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As An Atheist Can Your Life Have Purpose and Meaning?
I was wondering what other people thought about this.
I realize we weren't born with a purpose. No creator or "higher calling".
But as a non believer can your life have meaning and purpose without god?
I realize we weren't born with a purpose. No creator or "higher calling".
But as a non believer can your life have meaning and purpose without god?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Goscicki on -
Jonathan, Any kind of social commitment contradicts freedom.
That goes without saying, but I'd use "limits" freedom rather than contradicts.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Carter on -
Anarchy ..law of the jungle ??
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on -
"It is with government as with medicine. Its only business is the choice of evils. Every law is an evil, for every law is an infraction of liberty."
—Jeremy Bentham
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Permalink Reply by Alan Carter on
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Nonsense
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Allan H. Clark on
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Whatever you believe, you need to make your case against Bentham's statement. Invective is not argument.
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Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on -
Jonathan, you appear to define "true believer" as a person not motivated by expectation of a reward. It seems an idiosyncratic definition.
I see the words of the rest of your post but don't see a connection between what I wrote and your analogies.
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Permalink Reply by Jonathan Chang on
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That's the way it is defined by the religion itself as far as I understand. People who motivated by a reward instead of "God's love" (or righteousness, even if it is according to the ethics described by the Bible) cannot be true believers. It may seem idiosyncratic because you see religion as necessarily evil, not only in practical effect but in inherent purpose.
This leads us into my analogies. The only way religion makes its "believers" (or shall we say non-believers?) unhappy is the rules that it defines. These are rules not dissimilar to laws or other cultural, familial commitments.
If I've misunderstood you, please expand on why exactly you think religion must make people unhappy?
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Permalink Reply by Alan Carter on
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Pleasure depends what u mean pleasure ...tiddlywinks ..golf ..snap.. shooting defenceless animals for fun
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Permalink Reply by Alan Carter on
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Rubbish .. choice .. a way of life some with heaven in mind
those without belief much the same moral choices every day
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Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on
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Pleasure is a reasonable choice for life's purpose. Sexual pleasure is a reasonable choice of pleasure.
Augustine famously prayed for chastity, and more famously added, "but not yet."
Why were so many "fathers of Catholicism" sexually repressed?
I suggest post-traumatic stress.
My reason?
The author of a book whose title I recall as "Achilles in Viet Nam" asserted that many of the ancient Greeks whose names we know had fought in the wars of their times and exhibited symptoms of what we know as PTSD. Their heightened alertness, the mildest symptom of PTSD, resulted in their turning to literature or philosophy as a means of self-therapy.
Wars and other kinds of trauma continued, and in later centuries PTSD sufferers turned to a kind of drug: fantasizing happiness in another life.
PTSD might have caused religion. It might also have caused sexual repression.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Carter on
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Repressed priests exploited women you are fixated with sex porn my son twists the mind
cold shower is needed or as they do with dogs... spayed man in your case
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Permalink Reply by Richard Goscicki on
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Anyone who would like to study the painting of the Auto da fé of St. Dominic I posted earlier can click here. Just click on the painting and it you can see it in amazing detail.
I find this picture shocking as well as remarkable. What’s especially striking (and sick) is the fat cleric directly below St. Dominic dosing off as if he were at a boring opera. It shows how routine these horrible murders were.
I still find it disturbing to think there’s a New World island country named after this guy. He must have been a 15th century Tom Dewey who gained national attention by prosecuting criminals. The only different is the Cathars weren’t mobsters but good people who didn’t want to pay homage to the pope.
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Loren Miller commented on Ruth Anthony-Gardner's group Hang With Friends"Ooooo, an ATHEIST on NATIONAL TV??? Call out the National Guard!!! Notify FEMA!! CALL GLENN BECK!!!!!On second thought, scratch that last! [UGH!]"
Debra Stevenson commented on Ruth Anthony-Gardner's group Hang With Friends"Yes, not everyone thanks a deity for their survival and nobody should thank their god for a vicious tornado that wiped out so much of what people owned and even took lives, especially the lives of innocent children.
Brandi Amari Williams"
sk8eycat commented on Ruth Anthony-Gardner's group Hang With Friends"Tony, I love that clip! "Wolf Gets Blitzed"...tee-hee.
Did anyone read the comments below the You Tube version? they were almost all like, "Yeah, thank the lard for sending a ghastly tornado to kill more than 50…"
The Flying Atheist commented on Ruth Anthony-Gardner's group Hang With Friends"Great clip, Tony. People need to realize that not everybody superfluously and automatically thanks god in a time of crisis. Maybe he's learned a lesson and become a smarter man. "
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