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

[GeistFaust]

I think that life is actually random and meaningless, and that the fixed nature of objects in the material world as well as their content and information gives us the illusion of their being an objective meaning in the world. I think the world operates on the basis of a variant of operations and mechanisms, which in sum we call the law of causality. I think that behind this causal force there is no meaning or objective truth, but just illusion which arise of their being such.


The reason for this is because our mind and brain in making sense of the phenomenon of the world wants to understand the concept and notion of the thing as it appears in and of itself. That said the abstract content and information of the thing as it appears to us is useless if its not derived from an empirical basis or projected it from.


The point of departure to all matters of truth and meaning lie within the empirical world, and their ending point is to be found in the empirical world. Meaning is encapsulated by the empirical and it deals primarily with it. If there is a higher and objective meaning to life it must accord itself with the dynamics, operations, and qualitative nature of the specific empirical item we are trying to discover meaning in.


Reason is the general tool through which we make specific inquires to find specific truths about a particular object or group of objects. We also need to find specific truths in order to comprehend and delineate aspects of other beings or group of being into larger and broader sub-categories. I think though that the dynamic nature of the empirical world and our environment pressupose that everything is merely a divergence of certain notions or concepts.


The notion and concept is constantly wishing to self-replicate itself through the empirical, and this is the will to live. This divergence that takes place within the empirical mutates and deviates a thing from its original state, and thus changes the original meaning of a thing. There is no fixed meaning in most of the notions and concepts we deal with pertaining to the matter of the empirical world.


There are some matters we can verify and affirm through an abstract process of reasoning such as in the sciences and math. These things can be reached apriori in relation to a general law or a preliminary notion of the operation working this way. These judgments are synthetic apriori according to Kant, and they things which are merely determined by the sensibility, and independent of the cognitive function.


They necessitate the cognitive function and empirical examples though in order to be proved and validated. That is empirical examples and our cognitive function serve as mediators to validate these truths in our mind, even though they exist apriori and independent of our own experience. I think that these cases of apriori truths are rare, and only apply to mathematical/logical/scientific inquiries.


They hold no other merit in helping us to understand the operations and the way the phenomenal world functions around in relation to the law of the causality. Biology and Chemistry are too important subjects which deal with such matters, but in the whole I believe life is a dynamic meaningless, wandering, and random process with no overlapping meaning.


All in the end comes down to subjective judgments, and they depend on subjective critiques in order to be valid or meaningful for the human person and his condition. All is consciously and unconsciously subjective to some extent or another whether we want to acknowledge this, and there are only a few exceptions where this does not apply necessarily like in Mathematics/Science/Logic.


In matters such as theology and religion though they do apply, and this is why theology and religion is largely a subjective matter, which seems to base its dogmatic code and principles are merely that which is sensibility. This means it possesses little context to our own life or meaning when it comes to being capable of being applicable to the real world or according itself with the dynamics of the empirical world.

[arcticwolf]

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.

Here is where the problem is. Let's assume that an intelligent entity has planed, designed and put in place all that we call reality around us. That ultimate reality would have to be perfect by our standards. If all this was created at certain point, then the question is why? What was lacking in the experience of the creator that prompted him/her/it to create at all? Why would a perfect entity feel want, desire, or the need to create? Why wouldn't be such an entity content with what was already there?

[Insuperable]

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.

The very question "What is the meaning of life...? implies that there is something higher than humanity or life itself if someone thinks it through hard enough

[Virtuous]

I usually ask this question to myself while taking a shower and I keep staring.....and wondering....and staring again, until I forget what I was thinking about.

[arcticwolf]

Just a reminder, I did not use the word life on purpose. Existence implies more that just animated ( in motion ) life. But life will do

[Stefan]

Here is where the problem is. Let's assume that an intelligent entity has planed, designed and put in place all that we call reality around us. That ultimate reality would have to be perfect by our standards. If all this was created at certain point, then the question is why? What was lacking in the experience of the creator that prompted him/her/it to create at all? Why would a perfect entity feel want, desire, or the need to create? Why wouldn't be such an entity content with what was already there?

I'm having trouble following your logic. What qualifies as perfect and why must this extra reality, which we cannot perceive, meet perfection? If that holds true logically(this perfection you speak of,) then it is a logical and seemingly valid objection for the universe being a production of an intelligence.

by our standards.

We are incapable of perceiving this extra reality empirically; through either deductive or inductive reasoning, therefore we have no standards, and it is irrelevant to the context of what is actually objectively measurable - the nature of existence, not the reason for it.

[arcticwolf]

I usually ask this question to myself while taking a shower and I keep staring.....and wondering....and staring again, until I forget what I was thinking about.

Cool story bro. And I mean it in the nicest way possible. Thank you

[Virtuous]

Cool story bro. And I mean it in the nicest way possible. Thank you

Thanks bro not many people appreceate my stories.

[GeistFaust]

The very question "What is the meaning of life...? implies that there is something higher than humanity or life itself if someone thinks it through hard enough

I think there is a certain danger with trying to compute our understanding of life in general and abstract from a groundworks that is based off of the material world. An analogy of the world needing to have a higher meaning to itself or a creative basis, which derives it from the empirical world leads us to a multitude of vagaries.



I think we end up contradicting ourselves, and acquiring less meaning about life, but unfortunately analogy is the only means we have to descibe an objective meaning to life or the necessary of a creator.


We have nothing but this, and I think it all lies on shanty grounds in so far as it regards its readiness and capacity to be applied to the empirical world, and its viability in according with the dynamics and operations of the empirical world. That is I doubt it can accord itself with the variant dyanmics, mechanisms, and operations contained with variance which is life nor can it account for each cause, which is divergent and independent of itself.

[Insuperable]

Here is where the problem is. Let's assume that an intelligent entity has planed, designed and put in place all that we call reality around us. That ultimate reality would have to be perfect by our standards. If all this was created at certain point, then the question is why? What was lacking in the experience of the creator that prompted him/her/it to create at all? Why would a perfect entity feel want, desire, or the need to create? Why wouldn't be such an entity content with what was already there?

I do not know what you mean by ultimate reality but physical and mathemtical reality is surely perfect by our standards
Your questions seem intelligent.
Our inability to answer these question does not mean that there is no ultimate Creator.