The absurdity of atheism

[Peter_Plato]

That’s the most useful thing most of us will ever do. Although I managed to perpetuate the species to a certain degree (the’s a smaller version of me spraying water all over the garden and kicking those damn leaves everywhere at the moment).

Your claim that “the most useful thing most of us will ever do” is to decompose and become humus, would seem to nullify your aspiration to “perpetuate the species” as a laudible act. Wouldn’t it be better just to remain humus rather than prolong the process – I mean if decomposing is, indeed, the most useful thing?

Of course, I am assuming that by “useful” you mean something like “good,” and fully acknowledge that I might be wrong about that.

Your post leaves me deeply flummoxed and skeptical about the grounds for an atheistic moral system. Your grounds for morality seem very susceptible to decomposition. Just saying. :jrbirdman:

 

[Peter_Plato]

What some people would like is that everything would have an ultimate meaning. To expand what is occasionally and temporarily meaningful to include everything at all times. Again, it’s a nice concept. That there must be more to life than chocolate covered strawberries. It keeps a lot of people happy to think so. They believe it to be so.

But that doesn’t make it real.

It is hard to take seriously the musings about what is real and what makes people happy from a man who thinks decomposing and turning into humus is “the most useful thing most of us will ever do.” :yukonjoe:

Now, of course, I could make the observation that you proposing becoming humus to be “useful” is a corollary to the argument from desire. We could call it the argument from utility – i.e., one could only find “useful” things that happen to be real, like humus. Humus, then, must exist, no?

Are you going to deny the existence of humus? Why, otherwise, would it be useful to decompose?

 

[Bradski]

Life is made up of concentric circles of meaning. Physical and temporal.

There are people close to you who are very important indeed. Spouse, children, parents, close friends. As that familial circle increases, the emotional attachment and meaning you personally attach to them decreases. Until at some point, there is no meaning at all.

We are all distantly related in some way but there are billions of people all over the world who have no meaning to you. That’s not to say that you wouldn’t care about them if you knew them. But you don’t. And it is impossible to care about someone you don’t know exists. And they have no interest in you either.

If you simply ceased to exist, then they wouldn’t care and it would have no effect on them at all. Just as the fact that the 500 or so people who have died while you read up to this point have no meaning to you.

Even people directly related tou you have no meaning. Keep going back on your father’s line and the meaning that these men have to you descreases. You propbably have no emotional attachment to your great great great grandfather at all, even if you know who he was.

Let’s face it, there have been whole nations that have long gone, whole races of people, entire civilisations long gone that we know nothing about. And their meaning in the grand scheme of things? All those people with hopes and dreams and loves and ambitions? All ultimately meaningless. Except to themselves and their small circles of interest.

But does that mean we all have bleak and meaningless lives? That we shouldn’t care about others? Well, that’s up to you, Peter. You can just go short term and pour yourself anothe g and t and put on some Pink Floyd or you can go long term and maybe do something about global warming or raise a family or work for Medicins sans Frontiere.

Just because life is ultimately meaningless doesn’t mean those circles of immediate and personal meaning don’t exist.

Anyway, I’m going short term right now. Another g and t and, yes, some Pink Floyd while I’m cooking. Learning To Fly first up… After all, I will be coming back as an eagle.

 

[PRmerger]

. After all, I will be coming back as an eagle.

Scratch an atheist, find a fundamentalist.

Heaven can grant you your desire to be an eagle.

Just don’t think literally. Think spiritually, friend.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . There are people close to you who are very important indeed. . . . whole nations that have long gone, whole races of people, entire civilisations long gone that we know nothing about. And their meaning in the grand scheme of things? All those people with hopes and dreams and loves and ambitions? All ultimately meaningless. Except to themselves and their small circles of interest. . . Just because life is ultimately meaningless doesn’t mean those circles of immediate and personal meaning don’t exist. . .

What connects you to those closest to you is love.
We give of ourselves to one another.
This Giving is ultimately transcendent.
It, He actually (because it is greater, more real than we are and brings us into being), lies at the Core of existence.
We should care for one another because we are all cared about and the potential for love exists between any and all of us.
Things of this world are totally meaningless in themselves: riches, pleasure, honour.
The loving connections that bound those people in ancient civilization are what remain because the Love that brought them into being exists eternally.

It is something like that.

Once out of its golden cognitive cage, the soul can soar like an eagle.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

Life is made up of concentric circles of meaning. Physical and temporal.

