Hello all, I'm new at this, and I don't even know if this is really a valid subject/debate, but here goes . . .

I've been thinking about the meaning of life for a few days now. I've looked it up a little bit on the Internet. Yes, I've seen different views and opinions, religious and non-religious, but I am not satisfied with what I have come up with, if it is anything other than re-wording a whole slew of things. Religiously (Christian, I believe) the purpose of life is to form a healthy, strong, loving relationship with God, because he has a plan for each and every one of us, and we have to ask for guidance from him to find out what we have to do. Non-religiously, I believe the purpose of life, or of living things, is to sustain the cycle (or ecosystem or whatever you want to call it) so that life is preserved and keeps on going.

The only thing I could really think up happened in this order:

(Initially)
The purpose of life is to make your mark on the world.
(Then, I thought about it)
The purpose of life is to do what you can to improve the life of all after you, human or not.
~Then~
The purpose of life is to improve life and maintain that improved life for those around you and to come, human or not.
(Then, I thought about it more and started looking up information on the net)
I finally came to this confused thought that I am still not satisfied with, if I ever will be:
There is NO purpose to life, though it fulfills many purposes.

So exactly why would we like to keep life going? (NOTE: I'm NOT suicidal )

What does life accomplish?

Is life selfish? Can all that we can think of life to be sustained is that it is "Good" and/or it is our "Natural Instinct" to live?

I would ask if you could answer these questions without involvement of some god or religion or other, because we can all try to find that on the net and/or religious leader.

Deep, deep and broad subject matter...but I'm willing to go out on a limb and give my two cents worth.

Life is a journey with many lessons to be learned and, hopefully, mastered so that we become the very best that we are capable of being, leave this place a little better off than we found it, and pray that we can graduate the first time around so that we don't have to do it again!

LIFE: What is it and why is it so special?
Biogenesis & Abiogenesis

The first is a link to a previous topic which attempted to get at what really constituted life and what implications some definitions might have on both science and personal ideology. The second, now closed due to the interruption of religious arguments, dealt with the issue of biogenesis and the theory of abiogenesis. Taking the information discussed in both of them under consideration, I'll take a shot at the questions posed:

So exactly why would we like to keep life going?
I say instinct. It seems to me that we are ultimately a flicker in the history of our own solar system, much less the entire universe. Many forms of life have come and gone before us on our own planet and many forms of life may have come and gone before us on others as well. Neither the mountains or the stars will mourn us when we are gone, and the only memory of our existence and accomplishments will be in the fossils we leave or the new forms we commit our atoms to.

What does life accomplish?
It accomplishes whatever we as a race like to think it accomplishes. As I support the theory of abiogenesis it seems quite likely to me that life is just an event with no more goal or purpose than the inanimate objects around us or the molecules unseen by the naked eye. We can assign a meaning to life in order to pursue and accomplish a goal, but it ultimately accomplishes nothing beyond our own arbitrations.

Is life selfish? Can all that we can think of life to be sustained is that it is "Good" and/or it is our "Natural Instinct" to live?
I'm leaning with the natural instinct factor, but I do not consider it to be anymore selfish than a rock wishing to stay a rock. Everything in the universe changes and matter is always shifting, expressing itself in new forms. For me it seems that life is one of these forms and is universally no more selfish or important than any other.

Side note: I would stress to future posters on this subject to respect the wishes of EndoreseThinking! and not include deities or religion in responses to the subject. Besides the courtesy of it, America's Debate also no longer wishes to host generic religious debates or see any other debates impacted by them.

I have the answer:




Seriously though... I think this is an unanswerable quesiton if we exclude religion. If not for some religious purpose, then each of us must find our own purpose. Or perhaps there is no purpose? Why must there be a purpose anyway? (This last question sparks memories of Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions. )

Perhaps we're all here to actually figure out "the answer" to why we're here.

Which might explain why those who think they know "the answer" are still here

Why are we here?

That is a question I give deep thought to,especially when I am out of the city at night and looking at all the objects in the sky. According to the experts in astronomy, there are countless heavenly bodies in the universe. And are we the only universe. Is there a parallel universe?


Getting back to the subject,I think each person is put on earth for some reason. I don't pretend to know that reason. There is too much harmony with all the heavenly bodies revolving around each other. To me,there is someone or something that has created this.

If a person ever thinks they know everything or they are a important person in this world, just look at the vastness in space some night,and it may make you change your mind.

I wish to emphasize this and say that the idea of 'religion' is to give the purpose so excluding religion from the debate already states that the only option is no purpose.

A religion is a code or belief you hold as to the nature, existence and continuation of your reality. So even if you believe in no greater creative being/beings/thing you still have a belief of how you came into existence (i.e. spontaneously).

I do think this is quite an amusing question when it is then followed by;
'Don't bring religion into this'

But I will attempt to do just that.
If life has no purpose then it doesn't matter one little bit what you do with the time you have.
If we are meant to find "the answer" and the purpose is ours to make, then life is a joke in the making .
If there is a definite purpose, what is it?


Just to provoke thought, If life has no purpose then you can't be sure of anything. As if it has no purpose you don't know whether what appears to exist actually follows its own rules. You cannot assert that spontinuity would definitely produce a universe and the absolute way of looking at it through human intelligence.

If life has no purpose, how can it fulfill any purpose/purposes.
If life has no purpose, looking for one won't hurt.
If there is a purpose, then we should fulfill it.
If the purpose is ours, then we should fulfill our own purpose.
If the purpose is given, then we should fulfill the givers purpose.

If you have said to yourself that there is no purpose then you are saying that nothing matters so trying to find a purpose is no waste of whatever you have because you haven't really got anything, have you!
If there is a purpose and you believe there isn't one then you will never fulfill that purpose as you will never try to look for it. And never looking will either mean you are waiting for it to hit you or waiting for the end which if there is no purpose is death .

