Y’know, this it the kind of OP that really irks me. FRM starts out asking “non-believers how do you find purpose in life?” Then goes around, answering each response with “Nope, not purposeful enough”. It’s apparent to me, from the responses, that there isn’t anything that will make the OP say “Oh, so that’s where you get your purpose from!”
I, myself, am a theist. My husband is an atheist. There is very little difference in what we find purpose in in our lives. There’s very little difference in our morality, except that I’m pro-SSM, and he’s undecided, although he can’t say why.
If I am correct, and there is a God, and there is an afterlife, then the life I’m living in this world serves to strengthen and prepare me for the next life, and to do things that are meaningful in the here and now. If hubby is right, and there is no God and no afterlife, then the life he’s living in this world serves to do things that are meaningful and relevant in the here and now. We know that in the Waaaaay long term, it won’t really matter any more, but it matters now, and that’s what we must concern ourselves with, because it’s all we really have.
But in that case, you’re making a terribly empty argument. Do you have any account of morality that is immune to your own insistence that everything is meaningless other than the generally agreed upon standards by which most people judge common morality, regardless of their origin or justification?
No, it isn’t. And again, you’ve made no argument to the contrary other than to insist it’s so. Nor have you presented any alternative idea about what makes “real” meaning or what meaning even is. I’d say you’re leaning increasingly towards “wasting everyone’s time” if this is your angle, devoid of any counter-example.
First of all, subjective meaning, however transitory is not in the least “no meaning.” Second of all, three’s nothing inconsistent or irrational about any of the standards you list. Comparing them in terms of which is more valuable may require some meta-ethic, but internally there’s nothing that need be susceptible to what you’re complaining about. Thirdly, despite all you say, it’s pretty clear that people DON’T consider all moral standards exactly as valid as anything else. In fact, there is rboad consensus in human society about what is moral and immoral in general how we can tell. Sure, ultimately to some superman on a hill devoid of human feeling empathy and values, that doesn’t mean anything, but arguing that you ARE that being isn’t all that impressive a point, particularly when you are just faking it to try and smear your opponents anyway.
I don’t think that concept means what you think it means. I don’t think you understand what “meaningless” means (since if it means something to me then it clearly isn’t meaningless). And I don’t think you understand what “begging the question” involves, because bare statements of value certainly dont’ contain their own premises: they aren’t even arguments. How can you use language this sloppily?
Here’s an actual fallacy for you: saying that because I’ll die, my feelings and values don’t matter is a complete non seqitur.
Okay. I thought you might be trying to make a deeper or more interesting point. This is about 2nd grade level philosophy.
If you can establish a morality that in any way satisfies your complaints (complaints which I don’t think you’ve even really bothered to justify outside of blind assertions), go right ahead and try. Otherwise, what’s the point of your complaint andd why single out atheists?
Shodan seems to be criticizing others’ purpose in life because it does not prevent murder (and presumably other antisocial behavior in general). There are of course many fallacies inherent in this line of argument. Among the most obvious:
No reasonable definition of “purpose” includes the requirement that murder is prevented. Perhaps Shodan is conflating the concepts of purpose with “ethic” or “moral.”
No evidence exists that other constructions of purpose, most notably ones that include the concepts of God and the afterlife, prevent murder. One could circularly argue that those who commit murder must not really have conceived of purpose to include afterlife and God, even if they claim otherwise.
However, we would have to ask why we are limiting harm to only murder, and what cut-point along the continuum of harmful behavior would end up yielding a meaningful number of people who conceive of purpose to include an afterlife and have yet never harmed others.
And of course, as Diogenes has observed, one’s subjective definition of purpose is just that - one’s subjective definition. I’m hard pressed to understand how someone’s concept of purpose could prevent a second person from killing someone.
Can you say that your parents did nothing for you? Perhaps it would be better to ask if you feel that generally, parents do nothing for their children. I know that I would be hard pressed to claim that my parents did nothing for me simply because I will not be around forever. Regardless of my impermanence, my parents have had a meaningful and marked impact on my life.
Similarly, by less directly, MLK has influenced my life as well, despite having died before my birth.
Why does the concept of “purpose” (or by extension “benefit”) have to include “eternity”? I really don’t think it does, and by confusing the two you are causing yourself some difficulties comprehending others’ responses to you.
I would not recommend that you see the film “March of the Penguins.”
I am somewhat puzzled by the idea that their ought to be a purpose to life. It looks suspiciously like trying to derive an ought (the purpose) from an is (life). Meaning I can understand - we create that for ourselves all the time, completely within the confines of our own minds.