There are people close to you who are very important indeed. Spouse, children, parents, close friends. As that familial circle increases, the emotional attachment and meaning you personally attach to them decreases. Until at some point, there is no meaning at all.

We are all distantly related in some way but there are billions of people all over the world who have no meaning to you. That’s not to say that you wouldn’t care about them if you knew them. But you don’t. And it is impossible to care about someone you don’t know exists. And they have no interest in you either.

If you simply ceased to exist, then they wouldn’t care and it would have no effect on them at all. Just as the fact that the 500 or so people who have died while you read up to this point have no meaning to you.

Even people directly related tou you have no meaning. Keep going back on your father’s line and the meaning that these men have to you descreases. You propbably have no emotional attachment to your great great great grandfather at all, even if you know who he was.

Let’s face it, there have been whole nations that have long gone, whole races of people, entire civilisations long gone that we know nothing about. And their meaning in the grand scheme of things? All those people with hopes and dreams and loves and ambitions? All ultimately meaningless. Except to themselves and their small circles of interest.

But does that mean we all have bleak and meaningless lives? That we shouldn’t care about others? Well, that’s up to you, Peter. You can just go short term and pour yourself anothe g and t and put on some Pink Floyd or you can go long term and maybe do something about global warming or raise a family or work for Medicins sans Frontiere.

Just because life is ultimately meaningless doesn’t mean those circles of immediate and personal meaning don’t exist.

Anyway, I’m going short term right now. Another g and t and, yes, some Pink Floyd while I’m cooking. Learning To Fly first up… After all, I will be coming back as an eagle.

So people like Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Michelangelo, Dante, etc. - their lives had no meaning?? You are being absurd. Every life has meaning and every soul is important to God. Obviously Pink Floyd has deep meaning to you. Even the way you describe your daughter shows how much meaning her life has. What are you talking about Bradski?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

When I die I want to come back as an eagle.

If it’s high flying that you like, you might want to come back as an angel.

Ah, but you’d have to earn a degree for that!

 

[Charlemagne_III]

There’s a pile of leaves in the garden which my wife has asked me (yet again) to clear up. It’s just a pile of leaves. They serve no purpose and they have no meaning.

They serve a purpose, believe it, to make room for new life on the tree.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

After all, I will be coming back as an eagle.

I hope you like eating decaying fish and avoiding flying into windmills!

 

[Peter_Plato]

Anyway, I’m going short term right now. Another g and t and, yes, some Pink Floyd while I’m cooking. Learning To Fly first up… After all, I will be coming back as an eagle.

Well, I suppose that would be a little better “term” than decomposition into humus. Perhaps when you transcend the level of worms and maggots you might get a better view of things as an eagle.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I am seeing several senses of “meaning” invoked here. Seems to be used to express intention, dependency, emotional attachment, having impact, and more. Are all of you talking about the same thing or is there some other sense of the word “neaning” that is common to all of these concepts?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I am seeing several senses of “meaning” invoked here. Seems to be used to express intention, dependency, emotional attachment, having impact, and more. Are all of you talking about the same thing or is there some other sense of the word “neaning” that is common to all of these concepts?

Good question. I vote for “intention.”

For example, does the universe just exist, or does it exist by intention?

If it exist by intention (God’s will), everything in it also exists by intention, including dead leaves, bald eagles, and humans.

As Einstein put it, our purpose is to understand God’s thoughts (intentions).

Blaise Pascal argues that in all of creation man is special. He is both nothing and everything, with a reason to be humble and a reason to be proud.

“Man is a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed…. Even if the universe should crush him, man would still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows he dies; and he knows the advantage the universe has over him…. All our dignity, then, resides in thought.”

 

[Peter_Plato]

I am seeing several senses of “meaning” invoked here. Seems to be used to express intention, dependency, emotional attachment, having impact, and more. Are all of you talking about the same thing or is there some other sense of the word “neaning” that is common to all of these concepts?

I don’t know about the word “neaning,” but for me “meaning” involves grasping the significance of all that is, relative to all that is. In other words, what is the real significance of a human life, for example, relative to all that is and what is its reason for existing in that larger scheme at the most basic and final level. The most pithy depiction of “meaning” would be a full and complete answer to: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

 

[CHRISTINE77]

I don’t know about the word “neaning,” but for me “meaning” involves grasping the significance of all that is, relative to all that is. In other words, what is the real significance of a human life, for example, relative to all that is and what is its reason for existing in that larger scheme at the most basic and final level. The most pithy depiction of “meaning” would be a full and complete answer to: “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Yes I am unclear about “neaning” too. Is this an atheist’s code word? But “meaning” is about everything. You can’t reduce it to earthly things. We are part of this world, but we have eternal souls. God loves every one of our souls. They have deep meaning for him.

