I think we have different ideas about what fearing death means. I fear death because it will be the end of my life and experience. I do not fear death because of what might come afterwards (like hell). What comes after death is irrelevant to me. It doesn't enter into my thought process at all. I believe that if there is a life after this one, we are all going there with as little choice as we had coming into this life. That doesn't mean that our lives are worthless and we might as well just die. On the contrary...I think it makes our lives even more precious. If there is nothing but this one life that we all get, doesn't that make is pretty damned special?
Except what makes your life and experiences precious in the first place? IF there is nothing more to this why do your experiences matter that anyone else? In a travel thread on hangout we are talking about favorite places but consider if life is just material experience what makes it better to travel to the Grand Canyon than to just go to McDonalds and eat a lot of fatty foods? We as a humans see that there is something greater to our existence than just material pleasure or passing our genes.
Yes. My bad on the typo. Dr. Manhattan is a fictional character in graphic novel the Watchmen. I only bring him up just because his quote about life and death succinctly states the reductivist view I am talking about. I actually think you understand what I am getting at regarding going beyond the material but are hung up on the answers provided by most religions. As I said before I am not arguing whether the answers of any particular religion are right or wrong but why the process of seeking answers to meaning matter to us as humans.
My life is precious because it's all I know. My experiences don't necessarily matter compared to yours, but that doesn't mean they are meaningless. The have a lot of meaning to me. I have traveled all over the world seeking new experiences and understanding. This has added a lot of meaning to my life. It has completely altered the way I look at everything. Does this have some sort of grand cosmic meaning? No, but that doesn't mean that it is irrelevant. I spent an hour inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was insanely cool. I spent an hour inside a slave dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, which affected me on an emotional level unlike anything else I have experienced. These experiences have added a lot of value to my life. In my world, this is what life is all about. If you don't know the difference between the Cayman Islands and a McDonald's, I am not going to be able to explain it to you. The idea that all experiences are the same if there is no afterlife is unacceptable to me. Does a McDonald's hamburger give as much utility as a steak from Brasserie 19? The answer is a very obvious 'no.'
I followed you until this part. What???? In your world, you sure enjoy some fine things in life. I didn't know the meaning and worth of one's life was about fine dining and vacationing well in the Cayman islands.
I was pointing out something obvious to the "all experiences are exactly the same" argument. Someone else compared McDonald's to the Cayman Islands. And what is wrong with fine dining and vacationing in the first place? The meaning of my life, for me, is to be as comfortable and happy as possible. I guess that makes me a terrible person in your eyes...
Don't be so self absorbed. It doesn't matter what i think of you (I don't think you are as nearly as terrible of a person as much as you may think I think of you...ponder that for while). If that is what life means to you, then that's great. I just thought the whole time you were going somewhere else a little more profound with your posts. It just reads funny and a little shallow. That's all. Because by your own previous logic, one's experiences are only meaningful to one's own life. So comparing McDonald's to Brasserie 19 was pretty much irrelevant.
Indeed. Instead of unacceptable I would say -- utterly nonsensical. Rocketsjudoka seems to make a leap from "All emotions, including sense of meaning, originate in our physical bodies" to "All emotions are meaningless". What?
Somewhat related to the discussion, I think a lot of people spend too much time thinking about what happens after death. So much so that many regret forgetting to do things they should have done during their life which, IMO, ultimately would have made them more prepared for the possibility of an afterlife anyway. This blog post profoundly changed my life. I'm a different person in my life, with a different job, with better relationships all round. As depressing as it is, I read it often and I find that reminding myself of these things impacts me in such a positive way. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/5-things-people-regret-on-their-deathbed-2013-12#ixzz2wvClOtO9
Hell would be laying on your deathbed filled with regret. ( I've got 99 problems but none of them are those 5)
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You are making my point for me. Your experiences matter and are unique to you because you have found meaning in them. My contention is that in a purely materialistic view of things one experience versus another has no meaning. The Grand Canyon is physically unique but consists largely of the same matter that makes up a Walmart parking lot. As humans though we see something deeper to the Grand Canyon (no pun intended). That is my basic argument is that our rationality imbues something than just what is objective material reality onto the World. No one's experience is just the same. Your experience inside a slave dungeon in Ghana wouldn't be the same as my experience yet it is very meaningful but not in a way that can be measured objectively.
Perhaps I am doing a poor job of explaining this. I am actually saying the opposite that all emotions are meaningless but that they as humans we seek meaning in more than objective reality. This is why faith, spirituality is important to us as humans. Whether there is an afterlife or not the point is that we see more to life than just the purely physical. Again you guys are looking at the answers (big guy in the sky) rather than the process (is there more to life than just physical existence). Because we seek out meaning in our physical experience in a way that cannot be reduced to just measuring objective phenomena we also question whether there is more to our existence than what is objective phenomena. This is getting to my point why science and religion are different but both needed. It goes back to a contention frequently brought up that science can ultimately explain existence so things like faith and spirituality aren't needed. Science is dependent upon a quantifiable reality. We can measure the amount of matter that makes up the Grand Canyon, mathematically determine the amount of energy that was used in the creation of the Grand Canyon but that doesn't answer why some of us might find the Grand Canyon meaningful because that is something that can't be objectively quantified.
As humans, we appreciate beauty. That is why the Grand Canyon attracts millions of visitors while Walmart parking lots attract zero.
How do you determine beauty scientifically or objectively? Also would you say that the slave dungeon was beautiful yet it still had a profound meaning to you.
I don't know why you're separating out "the science world" and me into two different camps. I AM a scientist (with a PhD in astrophysics).
Maybe it's because of what you stated? "When a theory is known to be incomplete, you should not state that it is fact" Gravity happens. Evolution happened and still is. Those are facts. I am NOT a scientist but from my general understanding of things, that is how a fact is defined. Not by how we precisely understand the subject matter.
Scientifically, symmetry has been proven to be considered beautiful in people's faces. The view of the ocean from the slave castle was epic. I spent hours sitting on the edge of that castle watching the waves hit the rocks. The inside of the slave dungeon was not beautiful at all. You could see on the wall where they had excavated a few feet of petrified feces (the feces piled up 2-3 feet and petrified while the slave dungeon was being used and the slaves just had to live on it).