Abs posted the link to the bio/abio-genesis thread which is part of the problem with the purpose debate. You must first assume nothing and then make a judgement. Not, assume there to be no purpose and then deny there is one.
The purposeless universe rests on the two theories of the 'Big Bang' and 'Evolution' (although other alternatives may be concocted in the future) so on these grounds you are nothing but a mish mash of particles and an interaction of them with no will of your own but following only the laws which also formed you from nothing, by chance. If so you have nothing to worry about as there is nothing more than this physical world, and when your cells stop working and your pronounced brain dead that's it. What you are living for is death. And by this the idea of survival is contry to the nature of the universe so why does anything else like human logic have any grounds for being trustable. Or is that because your pre-determined particle interactions that you call you is fooling you into believing you can trust the randomness you accept!

It is far better to look for a purpose than to sit there denying there is one. And if there isn't a purpose then you have nothing to waste in trying to look for one.




Personally I don't see any acceptable answer than the existence of an infinite being outside of space, time and human understanding.


Because man is evil in Gods sight he had to make a way to reach his special created human beings and that way is Christ alone (the second person of the trinity, incarnate) Who paid the debt we owe for our disobedience and sinfulness.
That is why it is called Christ-ianity.

If a man new everything there was to know "Under the sun" he would find no purpose but must use the greater qualities of the human mind and look to things unseen.

At least you are looking for something and not denying everything!


So by your own logic and standing point you are not responsible for writing this but the interaction of all the molecules with the rest of the universe made you do it. Where do humans get there ability to choose or is the whole of reality a giant charade just to get on our nerves and make us think we think we think we think ... etc.
Abs, can you in anyway challenge the view or pursuit of anothers goal if you believe you are doing nothing but following the laws of interactions of particles. On what basis do you even believe yourself to exist, or is existence an illusion created by the illusion of existence. How can you see yourself as nothing but a more complicated arrangement of molecules than a rock. You live because you have a choice to live (which if there is no purpose, denies itself). The rock no more chooses its existence than it chooses to continue to exist. It has no choice but you who definitely have one would choose to call yourself "like unto a rock".
'Self' annihilating ideas are only destructive to human truth.


The only way to account for anything is the existence of the infinite, which in theoretical physics people have come up with in the idea of an infinite number of parallel universes but that doesn't make it easier to explain, it makes it infinitely more difficult than it was before. Look to the infinite and his purpose!

Basically it is either Man who will go back in time and create the universe or something above and beyond us made us with a purpose!
(Fat chance we have of building our own existence!)

Ancient question with no one answer.

I like George Carlin's take on it. We are here to produce plastic. No other living thing produces it, and apparently the planet wants it burried perhaps to feed the next dominant species.

Personally, I think life is an illusionary training ground for spirit.

But then, maybe it's all about plastic. We seem to be a bit too self-important to make a good judgement.

42 and out.

I've probably mentioned my personal philosophy before, as regards the purpose of life. I formed an opinion long ago, and I have found it personally useful...

I think I formed it on one of those days when I was finishing a class that I had really enjoyed. The final exam was for a maximum of one point, the total that I had missed on the semester's tests. I would receive an incomplete and fail if I didn't take the test, but an A for the course if I missed every question on the final exam. It was more important that I be there that day, than anything that I might accomplish that day. When I finished the test, I handed in my final exam and left; knowing full well that circumstances had shaped my life such that I would never again re-enter that room, or talk to those people.

It suddenly hit me, that someday I would, like everyone, die. It would be that same type of experience, where there would suddenly be no going back to change a single written word; the final exam would have been handed in. God, or one of his agents would be standing at the door saying thank you, and I might never even know what grade I received on the exam. "I'm not ready to die yet." I told myself. "I'm not ready to hear God say, 'Thank you. Next!'"

Life, I concluded is for living. I don't want to spend my entire life asking myself if I am living it properly, and according to some unwritten, unexplained plan. Maybe in the end, I'll just turn in a blank Blue Book, take an incomplete for the course, and hope that I can repeat it. I am in no rush though to decide that I know the meaning of life, write it down concisely and quickly, hand in the answer, and walk out that door... never to look back or return.

It would be hard for me not to include God in my response, but I'll give it a whirl:

Life and the meaning of life is to create beauty, love and peace through ones actions and interactions with one another. Life is also to leave the Earth in a better place for the next generation than it was when you entered it.

Our purpose has been defined in a lot of ways, I kind of like the Epicurean approach to this topic. Epicurus belived that pleasure was the source of happiness and that no pleasure was bad in and of itself. In the mind of these men pleasure is inextricably linked to something called virtue, which is another word for excellence, and actually mispronounced in eastern philosophies as daharma (karma). It should not be confused with hedonism which is pleasure for its own sake.

This may seem like it is contrary to Christian thought but both Epicurius and Jesus emphasised one principle, its summed up in one word, "Blessed".



"Blessed" is a peace of mind that is undesturbed by external circumstances. It was spoken of as the natural condition of the gods ( or God if you prefer) and was thought to be indisovable. My favorite quotes along these lines is the answer to the question of what man's destiny is and what is the happy life:



I think happiness is part of our purpose and I have found that the principles of blessedness and the pleasure of pursuing excellence are common themes in most philosophical systems. For those who find it unnessacary to have your purpose and happiness linked to divine providence, I suggest that epicuriun metaphysics is an intersting alternative. The people who have followed this kind of a philosophy liked things like fine wines and elaborate culinary arts. They had a very sophisticated appetite for poetry, music, fine art and literature. They imbraced the mystics pity generalities and the proof by proof postulate reasoning of natural science with equal passion.

Our purpose is, in a word, to be happy.

As far as I know there is nothing on this planet or in the universe which doesn't abide by the laws of physics, Zebbeddee. That does not mean, however, that another persons views or pursuits aren't open to challenge on the basis of logic and other mental constructs.

What human truth are my "self annihilating ideas" serving to destroy? Short of arbitrary mental constructions there is no other truth I am aware of other than varying molecular complexity (both passive and active).

Everyone has had some really good/interesting contributions, by the way. And while 42 may be the answer, I think AuthorMusician and George Carlin are right: Plastic makes it possible.

