The nature of religon

Religion has a lot of potential functions.

On a personal level, I believe it is the human brain's attempt to battle despair.

You see, since we (generally) have the ability to reason out our own existence and make sense of our life's situation, we soon come to wonder "why?" For some reason we want to find meaning and purpose in everything. Most of us are not content with simply existing, we want meaning to exist. In all my pondering, I cannot figure out why we desire meaning in everything. I for one know that if I do something that would ordinarily be enjoyable for too long, I get anxious - not bored. I feel that I have to do something that I find productive, even if only subjectively so.

That said, I believe that each and every one of us has some type of subjective belief that gives ultimate purpose to our overall existence. This is often religion, as most (if not all, I don't know) include some concept of a conscious existence after death, and generally this existence is greater - or at least vastly different - than the previous life. Nevertheless we will face something more magnificent after life; this may or may not be based on how well we performed during life.

As an atheist (perhaps nihilist); I often question my existence and at varying intervals realize that THERE IS NO MEANING. When I realize this and fully grasp the weight of this truth, I usually despair.

Why is there no meaning to life? It's actually somewhat of a paradox:

• Imagine starting to read a book. Although the book appears to have definite size and fits in your hand, you find that no matter how many pages you turn, you're always somewhere in the middle of the book. You read this book for years and years. Things happen to the characters, the settings change, events occur. But as you continue to read, you get frustrated. It's neverending!
  Why is it so frustrating? You cannot draw a conclusion from it. It has no end; thus it - as a whole - has no meaning. Parts of it do, but they ultimately build up to nothing.
  This would be the nature of everlasting life or ceaseless consciousness. It is meaningless because it does not end.
• But what if you do die? Does that give meaning to your life? Some say you can find immortality by making history. But history in itself is only temporary. All will be lost to time. What is important now; what is important for hundreds of years could be trivial in the face of an ever-increasing history. Even if you made history that lasted for as long as there were beings to study it, it's ultimately useless.
  This universe is doomed. It's going to collapse; rip apart, reach maximum entropy, or all of the above, and all history will be erased.
  And if it wasn't erased, would it matter? If the universe were everlasting; it would be meaningless in itself, and for the reasons stated above.

That which is temporary and that which is everlasting is equally meaningless. Cool, huh?

The mind does not like to despair. It might be accurate to say that this is necessary by nature; if a creature despairs, it will let itself waste away. From an evolutionary aspect, survival is key to existence, so despair is a no-go for any organism with the slightest ability to reason. The mind does not want to deal with the meaningless of its existence, and it will find a way to avoid it if possible. This includes creating a false reality or refusing to let go of nonsensical or illogical reality (often times, religion.)

Religion of course has multiple purposes, so besides being the mental enemy of despair, many other things tag along with it. Some of them are good for the mind/body, others are negative but necessary. I - knowing my existence carries no purpose - sometimes wish I could still have religion. Unfortunately, my mind's logic, subjective or not, rejects it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well I basically supported my "premature" conclusion with the paradox:
It would be impossible to draw meaning from that which has not ended.
Anything that has ended will eventually be lost to time, therefore it is the same as if it had never existed. The amount of time it takes for this point to be reached is indefinite, however still logically/scientifically proven.

Quote:

It is because it is not true, and we know it!

I do not believe we are born with the inherent belief that life has meaning.

My only guess as to why we seek meaning in everything is because our brain realizes the trend that is finding meaning in things. Throughout life, there are lessons to be learned. Some of them can be called subjective ("Don't talk back to your mother, she will slap you if you do"; applies to some but not all), and some of them are pretty much objective ("Don't touch fire, it will be painful"; if this is not true for someone, I'd like to meet them).

At a very early age our brain notices that learning is essential to avoid pain and seek pleasure; and part of learning is logically reasoning out meaning from events that don't have obvious meaning. Learning about the nature of mankind cannot be determined with a single burn or slap, it takes years of fuzzy logic and observation; and it can change on a whim when another aspect is shown. Fire will always burn if you touch it, this will never change unless part of you is paralyzed.

Unlike other animals (arguably) we can actually decode our own existence. A dog, for example, is not intelligent enough to psychologically analyze itself. It is too simple for this. It cannot despair out of lack of life's meaning, for it most likely does NOT take the time to ask itself the meaning of life.

Humans are different. Thanks to our advanced intelligence, it would make sense to say that we will one day figure out how our brain works in its entirety, so much that we will be able to duplicate it programmatically. It's actually somewhat of an ironic thing that we can do that.

Because of this, and because of the trend that is "events have meaning" (this is especially apparent in the fact that we try to derive meaning from things that don't even necessarily have it. For example, some try to take objects that appear in dreams as means of predicting the future, when scientific evidence shows dreams are actually compilations of past thoughts), we want to find meaning that which is most important - life. Not so much our life, but our very consciousness. Our thoughts and feelings and experiences, we believe they must mean something because everything else seems to mean something.

I wonder if all people even reach the stage of "life is meaningless", even briefly. Surely people question religion or any other belief, but do any of them actually think that life is meaningless? I know I've brought it up to a few people, and their reaction was basically, "Oh come on, that's ridiculous!" It was almost as if they had never considered it; like they assumed life had meaning, they just didn't know which meaning it was or what it was at all.

So what happens when the ultimate trend - the trend that an event equals a meaning - has no application to the very "IS" that is consciousness? For most people, nothing precedes consciousness. It is all there is; the one thing that can be grasped, that can be proven ("I think, therefore I am"). Even if our life were a long dream, even if our life was someone else's dream, existence is existence; pleasure is pleasure; pain is pain.