No, you are trying to change the subject. I am asserting that, given the premises of the OP, no morality can be established. I am under no obligation to argue that I can - I am granting the premises and arguing the conclusions.
On the contrary, I am pointing out that all suggestions for meaning or purpose are based on non-rational assumptions - articles of faith, in other words.
See above. Pointing out a logical fallacy does not obligate anyone to change the premise of the discussion.
If you don’t like my points, then propose some rational basis for thinking that life has meaning or purpose. If you don’t have any, too bad.
The lack of a meta-ethic is exactly what I am talking about. Certainly if you grant the premise - “racism is the Good” - then a life devoted to racism is a meaningful one. But there is no possible rational basis on which you can decide that racism is the Good that cannot be equally refuted if you claim that the welfare of your family is the Good, or altruism, or anything else.
Argument ad populum is a logical fallacy. You haven’t established that the broad consensus is either correct, or based on anything, or that it leads to some different outcome that can be rationally defended.
There once was a broad consensus that the earth was flat. Can we decide therefore that this is based on reality?
At least I don’t resort to ad hominems.
One last crack at changing the subject again, eh? Didn’t work then either.
My parents did plenty for me, but it was a wasted effort in the same way that everything is a wasted effort and yes, in the same way MLK’s work was a wasted effort. Would you bother reupholstering a car that was about to be crushed? Hang on, lemme try and predict you answer:
[ii]But EVERY car gets crushed someday! Are you suggesting it’s not worth it to reupholster a car that still has years of useful life left?*
Yep.
Here is thing thing: religious people get satisfaction from knowing that they are following God’s plan. Atheists get satisfaction solely from knowing that they are helping their fellow man. The crucial difference being that God is forever and humans are not, at least not if you’re an atheist. And I posit that the only reason atheists are not all wallowing in existential angst is that most people never really think about this at all.
No, actually, I don’t. Subjective experience is everything. Just because objective “meaning” does not exist does not invalidate the subjective or make it “nothng.” There is no such thing as objective beauty either. That doesn’t mean beauty doesn’t exist subjectively and that it doesn’t exist meaningfully.
What is the purpose of God? Believing that your purpose is to serve God is ultimately still nihilistic because God himself has no objective meaning or “purpose.”
Not quite. The position here is not that one’s subjective view is all that objectively exists, but that it’s all that matters (i.e. “has purpose”).
I can’t see how “lasting forever” has the slightest bearing on the subjective meaning I choose to attach to my life. I don’t “wallow in existential angst” because I don’t care that I won’t last forever. The idea of immortality holds no attraction for me at all and I would turn it down if offered the choice.
No, not really. If my husband and I are living our lives in pretty much the same way, and I’m a theist and he is not, how does being a theist make my life any more purposeful than his? And if it doesn’t, then why are you going on about the afterlife and belief in God?
I still maintain that you posed a question in the OP that you were entirely uninterested in having answered. It still seems to me that all you really wanted to do was say “This is what I believe, and nothing you say can convince me otherwise”, leaving me wondering why you posed a question at all.
No, my response is to first point out what a bad analogy to human existence a car is. However, my second response is to ask why you focused on upholstery. Surely the purpose of a car has much more to do with transporting you from one place to another than to be upholstered. If the upholstery of a car is useful to this argument, it would be more analogous to the wholeness or quality of life of a person. I would not argue that an aged or disabled person should be crushed. Hopefully you would not do so either.
The question regarding a car is whether it can be driven any more or not. If its purpose cannot be achieved, I have no problems with the concept of making something else out of it (although there are non-drivable cars that still have historical, sentimental or aesthetic purpose). I’m just not sure how this really relates to the question at hand.
I’m more agnostic than athiest, but I do place importance on altruism. Who says, however, that “atheists get satisfaction solely from altruism”? Certainly part of one’s purpose on a daily basis is to survive another day, and for most people, to minimize pain and maximize pleasure (pleasure including abstractions like satisfying altruistic drives or planning for the future, in addition to masturbating or playing videogames).
If you’re an atheist, there is no God.
What is the term for this – argument ad conceitium? Yes - “those who do not think as I do have simply not thought about it.” I think about it, and am free of existential angst. I remember feeling nihilistic for about a week when I was 15 or so. Perhaps it is something one needs to grow out of. (Is that an example of argument ad smug superciliousnessium?)
Two points that I recalled after submitting the last post.