For a human to have a construct of choice there must be something that is not bound by the laws of physics but is a free mind and seeing as you already deny such a thing, you must therefore conclude that all you thoughts are merely the interaction of particles in your head. So you no more choose to write what you write than a rock chooses to be a rock. It was all decided at the beginning by spontinuity (which seems to have done a pretty good job if that's all how it happened) and from that 'everyone and anything' are nothing more than an ordered arrangement of physical laws.
You have no mind as all your actions are already predecided by the laws of physics.

Are you choosing to write what you write or is it something more?


("As far as I know there is nothing on this planet or in the universe which doesn't abide by the laws of physics" - that's because there are two realms, the physical and the spiritual and Man is part of both!)

If I had picked up a five cent piece next to a mailbox at the corner of Main and Market yesterday at 5:14 p.m., I would have made a choice to pick it up. From the time the nickel was mined and molded into that five cent piece, it wasn't already decided that I would pick it up at that place and time following the numerous pockets and transactions it was involved with along the way. Neither I or the nickel was at any time in history guaranteed to be there, just as neither I or any other coin is guaranteed to be anywhere at anytime when I pick up additional lost change.

All of my thoughts and actions, as well as the presence of coins and rocks, are essentially the interaction of particles. This does not mean that any were predetermined by the laws of physics.

And as far as realms go, I see no difference between a person saying there are two (the physical and the spiritual) and saying there are 42 (ala Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut).

His Holiness the Dalai Lama answers this question.



Another Tibetan lama expands on it:



J. Krishnamurti gets even more complicated:

I agree with Zebbeddee on this. My belief is that we are spiritually children of God. We are born into a physical world where we are free to choose right and wrong. To succeed at choosing right we must constantly seek after truth (which is the purpose of AD right?) and conform our lives to it when it is found. The more we follow after truth, the more we become like God. And the more we become like God, the happier we are.

I do not say whether or not Life in itself has any specific purpose, but it achieves things like developing ways of making life easier for those here now around you and/or to come, continuing life, and completing a “Circle of life” (for example, herbivores eat plants to survive, so the plants help the herbivores live, and the plants take minerals and chemicals from the soil that are broken down by decomposers, who may have just decomposed a dead herbivore).
By not including religion, I mean that we can find those religious responses and thoughts through each our own ends (but it would always be nice if something of significant importance to the debate were given a link or taken note of, or something similar), I don't really mean for religion to not exist, it's just that it is information we can get our hands on and doesn't really need to be written here.

A kind of offshoot, these posts, all of them, are great and I really appreciate each and every contribution, whether comical, critical, or controversial, each is a great post that makes me think about what other's and they have said, and I hope that this is the effect on other people too

From the beginning of the universe (whatever happened) the laws of physics came into existance then and every event followed those laws. So you finding the five cent piece was always going to happen if there is no choice from outside. What you are saying is that your choice is nothing more than the changing interaction of particles responding to there internal and external enviroments. So neither you or the coin chose to be there, they where just following laws that as far as "you know there have been no breaking of those laws".
Everything is predetermined because we cannot go back and change it. Once something has happened it can never be changed and one thing leads to another.
There is only one future and that future will come to pass. It cannot be changed as it was always going to happen that way!

The future is predecided so make it a good one


If we were created by a God I don't think God would want us to become Gods. Can you imagine 100,000,000,000 Gods with the ability to create universes. It would be utter chaos .


It seems to be a common view that the purpose of life is for personnel happiness and I can't really dispute that but what is the nature of true happiness. How does one become happiest?!

I think he means, if I am correct, he is referring to the positive attributes of God. Like the term Christian means to be Christ-like. Since the human soul, IMO, is eternal, do we choose to follow in the foot steps of a good role model, Like Christ and pattern our lives after Him? Or do we choose a more destructive and hateful outlook on life? Life is full of choices.

deerjerkydave, sorry, I think I took your meaning in a bit of a Construed way.
I Read it again I think you mean like God in his holiness?! Not actually being God!


Is there an answer to the question "What is the purpose of life?" that we can all agree on. Is it just to seek happy-ness in whatever way an individual sees fit? What is happiness and why does it matter, and even if it matters does it matter that it matters?

The laws of physics don't predetermine the future. They establish what is and isn't feasible, but that restriction of possibilities is not equivalent to predetermination. Everything, including choices, is an interaction of particles responding to environmental circumstances. This again says nothing about predetermination.


Not possessing the ability to change the past doesn't say anything about the future, Zebbeddee. One thing leads to another but there are countless variables which will all come into play and leave the future one of uncertainty. The ability to choose does not violate any laws of physics. And there are no laws of physics I am aware of which necessitate a predetermined future.

Side Note: Were the future somehow predetermined it would be an exercise in futility to tell people to "have a good one" as they would have no choice in the matter, Zebb.

Abs, at the very end of time only one future will have been fulfilled. Nothing else can or could have happened. So in this sense it is predecided as whatever happens is always going to happen.
This in no way denies choice, it just says that it was your choice to do what you did and that is part of the way to the end.
If you spontaneously try to change a choice you where going to make you where always going to do that.

The laws of physics all follow mathematical equations (however complex) which in any given circumstance will return one result and that result will be the one that happens. If everything started with the laws of physics you are nothing but a construction built by those laws and everything you do follows those laws. You are a massively complex structure that follows laws of perception, processing and reaction and if all you do is follow those laws you have no more choice to do anything than the rock does in being a rock.
However, you do have choice and the predecided future is affected by that but it will always happen in the predecided way!

If there is nothing beyond our world then unbreakable laws deny choice yet you believe you have choice???


What would constitute purpose? Purpose can only come if something is given a purpose and to give there must be a giver. E.g. an axe is made with a purpose, to cut down trees. A blanket has the purpose of keeping you warm, it may have other uses but that is its purpose.
Basically what I am saying is that if nothing created our reality then there can be no purpose.
And if there is no purpose what should we do ... live as though there was one and carry on or all commit mass suicide which if our universe has no purpose seems far more preferable than sticking around for the 'big crunch'.

I do whoever believe there is a purpose and a giver of that purpose but what that is AD doesn't want to hear!


