Existentialism

Madeline · Post by **Madeline** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 2:37 pm

I have my view on why we were put on this earth and the purpose of our existence. I know that there are agnostics and atheist here who argue about our existence from a philosophical viewpoint. I'm as curious what some of you might reason as to why we exist—in a nutshell, please explain.

Love,
Madeline

Madeline · Post by **Madeline** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 6:08 pm

bernee51 wrote:The universe does display order...but also chaos. There is balance. If that balance did not exist, neither would we.

Yeah, but why would this sort of balance exist in the first place? Would good exist without evil? Evil exists because it is to show us the 'meaning' of what Good is! Without it, we would never know. The same with Chaos, without Chaos we would not see Order. This balance exists to show us that there is meaning and purpose.

Love,
Madeline

bernee51 · Post by **bernee51** » Sun Oct 22, 2006 11:34 pm

Madeline wrote:
bernee51 wrote:The universe does display order...but also chaos. There is balance. If that balance did not exist, neither would we.
Yeah, but why would this sort of balance exist in the first place? Would good exist without evil? Evil exists because it is to show us the 'meaning' of what Good is! Without it, we would never know. The same with Chaos, without Chaos we would not see Order. This balance exists to show us that there is meaning and purpose.

Love,
Madeline

Balance exists therefore you assume meaning and purpose.

Why does balance exist? Because it does and without it we would not be having this discussion.

Good and evil are concepts devloped by humans to describe certain situations. What is evil to you (e.g pre-marital sex) may have been not only good but desirable to someone else.

You see order in the larger functioning of the universe. Does this order extend to the quantum realm?

Madeline · Post by **Madeline** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 12:09 am

Good and evil are concepts devloped by humans? Pretty much everyone knows that Murder is wrong, and its not a matter if I personally believe its wrong, it's wrong and you know it. A year old baby will cry in distress if she/he sees a murder happening in front of their very own eyes. Knowing that murder is wrong is innate, not developed.

Love,
Madeline

bernee51 · Post by **bernee51** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:23 am

Madeline wrote:Good and evil are concepts devloped by humans? Pretty much everyone knows that Murder is wrong, and its not a matter if I personally believe its wrong, it's wrong and you know it. A year old baby will cry in distress if she/he sees a murder happening in front of their very own eyes. Knowing that murder is wrong is innate, not developed.

Love,
Madeline

I disagree. Killing of another has been done and continues to be done and is justified by those doing for a variety of reasons.

I think it is wrong, you think it is wrong but it is not difficult to find those who do not believe it is wrong. Have you looked at Iraq recently?

Knowing it is wrong is not innate - it is cultural.

BTW a one year old has no idea of right or wrong.

QED · Post by **QED** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:22 am

Madeline wrote:Good and evil are concepts devloped by humans? Pretty much everyone knows that Murder is wrong, and its not a matter if I personally believe its wrong, it's wrong and you know it.

Can you imagine a group of people sitting around a table and playing some sort of board-game. Each individual is equivalent to all the others in terms of what he or she can do (within the frame of the game rules). So if there is an optimum strategy, it will be equally applicable to all players. The rules of the game are arbitrary. In the real world they are set by things like physics economics and geography. All the real-world players can therefore experience the same common strategies for optimal existence.

This is how I think we arrive at these moral concepts that you seem to feel can only be imposed by an external, intelligent, guide. Change the "rules" by altering the physics, geography etc. and a different set of optimal strategies will emerge. I we look, we actually do see this in past or isolated societies, so it has a definite ring of truth about it in my view.

As for the balance between order and chaos, there is a branch of mathematics devoted to this very subject. These two things are known to be the opposite faces of the same coin i.e. it is logically impossible in our world to have one without the other. Can we read anything of greater significance into that? I don't see how. It's the only solution that provides the right blend of stability/instability that makes it possible for thinking beings to exist. We might even submit that God (as a thinking being) would himself be subjugated to the same contingency.

McCulloch · Post by **McCulloch** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:45 am

Madeline wrote:I just believe that there is a rhyme and a reason for everything and that there is no happenstance.

Why would you believe that?

Madeline wrote:It just doesn't seem plausbile that we exist just because, it is almost chaotic. The universe displays order in its creation, not a random sequence of events. I look at the splendor and grandeur of the night sky and all its bright stars and wonder, there has got to be more to it. Whats out there, any gorgeous guys?

The more you learn about the universe, the more you should be able to see it is arbitrary. Most of it is cold and empty.

Madeline wrote:Why are we here?

The truth is, we don't know. No, the truth is we don't even know if the question is valid.

McCulloch · Post by **McCulloch** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:51 am

Madeline wrote:Good and evil are concepts developed by humans? Pretty much everyone knows that Murder is wrong, and its not a matter if I personally believe its wrong, it's wrong and you know it.

