
Originally Posted by
The_Child
because all of you are hinging yourself into meaning. religion or not, believe in god or not.
and the_child speaks..
people claim there is no meaning in life, yet they keep on living.. pretending there is no purpose/meaning in what they do..
what a severe form of denial..

Originally Posted by
rodsky
The condition of being alive doesn't have to have meaning. So there is no irony to that, nor is it preposterous.
Yes, fear is ingrained. Biology teaches this, so why is it preposterous?
-RODION

Originally Posted by
rodsky
You are right. People are happy because they indeed have something to run to--religion.
I'm not "waiting for the day to fade." I do stuff that makes me happy and make other people happy. But it doesn't have to have
meaning. I do what I do, because I can do it.
I'm not settling for anything less--I'm living my life to the fullest, doing the things I can do. I am happier nowadays compared to the times when I had religion in my life, and I believe this is because at the moment, I'm the one in control of my life. Self-determinism is an important factor in self-awareness and the freedom from fear of the unknown.
-RODION
you can keep on saying that life is meaningless, but the fact that you keep on living (not because you can, but you must..) pretty much goes against the very notion of life as meaningless.
again, personally, that's kind of hypocritical (and selfish) to say that life is meaningless. it would all go back to the question "why are you still alive?" if life is truly meaningless, obviously, there is no point to living -- and logic would state that you can very well choose to die too.. yet not having made that choice so far only proves the point that life has meaning indeed.. otherwise you'd certainly see living things willfully ending their own life by choice all the time (but rarely--heroically as they say--unless it preserves their own line, which ironically again proves that life has purpose and meaning)..
and fear has no place in biology.. i dont know where you've read that, but that's a misnomer..
intelligence is what makes a living thing survive, not fear. sometimes, intelligence is misconstrued as fear. when a living thing avoids something, it does not mean it fears it, it simply means that its smart enough to avoid it because it knows that if it goes head on, it will surely perish if it continues to do so. that's why its called "adaptation".. you don't vanquish your enemy.. you bend as the bamboo bends with the wind to avoid breaking itself against nature.
on the contrary, although something that fears will adapt for the time being, sooner or later it will perish under its own fear. intelligence does not do that..