Side Side note: That's why the smiley is there. Please take note of it, it was there for a very good reason and it is not contradictory, just confusing. If I decide now that I am going to do something special with my life then what I do is (and was) always going to be the thing that happens. There is no going back! So you are free to predetermine your life, but what ever happens, whatever choices you make, that was always going to happen. You have no choice!

I am not able to think as deep as some of the earlier posts. In fact,I believe I got lost a couple of times. But that is just me. I am sure I will never be able to keep up with some of the more intelligent debaters on AD. And that is not meant as a dis-respectable remark. There are some intelligent and deep thinkers on Ad.

I have thought about what is life more times than I can count. I think it is something that concerns all of us. I believe we all have a purpose in life and are here for some reason. I can't believe it was just by chance that I happened to be living on Earth at this time.

If anyone ever comes up with the reason for life, I would like a few minutes of your time.

First of all, you're presuming that time is linear and that it has either a beginning or an end. That is not necessarily the case.

Saying "whatever happens is always going to happen" and declaring that everything is predetermined does negate choice. What you are saying is that choice is an illusion. There is no choice, no power of selection, if all acts and events are already predetermined. Nobody could even "spontaneously try to change a choice" because nobody would have the ability to differ from a predetermined course. Predetermination eliminates the possibility of alteration and choice.


I'll be happy to do some research if you'd like, but from what I have read in regards to quantum physics there is no longer only one result returned but actually a multitude of results. Rather than A or B, both A and B might be returned or perhaps a number of other alphabetical possibilities and combinations.

I see life as a journey as well.

To me,
life is not just the act of living until we get to the ultimate destination of death, but a journey that must involve interaction with fellow travelers. Our encounters with others along the way are opportunities to learn more about ourselves. Discovery of self is easier with help from others who may be farther along the path. Happiness is part of the journey that is not usually obtained by the solitary traveler.
There is no one set path, as in a maze, but multiple paths all leading to the ultimate destination. Although we are each individually responsible to find our own way, the wise person does not attempt it alone, but travels with and learns from others as much as possible to make the journey more pleasant and/or rewarding.
Once we reach the end, we should be able to look back with satisfaction of a life well lived, and of a very long list of good friends.
Life, like love, is meant to be shared.

This question is most perplexing; while pondering this many years ago i ran into a tree and the answer was clear... do not anticipate the destination, be mindful of the path for the destination may not be as one had anticipated. While traveling the path you will be happy; for you replace anxiety with mindfulness. It is vaguely apparent that this is all a wonderful coincidence possibly pre-dated by other coincidences; be happy that you are.

Oh yes, Quantum physics is ... ummmh ... weird. At the moment it is still a relatively new science and we cannot predict or measure all the variables in a given situation so even if the experiment looks and seems exactly the same in every respect to our instruments there can be massive differences we are unaware of. String theory is even more uncertain in its postulates and is an attempt to square quantum physics with einsteins theory of relativity. At present too little is known about quantum particles or what thier made of etc so just because we cannot predict the results and they seem to be different does not mean they are not bound by the laws of cause and effect. It is a very fascinating subject and I would recommend everyone to do a bit of reading on it!



In infinite mathematics your value is too big to deal with so you break it up into an infinite number of finite parts and then predict reality from the change between consecutive parts. So if I know the position of every particle in the universe at one moment in time and then at a second moment in time very shortly afterwards measuring the changes would give me the velocity, mass and position of every thing in the universe. And from this using mathematics and assuming I knew all the calculations I would be able to (given a little bit of time) tell you the entire proceedings of the universe. That is, if no other thing from outside affects it.
So in the above scenario you have no choice (assuming no outside influence).

And predetermination does not deny choice. I won't say "at the end of time" this time, but lets say in a thousand years time. When a thousand more years have past (if the universe still exist) how many futures will have happened. One, One and only One. And that one was made up of many many choices to bring about that one future. Yet, if you knew everything at one moment you could predict everything to come so everything is chosen to be the way it is but it will only ever happen one way, so in this sense it is a predecided chosen choice.


Alteration eliminates predermination but predetermination does not eliminate choice, you chose it, you where always going to choose it and so you chose it as it was predecided. Only the future holds unknowns we can't forsee and it is only unknown because we don't know everything in the present and there is never enough time to now eveything in the present as it keeps on moving from infinity too infinity.
Abs, it is predecided what you will post, whether you will post, and when you will post but all those are your choice to do so. Absolutely correct Prediction does not deny that choices where involved in perfectly matching that prediction.


What is your Choice?!
And Whatever it is make it a good one!

What you're saying is that I must post when I must post with no room to decide that I don't post. Requirement to act without room for alteration is not choice. You might as well be arguing that a rock dropped from the ledge of a building on Earth yesterday had a choice as to whether or not it fell in accordance to gravity.


Getting back to that "ummmh ... weird" field of quantum study, you may encounter a problem with this reasoning. The ability of an atom to exist in two places at once would conceivably impinge on the ability of anyone to know the position of every particle at one moment and form an applicable equation for predicting the future. The ability of atoms to co-exist in more than one place simultaneously compounded with what research in chaos theory has turned up would make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to make any kind of prediction about the future. From what I can tell the two together suggest a completely random and unpredictable future.

Quantum physics and chaos theory aside, I also don't know of anything to suggest of a beginning or end to time. All of these together seem to suggest an arrogance on our part in thinking our place in the universe in anyway an important one.

Noooooooooooo, stop twisting what I'm saying. The future is made up of an infinite number of choices, every moment an immense number of things happen, some of them the result of choice and some not. A rock can fall if it likes and is infinitely more likely to fall than not fall so in every example we will observe it to fall and it has no choice by that definition. You however, may have been in exactly the same circumstance more than once and chosen to do different things in each but in the same way as the rock is predecided to fall (it was always going to do that) in both situations you chose what you would do and so affected the future. And in making your choice filled the part you where always going to play, you made a choice so it happened. Just because that was always going to happen does not mean you did not have a choice in bringing it to pass.


