That depends on what you mean by nature. While it is true that physical effects accompany those experiences, the meaning that we experience in love, shame etc, is not physically quantifiable. You can’t put the experience of love or good in a test tube. There is more to reality than just physical objects.
Yes, if life leads to meaning. No, if life leads to nothing.
I cannot find any meaning in love. What is meaning of life?
No its not. Sorry, but that’s just using the word, Hope. String theory and Gravity waves are all referenced within our reality for their equations to work. We all have access to this experienced and demonstrable reality for our mathematical models. There is no, zero, nothing, no data at all about religious claims to the supernatural at this point. Back to my example, there is zero evidence of a 7 turning up on a 1d6 dice roll. Now if I make a mathematical equation that points out that the dice could end up on its edge and not actually land on any dice side at all, that is theoretically possible based on the mathematical model to create that event since everything in the model is referenced to reality. Gravity, inertia, etc. there was no “miracle” that happened to explain why X occurred in the equation presented. The Faith example of the mathematical model of Gravity waves would be: math references of reality as we understand it, then the magical poof of a deity brings about the results we would prefer in the experiment. The 7 appears on the 1d6 dice role when reality does not indicate that is a possibility at all.
So your saying that since this is what reality actually demonstrates, this creates a problem for you that you don’t like, so you have to invent a whole realm outside of reality so solve this problem? Until you can demonstrate your reference point to solve this problem exists at all, why is it allowed to be a potential solution? All you’ve done is stated, I don’t like how reality is, so I’m going to create an addition to reality to solve this issue. Reality doesn’t owe you a solution to the problems you have about it. We have to deal with reality as it is until it is demonstrated that your solution is there at all.
Every statement we communicate to each other then is “make-belief” by this standard then. Our communication to each other for what we value is irrelevant to the discussion of understanding humanity then. Reality doesn’t bear this out it seems. When people are in love, they communicate this. When we are in pain, depressed, every state of mind we communicate this. These are all statements about what humanity values. Are you arguing the point that we can not do this but we are just the conduits of a deity communicating what it values regardless of the human experience then?
Can you expand on this? I don’t know what you’re getting to here. When someone tells me they value X or are in pain or they don’t like Y, I’ll believe that is the case for them. We wouldn’t have made it as a social creature if we didn’t do this for each other.
It is true to the person that believes they are in love and find value in X if they understand that is true to them as they understand it. Person A is in mental state X. They profess they are in love. You come along and disagree with the label and call it Y. That is now just creating a communication problem but does not change the actual mental state that person is in. They just learned to call it Y to you but to everyone else that understands that mental state as X, the person will keep calling it X.
Good to know that’s part of your tribal identity and language. Doesn’t change anything for people outside of your tribe for the value they have in life. They have the same value as you do and the same experiences of life. They just don’t use your vocabulary for expressing it. So you’re not as special as you appear you wish you were. You’re just as human as the rest of us.
Of course not because we dont ascribe to your world view, just as other deists and theists don’t ascribe to your view either too. It’s absurd to us. But atheists are individuals about everything except the one question, “Are you convinced that the supernatural exists?” - No, No I am not. That’s it. That’s all it is to be an atheist. Any question at all outside of that one question is a completely different issue to each atheist since we have nothing else that links us together. There are world views that tend to have a lot of atheists in them, but you can still be a theist and be a skeptic, liberal, republican, democrat, Darwinist, nihilist, communist, etc.
How we feel about something is just a motivator for (name removed by moderator)ut into helping us create a hierarchy of what to remember. Don’t need your deity’s approval to make things meaningful or not. Because do you need anyone else’s (name removed by moderator)ut to make you feel the birthday card your kids gave you for your birthday is meaningful? I seriously doubt it. You seem to have this abhorrent distaste for the human experience. Sorry religion seems to do that a lot. But that’s your institution’s issues, not anyone elses. You are creating issues where there are none actually.
Referencing a deity to give something mean is no different than saying X is meaningful because bob said so. Again all you’re doing is saying, I don’t like what reality has actually presented, so I’m going to invent a solution to this issue that has no evidence of its existence at all. Sorry reality doesn’t owe you a reality you would prefer.
The brain is the only instrument that we have to understand reality. That is what reality actually demonstrates to be the case. All your whining for some magical entity being outside of a physical brain is pointless unless you can actually demonstrate that it is there at all.
That’s what you believe, it has not been demonstrated. A-prior, we have no idea what the ultimate nature of reality is or whether it has meaning or not. I didn’t begin with assumptions, only the possibility of faith. At the end of the day, i do not expect the scientific method to discover anything more than it can measure, so it is a weak argument at best to say that we should assume that other realities are impossible until we have scientific evidence that they are possible. To do so would be completely circular and without any justification. To argue philosophically that the reality of our senses is probably the only possible reality because that’s all we can see, is short sighted thinking at best. It’s like a fish that only thinks the tank in which it lives is the entire world. What objective standard do you have to justify a pro-materialist stance beyond pleading ignorance?
I think the weasel words you use here “self-made humanistic fantasy” are telling. It’s clear that you believe that without faith, humans must inevitably be bereft of any purpose. But that’s simply not true. I find joy and purpose every day in spending time with my kids, playing my piano, spending time with friends and family, visiting new places, meeting new people, and so on - in all likelihood, the exact same things that you do. The fact that I recognise that I serve no higher purpose does not make any of these things less enjoyable. It’s only people with faith that assume that those without must be caught in a despairing nihilism. I wonder if you ever question that assumption - or any of your assumptions?HerCrazierHalf:
Some people are okay with make-belief, making up life as they go along, like a user-experience in a game or something. The idea that life is what you make it is appealing to some people as a philosophy since it promises a degree of autonomy that one simply cannot have in other philosophies of life. If you cannot see how your belief in metaphysical naturalism robs you of your dignity as a personal being, then that is your bag. That’s your prerogative at the end of the day. What i will not agree with is the idea that living “life” (whatever you imagine that to be) in that manner is more rational than having faith. The idea that someone is more rational for living in their own self-made humanistic fantasy than someone who places their hope in a theistic point of view is ridiculous to me.
In the end we each live out our lives as we see fit. Though your use of “hope” suggest you view this life and it’s temporary nature in and of itself is barely tolerable. On this we disagree. And from that the importance of “meaning” is much greater for you than me.
I have no problem with how people choose to live their lives individually. Neither is the idea of being alive in itself intolerable, rather i view the idea that my life is truly meaningless and lacks true moral worth and purpose as existentially intolerable (and so do atheists since they have to make believe purpose meaning and moral worth); and i think if other people including atheists truly viewed their lives in that way they too would view that as an intolerable point of view. I don’t think any reasonable person views there lives in that way, and i also think metaphysical naturalism is incompatible with the idea that our lives have significance, moral worth, and purpose. Metaphysical naturalism renders human existence and their actions pointless and unintelligible.
Did i at any point in this thread claim that “those without must be caught in a despairing nihilism.”
If God does not exists then we are all living in a fantasy, and we are all responding to and acting on experiences that have no objective or true meaning. We are all being irrational because we are all trying to make a meaningful point out of something that is essentially pointless and meaningless. The fact that you are blind to the logical consequences of your philosophical position while enjoying what God has given does not make it any less true that the way you think and behave in the presumed absence of God is irrational and pointless.
Which God tho?