What Is The Meaning Of Life?

[Harbal]

You have no authority to act upon telling anyone anything even if you wanted to.

Your assertion that there needs to be an ultimate authority figure to whom we are answerable in order for there to be an imperative to act is just your belief.

Any telling (story telling) aka fiction, is nothing more than a believed fictional tell tale.

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If I give you money for some sweets will you go away?

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Nobody said morality is a product of Christianity. Rather, Christianity itself is a product, a product of the worship of the true God. But the practice of worship predates Christianity, and even Judaism, going back into the ancient past. The question, then, is not what the "religion" is called at a particular time in history, but rather whether or not it is premised on relationship to the one God who actually exists. That's the only issue there.

Morality is a product of the existence of that very same God, the objective Giver or moral truth and Judge of human action. Morality is an expression of his nature and his intentions for his creatures.

Immanuel Can did not but I will finish the story in which morality can be traced back to the true God. The "true God" himself derives from the commonly experienced social order in which the king is the source of worldly authority.It is clearly to be seen that Immanuel's God is a Conservative politician

[Hobbes' Choice]

Christianity is only 2 000 years old but human beings have existed for at least 100 000 years so Christianity can not be
the origin of morality. For that accolade goes to evolutionary psychology not religion. And there are codes of morality
that exist within the animal kingdom. For it is not an exclusively human concept but something much more ubiquitous

What I'd call a no brainer.
Shame that the bleeding obvious is not so obvious the some on this thread.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Immanuel Can wrote:

Nobody said morality is a product of Christianity. Rather, Christianity itself is a product, a product of the worship of the true God. But the practice of worship predates Christianity, and even Judaism, going back into the ancient past. The question, then, is not what the "religion" is called at a particular time in history, but rather whether or not it is premised on relationship to the one God who actually exists. That's the only issue there.

Morality is a product of the existence of that very same God, the objective Giver or moral truth and Judge of human action. Morality is an expression of his nature and his intentions for his creatures.

Immanuel Can did not but I will finish the story in which morality can be traced back to the true God. The "true God" himself derives from the commonly experienced social order in which the king is the source of worldly authority.It is clearly to be seen that Immanuel's God is a Conservative politician

[Dontaskme]

If I give you money for some sweets will you go away?

I'll go away when you prove you are not just making it up about being able to see your own face. Prove to yourself you can do that and then tell me how you have proved it, then I'll know you are not just believing something you only think is there...don't think you can get away with saying the belief in god is not real when you have not proven you even have a face to say that...show the face that has the authority to make such a claim...then I'll go away..otherwise Harbal, I'm not going to go away so there ...

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[Harbal]

show the face that has the authority to make such a claim...then I'll go away..otherwise Harbal, I'm not going to go away so there ...

Okay, in that case you'd better make yourself comfortable, perhaps make up a flask and some sandwiches.

[Dontaskme]

show the face that has the authority to make such a claim...then I'll go away..otherwise Harbal, I'm not going to go away so there ...

Okay, in that case you'd better make yourself comfortable, perhaps make up a flask and some sandwiches.

Okay, I'll also include my neverending story book so that I have something to read in case I get too bored of staring into space. The images in the book might even tell me what those long bolt upright things are that appear to be sticking up out of the ground, the words might tell me as well.

Oh hang on, there is the word tree, and an image of that tree...it looks completely the same...ah, so that's what it is...

I had no idea what I was looking at ...I had to match it with it's own image. I found the matching image in a book, and the word to boot.

What do you think of me now?


I could not have known who I am either until I saw my image, that makes me an image of the imageless.

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[ken]

I'll go away when you prove you are not just making it up about being able to see your own face.
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What do you call that in the picture directly above the word 'dontaskme' in dontaskme's posts?

[Immanuel Can]

Continue with your infinite loop of atheism having to rationalize itself.

Gladly.

Well, unless you wish to add "irrational" to the list of Atheism's failures (why not? I would), you still owe some kind of an answer to the question. And "Yeah? Well, some other ideology or system is bad too" isn't any kind of rational response. It just means you're admitting that Atheism is among these failed "religions," yet another of these systems that can't do anything. And there still may be systems of thought (like Monotheism) that can.

So whether or not you're wrong about Christianity (and you are, of course), you haven't saved Atheism. You've surrendered the point that it is both amoral and incapable of imparting a meaning to life.

If you're happy to leave it at that, then so am I.

[Immanuel Can]

God, the objective Giver or moral truth and Judge of human action.

But how can we know this to be the case, how do you evaluate the truth in it? If you say, yes, I'm sure there is a God and I believe he wishes me to behave according to his morality, what then leads you to believe that morality worthy of following? How do you know it's the right thing to do, the good thing to do?

I understand where your question is coming from, but maybe the problem is in the question itself.