As far as I am aware no particle exist in more than one place in a single moment as that would defy "Energy is neither created or destroyed" as the energy for that particle would have to exist in two places at once and so there might be twice the energy sometimes and other times only one times the energy.
Cause and Effect ... an effect in all observable cases is brought about by a cause and just because we don't know that cause does not mean it cannot be predicted (perfectly). Electrons appear to do all sorts of wacky things and travel down two paths at once splitting themselves like waves and then integrating again. Just because we cannot perfectly predict the future just shows our lack of understanding of the universe we live in, not that it is unpredictable.
Lets take the best example of undesputed science "Gravity", we all know it exist, we experience its effect everyday but we are still totally in the dark as to what causes it. Lots of theories have been proposed like the existance of the graviton or ties in higher dimensions of all energy to all other energy but we have no idea what it actually is. Loads of experiments have been done to try and detect gravity waves from einsteins predictions of them and as far as I know all the tests failed to find any (I may be wrong here but I haven't seen anything saying that we have detected any, only stories of failure). The number of variables is too great for us to measure and the uncertainty principle makes it even more annoying but if everything remained un-observed it would go along quite happily in its predecided way. But observing it forces it to do that as it must then fulfill the laws of physics.


Everything in this entire universe has a beginning and an end so why should time be any different. Our little universe to be the way it is fits into an amazingly "perfect for life" enviroment (I'll have a look for the calculations for you) and to deny it has a purpose or that we have a meaning seems a rather stupid position to hold seeing as you can't be sure of anything. If it doesn't matter why your here what are you doing posting on this forum, why aren't you out there having as much fun or pleasure as you can. If there is just this world what are you wasting your time here for?! . . . You have one chance to find out what is true, don't waste that opportunity.


We may understand alot but the further we go the more there is to understand. When we discovered the atom we didn't understand anything about things smaller than that but know we know bits about sub atomic particles which in turn are made up of quarks which in turn are made of something else and so on until we really do find the "atom" (the indivisable particle). Our understanding of the universe is nothing compared to what it has to teach us, its bounds are almost infinite and we will never ever understand everything.

For every thing we know there are ten things we don't know and for everything we discover there will be ten things we have discovered that we didn't know needed discovering before!

Does 'Design' point to a 'Designer' or does it point to something else?

I believe that the purpose of life is to procreate. End of story

Much of the world believes in reincarnation. This allows for a “soul” to be reborn numerous times and work through the “experiences” necessary to raise ones consciousness to a higher (spiritual) level. The old mind/body science of yoga is a good example of this line of thinking.

At the highest level one is not reborn again but is reunited with the ultimate creative force (God).



So to live and procreate is part of the process!

Uh, that's not really what I believe in. When I meant "end of story" I meant "that's it. Nothing more." You're born, you live, you die, you rot. No afterlife. I'm not sure if you were misinterpreting me or what, or just using my post to submit your own reply to the topic.

Everything? I can't think of a single thing that has a beginning and an end, except life. Science hold sthat matter and energy cannot be destroyed. They have no end. They can only change into different states.



It's said that a host of monkeys typing away at a batallion of keyboards will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare. Are the monkeys designers? You seem to think that a the presence of a working system presupposes design. I don't see it as perfect, but as something that has, over time, through trial and error, developed into a stable system, with each element relying on the other. I'm sure there are things in the deepest depths of the ocean that humans have not heard about, and which we don't particularly need to function properly.



Not finding meaning in life is not the same as not finding worth in life. The way I see it, if he believes life occured entirely by chance, he's doing exactly the right thing. He's taking advantage of the rare gift of sentience. This is much the same as I see it. To me, life has no meaning other than the one given it by myself, which is the opportunity to partake of certain experiences, like a good epicurean. This is my personal meaning. The purpose of life and everything seems to be progress, which happens not by design, but by nature.

What about those who are unable physically unable to procreate? Does their life have no purpose then?

No.

What about those who choose not to procreate? Does their life have no purpose also?

No.

Life is meant to be lived and shared.

Heh. I think she's talking "as a species", not individually. The purpose of life as a species is to persist.

Well of course the purpose of any species is to procreate, that's obvious. I would assume that we're talking about the more philosophical question.

I, too, find it difficult to provide a description of life's meaning devoid of any references to deity and a divine plan. But I will try to make it as non-offensive as possible to those who are bothered by that sort of thing.

Life is growth and learning. It is the experience of a plethora of feelings, both physical and emotional, as we interact with family, friends and the environment.
Life is also making mistakes and either learning from them, or repeating them.

Living life fully means coming to embrace even the painful, trying times, as they give us a depth of knowledge and cause us to relate to our fellow creatures who are in pain. Living life fully means feeling part of the wholeness of existence.

At some point in our lives, many of us desire to find a purpose for our existence, to leave some mark upon the world and its inhabitants. This desire becomes clearer as we age, knowing that our lives are finite here. There are many ways to leave one's mark: progeny, fame, philanthropy, excelling in sports, warfare, intellectual and spiritual accomplishments, kindness, wealth, and leadership. And in some Eastern cultures, not leaving a mark becomes the objective--to disrupt other lives as little as possible and become indistinguishable from the whole.

Our departure from life may be a sudden or protracted experience. Achieving a peaceful state of mind and leaving this existence in that state of mind is considered one important sign of a life well-lived.

Zebbeddee, again, if it was always going to happen, there is no choice in the matter. If my actions for tomorrow were determined a millenia ago, before three fourths of my ancestors had even been conceived, I have no more choice in my actions than the growth of a forest or the rising of a mountain. Predetermination irreversibly denies the possibility of choice. There is no deciding whether to post, when to post or what to post if my every detail of my post was already destined to happen before our Earth had even begun to form, just as there would have been no choice during any of the time between.


The ability of particles to exist simultaneously in more than one place says nothing about either the creation or destruction of matter, Zebbeddee.
A cat through the eye of a needle
Quantum Mechanics in Plain English
Quantum Superposition


I would actually challenge you to support the claim that everything in the universe has a beginning and an end. As you said previously, everything we know currently says that matter is neither created or destroyed. As everything is known to be made of matter it would seem we only perceive the perpetual change of matter to be various beginnings and endings. So long as matter is infinite and infinitely changing it would stand to reason that there is no actual beginning or end to anything in this universe; there is only change.

