When I asked that question, I was asking why does life exist in the opinions of the Atheists and Skeptics here.


It just does.

=)

Bearded men in clouds with peeping tom tendencies don't need to exist for me to be here.

Why is it a fallacy, because someone can't come up with a scientific answer for it?

This is a discussion about God right, so how is it that this question has no value.

When I asked that question, I was asking why does life exist in the opinions of the Atheists and Skeptics here.


As Ken said, the question, fundamentally implies, a designer. The form of the question is fallacious. It's Loaded, it's sorta like asking 'have you stopped beating your wife yet?'

Your question 'Why are we here' implies an objective meaning to life. Which, most of the people here would argue, is patently absurd.

As to why does life exist in the opinions of Atheists? Well, to get the best response, ask each of us, we're a fairly eclectic Bunch. But, really i think the response your going to get, on the whole is "There is no 'Why' we are here.... We just are"

Deal wid it.....

Aye. Tis true.

It implies that there is a "why" which implies an intelligence with the capacity for intent.


1) Testing the alternatives: As faulty as mythical thought?
2) Appeal to consequent.


1) Logos doesn't get us to the Spanish inquisition.
2) Science is a thousand times more humble than religion; it recognizes the things it doesn't know, and makes only such statements as the evidence supports. Even those statements are qualified, and there is always the understanding that any theory can conceivably be undermined by a single irreconcilable empirical result. Religion gives us no such humility: it assumes knowledge of the truth, and provides no criterion for falsification. It resists all countervailing evidence, denies logic and good science in pursuit of homogeneity.

Worse, religion is territorial, provincial. Religion fears other religions, other ideas, especially in monotheist traditions. Syncretism is the exception, not the rule. Even if scientific knowledge has been used for evil purposes, this is only possible because science is a tool, a way of thinking, devoid of motivation. You can use it for good or evil, to build stair-climbing robots or atom bombs. Religion, on the other hand, has been a motive force for evil--it has ACTUALLY CAUSED evil, rather than merely been used in its service. That's worse, from a moral standpoint.

Therefore, I don't see how you're getting anywhere with the argument that mythos is superior to logos. Amorality is preferable to immorality, progress in human life is superior to a perpetual dark age. It's possible to argue that mythos and logos must coexist, but that first requires a recognition that mythos can never be taken to have a logical or empirical reality--that God can't be proved, that the myths of religion speak to emotional and spiritual truths rather than physical ones, that the question "why" doesn't have a rational answer. Otherwise cultic mythos will use the logos of science to nefarious ends, like the statist religion of the Nazis or the anti-intellectualism of Stalin--mythos can be used without reference to God, all that's required is incomplete acceptance of the importance of discourse and empiricism. To say the Nazis were an evolution of science and logic is ridiculous; they made up the idea that Germans were racially superior, and forced what evidence they could to fit that idea, even where it was patently absurd. They were more like creationists and flood geologists than scientists in that regard. They certainly used good science elsewhere, but wherever we allow some logic to be ignored, some flaws to be allowed, some fallacy to be accepted we are tolerating mythos at the expense of logos. The Nazi myth is what made them evil--their science merely made them dangerous.

And from a logical perspective, there is no more arrogant thing in the world than religion. Religion is the way human beings force the universe to conform to our imaginations. It is the way we convince ourselves that everything is really about us. It is the way we scream to the indifferent vastness that we are significant. I once heard a preacher on the radio complaining about how science had created a "man centered universe" devoid of God. My first thought was: it's the religious who believe man is at the center of creation. It was religion that taught us for so long that universe revolved around the Earth. It's religion that teaches us that God created the world for us, that we might live in it. It's religion that teaches us that what we do is important to Him, that He will intercede if we ask the right way, that He hears us, loves us, and wants us to be happy. Science teaches that we are a tiny colony of life forms on a huge planet in an incomprehensibly vast solar system orbiting an enormous ball of plasma at the end of a spiral arm of a galaxy of billions of such systems, in a universe of billions of such galaxies. To call science "logotistical" is ridiculous, even hilarious, because religion is nothing more than the application of the human ego to the problem of an indifferent universe.

Go ahead. Pray for rain. Pretend the universe hears you.

This post was beautiful!!
Earned you a +rep.

Yeah, yeah... I know that quoting a post ad nausem just to say how great it was is bad form.

But, this poster fuckin earned it!!!!!!!

But I can see why this stance could be considered a cop out?


it's basically a equivalent to "I dunno lol ¯\(°_o)/¯"

Why would God exist?

Well in the Heathen worldveiw The Gods exist as sort of managerial elements.
Now mind you it's a crude description and theres much more too it then that but it tells the gist of it.

As Ken said, the question, fundamentally implies, a designer. The form of the question is fallacious. It's Loaded, it's sorta like asking 'have you stopped beating your wife yet?'