If God exists, then I'm afraid this question is itself not quite coherent. What I mean is that the question itself posits some difference between a) the moral will of God, and b) "the Good." But if they are identical, then the question itself doesn't make sense. It's like asking, "Is this man your father or your mother's husband?" The answer is, of course, "Both." It's two different ways of naming exactly the same reality.

So the question there is faulty, because it requires an untrue assumption to be accepted before it can have its expected response. You can't answer the question about your father and your mother's husband (except in the case of illegitimacy or remarriage, of course); and you can't answer any question that supposes "God" and "the Good" have to be distinct predications one of the other.

As long as we try to think of "the Good" as some independent property that human beings are (perhaps, debatably) equipped to evaluate, and so long as we think of God as merely one of the many objects within the universe, the question may sound sensible to us. But the minute we realize that the universe is derivative from God, that He is its Creator and Definer, and all the properties we can (rightly) identify as "good" or "bad" are also derived from their relation or distance from His nature and character, in that same minute we realize that we are not talking sense anymore.

That's why the Euthyphro Dilemma worked for Socrates, the polytheist, but has no bite for any monotheistic system. Polytheistic systems have "gods" that are smaller than the universe. The great monotheistic systems do not posit small "gods," but a comprehensive Supreme Being, with one nature and identity. And that changes everything.

"The right thing to do, the good thing to do" is that which conforms to the character and wishes of the One from whom all "rightness" and "goodness" originates. Indeed, we could have no conception of "right" or "good" at all, were it not from Him.

However, Atheism has no such basis. There is no Judge. There are no rules.

I agree with this but to put it into context we have to compare it with its counterpart, theism. What are the rules of theism?

Rule #1: You shall love the Lord your God. Judaism has it, and so does Christianity. It's the first of the 10 Commandments.

What does this mean? It means that God IS "the Good," and that if you want to know what is either morally good or meaningfully good (that is, what helps you achieve your purpose as a human being) the first thing you've got to do is stand in a right relationship to your Creator, a relationship of exclusive faith and trust. Without that, you know nothing about morality, and cannot find "the Good."

I don't particularly mean your theism, I mean any theism, of which there are many varieties. Theism, in itself, requires nothing more than a belief in the existence of a supernatural being.

Well, monotheism requires more, and then after that, the different monotheistic systems have disagreements among them. And this means that each offers an alternate course for resolving the question of the nature of the (not "supernatural" merely, note, but) Supreme Being. Where systems disagree on fundamental fact-claims, Aristotle taught us, it is possible for all to be wrong, or for one to be right and the others wrong; but we need not imagine they can all be right, for that it against the Law of Non-Contradiction.

So the question is, "Is any of them right?"

If you are a theist you could be a Christian or a Muslim etc. and draw your beliefs from these systems. If you are an atheist you could be a Humanist or a Buddhist etc. and do the same. Your assertion that there needs to be an ultimate authority figure to whom we are answerable in order for there to be an imperative to act morally is just your belief.

No, I'm not offering it as that.

I'm not saying, "Because I believe it, you ought to too." Rather, I offer it as a rational postulate. And I offer it this way: that if Atheism is true, and there is no Supreme Being, then there is no grounds for "the Good" either. It becomes merely a (mistaken, obviously) figment of the human imagination, whether the personal or the social imagination. And to test that claim, one need not sort out all the theistic alternatives; rather all one has to do is look, like Nietzsche did, at what is bound to be true of Atheism itself. And when we do, we find that Atheism grounds absolutely no moral imperatives at all. it leaves them all as mere social or personal fictions.

Now, on the flip side, IF one or another form of monotheism is true, a couple of other things would also automatically, and for rational reasons, be true. Firstly, whatever we define as "the Good" would, like everything else, have to be oriented to the intentions and work of the Creator (which is another way of saying that nothing real would not be a "created" product, except for the Creator Himself: "the Good" would be a product of Him). Secondly, whatever "the Good" was, it would not matter how many wrong guesses about it mankind had made; it would still only be what it was -- the one truth about morality, and the one way forward for mankind in terms of being in right relationship to the Originator of all things. And those things would follow not out of mere belief, but by way of logic and analytics of the meaning of the term "Supreme Being."

I'm sure there must be many non theistic systems where people feel obliged to follow some moral code or other because of a belief.

Yes. But there's no reason to think they're all right, and every reason to suppose they're not. For as Aristotle pointed out, once you have a strict contradiction between to predications (concerning God or anything else), then you have only two possibilities: that both of them are wrong (and a third thing is right) or that one of them is right and the other wrong.

And it's not my belief that warrants any of that: it's the basic laws of logic. So what we're left with is the question, "Is Christianity true?" If it is, one set of things follows. If it's not, then it's on to the next system or explanation. But whatever we do, one fact will remain: Atheism won't help us; for we have seen that it has already surrendered morality and meaning to oblivion.

[Harbal]

unless you wish to add "irrational" to the list of Atheism's failures

Why do you say that atheism is irrational and what do you think atheism attempts to achieve that it has failed at?