As to that "perfect for life environment," there are several different locations within the solar system that would still provide hopitable environments for life on this planet. And the presence of life on this planet doesn't suggest that the planet is so much perfect for life as life is perfect for the planet. There is no reason to presume that the Earth situated itself with life an intended consequence.


Like a person seeing Santa in the maple syrup of his or her breakfast, not everything with order has design. Our ability to perceive and assign order to systems doesn't make it so. As chaos theory has shown, it is a common occurrence for order to be generated from disorder and back again.

I had a friend who said something similar to me. And I asked him "But What's it for, what do we continue to procreate for?" If there is nothing that we're heading towards the idea of continuing seems pointless and contradicts itself in doing so.
He then answered, "That's it, you don't ask questions, you just do it (carry on with life)".
But doesn't that seem a rather poor use of human intellect and creativity!


I'm a bit shaky on some of physics but taking matter as energy (albeit frozen energy) all the matter in the universe had a beginning. It was not matter at the beginning, it was energy, which became matter. So all matter has a beginning.
In the sense that everything just changes then nothing had a beginning, as everything is made up of what originally came into being but It has been said within Big Bang theory that we can never find out what happened at the original instant. We can calculate backwards using our understanding to 10 ^ -15 seconds (some very small number, anyway) but never to the instant of the Bang. Probably because we can never make a safe observable experiment but it stands (in theory) that nothing existed at some point and then something did. Maybe because of a quantum ripple in non-existent space which created time and space by rippling. We don't know ... but nothing remains the same one instant to the next so everything ends all the time.
As observation goes particles and waves can borrow amounts of energy in multiples of Plancks constant (from somewhere, but that's something else) but this energy must be sent back or repayed usually within a very short time frame dependant on the amount borrowed. So at the moment of the Big Boom all the energy in the universe was borrowed and due to hundreds of thousands of millions etc of occurences so all the energy in our reality had a beginning ... whether we can figure out what that was or how it happened is another story but all things must start somewhere in a finite universe!


No amount of monkeys would ever produce the complete works of shakespeare, Infact that statement has been shrunk by the scientific world to say "a host of monkeys typing away at a battalion of keyboards will eventually type out one of Shakespeares Sonnets" which is still pretty incredible but wholly unlikely. No amount of randomness will produce the order we see embedded in life ... If just one thing goes wrong in development the whole order collapses and is wasted!


From my previous post:

What I was referring to when I said Everything is probably a flawed human classification of objects analogy. If I say "this is a car" then, the car had a beginning and an end (i can safely assume so, anyway). A star had a beginning and will not be a star after the passing of much time (it will burn up and either become a black hole or dissipate into a cloud of heavier elements).
Everything had a beginning but by everything I was referring to objects which are our classification of them, which is not exclusively true of what their actual substance is, which never disappears, only changes state.
But where did that energy originally come from?!



If I could perfectly predict every occurence of tomorrow perfectly (just say that I could) would that mean that choices where not involved in tomorrows occurences.
The Past is what has happened, the Present is what's happening and the Future is what is going to happen. The present is a moment in which to make your mark but nothing that you do cannot happen. Everything you do will happen, and everything you do happens, because you do it. The future is predecided because our choices and the interactions of everything else have chosen it. Maybe what your really against is that predecision means something had to decide what would happen or let it happen as part of a preforseen plan!


Where did I say "creation or destruction of matter". Wasn't the term energy used ... Yes it was. Wave-particle duality is a flaw in our modelling system where we separate the two out. They are just monitors of the different behavior of energy in two of its states. We apply different mathematical models to explain its behavior but an electron passing through two slits at once is no longer a particle but is a wave. You can be aware of its effects travelling down both routes but as soon as you observe it it will assume a single particle state and fit our particle model again. It cannot exist in more than one place at once as a particle as more energy would be required for it to do so (its frozen energy state would have to duplicate or tripicate itself). The particle merely starts behaving like a wave and if you interfere with that wave it will again behave like a particle. And all the energy contained within its wave condenses back to its frozen form.
Every 'unit of energy' always does one thing, and that is dependant on what every other 'unit' is doing!
But our knowledge of science is not great enough to monitor pure energy and so we will sit in the dark not knowing what's going on until we can.


And just for explanation:

You make life sound like its cheap ... It is the most amazing ordering of molecules conceivable and you make the assumption that it is easy to make out of chance encounters.

Space is an incredibly inhospitable place and life is a vulnerable thing. It must be protected by a multiplicity of things to exist, adapt and continue to exist.

I will now go about showing how precise everything has to be for life to exist, and how perfectly our planet, sun and solar system are to allow life to exist here.

From the beginning ... Bang.
At the beginning of it all, the Big Bang lots of things had to go right:
If not enough energy was "Borrowed" then the universe would have spread out and there would never have been enough gravity to form stars so there would never have been any element greater than Deuterium (The first isotope of Hydrogen).
If too much energy was "Borrowed" then the gravity would have been too intense and it would all have collapsed back in on itself and creating the "infinite energy vacuum".
It has been calculated that the probability of getting the critical mass (enough energy to break free, but not too much to collapse back on itself) is 1 in 10 ^(10 ^123). That is a bigger number than the number of fundamental particles in the universe. But ofcourse once again you'll post your links to show how chance can produce order and how entropy isn't compromised etc. ... and fall to your theories of why you don't have evidence to back up your claims.
I'll continue:
If the mass of a neutron or proton differed by even a tiny bit (about 1/1000th of a percent) atoms would not form (that would kind of mess things up, wouldn't it). If the electron (which for some reason beyond our understanding perfectly matches its charge with a proton) where to have even the slightest bit variance of charge from a protons the whole universe would be nothing but photons as atoms would never form and out balance their anti-matter pairs.
Then life has to have the right conditions, it must have the elements it needs, the right temperatures, the methods to intake energy and replicate.

Our planet being covered by two thirds water is absolutely right to store enough heat to prevent the atmosphere from collapsing, it is within an almost exact orbit in which it gains not too much but not too little heat from the sun. If it was 1% further away the oceans would freeze and 6% closer and the would boil. Neither of these would be very helpful in generating life!