Brain and mind can't handle it; the ultimate trend has no application to consciousness. It can't be true. Maybe for some other events, but existence in itself? The mind shuts down; the mind despairs. Why live? It's lived not only because it can, physically, but because it thought it was going somewhere, but it's not. It's trapped. This is the limit; the end of the road.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So can one reasonably say there are some scientific explanations that defy logic?

I'd say there are some that concepts that would seem illogical, but when broken down into the smallest chunks of logic, could not be claimed to be illogical.

My paradox, however, is not science (most likely cannot be), it is raw philosophy. I can only support it with logical reasoning, which is inherently subjective. I trive to illustrate the concept in an earlier post.

Since it is impractical to prove a universal negative, these are only ideas at best. I can only support them with logic.

That said, I've seen you discredit some of my key philosophical concept, but I don't see any substantiations behind your rebuttal. I know that it cannot be proven; if it could, then it wouldn't be philosophy. So what are your arguments against my paradox besides the mere idea that it cannot be proven?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Fyodor D.

Yes, things that would seem illogical at first but are defied by science make more logical sense after a closer analysis. And my point is that you would not know for sure if your logic is complete. You are not entirely sure that you have broken it down to the most elemental details.

I believe this is true with any philosophical argument. The limitations of personal human experience, intelligence, reasoning, and objectivity make any argument valid only up to a point. That said, any argument that is not apparently logically unsound should NOT be disregarded on that basis alone. If there were no limitations to the validity, it would be a truth and not a philosophy. No philosophy is 100% true.

Originally Posted by Fyodor D.

As for the paradox once again. Like you said, it is impractical to try and prove a universal negative. However, though you may be able to support them with logic, I do not believe they are supported by complete logic. Meaning, all the possibilities have not been considered, and thus are not reasonable a priori notions to start with.

It is impossible to consider all possibilities, as there are an infinite number of possibilites to consider. Again, subjectivity comes into play when I try to consider any possibility that I think is valid. That is my only choice. If you think I have missed a valid possibility, you should mention it.

Originally Posted by Fyodor D.

You say for example that it is impossible to draw meaning from something that is not complete. However, my contention is that is an invalid claim, not entirely supported by a consideration of all possibilities.
For example, God could come to the world and say "This is your purpose in life. This is why you live." Then, we would have to admit that it IS possible for us to know the meaning of our lives even before we see the end, right? Disproof by counterexample. Let us not get into the argument of whether God HAS done this or not just yet (although I would like to say right now, that I do believe this is the case)

This is a tricky thing to bring up because it involves the notion that a higher being responsible for the existence of the universe(s) and humanity exists. This is a separate debate in itself, so I feel there is no way for me to argue against this without bringing up the age-old topic of "Does God exist?" That would be beating not only a dead horse but the descendents of a dead horse. However, it is true to say that only way this could happen is for God to exist. Not only that, but God would have to truly have a meaning for our existence and not be bullshitting. This sounds terribly sacriligious, perhap to you. The nature of God is up for debate; some believe he has intelligence on par with a human's but the power to create worlds (I could believe this if I believed in a God; humans will eventually create an AI which could very likely be sentient and could very likely be almost as smart if not as smart as we, yet we would still be in control of the on/off switch. We would be Gods, but superior only by our physical power.) Some believe he's greater than us in ever aspect.

This to me presents a circular argument that would be similar to the following dialogue; I say something is true or false based on a set of evidence, you say but what if the opposite is true or false based on other evidence, and I once again say that something is true or false based on a set amount of evidence.

I actually don't know how to approach this criticism without getting into the debate of if God exists. Basically if God (as I'm assuming you defined him) existed, I would be totally wrong. If he didn't, then my argument still stands. But the evidence for/against God is pretty even, so there's no where to go in any direction besides arguing if God does or doesn't exist, which is just as circular.

Originally Posted by Fyodor D.

As for the following axiom:
"Anything that has ended will eventually be lost to time, therefore it is the same as if it had never existed. The amount of time it takes for this point to be reached is indefinite, however still logically/scientifically proven."

First of all, although it sounds really cool philosophically to say "anything that has ended will eventually be lost to time," that is a logically incoherent statement. How can something be lost to time? Do you mean the memory of someone or something? This may be true. But that would nonetheless be a logical falsehood if you are implying that the world would not be any different if such a thing(or someone) had not existed. Perhaps my decision to pee in the woods might not be affected by whether there were 3 or 2 rocks for me to hide behind as I pissed, but those are small things, bearing little impact on the universe as a whole. However, the human life is still a very powerful thing, regardless of whether anyone remembers your name and what you did. You still had an impact on the world around you.
Just because someone doesn't remember you completely doesn't mean that you did not make a difference.

Any action/event will have an impact on something or someone, which will trickle unto something/someone until that tiny action has perhaps impacted the universe. I believe this is where "the Butterfly Effect" term originates; how the smallest thing can set off a large thing. That said, anything I do will essentially impact the universe, albeit in a subjectively significant way; the removal of any given event would most likely drastically alter the course of time, but the effects would most likely not be immediate.

Nevertheless, the universe's existence - from a scientific point of view - is finite. Unless God exists or a greater being can stop the universe from constantly expanding, it will, based on current science, reach maximum entropy and all will be frozen forever. This cannot be said to be the actual destruction of the universe, but it does end all possibilities for life or any other kind of action to ever occur. Other models say the universe will collapse; some say it will rip apart. But it is true that the universe is ever-expanding, and since matter cannot be created or destroyed, maximum entropy would be the most obvious end.

Any impact I make on the world or universe is temporary and ultimately pointless; if it is not pointless now or even hundreds of years from now, it will be in several billion when my action no longer has anything to impact and when the impact is no longer existant.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?