Your question 'Why are we here' implies an objective meaning to life. Which, most of the people here would argue, is patently absurd.

As to why does life exist in the opinions of Atheists? Well, to get the best response, ask each of us, we're a fairly eclectic Bunch. But, really i think the response your going to get, on the whole is "There is no 'Why' we are here.... We just are"

Deal wid it.....

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree on it.
I do believe there is a purpose to life.

Interesting discussion folks.

I'm signing off for the night, see ya later.

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree on it.
I do believe there is a purpose to life.

Interesting discussion folks.

I'm signing off for the night, see ya later.

So what is the purpose of life? That we exist to be judged by immortals? or that we exist to be immortal nutriders? Even if there was a god, it still could hardly explain our existance. why create such flawed life forms to begin with?

Well in the Heathen worldveiw The Gods exist as sort of managerial elements.
Now mind you it's a crude description and theres much more too it then that but it tells the gist of it.


It's circular then. If life and the universe don't exist for any intrinsic reason and gods exist to manage them then there's no real purpose for both to exist. Why does life exist? It was created by the gods/God. Why do gods/God exist? To manage life.

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree on it.
I do believe there is a purpose to life.

Interesting discussion folks.

I'm signing off for the night, see ya later.

Eh? Either you understood what i wrote (and what Thaiboxerken was writing) or you didn't...

It's not a question of 'agreeing' or not.

Because 'Belief' in a 'purpose' to life uses a fundamentally different thought method and area of discussion to the propositional logic of question formation.

What is this purpose then? and if it is an objective purpose, what happens when (inevitably) someone here says 'I don't like that' or 'I disagree' or 'That doesn't apply to me at all' or and i suspect, the personal favourite of the folks here, 'What a load of old Bullshit!!'

Why do glasses exist? To help people see better.

Why does a mobile phone exist? To let people speak to each other in really load and annoying voices on trains.

Why does a computer exist? So we can post stuff on the intardnets and play awesome games like this **** when it comes out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjoUNeC3soQ

The "why?" is always in relation to an intelligent designer so when someone says "why does life exist" it is a loaded question. To say there is no ulterior reason for life to exist is no more a cop-out than saying you don't need to change the batteries of a banana.

But let's look at the Christian's view of "why". There still isn't really an answer and the implied one isn't very satisfactory. God made people so he could sit and watch them, like an ant farm. Like a Sim City for his own personal amusement.

Theists have told me that life was created by God so he could share his love, or to have a personal relationship with him. What a fag.

Building a universe, of which most is inhospitable to life and then making people live on a place that kinda sucks so he can put them through a test to see if they get into another place he made that is really awesome, when he already knows what the outcome will be anyway is a REALLY FUCKING RETARDED IDEA. That's the big "purpose" the theists talk about and gets them teary eyed. And you think "there isn't one" is a cop-out. Compared to the alternative as a play-thing, a puppet or an amusing diversion we should be glad there isn't an ulterior purpose.

The only answer I can conjur up as to "Why does life exist?" is that given the circumstances of (fairly) early Earth, that's just what happens. There are a few ideas on the origin of life on Earth, but none of them have a real reason for happening except that it's what the conditions dictated. As for why life continues, that's straight back to evolution.

On the note that life, universal laws, etc. might have some purpose (presumably us [arrogant much?] in most religions). It would be an awfully drawn out way to create us, waiting about 14 billion years before it came to humans. You'd think some form of omnipotentence would be able to work a little bit more efficiently.

i just want to add something to what virus said here:- Compared to the alternative as a play-thing, a puppet or an amusing diversion we should be glad there isn't an ulterior purpose.

Lets just assume for the moment that the thiest's are right about that...... Doesn't that thought, i dunno.... SCARE THE LIVING **** OUT OF YOU?????

Quote Bill Hicks 'Doesn't it worry you that God might be Fuckin with our minds?? I have trouble sleeping with that thought...'

'HO HO I'm a prankster God... I'll bury these fossils, we'll see who believes in me now'

Im actually an agnostic, ala Einstein, just so we're clear here.

maybe one day science will explain god or vice versa, until then its always going to be a debate.

The only reason it's a debate is because most people are too stupid to think critically and are all too happy with deluding themselves just so life doesn't seem as shitty as it is. I can understand the latter group, but the former group gets no sympathy from me.

No!
Science has already explained God!! i.e The Monotheistic God of the judeo-christian religion occupies the same intellectual space as the tooth fairy!!

This God has all the same validity of existence as Santa Claus?

What? You think i'm being glib?

All-Powerful- Flies a sleigh round the globe, delivering millions of presents to millions of kids.
All-knowing- He knows where they all live. He knows there name's and He knows (all together now) whether you've been naughty or nice.
All-loving- He don't get paid, why else would he do it?

FUCKING SANTA CLAUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CLAUSIANITY FTW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

EDIT- I was answering Merck's post here....