Our solar system has our giant friend 'Jupiter' , which if it wasn't there would result in millions more asteroid collisions striking earth but because of its immense magnetic field and gravity it tends to pull everything towards it away from earth.

Our Sun is just the right size to maintain a long period of relatively constant energy production (not too large so as to burn up too quickly, not to small to create massive fluctuations in energy output). It is of the right size to not spue out too much toxic material and vaporize any atmosphere and not make too much destructive radiation. The range of electromagnetic radiation that it creates is mostly unharmful and so is fit for life, They are collectable without being destructive to your body and warming to heat the earth the right amount.

The elements that make up life have to be present in the right quantities or they are poisonous. Too much oxygen in our atmosphere and you'd get burnt lungs every time you breathed, Too little oxygen and breathing would be a grossly inefficient way of taking in oxygen. The level of nitrogen (which is generally a non reactive element) is absolutely perfect for this method of intake and "coincidentally" is almost the same density as Oxygen and so the two elements can mix without massive tendencies to separate out and break the balanced concentrations.

Even the simplest bacterial life form shows quite distinctive design properties. The fact that proteins even form RNA and DNA strands is a marvel. DNA goes through a massively complex system of self replication, error checking, protein building and folding which contains both the blueprints for building itself, every process the cell has to perform and reading itself as well.
A cell must protect itself against the outside while letting nutrients in, convert raw minerals into enzymes and energy, kill foreign bodies, replicate before its death, be able to respond to changes in its enviroment, survive in many conditions in case of rapid change. All these processes or properties need massive amounts of control mechanisms that all have to be present or the cell just won't function. And you think it just happened in a gooey mush that covered our planet!

The whole "primordial soup" theory has fallen by the wayside now as it is just not possible to make life from the conditions that an early (theorised earth) would have. Running the .
Does everyone know "science" is now looking at the idea of panspermia (we where either put here by super evolved aliens or the whole thing was started from a collision with a rock that carried life on it). And so far we have found nothing but dry dust and empty space.

The elements themselves have to be just the right match for each other as well. The carbon-oxygen bond fits within a 4% boundary of stability out of which carbo dioxide just would not form and life just wouldn't be possible.
It has been said that the universe was "made for life" ... if the universe never produced life or life never existed would the universe have a purpose?, could it have a purpose?.

It is a miracle that life exist here, let alone that it somewhere else! ... there is nothing out there, we are alone with only the designer to give us a purpose!

This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to design features of the universe ... and where does all this design point too. Oh I know it points to the God of "Chance" who seems to me to be an incredibly intelligent mindless phenomenon.


For life to exist conditions must be perfect. Otherwise what your saying is that life is a "force" that manifests itself wherever it can?

So many things have to be exact to allow life to even think of existing.
This is not just some fluke apparition of "chance", it was built for life, for a purpose and it has not yet fulfilled it!


Maple syrup "chaotically" being poured onto a bowl of cereal may produce a shape my brain will think looks like something else it has visualized e.g. Santa. And I wouldn't think that totally out of the ordinary, I have often seen shapes in random occurences. However, no-one would be able to tell me that they have seen anything complicated forming in their cereal like there name being written or a precisely equal sided hexagon. The chance of such an event is out wayed by the chance it will not by at least a factor of a thousand. For complex order as we see in "life" to have arisen by these random occurences that you trust in is asking for perfect evert after perfect event.


Purpose is given, it cannot be otherwise. All you have to do is find out what gave you your purpose and fulfill it!

Wholly unlikely? That means it is not wholly impossible, right? Does that mean if it does happen, the monkey is a genius "designer"? No. It's still an idiot creature that got it right by chance. This is a good site about the monkey claim. It hasn't been going long. I hope to check up on it every few years. The odds are against it, but it's still not impossible.



You mean like the monkey thing? You're a miracle of chance, are given awareness, and you look back and think, "geez, life being created is pretty unlikely. And this place, judging by the limited experience of the only existence I've known, is just too perfect. It couldn't have happened here because I'm living to see it. Must be God. That sounds more plausible. "



That's an opinion, not a fact.



So what you are really saying is, things change? The star doesn't end, our classification of the star ends, and a new classification, "black hole" begins. "Car" is likewise a classifcation for "metal mined + wrought into parts + fitted together + given coat of paint + sold." You admitted it youself that you are referring to the classification of objects, and not the objects themselves.

Where did the energy come from? You're trying to suggest that energy had a beginning somewhere. As Abs said, you are assuming time is linear, when that may not be the case. If everything had a beginning and end, so does God. If God is infinite, why can't time and energy be infinite?



... you do know we haven't looked very far yet, don't you?

Does everyone know "religion" now believes all the bad stuff in the world happens because aeons ago an alien overlord who brought some alien prisoners here to blow up in volcanoes, and now their spirits are drifting free, causing harm? Oh, when will "religion" learn! It's true, "religion" believes that!

Please provide a source to your claim. I haven't heard of this theory. Also, just because "science" is looking at the idea, doesn't mean it in any way believes it. Remember, science, unlike religion and much like life, evolves.

[quote=SuzySteamboat,Dec 2 2003, 10:16 PM]
So to live and procreate is part of the process![/QUOTE]
Uh, that's not really what I believe in. When I meant "end of story" I meant "that's it. Nothing more." You're born, you live, you die, you rot. No afterlife. I'm not sure if you were misinterpreting me or what, or just using my post to submit your own reply to the topic. [/quote]
Yes I understood that Suzy I was just giving my ideas.

What we should remember if the idea that matter/energy cannot be created OR destroyed but only change form. From the point of the “Big Bang” – and this ‘point” was smaller than the diameter of a hydrogen atom – energy has transformed into us and the things we can see.

So to believe in an afterlife it is only necessary IMO to believe that our “consciousness” somehow survives (as a form of energy) whereas our bodies decompose (rot) which is another form of matter/energy transformation.

I might add just a bit to what Corvus said in response...

The only way there is any choice in the universe you're attempting to describe is if every single particle has forever had a choice of their own. The future would not be "predecided because our choices" but because of every single event ever to have occurred. If particles and inanimate objects do not have the power of choice, revered as a gift to humans by certain religions, then the future and principle of predetermination in fact does eliminate even the chance of choice.

