Not exactly. Meaning is something that is imbued and by humans we can certainly imbue meaning on the Universe.
We imbue meaning onto our concept of the universe, not the universe itself. For something to have meaning, it must exist. There can be concepts of things that do not exist. Furthermore, concepts of nonexistent things can have meaning without implying that the things themselves exist. Therefore, that a concept has meaning does not necessarily imply anything about the meaning of the object of that concept.
No offense, doesn't look all that convincing, and I wouldn't waste time. Heard it all before, old wine new bottle. For instance, even assume there are universal moral codes, it still doesn't mean they were preordained by a super-nature. Likewise, other so called evidences don't lead to the conclusion of God's existence even assuming their validity.
We all intuitively know what life is. Even a kid knows what is living and what is not. But that's not what I am talking about here... As you say, the question is whether or not there is something that goes beyond our bodies. Is this "Life force" as you call it, or soul, independent of our bodies? I have no clue. No one really does. There is no real hard core evidence for it. And there is no evidence that is capable of disproving. But we all have weird experiences that makes us wonder. Perhaps it was one night when my sister woke me up in the middle of the night to say she had a dream our grandfather died....which I dismissed as ridiculous. Sure enough, we awoke to find out that our grandfather had indeed past away that very night. There are other things. Perhaps it is just a coincidence...and we only pay attention to the coincidences that have meaning to us. Or perhaps not. I have no idea. Is our desire to believe in something greater merely an evolutionary trick to keep us enduring through hard times? Or is there more there? We may never know. Even when we die, if there is nothing, we won't know that. We don't know if even if our life goes beyond death, whether our memories and identies go with it. So it's plausible that even in a spiritual world - your identity is forever lost upon death.
Does the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the easter bunny exist? They certainly have a lot of meaning to people? Do symbols exist? They too have meaning. What about ideas? thoughts? Feelings? Do they really exist? Does a smell exist? A sound? A memory?
I exist. A bag of minerals exist. I don't know what the bag thinks of itself, but I think I'm exceptional. It would be natural to place ourselves above inanimate objects, but who's to say those objects are also exceptional under a different standard? We have the power to take an abstract idea and turn it into reality. That is exceptional and not always 100% repeatable like a physical law of the universe.
Very interesting topic. For Christians it is certainly significant since Jesus lived again after being dead 3 days. Jesus predicted that even after His resurrection many people would not believe it. I think that is very significant. The early Christian church was founded on the observation of the early apostles that they actually witnessed Jesus alive again. In one Bible account Jesus was seen by 500 people after the resurrection. The testimony of the earliest disciples that Jesus indeed was alive again after death became the most contested debate among the Jewish people and many Christians were arrested or put to death for claiming to be eyewitnesses to this. Life after death is the most emphasized message given by Jesus in His teachings.
His arguments are hardly new. That line of thinking could be traced back to Plato, and (to a certain extent) aristotle. Certainly, a variant of his rationale was key to the scholastic school of thought. Or were you asking if I agreed/disagreed?
Wow, this is a fascinating and very CIVIL discussion...what's it doing in the D&D? Please, carry on. This is good stuff.
Personally, I think that the primary disparity between homo sapiens and other animals is our ability to show compassion and love, or cruelty and hate. To the extent that one chooses the former over the latter, this is a mark of virtue. The opposite could be called willfull dehumanization, and I would argue that such a persons associated worth is, for all intents and purposes, forfeit. None of which directly responds to D'Souza's arguments. Which is not surprising, since his argument is pure subjectivity. I could state that it's implausible or fanciful, but I would have no hard data to prove it with certainty. However, to the extent that D'Souza presents only one side of the anti-darwinian argument for humanity's "specialness", I'd posit that his hypothesis is, at a minimum, incomplete.
Other higher thinking creatures can do this, but I do think the course of human development is leaving the primal behind and advancing the cerebral. Of course there is no measuring stick but I feel like we haven't come too far yet.
Well, the qualities aforementioned are subjective, but I'm not sure I agree with your statement that other "higher thinking creatures can do this". Of course, even if that was true, it would have no bearing on my thoughts regarding the matter - although it may necessitate expansion.
Yes, we do pay more attention to experiences that have particular meaning to us. I think our tendancy to believe in something greater, as you say it, is more of an artifact of our capacity for abstract association than a specifically selected-for trait. The advantage of abstract thinking is that we can have knowledge about things that we have never directly experienced before. We use abstract concepts to relate real things in the world, and sometimes we mistake those concepts for the actual things they relate. An example of a consequence of this blunder is the ontological argument for the existence of God. The argument states that the God cannot have any limitations and therefore must exist, because the property of not existing would constitute a limitation. RJ made the same mistake conflating the universe itself with the concept of the universe. Only the latter can "have" meaning because it can be contextualized. In the discussion about life after death, D'Souza makes a similar mistake--he adds meaning to the concept of life that does not correspond to anything we actually know about life. This is why I keep asking, why is life special? What do we know about life that allows it to persist seperate from the physical world? If D'Souza could answer that question, his book might be worth more than the paper it's printed on.
There is a big gap between animals and humans that cannot be crossed by any animal. Animals don't dream about anything they can't already do, and if they do they can't do anything about it
