Why are we here, what's the purpose of existence?

[arcticwolf]

Suspend for a moment the stories of the "Big Ghost in the sky and his plan" and contribute something really insightful. Anything at all, take it apart, question everything from every angle. Go!

[Mordid]

to screw like rabbits.

[arcticwolf]

to screw like rabbits.

Well, I meant besides the obvious!

[Mordid]

Well, I meant besides the obvious!

Ok, I gotta be serious this time. I think the reason why we are here is because the meaning of life is to find our meaning.

[arcticwolf]

Ok, I gotta be serious this time. I think the reason why we are here is because the meaning of life is to find our meaning.

I think you are on the right track.

[Supreme American]

Ok, I gotta be serious this time. I think the reason why we are here is because the meaning of life is to find our meaning.

I don't see how we can really do that without guidance and/or instruction. It's like putting a car together without a manual or tools.

[arcticwolf]

I don't see how we can really do that without guidance and/or instruction. It's like putting a car together without a manual or tools.

Isn't that exactly how science got started? Is self-resolving puzzle such a far fetched concept?

[Stefan]

These questions require the notion of intelligent design. Reason is a cognitive aspect, to have reason you must be a conscious being. The only thing that would have reason for our existence would be a creator. Therefore, to answer these questions one must adhere to the belief that we were created by an intelligence capable of similar cognitive processes of reason as ourselves.

Now if you are asking about an individual ideology of what I've decided to do with my existence and what events are my major goals and actions I wish to partake in; I hope to learn as much as I possibly can about the nature of my existence and its relation to the rest of the universe, and impart my cognitive process in social interactions with other human beings, particularly a familial group.

[arcticwolf]

These questions require the notion of intelligent design. Reason is a cognitive aspect, to have reason you must be a conscious being. The only thing that would have reason for our existence would be a creator. Therefore, to answer these questions one must adhere to the belief that we were created by an intelligence capable of similar cognitive processes of reason as ourselves.

Now if you are asking about an individual ideology of what I've decided to do with my existence and what events are my major goals and actions I wish to partake in; I hope to learn as much as I possibly can about the nature of my existence and its relation to the rest of the universe, and impart my cognitive process in social interactions with other human beings, particularly a familial group.

If you want to have a being ( whatever that means ), a creator, than we have to assume that it is the absolute reality. Now why does intelligence have to originate with a being? What if intelligence is impersonal and the a building block of all there is? I fail to see how the ultimate reality has to be a being.

[Stefan]

If you want to have a being ( whatever that means ), a creator, than we have to assume that it is the absolute reality. Now why does intelligence have to originate with a being? What if intelligence is impersonal and the a building block of all there is? I fail to see how the ultimate reality has to be a being.

Being was a poor word choice, I should've used a word with far less philosophical meaning behind it. Would "entity" suffice?

I'm not going to dabble in philosophies of this; I will explain it from a physical perspective.

From a physical standpoint it seems very unlikely that the universe is constructed from or a manifestation of intelligence. It is objectively measurable that our feelings and thoughts are reactions to environmental stimuli by pathways constructed in our physical brain. There are those who argue for some form of "quantum consciousness" theory, but such a hypothesis has very little credence. It also seems likely to me that our universe isn't an effect of some intelligent design, and unfortunately, there is no foreseeable objective method(scientific method) to answer the question of whether or not our universe was created by an intelligent entity, mostly because we would not be able to comprehend the outside entity in the context of our observable universe.

So the point of my post was that to answer those questions you must have faith that our universe was created by a being capable of cognitive abilities such as reason, as it is through reason that we form questions of the "why." Only something responsible for our creation can answer these questions, and to do so it would require cognitive abilities.