[Immanuel Can]

unless you wish to add "irrational" to the list of Atheism's failures

Why do you say that atheism is irrational and what do you think atheism attempts to achieve that it has failed at?

Well, look at it this way.

• P1: A "rational" belief, by definition, is one for which "reasons" can be adduced.

• P2: And, as per Leibniz, these "reasons" have got to be "sufficient" to the effects they purport to explain. (for example, any explanation that says something too small and weak created something too large and substantive would not be a good explanation).

• P3: Atheism is the denial that any kind of God or gods exist.

So far, we have three completely undebatable premises, I think. Any reasonable person would believe all three. Let's continue:

• P4: Atheism (if it is a "rational" system) owes us sufficient reasons for saying that no God or gods exist.

And here's the problem: Atheism cannot fulfill P4. There are no sufficient reasons for saying it's rationally assertable that God does not exist.

Now, Atheists themselves admit this; you can see them do it all over this forum, for example. But then they try a dodge. They say, "Well, we're not saying 'God doesn't exist,' we're saying, 'We don't believe in gods.'"

But there's a problem with this: you can ask them, "Are you offering that as a personal belief statement, or as a rational claim that others ought to believe too?"

And if they say it's just a personal belief statement, they're saying that they have no sufficient reasons for believing it. But if they offer it as a rational claim that others ought to believe too, then they're back on the hook for sufficient reasons...which they do not wish to be.

The upshot, then, is that Atheism has to be irrational. Either it's irrational because it is merely a gratuitous belief statement that requires no proof but has no reasons, or it's irrational because it depends on a universal claim that (it admits) lacks sufficient reasons.

Either way, it fails to be rational. Nobody has the rational means or data to assert, "God does not exist." It can only ever be offered as a wish, not as a rational affirmation.

[Dontaskme]

I'll go away when you prove you are not just making it up about being able to see your own face.
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What do you call that in the picture directly above the word 'dontaskme' in dontaskme's posts?

It'a re-presentational image of the imageless appearing as this immediate presentation.

You can't see you're own face .. you can only see a mental impression of it in the form of pictures and words...in other words, a copy, you can never see the original face, simply cos there isn't one...you make the dam thing up yourself and wear it..it's called a mask.

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[Harbal]

If God exists, then I'm afraid this question is itself not quite coherent.

If God exists then, after all the initial creating, he may well have stepped back and taken on the role of impartial observer. He may not be interested in influencing things, he may simply want to see what happens. The concept of God as creator does not necessarily contain anything beyond his existence and the existence of his creation. This being the case, the question seems perfectly coherent to me.

"The right thing to do, the good thing to do" is that which conforms to the character and wishes of the One from whom all "rightness" and "goodness" originates. Indeed, we could have no conception of "right" or "good" at all, were it not from Him.

Well I have a conception of right and good yet I do not include God in my outlook. This means that either I am the source of my ethical views or God has instilled them in me regardless of the fact that I take no account of him. Either way atheism would be no impediment to my morality being of equal status to a Christian's or anyone else's. To say that my morality is somehow fake because God is not involved is to assume an insight that, were I to believe in God, I would say only he could have. You can't look inside a person and see what's there.

Rule #1: You shall love the Lord your God. Judaism has it, and so does Christianity. It's the first of the 10 Commandments.

These are not rules of theism. They may be rules of some forms of theism but believing in God does not logically necessitate believing he has any rules.

What does this mean? It means that God IS "the Good," and that if you want to know what is either morally good or meaningfully good (that is, what helps you achieve your purpose as a human being) the first thing you've got to do is stand in a right relationship to your Creator, a relationship of exclusive faith and trust. Without that, you know nothing about morality, and cannot find "the Good."

This is just something you believe and I do not. You saying that it's true carries no more weight than me saying it isn't.

Rather, I offer it as a rational postulate. And I offer it this way: that if Atheism is true, and there is no Supreme Being, then there is no grounds for "the Good" either. It becomes merely a (mistaken, obviously) figment of the human imagination

There is nothing rational about your "postulate". I could equally say that sense of "the good" comes from within a person and belief in God and his rule book are figments of the human imagination.

Atheism grounds absolutely no moral imperatives at all.

You're doing it again. No one has claimed that atheism grounds any moral imperatives. What is being said is that atheism is not an obstacle to having moral imperatives.

And it's not my belief that warrants any of that: it's the basic laws of logic.

You are a very intelligent man, IC, and I do not believe for an instant that you would apply the type of "logic" you are using here to any other area of your life.

Atheism won't help us; for we have seen that it has already surrendered morality and meaning to oblivion.

Who are you speaking for when you say "we have seen"? I haven't seen and I'm sure there is a significant number of others who haven't seen, either.

[Dontaskme]

Harbal, it's nice to see you sinking your gnashers into some meaty flesh and bone re-butts for a change.

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