- RomanJoe
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
@DanielCC
I think that's a good pint--the survival of consciousness is not sufficient for life to be ultimately meaningful. I suppose one needs earthly life to have consequences that are realized after his mortal existence.
- Miguel
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
I think one can make this argument, but currently it's not how I would frame it, because I think it's possible to make some serious arguments for meaning in a finite life. However, none of that would change the fact that there is in human beings a deep longing for perfect goodness and transcendence. We cannot help but desire perfect bliss, Goodness itself. If there were no way for us to achieve this perfect goodness, or if it didn't exist, then maybe we could still carry on with a life of finite meaning, but surely it would leave us with our biggest desire completely unfulfilled.
In this sense we could say life would be absurd, I guess. Like a bad joke. We have this inner drive in ourselves that is desperate for goodness itself, goodness without limits, pure perfection and bliss, and for whatever reason it could never be fulfilled. And only an eternal life of having this perfection forever could satisfy us.
So whether or not life can have meaning in its finite duration, maybe in the cultivation of virtue, there is still this transcendent desire we have in our hearts, is something that does require an afterlife, as well as perfect goodness. And the idea that this desire could never be fulfilled would be enormously tragic, too tragic to accept with calm and ease.
Last edited by Miguel (5/16/2018 7:19 pm)
- Brian
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Can you define 'meaning'? If I buy flowers for my fiancee that action is meaningful. That seems obvious. Is that action 'ultimately meaningful'? I don't know, but it sounds like you are asking whether temporal actions have meaning outside the realm of time. If that's the case then no. But so what? Do musical notes have meaning outside of auditory perception? No. Does that devalue music? It shouldn't.
It seems like we are maybe conflating meaning and value. Meaning is a psychological phenomena so far as I can tell. Value may be something different and more.
- RomanJoe
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
Perhaps a better way of looking at the threat of non-being is through the lense of ultimate purpose. If there is no ultimate purpose to our lives--and we are merely a transition out of non-being and back to into non-being--can we really say our lives have value beyond that which we subjectively interpret them to? In other words, if mankind never existed in the first place, would it make any real difference in the last analysis, given that mankind is doomed to die along with the universe?
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Thread Starter- Brian
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Re: Is life meaningless without an afterlife?
RomanJoe wrote:
Perhaps a better way of looking at the threat of non-being is through the lense of ultimate purpose. If there is no ultimate purpose to our lives--and we are merely a transition out of non-being and back to into non-being--can we really say our lives have value beyond that which we subjectively interpret them to? In other words, if mankind never existed in the first place, would it make any real difference in the last analysis, given that mankind is doomed to die along with the universe?
Who would be conducting this "last analysis"? The question wants to posit an outside observer, like God, from whom value comes. If God does not exist, this a very peculiar way to think of the question in the first place. If God does exist, the after life question seems secondary and derivative on the question, "whence value?"
Let's say there is no God or transcendence. The idea of ultimate purpose would be a fantasy. At a certain point, one would have to reconcile one's beliefs with reality and stop asking for something which by nature is a chimera. Just like a man could desire a meal so good he would never be hungry again. If said desire prevented him from enjoying the actual meals he ate, or worse, made him stop eating, it would be to his benefit to purge that desire from his psyche/mind.
It's obviously not that simple, given that we don't know God is dead. So we do have to struggle with the idea of ultimate purpose.