1 - RomanJoe
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Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
I'm recalling some of Dr. Craig's work on this issue. His argument was that life is utterly meaningless if all of our actions really have no eternal consequence and culminate in our non-existence. I read some of Tolstoy's writings on this very issue--he became depressed, suicidal, and fell into the worse kind of nihilism. Admittedly, I fell into something similar years ago but not to the same extent as Tolstoy. What is the forum's take on this?
In my opinion I think there is power to this line of thinking. It's hard to conceive of anything we do in this life as being something other than inconsequential and, ultimately, meaningless. I suppose we'd have to define our terms in order to give a proper answer. The person making the argument that life is meaningless apart from eternity is, obviously, assuming that a meaningful life is one that has eternal consequences. The skeptic could argue that that definition of a meaningful life is incorrect. Life retains meaning insofar as, though finite, it is still hashed out through a series of intended goals, personal pursuits, moral endeavors--and that, though these actions won't echo in eternity, they are nonetheless meaningful in the present to the one committing them and perhaps those affected by them. And this meaning is merely a symptom of conscious intention of a goal and subsequent movement towards that goal.
But one could concede that we do have meaningful goals and intentions within the finite earthly existence (something no one doubts), but that these goals and intentions will eventually culminate in nothing more than noise before eternal silence. Then one begins to question what was the purpose of that noise to begin with. One moves towards a goal, achieves it, and then is obliterated and, given the course of time, the goal and its historical effects will fade out of human recognition. Furthermore, one may also, as Craig does, touch on the eventual heat death of the universe which will be a definite end to any and all sentient activity, including human beings if we survive that long. There will be no one to praise the moral accomplishments of the past, or preserve the wisdom of scholars and scientists, no one to honor the dead or revere ancestral traditions. The past will be dead, and the present will be indifferent towards it.
This isn't an argument for eternal life--far from it. But I think it provides an emotional incentive to accept something like an afterlife. Or, at best, it appeals to some type of intuition we hold concerning our own existence.
Last edited by RomanJoe (5/14/2018 6:09 pm)
- Ouros
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Personnally, I wouldn't say that's an "argument" for an afterlife, but rather for God. Something along those lines: if we there is objective meaning to our sense, it can't disappear, never. Therefore, someone must remember it without any corruption and for eternity: that's basically God.
But that can't be a real argument as such, that can prove the existence of God, because I think we can't say that there's objective meaning or not. It's more a psychological argument, in the line of Pascal Wager and Kant's pratical argument; If we believe that there's objective meaning, and I think that a lot do, we should believe in God.
Well, obviously, the dices are loaded: the fact is that our culture was shaped by theism, so it's not innocent that we think about the question of meaning.
Last edited by Ouros (5/15/2018 6:04 am)
- RomanJoe
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Ouros wrote:
Well, obviously, the dices are loaded: the fact is that our culture was shaped by theism, so it isn't innocent that we think about the question of meaning.
Of course it's not an argument. That's a good point that the dice are somewhat loaded insofar as every culture has some religious foundation to its philosophical ethos. And perhaps the intuitive feeling of absurdity towards a meaningless existence is a result of this conditioning ethos. But the theist may reply that the very existence of this ethos and its near-universal historical presence may buttress the claim that we have an intuition of purpose, value, and ultimate meaning to existence.
The question of eternity vs non-existence and its correlation to meaningfulness or meaningelssness is a vexing issue. I'm not sure whether or not a meaningless existence would, on an objective level, be any less a tragedy if we had a non-theistic culture that never entertained those questions. Should we view such a culture as blindly parading through their own existence towards nothingness? Blissfully unaware of the ultimate tragedy of reality?
Of course the reply might be that to even regard it as a tragedy is only to mirror my own cultural philosophical bias.
Last edited by RomanJoe (5/14/2018 11:45 pm)
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Thread Starter- Callum
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
I'm on the fence. On one hand I think he correct about *ultimate* meaning for sure. I don't think that exhausts all type of meaning. Craig stresses ultimate meaning, humanists stress another. Both have some truth to them.
- RomanJoe
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
I'm on the fence. On one hand I think he correct about *ultimate* meaning for sure. I don't think that exhausts all type of meaning. Craig stresses ultimate meaning, humanists stress another. Both have some truth to them.
I think you're right. I think the he's trying to emphasize that, though we can call certain actions we take in this life meaningful (insofar as they pursue and possibly achieve intended goals), they don't ultimately matter in an indifferent universe where humanity and subsequently history will inevitably be lost to time.
Last edited by RomanJoe (5/15/2018 1:52 am)
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Thread Starter- Ouros
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Of course the reply might be that to even regard it as a tragedy is only to mirror my own cultural philosophical bias.
Maybe. But obviously, some civilization had knowledge of that: a lot of them complained about the fatum, wich is an echo of it, I think.
- Gator
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
But one could concede that we do have meaningful goals and intentions within the finite earthly existence (something no one doubts), but that these goals and intentions will eventually culminate in nothing more than noise before eternal silence.
I'm not sure this is entirely correct, as an eliminative materialist would disagree I believe (whether or not we take this as a live possibility is another question). But I do think this argument has some weight, at least emotionally. At least if we look at the fact that the idea of death being the end brings emotional pain to many, that in itself seems difficult to fit in a materialist framework. Reminds me of an old CS Lewis quote: “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
- Greg
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Hard to say. I find it hard to dismiss the "if God is dead, then everything is permitted" thought out of hand. But it also seems tough to take someone whose life is subjectively meaningful--someone who takes his life to be full of meaning--and say that it is not.
On the other hand, disillusionment is something that happens to some people sometimes. In disillusionment, someone comes to believe that what he took to be a meaningful life in fact was not. It now seems empty to him. We don't do justice to the transition to understand it merely as a change in belief about what is meaningful, because it's a transition to seeing one's prior outlook as illusory, as lacking meaning even then. (One can make a similar argument for an objective standard of a weak sort in ethics, from the phenomenon of regret.) So I don't think subjectivism about meaning is true, and a theory according to which many people with subjectively meaningful lives in fact lead lives without meaning cannot be immediately ruled out as disregarding of human experience.
- DanielCC
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Yes.
More seriously I think life is meaningless without some form of transcendence, if which some form of afterlife is a necessary though not sufficient condition (as has been pointed out there is not a priori conflict between the survival of consciousness after death and atheism/non-ultimism - transcendence is not the mere temporal surivival of consciousness though, a point which should be remembered the utterly vacuous Oxbridge ‘Oww immorality would be vey boring’ counter-arguments).
Talk of making one’s own subjective meaning is fine but one can offer no objection if it involve joining the SS (instead of the Resistence) flaying crippled science guys (instead of devoting time and energy to keeping them alive) infecting bright eyed infants and woodland annimals with unpleasant diseases (as opposed to curing them).
Last edited by DanielCC (5/16/2018 11:40 am)
- RomanJoe
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
I'm not entirely sure that imposing a subjective meaning onto life could help to avoid a meaningless life if you and the rest of mankind will terminate with nonexistence. The meaning you bestow on life will not endure your death--it seems to be ultimately ephemeral, illusory.
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