live as if it did, but this doesn’t change the fact that in the true scheme of things, man’s existence is (in Sartre’s language) a “useless passion.”

touchstone:

I’m not offering a proof. I’m criticism the notion of “intrinsic meaning”, specifically the “intrinsic part”. It’s mistaken in its conception of what value and meaning are, and how they obtain.

I know you like Wittgenstein and are for some reason impressed with his ideas about language (which preceded him and were put into much more intelligible conception in the 1250s), but the above is simply gibberish, considering the fact that your whole post is written in order to prove that life is, somehow, “really” meaningful. It doesn’t matter how you want to dress this language up, i.e. if you want to call it a “category error” or what have you. Life is either worth something, in and of itself, or its an illusion which you entertain because you want or like to. Those are the only two options.

As I’ve noticed in most of your posts, you continually deconstruct your own points, as well as everyone elses, and therefore end up running in circles. I.e. you “bewitch” yourself.

touchstone:

If you were to watch a sperm combine with an ovum under a microscope, it would be chemicals being chemicals, but it would be meaningful and valuable to behold

This is just an assertion. I find absolutely no reason to think this is so, if humans were not created in the image of God.

touchstone:

This commits the same error, conceptually as “intrinsic”, above, I suggest. It supposes some magical dimension of “really” or “intrinsic” for value that has not been established, even a little bit.

What hasn’t been established on atheism is why I should think “life” is meaningful. Why give the brute fact of “existence” meaning? Sure, you can offer some practical response, but pragmatism presupposes an end, or a meaning, or a reason for acting. The end or meaning or reason for acting is precisely what is in question, however, and precisely what has no justifcation whatsoever if existence is a bald fact.

touchstone:

No, I think that’s a Catholic thing. One of my main moral criticism of the Church - it’s ground in morality and ethics in God’s power and sovereignty.

According to Catholicism ethics and morality are grounded in God’s nature, which is pure being, goodness, truth, power, justice, sovereignty.

On atheism ethics and morality are grounded in human nature, which is simply a bald existential reality: a chunk of matter which happens to wiggle around and undergo this experience we arbitarily call “life.”

touchstone:

To say my life is meaningful is to say I have decided that it is a priority to me, something to preserve, engage, and invest with goals and objectives.

Sure thing.

But that is not to say that your life is meaningful to me, or in and of itself. Indeed, for all my purposes, you may be simply an obstacle for me to overcome, on my way to my goals of preservation, etc.