Killing other humans is not universally considered wrong. Killing other humans without the appropriate reason or authority is universally considered wrong, yet groups of human do not even yet, agree on what the appropriate reasons are. However, inappropriate killing of others in our own species, when social cooperation is essential to our survival, would bring about a strong evolutionary advantage. So after millenia of evolution, every human knows it is wrong to murder. Cats, on the other hand, have no evolutionary advantage in this prohibition, so some male cats have no problem killing the young of their rivals.

Madeline · Post by **Madeline** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 9:09 am

bernee51 wrote:I disagree. Killing of another has been done and continues to be done and is justified by those doing for a variety of reasons.

I think it is wrong, you think it is wrong but it is not difficult to find those who do not believe it is wrong. Have you looked at Iraq recently?

Knowing it is wrong is not innate - it is cultural.

BTW a one year old has no idea of right or wrong.

Surely you would know the difference between killing and murder. Murder is unjustified, killing isn't! Soooooo, don't you think that everyone knows that murder is wrong, sure they do! Those in Iraq are those who have their consciences seared and have been desensitized to the immorality of murder, OR they believe that they are not committing 'murder', but are killing on behalf of justice.

They have been sucked into believing that their unjustified killings are loyal services to their country.

Love,
Madeline

methylatedghosts · Post by **methylatedghosts** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 9:26 am

Oh, this question again. Why are we here. My belief is based on the assumption we are here for a reason, and it has to do with god. Sorry if this is a bit long and tedious BUT it is logical (if you assume a creator). I'll try and make it as short as I can, but that probably won't work. Please bear with me, alot of effort has gone ino this. So, away I go.

Your soul knows all there is to know all the time. There's nothing hidden from it, nothing unknown. But this knowing isn't enough. The soul seeks to experience.

You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something that displays generosity, all you have is a concept. The soul's only desire is to experience what it knows. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation.

This is God's speculation, and his desire. God has been speculating for forever - quite possible longer than the universe's age multiplied by the age of the universe.

In the beginning, that which Is, is all there was, and there was nothing else. Yet All that Is could not know itself, because All That Is is all there was, and there was nothing else. And so, All That Is, is not. For in the absence of something else, All There Is, is not.

All That Is, knew it was all there was, but this was not enough, because it could only know this conceptually, not experientially. It was this experience that it longed for because it wanted to know what it felt like to be so magnificent.

But this was impossible, becase the very term "magnificent" is a relative term. All That Is could not know what it felt like to be magnificent unless that which is not showed up. when that which is not is absent, that which is, is not.

(JUST RE-READ UNTIL IT MAKES SENSE. IT IS LOGICAL, JUST THINK ABOUT IT)

The one thing All That Is knew, is that there was nothing else. An so it couldn't know Itself from a reference point outside itself. This point did not exist. Only one reference point existed, and that was within.

So, the All Of Everything chose to know Itself experientially.

This energy - this pure, unseen, unheard, unobserved and therfore unknown by anything else, energy - chose to experience itself.

It reason, quite logically, that any portion of itself would necessarily have to be less than the whole, and that if It just divided Itself up into portions, each portion being less that the whole, It could look back on Itself and see Its magnificence.

So, It divided Itself - becoming, in a single instant, that which is this, and that which is that. So, this and that both simultaneously existed,

So, three elements were created. That which is here, that which is there, and that which is neither here nor there, but must exist for here and there to exist. It is the nothing, that holds the everything

"That which is neither" is what some people hav called "god". But, that is inaccurate, because that suggests that there is something god is not i.e. everything that isn't nothing.

So, in creating here and there, God made it possible for God to know Itself. In this instant, God created relativity. From nothing sprang everything - entirely consistent with the big bang theory (only not on WHY). As everything raced forward, time was created. Because a thing was here, but is now there, and the period it took to get from here to there was measureable.

So Gods portions now could define themselves relative to each other.

God's purpose in dividing Itself was to create sufficient parts of Itself so that God could know Itself. There is only one way for a creator to know itself experientially, and that is to create. So, God gave all of God's portions (us, Gods spiritual children) the same power to create.

(Could god have said to his creations "go forth and create", rather than "go forth and multiply")

This is what was meant by that we were created in the "image and likeness of God". It means that our essence is the same. We are composed of the same "stuff" - with all the same properties and abilities.

Gods purpose in creating us was to experience Itself as God. God has no way to do that, save through us. So, this can logically lead to saying that Gods purpose for us, is to know ourselves as God.

This is very simple, but becomes complex, because there is only one way to know yourself as God, and that is to know yourself as not-God.

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Whew. That was some effort. I'd like to hear some feedback and questions would be welcome.

Aargh - longer than I thought.....

Madeline · Post by **Madeline** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 9:40 am

Ummm...I will have to get back to you on your response QED and McCulloch. I think I need some MORE time to think about what you guys said before I respond, LOL!!!!

Love,
Madeline