The concept of predetermination being the "preforseen plan" of some enigmatic force or character gives choice only to that character, not to any of the ensuing animate or inanimate objects spawned by such a plan. The idea that our lives are predetermined by some form of deity still eliminates individual choice on behalf of anyone other than the specified deity.


Yes, you did use the term energy. I'm failing to see your problem in exchanging energy for matter in relation to the "law of conservation of energy and matter."


Precisely which form of life is the "most amazing ordering of molecules conceivable" and just what about those orders of molecules we haven't conceived of? There are various forms of life which live in a variety of incredibly inhospitable places to humans. Clearly inhospitability toward one form of life does not necessarily imply inhospitability toward others.

And while it was kind of you to go into depth about all the things that happened prior to the presence of life on this planet, you're making the assumption post hoc. Life could have still conceivable arisen with shifts in planetary rotation and location; with different volumes of water on the planet; and with different circumstances relating to the sun. For that matter, the Earth could have just as likely been 6% closer to the sun with the sun varying in size and temperature to accomodate the conditions we now see today. Our being here today as a result of past conditions does not mean those conditions were the absolute only way life could have arisen.


Science supports that DNA and RNA evolved on this planet rather than merely always existing with such perceived complexities. Taken in small parts with evolution in mind, there is no implication of design or designer. The "control mechanisms" of cells are all subject to entropy and other influences which quite often result in a failure of cells to function precisely and properly for best survival.


The theory regarding primordial soup has not fallen by the wayside anymore than the theory of panspermia is some revolutionary idea just now proposed. They have both been around for some time and both are looked at by different groups of scientists. And while Corvus is correct in saying we haven't been looking for long, the presence of water and certain elements throughout space represent more than merely "dry dust and empty space."


It has been said the universe was "made for life," but as I've explained already in this post, that claim is without support unless we resort to logical fallacies. As George Carlin has aptly examined, we could also say that our existence and our production of plastic could follow the same logic in declaring that the universe was "made for plastic."

And I'm not saying life is a force manifesting itself wherever it can. What I'm suggesting is that events do not have to proceed with any intended result. What I'm saying is that life is very likely an unintended and unimagined consequence of different events throughout the course of our solar system's history and the history of particles throughout the universe.


Nobody, Zebbeddee? You don't think out of all the Al's in the world that more than a couple wouldn't have Alphabet cereal form an "AL" in the middle of the bowl given enough servings? You don't think that given enough servings of rice krispies that a person might encounter a precisely equal sided hexagon in their cereal bowl? We might encounter both within only a hundred servings of cereals in comparison to the likely infinite number of particle actions and reactions over the billions of years (if not more) leading up to where we are today.

I do not believe in the existance of just the physical world so choice is not ruled out. The universe as we know it is rational (and this is an assumption scientific method must make in order to continue studying it) so matter and energy follow these rules to produce the outcome we see today. How it does this is vastly beyond our understanding at the moment and will be for a very very long time (if not forever). Do you believe matter or energy has a choice to do what it does? if not then you are just following the rules of interacting energy creating the illusion of choice to decided reaction.


If a deity created a universe without choice it would be nothing more than part of that deity and do what it was told ... creating it with choice gives it purpose, meaning and means the deity has a reason to create it.
I don't know how else to show you that predetermination does not deny individual choice. The future is made up of choices and we being finite beings have a limited number of things we can do in any given time. Only one of those will ever be done but we had every part in choosing or mischoosing that outcome.
Energy does not have a choice as to what it does but you have a choice as to what it does.
And a preforseen plan only means that it was predictable not that choice was not involved. I will choose to get up tomorrow but you could have forseen that, that does not mean I had no choice in doing so!


My problem was that matter is created and energy is not, so by shifting what I was saying to the creatable form of energy (i.e. matter) meant you where talking about something else. They are interchangeable but energy is the base unit which is what I was attempting to show had to come from somewhere.


DNA basically ... nothing else we have ever been able to synthesise comes even close to the complexity of DNA. You also seem to have walked around yourself here and got back to where you started, The way to survive in different enviroments is to have different properties. Some life forms can survive several hundred times more radiation than we can or temperatures in excess of 120 degrees C and as low as -200 degrees C. But life has to be able to arise in a very precise condition, it cannot be formed in an acidic lake without protection so both the code, the protection, the method of gaining energy and the code for replication needs to all be there at the same time or the "life form" will callapse. DNA is very delicate and so to survive these inhospitable enviroments you talk about one bacterium has as many as 85'000 duplicate copies of its own genetic code. In which case this particular code must be very easy to come by yet we have no idea how to spawn even the conceivably simplest DNA string.


That monkeys site you posted is quite funny and I think I could expect it to get as many as 40 letters in the right order to compare with a bit of shakespeares plays.
I'm not going to try to discredit the site but its random generator does work on an 80 symbol key board but not in the same way as life does. It has selected just a few amino acids which turn into the same proteins and form a 4 letter alphabet. Which string together into massively long chains. The site has a huge array of combinations to choose from but life is very specific in its choices.
And I said "wholly unlikely" because to say it is impossible to make life from chance collisions is a lie ... I have to at least admit that it is possible. I do not however see how it could ever happen in such perfect order without the errors you would expect. It all has to come about together, not one after another and if it doesn't work then the result is destructive. It is sooo wholly unlikely that you might as well say it's impossible!
I'd like to see how far the monkeys get though!


Not quite. I look at it the other way round ... God made it and so there is order and design. As I have said a universe that could even think of supporting life is miraculous enough as it is!


As I have also said if particular elements are in too high concentrations then life is destroyed by it ... Oxygen for one is a very destructive element and we have all sorts of anti-oxidisers in our body to compensate for its destructiveness. Life hangs in a balance and if the balance is out by a little bit, the whole cycle is destroyed. The Miller experiment has been under heavy criticism (for a good while) about the atmosphere used to generate the amino acids. You may have noticed that we have had no more leaps into the air about how life could leap up from the mud!