First, returning to your analogy, you would agree that a car has a purpose, would you not? Yet it is also impermanent.
Secondly, if you want to define purpose to necessarily include “lasting forever,” then I would have to agree that there is no purpose, because nothing lasts forever. However, we may as well come up with a new word for purpose, since, again, very few people would insist on purpose including “lasting forever.” Let’s call it “geehumpstanzibus.”
I agree with you that life has no geehumpstanzibus.
It seems to me that you’re conflating logical consistency and rationality where it’s not required. You seem to want to assert a meta-ethic that relies on an afterlife and $DEITY, which is question begging in and of itself. One might assume a meta-ethic of altruism, and apply game theory to arrive at rationality.
Certainly not as clean and simple as positing an afterlife and a $DEITY, but then atheists bear the burden of not having their morality dictated to them in the first place. Just because it is not perfectly lucid to me, you, or anyone else does not mean such a morality cannot be rational.
No, I think it is not meaningless. The standard of morality, as I said, might be a (possibly qualified) altruism. The measure would be how well that standard is met. Unless you are saying that positing any meta-ethic is question begging? In which case, there’s no difference between positing altruism and $DEITY’s rules.
With evolution (on top of the Sun dying and such), it seems impossible this version of ‘the human race’ will be around forever. If humanity as we know it no longer exists, does that render everything equally pointless?
You’re saying that there’s no point in doing anything unless somebody else can appreciate it. That sounds like old-fashioned egoism to me.
I don’t see how the second sentence follows from the first. You keep saying that these answers to life’s purpose are ‘too short-term.’ Life itself is pretty short-term. Your natural life is the only time you’d need to find a purpose for yourself, so what’s wrong with something that’ll just get you through 80 years? If there’s some sort of divine or supernatural purpose, you’d be aware of it after you die, and possibly before you live, and so you’d know how your actions fit into it. That’d be that. (Many people feel they know what life’s purpose is while they’re alive; I’m talking about those who don’t.)
But that’s no more special than saying that your job gives you a purpose, or that your parents had you for a purpose, or so on. It’s still
But it seems to me that the burden is on you to establish WHY all purposes are meaningless. Human lives seem unavoidably chock full of purpose and meaning: yet you are arguing that they are not. How do you justify such an odd belief?
First of all, no one said anything about a subjective view being “all there is” so that’s just nonsense. Second of all, that’s not even what solipsism is anyway.
But that assumes that the premises of the OP have anything to do with that problem. I’m saying they don’t, and that your argument is about as useful as someone saying that you can’t bake a cake because there’s no such thing as a black hole. Unless you can demonstrate that length of life has something, ANYTHING, to do with morality, then you’re just being nasty for no purpose.
Sorry cowboy, but values are not the same thing as faith beliefs. They assert no factual claims. As I pointed out, at the very simplest, the mere fact that I find my life and actions meaningful and experience my life as having a purpose is pretty much game over for you. It doesn’t really much matter if you don’t agree or think it arbitrary (though for me, it’s the farthest thing from arbitrary since I find it rather than get to decide it). You can ask for some rational justification of it, but that’s beside the point: I find purpose in my actions and that’s that. Asking whether I can prove to YOU, who refuses to even explain what sort of proof he’s looking for, is beside the point.
But you haven’t pointed out any logical fallacy (and you’ve completely sidestepped any responses that argue this point with you). In fact, you haven’t even bothered to define or explain your terms. You’ve entered this discussion in the worst kind of bad faith.
Again, at bottom, my life at least has meaning and purpose (does yours?). There’s no more need for a rational basis for that statement than saying that I feel cold. Discussing whether this or that morality is “correct” is an additional question on top of that.
Values are not the same things as physical facts about the external world. What people value is inherently pretty darn important to what people consider meaningful. It certainly isn’t the whole story, but then no one seems to have the whole story. But I’d say that because most people value not getting murdered its a little hard to think of a moral system that could not take that into account in some way.
Your whole line of argument isn’t working, because you won’t explain what your idea of “meaning” or “value” is. All you do is run around saying that other people’s accounts don’t mean anything without explaining what sort of justification you would find acceptable, if anything. That’s just a waste of everyone’s time, the argument equivalent of saying “oh, yeah, but what am I?”
Philosophers and theologians have debated whether there is any sense in which morality is “true” or some can be justified as better than others, and all the difficult issues of figuring out what “morality” even is for millenia. No one has very good answers. And you’re adding nothing to the discussion but an unjustified and unexplained amitus towards non-believers as somehow being in a special position in regards to these questions.
