People too often ask me how I can live without knowing that one or more gods smile down upon us poor blighters down here in the earthly muck, promising all manner of otherworldly rewards if we live lives according to one or another of the very many alleged divine revelations which we have floating around here.
As one bright and articulate blogger recently put it, if naturalists are right "there’s no Heaven or Hell, no afterlife, and no real purpose in living; we just live our pitifully few years on this Earth, then we die, and that’s that."
All points taken (and most conceded) - but has he really considered that we naturalists get to sleep in on Sundays? That strikes me as important somehow. Perhaps not cosmically important, but who says "purpose in living" has to be something we don't get from what we do while we are yet living?
3 comments:
if naturalists are right "there’s no Heaven or Hell, no afterlife, and no real purpose in living; we just live our pitifully few years on this Earth, then we die, and that’s that."
Ok.... so what? Reality is a bitch. The difference is most naturalists except it and move on.
Are you saying that wishful thinking does not a rational argument make? How very mythically-incorrect, culturally-insensitive and reality-centric of you!
Seriously, though, I don't see why "purpose in life" cannot be something we get from life-affirming actions that we take WHILE WE ARE ALIVE. The idea that life must be meaningless just because it is short strikes me as just plain greedy.
I agree with you. I get tired of the whole, "your life has no meaning because you think this is all there is" BS. Part of me understands this sort of arrogance because I use to think this way.
I remember years ago while I was going to a liberal-arts university as a fundamentalist Christian I made a joke to one of the obviously liberal Drama majors by calling her a "heathen" in jest. She promptly gave me hearty "fuck you!" I remember thinking how sad a life she must lead, besides, I was only joking.
Sometimes I think that it would be pretty cool to go back in time to when I was like that, walk around the corner, and surprise myself and say, "yes, I'm you from the futre, and you are an asshole. Someday you'll understand why."
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