How is Life Justified?

evolvedForm · #1 10-02-2006, 12:00 PM

I think everyone, at some point, must come up with a good reason to themselves to not commit suicide. At bottom all thinking people should come to a moral decision regarding the worth of life. No doubt it is a personal decision, but there are some universals that make life questionable for all people. I'm thinking primarily about Consciousness.

The paradox is that what drives most people and what feels best is success, power, wealth, etc. But these things are transient and we die anyway. I cannot therefore bring myself to care about these things. So what else is there?

People, relationships, sex, children, would probably be the next most common answers. But in my experience people are just as transient, and relationships nevernt last. Sex is too animalistic to satisfy an intellectual conscience. I don't have children and I suppose that is different, but when thinking of my relationship with my parents I lose hope. In the end I believe humans are fundamentally disparate.

What does this leave us? Personal satisfaction. But for whatever personal satisfaction we find, will it outweigh its opposite? In terms of quantity, probably not.

Finally, we come to aesthetics. The creation of new life out of the stagnant one. The moments of ecstacy, however thin, seem to justify the rest of our wretched existence. Perhaps it is because when we have them everything else drifts away, and we discover a bearable version of ousrelves, and a clearing in the fog of life.

Without aesthetics, life would be fundamentally immoral.

Religious people turn to God for justification. How do you atheists justify life?

JMAnon · #2 10-02-2006, 01:06 PM

My life is pleasurable and I like being alive. That is enough for me.

FortunaMaximus · #3 10-02-2006, 01:19 PM

[ QUOTE ]
My life is pleasurable and I like being alive. That is enough for me.

[/ QUOTE ]

Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy to boot. There's literally no escape from the Universe.

Borodog · #4 10-02-2006, 01:40 PM

Replicators that like to be alive will come to outnumber replicators that do not like to be alive.

tame_deuces · #5 10-02-2006, 01:51 PM

[ QUOTE ]
How do you atheists justify life?

[/ QUOTE ]

I ain't got nothing better to do.

(and yes, I'm serious).

chezlaw · #6 10-02-2006, 02:59 PM

Seems right I can't justify my life.

yet I still seem to be here, am I doing something wrong?

chez

NotReady · #7 10-02-2006, 05:26 PM

[ QUOTE ]

Religious people turn to God for justification. How do you atheists justify life?

[/ QUOTE ]

I offer you a tautology:

1. The universe has ultimate meaning.
2. It doesn't.

Pick the second and even your question has no meaning.

Pick the first, and we can talk.

FortunaMaximus · #8 10-02-2006, 05:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Seems right I can't justify my life.

yet I still seem to be here, am I doing something wrong?

chez

[/ QUOTE ]

Probably not. Entropy just takes its time sometimes. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

evolvedForm · #9 10-02-2006, 05:55 PM

2. It doesn't

Why does my question lack meaning? (Careful how you define meaning)

guesswest · #10 10-02-2006, 06:29 PM

What is 'meaning' here? It doesn't seem to come down to anything other than '[censored] happens' even when you do invoke god. 'God happens' is a bigger concept relative to the rest, but I can't see how even that instills meaning.