 

[Bradski]

So people like Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Michelangelo, Dante, etc. …Obviously Pink Floyd has deep meaning to you. Even the way you describe your daughter shows how much meaning her life has. What are you talking about Bradski?

Well my daughter, as I said earlier, has meaning to me, obviously. But let’s not confuse that meaning with simple enjoyment. Mozart leave me cold. Dave Gilmore can move me to tears. But that doesn’t mean the music is meaningful in any transcendent way. I also enjoy pizzas, cricket, cold beer, camp fires…nothing meaningful in any of them. I don’t contemplate a perfect Margherita or watch a crisp hit pull shot zinging to the boundary and think: Hey, there must be a God.

I am seeing several senses of “meaning” invoked here. Seems to be used to express intention, dependency, emotional attachment, having impact, and more. Are all of you talking about the same thing or is there some other sense of the word “neaning” that is common to all of these concepts?

Ultimate purpose. That all there is was made for us and we are the be all and end all of everything that has been, is and will be. I’m as bad as the next guy when it comes to feeling self important, but even I am not that egotistical.

I never ceased to be amused by the importance placed on humility and then he told in the same breath that we are the pinnacle of creation.

 

[PRmerger]

I never ceased to be amused by the importance placed on humility and then he told in the same breath that we are the pinnacle of creation.

This is not the Catholic view of humility you seem to be referencing.

Humility is nothing more than seeing ourselves as we ought to be seen.

So, if we *are *the pinnacle of creation, it is humble to see ourselves in that manner.

 

[Bradski]

This is not the Catholic view of humility you seem to be referencing.

Humility is nothing more than seeing ourselves as we ought to be seen.

So, if we *are *the pinnacle of creation, it is humble to see ourselves in that manner.

Considering yourself to be so is not, in my mind, a good example of humility.

 

[PRmerger]

Considering yourself to be so is not, in my mind, a good example of humility.

This seems odd to me to hear you say that it’s not humble to see yourself as you are.

If I am the President of the US,and I see myself as the President, is that not the correct view?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Considering yourself to be so is not, in my mind, a good example of humility.

You see Brad, it isn’t about you or what you think, it is about the truth.

Here is where your whole ego-humility trip gets turned on its head.

God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens – the substantial act of Being Itself – and yet God emptied Himself to become a lowly child, then hung on a cross and subsequently becomes Bread and Wine to be eaten by human beings.

This is “creation” from the point of view of its Creator and what being at the “pinnacle of creation” means, by example.

It seems to me that God has a completely incomprehensible view of what the “pinnacle” of creation entails – kind of like taking two completely opposite ideas and holding them in a sort of split-the-atom-fusion together… God hanging on a cross after becoming man out of love for his creation.

You say considering yourself the pinnacle of creation is not an example of humility, but if being at the pinnacle of creation means joining him on that cross, is it not an example of humility? Yet, we are called to be in communion with him.

Whether or not the “pinnacle of creation” is an example of humility depends entirely upon what “creation” means to its Creator and what the Creator has in mind by placing beings on that pinnacle. It might mean a lesson in profound and abject humility.

 

[Rohzek]

The fact that there may not be an “outside” object does not make the sense perception any less real or any more deceptive. It just isn’t clear what the source of the perception is. So what?

The point is that though the perception is real, the object itself might not be real. Hence, believing that the object is real is arbitrary and cannot be justified in the absolute sense, since there is no such thing as induction.

The existence of God isn’t anything like that – at least not to most people.

Oh but it is very much so. One might feel a divine presence, but it could just be an illusion. Belief is a very arbitrary thing.

The question remains as to the **rational **basis of the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity. Expediency?

Uhhhhhh…are you trying to question the basic principles of human rights or are you trying to question atheism? Because it seems like you are drifting towards the former. The rational basis for liberty, etc. is human creativity, as I said in a previous post. These don’t have anything to do necessarily with atheism. Vast swaths of theists and atheists in the first world do believe in fundamental natural rights, which come directly from Enlightenment philosophy.