You know, I have seen a similar post or two from you before. It's great that you have found your own way, but why do you find it necessary to insult and denigrate those who follow various religions?
The purpose of science is to help explain the natural world. You're asking a philosophical question, something both religious and secular philosophers have pondered for millennia. Science really has nothing to do with it. If you are trying to argue that science, as an intellectual enterprise, lags behind religious thought as a means for explaining the natural universe, it is absurd to point to all that we don't yet know as evidence of this (religion fares no better at answering those questions). I'll assume that's not your argument. If you are arguing that people should not be convinced that what science considers to be fact today is true, and this is borne out by all that scientists had wrong in the past, then you are both right and wrong. You are right in that we don't know everything. A new discovery might very well cause a paradigm shift in how we conceptualize the workings of the universe. Also, at any point in time, the prevailing scientific theories are just the best explanation we have so far, which is all we can ask for. Knowledge with 100% certainty isn't part of the deal. That said, not having 100% certainty doesn't mean we have reason to be skeptical or even cynical about the correctness of our current set of theories. You point to the fact that 100 years ago there was so much we didn't know, or thought we knew and it turned out we were wrong. Sure. But our ability to experimentally validate our theories of the universe at the smallest and largest scales have improved dramatically in the last 100 years. Science's greatest intellectual achievements in understanding the fundamental properties of the universe -- general relativity and the standard model -- have been tested over and over again, and so scientists justifiably have strong confidence that they are correct, though perhaps in some sense incomplete. To the original "meaning of life" question, why do you characterize the responses as getting "all flustered and defensive"? Some have attempted to answer the question and others have questioned the premise of the question. Both are legitimate responses IMO.
Yep... Either you believe there is a God or you don't believe there is a God.. I think people are confusing the different religions with the belief in God.... T_Man
I'd probably be classified as agnostic. I'd love to truly believe in there being a God or afterlife but I just can't no matter how much I wish I did or try to. I was baptised, mom is Catholic, dad is a fringe Christian. Went to a private Christian elementary school for a couple of years, didn't go to church much, a few times on easter, and a handful of baptisms. Parents didn't force anything, no bad experiences. I thought I believed growing up but when I started questioning things and looking things up at 14 years old I stopped believing which led to a bad 3-month depression. I still pray, just in case someone's listening. Only about health and happiness for family, friends, myself and for all the living things of the world, because high upside low risk amirite? I don't exactly get atheism, which is firmly believing there is no chance that God exist. I get not being able to believe there is a God, but firmly believing there's no chance that there is one is dark. It's impossible to rule out there being a higher being, so why do so?
Your thinking is outdated by a few thousand years way back from Aristotle. The belief that there is a causal reason for why stuff happens and that's long been debunked thanks to scientific advancement. Step up your science game bruh and get with the current times.
