Glad to meet you

Thank you for your very thoughtful response. It raises many interesting issues. My concern, are we even capable of knowing what reality is? Many believe things that appear to be reifications of wishful thinking. We overcome terror of death by believing in heaven or reincarnation. We tell ourselves fanciful stories, individually & collectively, to give ourselves meaning & purpose.

We can examine & ponder, but are never sure our realizations are not just more sophisticated & elaborate wishful thinking. Are we a reflection of our own ego?

@Remiforce Please read my full bio re subjective reality.

The universe was here many billions of years before I came to consciousness & I understand it will be around many billions after I'm gone. What was before will be, but without me, or at least my physical body. No one really understands the connection between the physical brain & consciousness. Is it possible a copy of our being (ego) & memories are stored in the "Hard Drive" of the universe & can be revived, like calling up a Word documant? In other words, do we have a soul?

@Remiforce I suppose if you put it that way...anything is possible....just unknowable.

You seem to be assuming there will be reincarnation, which is a comforting but unproven notion in some Eastern religions that we can get a Mulligan, a do over, in life. It is nice to believe if we don't get it right, we will be back over & over until we finally get enlightenment & go off to Nirvana, but this can be as big a fairy tale as Christian Heaven

@Remiforce I'm not saying that some day the molecules of being will 'belong to me" again...I'm sure that in a few thousand years I'll briefly exist as a plant, or insect or worm....but the odds of me becoming a thought-projecting, self actualized thinking being is unlikely in the near future.

In a few million years? Then I stand a chance.

I really think Richard Dawkins nailed it.

No one really knows what happens to us when we die. There are so called "Near Death Experiences", but they may be the product of residual brain functioning & don't necessarily indicate anything real. We would like to believe our precious egos & experiences are somehow stored in some "Hard Drive" of the universe & can be restored like a Word document, but no one really knows. Maybe the credits roll, the screen goes blank, & our story is over, but I believe those who say that definitely may be wrong also. To be an "Agnostic" means to keep an open mind about what you don't know. Things that can't be proved or disproved.

What I said is a "Big Question", which is why I am an agnostic & not an atheist. An agnostic has the humility & courage to admit they don't know anything with our feeble intellect & limited experience about these "Big Questions". Socrates was considered the wisest person in Athens because he admitted he knew nothing. If you say "god" doesn't exist, then you are pretending you know something you can't know.

We can get into a long story about what is the definition of "god", from the jealous old tribal chieftan to the Spinozan-Einstinian version of the sum total of the laws of the universe.

I like the Woody Allen joke about how he fell in love with a girl in college but couldn't marry her because of religious differences--she was an atheist & he was an agnostic.

I also like his one --God, Give me a sign of your existence--like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank account.

@Remiforce In my opinion, indecisive doubt is too often mistaken for humility. And, frankly, it shouldn't take much courage to admit when one is lacking knowledge. That's just intellectual honesty. But, until some cloud storage of the universe is discovered, I'm going to base my opinions on scientific understanding rather than subjective philosophy. In other words, there is zero compelling evidence to believe that anything happens after death, and until there is, I will remain convinced by current facts.

If this is the only life we have, & we believe the only meaning it has is the meaning we give it, that is freeing & exhilirating, but also terrifying. We are forced to make choices in every moment, & if we believe our choices define our being, & sometimes there is no right choice, then we face an endless dilemma, for there is no real right or wrong. Everything is "transactional", as Donald Trump appears to believe. There is a lot of truth in the old saying , "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". We wil lnever know if the choices we make are right or wrong, as there is no standard except our own. This concern is important in Existentialism.

Shit does not survive. It quickly decomposes

I can see through many of the lies, but I believe I'm beginning to see through many of the truths too. Is this just word play or profundity? Only my shadow knows!!!

What is the point of living if nothing means anything to you?

Animals appear to have a form of consciousness. You can communicate with your dog or cat. But animals appear to live in the moment & don't reflect the way humans do. They seem to operate mainly on instinct & haven't developed the cerebral cortex the way human's have. Consciousness of our meaning & purpose & our impending death & the death of all we hold dear is our burden. We are conscious of the passing of time, which is a cause of terror, because we know how it all ends, at least in terms of the only life we have known

@dare2dream The point of living is to live.

@txtreehugger If the point of living is to just live, wouldn't living a well lived life be better?

Animals simply live. As a higher life form, shouldn't humans find a greater purpose for ourself?

@dare2dream To paraphrase Socrates, the unlived life is not worth examining

@dare2dream, @txtreehugger This is like saying, "The point of driving a car is to drive a car". You may get some enjoyment from driving a car, but where are you going?

@dare2dream. I didn't consciously CHOOSE to be born. None of us did. Life is not intentional.RELAX: Nothing Is Under Control.

evolution is a process and does not claim to give answers (or anything else). we may find answers to some questions by observing what we can of the evolutionary process but answering our questions is not its purpose and not always its effect.

g

@genessa Evolution tells us how we and all other life forms got here, what we are, where we are likely going. It describes a radically different process from the miracles of yore. Maybe more mundane, maybe not. Evolution describes a dynamic process that is consistent with the other physical processes, casting aside miracles such as spontaneous generation. That a single principle could result in the variety of life gives hope that other processes can be discerned to account for the origin of life or the development of cognition or self-awareness.

Evolution has not pretty. It is the survival of the fittest. Sometimes the fittest is the most horrible and vicious, sometimes the most boring & nondescript from our human standpoint, sometimes when conditions change evolution goes backward & more primitive organisms survive. But it is not universal. Evolution is based on what appears to us to be accident, random selection among various possibilities.It is not eternal but very temporary and hyper local.

Religion,too, has evolved. The evolution of myth & story telling.

@racocn8 wrong. evolution does all those things without explanation. people explain. evolution just does. we explain evolution. evolution chugs along with or without us. if we understand how it works, it works, and if we don't understand how it works, it works anyway. meanwhile, it doesn't give purpose to our lives. our lives do not have intrinsic purpose except to be. if we want more purpose than that, we have to find it, preferably not in religion, but evolution doesn't give it to us and it doesn't explain it to us. like us, it just IS.

g

Great, Man, That purpose may be as good as any other, & probably more attainable than bringing world peace & such