Tchild wrote:If anything, life is much more precious to me now as a non believer and not knowing if this most special of gifts called life only lasts for this brief moment or not.
I know what you mean.
I used to hunt a bit when I was very young. I can't do it now. If I go fishing, it's catch and release. My wife teases me for pushing spiders in the house onto pieces of paper and letting them go outside.
I get no pleasure from killing anything anymore. The curse of being agnostic.
This, or any other post that I have made or will make in the future, is strictly my own opinion and consequently of little or no value.
"Faith is believing something you know ain't true" Twain.
Socrates wrote:Is life of more value to one who does not believe in afterlife or one that does?
Not at all.
Not having an afterlife, for me, makes life much less valuable. Without our divine nature and the understanding that this is just a phase in an infinite and beautiful existence, what do we have?
Well, we're a conglomerate of bones, skin, and other tissue that somehow evolved the ability to question our own existence. When we die, that's it. What's the point?
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.
I'm sorry, but all questions muse be submitted in writing.
Socrates wrote:Is life of more value to one who does not believe in afterlife or one that does?
If you believe in an afterlife that will be better than this, why would a "life cut short" not be a windfall for the one who died early?
Have you been reading MDD? Because they were making exactly that argument: it's perfectly all right for God to kill people, because he knows there's an afterlife and they'll be OK. (I called BS, and the mods banned me from two separate threads!)
The afterlife isn't a solution to the problem of the meaning of life. It's just an indefinite extension of it. I'm guessing that an eternal being can only pump out babies and make worlds for so long before he starts to wonder, "What's the point? Is this really all there is?"
CaliforniaKid wrote:The afterlife isn't a solution to the problem of the meaning of life. It's just an indefinite extension of it. I'm guessing that an eternal being can only pump out babies and make worlds for so long before he starts to wonder, "What's the point? Is this really all there is?"
What I suppose that it depends on how you define meaning. I agree that meaning would be subjective even if god existed, but for most people the thought of an afterlife and a god make it all seem more worthwhile and less transient.
I'm sorry, but all questions muse be submitted in writing.
malaise wrote:I agree that meaning would be subjective even if god existed, but for most people the thought of an afterlife and a god make it all seem more worthwhile and less transient.
That's only because they've never had to find ways to entertain themselves for all eternity.
LOLing at myself for staying in this thread as long as I did. I am done now.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~