What do you think is the purpose of life/ what keeps you going?

I am where I am. Just kidding. Yes, I'm in H-town.

 

sweet...when's lunch?

 

MadMax- I sent you an email. Let me know if you got it!

 

got it and replied

 

friends, family, health and work. or if you don't anything out of those, then junk food, p*rn and a really comfortable chair.

 

To crush my enemies, see them driven before me and to hear the lamentation of their women.

 

Ha ha, beat you to it.

 

Nice in depth post! Here's my view:

The mere fact that plants, animals, people, the universe exist is proof of God's existence. How can there be creation without a creator? To say everything just came into existence by itself doesn't make sense because existence can't come from non-existence unless there is a greater power at work. Say the universe can amass and descontruct itself, the components (materials/particles/matter/elements) that compose the universe have to come from somewhere (remember, being cannot come from non-being), something/someone had to have created the first step.

How do we know that greater power is God? God is Almighty and Unknowable but we can know Him through His attributes which we receive knowledge of through his "Messengers", "Prophets", or "Manifestations" like Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. These Manifestations all reflect His light and bring His attributes to us so we can learn about Him and get as close spiritually to Him as possible and make this world a better place.

I believe our purpose to life is to love God, develop spiritually and try to reflect His attributes, and serve humanity to better it. The ultimate purpose is for your soul to return to Him and be close to Him. The more spiritual qualities gained in this world, the closer to God you will be.

 

I am in full agreement with Rivaldo's last paragraph in the last post.

It's important to stay on the path of knowledge. Always seek out knowledge so that if someone asks you: "Did you make the best decision you could possibly make with the information available to you?" you can say that you absolutely did.

If you sit around on your ass and have the exact same set of beliefs at 15 as you do when you're 45, then you're doing something wrong.

Everyday, information is becoming more accessible. 500 years ago, it would be impossible to gather the body of information I have gathered about religion today. However, I am fully capable of learning the pillars of at least 90% of any religion on earth. I take advantage of that.

I respect everyone's views but one group. Those who can know, don't know, but still judge. It may be a flaw in my personality, but I absolutely cannot respect those people.

 

How can there be a creator without a creator?

 

The proposal that our existence is evidence of a conscious creator is just circular logic, as MEOWGI easily points out. At some point you just have to admit ...something exitsed without cause. You can say it's God, a conscious entity but it could it just be the unconscious, fabric of the universe, just the physics of energy. It would be the simpler, therefore, more probably correct solution.

Energy can neither be created or destoyed, you know.

 

That's where faith comes into play. I know crazyguypete pointed out that faith is not logical but you have to have faith that there is one ultimate "Great Creator" or else you would infinetly regress and have no begining. With no begining, you could have no following. Without 1, you can't have 2, 3, etc...We know that God is the Ultimate Great Creator because he has made himself known through his manifestations. That is the ultimate proof that can give us the backing or confidence that our faith in Him is not blind and that He exists.

 

I have faith that our universe came into being because of natural causes, just like I have faith that everything else that happens in our cosmos does so due to natural causes.

You count 1,2,3 but I see a circle. Before, after, inside, outside, it's all a part of the whole. The idea of the universe beginning and ending belongs to relative truth. In terms of absolute truth, it is futile.

 

i sometimes wake up and ask myself if this really is life

 

That's cool, I am just curious about these questions then:
* you don't believe God exists and we're just souless beings here with no real meaning to our existence?
* We all just came into existence because of natural forces?
* What do you believe is out purpose for existence?

 

My dad once told me a story of a man he used to counsel back in the early '90s. He told me that the guy didn't have a family and the only purpose he had for living was to see what new new technological wonders man was going to produce in the near-furure. Technology was improved so much since then and it's miraculous how much man is continuing to do. I thought it was a little funny, but my feeeling was whatever keeps you living your life must be okay, I guess.

 

Define creator.

 

There is no meaning OF life. Life IS meaning. There is no need to look outside of what is. It is our mind that labels things and gives them meaning.

We say something "exists" when conditions are sufficient and something appears. When one or two of the requirements fail and the thing does not appear then we say it doesn't exist. Ultimately there is no such thing as completely existing or completely not existing. Everything is in flux and every thing is composed of everything else. Things appear and disappear like shapes in the clouds. To label that appearing existence as a separate entity is wrong.

Nothing exists independently of everything else. Just like everything else, this "I" is a part of everything thing else in the universe is constantly changing. It is not a separate entity or being. So yes, there is also no permanent, independent, everlasting soul.

What is the purpose of life? I guess whatever you make it to be. I think everyone just wants to be truly happy.

 

These are my purposes, they are working out great so far:
Step 1: "Find out who I am and what I really want"
Step 2: "Do what I want, and do what I need to do to get it if I don't have it."

 

Human existance doesn't provide us with the tools to propery deduce intuitively the mechanics of existence, any more than Sir Isaac Newton could have deduced the nature of the Einstein Podolsky Rosen Paradox by watching an apple fall.

Our modalities of thoughts are a product of the nature of our existence, and we exist in a very limited environment relative to the totality of existence and reality.

The smartest among us can't even properly explain, with millions of man/hours of thought and effort, the physics of why time goes forwards and not backwards. The average person can't intuitively deduce the mechanics of existence any more than an ant can intuit the inner workings of an automobile.