Humanism and The Meaning of Life (help me with my RE project)

[Colm]

Hey everyone. I'm working on a project for my RE class in school, and the project is to do a case study on the meaning of life from a Secular Humanist point of view.
For the purposes of this project, I'm defining secular humanism as the non-religous belief that humans are nothing more but a result of evolution and the result of this, are separated from other forms of life by morality and self-awareness. As a result of this, secular humanists work to create a better society for everyone. Or, in this short quote:

“No god will save us,” wrote Paul Kurtz in Humanist Manifesto II (1973), “we must save ourselves.”

I know a lot of people on this forum have non-religious views, so I feel this subforum is a great way to launch a debate on what life means to the non-religious. Please contribute your feelings on subjects like life, morality and the possibility of an afterlife. You will remain anonymous.
Oh, and does anyone know any other forums that would be a good place to post this? PM me if you do.

2011 EDIT: So back in September of last year, I got the results of the project back in. Full marks. Thanks MFM\eXo

 

[KezraPlanes]

Hmmm... This actually a pretty good thread...

Well... I was brought up in a very religious part of the country. Priests here still had a lot of influence and they still do, I guess that's the reason I was once religious. Still, as one starts to grow up, one starts to questions things that are supposed dogmas that you shouldn't question. It all came to a head when a priest to me himself he didn't believe there was an afterlife. Then I started asking myself all these questions:

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where do we go when we die?

My experience in life so far tells me there is no afterlife, there is no such thing as ghosts so we better live this life while we can, it's the only one we're given. I like to think I live my life with no regrets, no looking backs. To be quite honest I don't care when or how I die... I just want to live my life to its fullest, with no interferences of "good/heaven" and "evil/hell". I want to leave a legacy my children can be proud of, that's my only concern in life. I also want to make my parents proud and prove all those that doubted me wrong.

That's all I have to say for now... Will add if I have anything else to say.

 

[Lachrymose]

You should talk about existentialism.

In my philosophy club last year, my teacher tried to teach us those morals without us knowing. It worked, lol.

 

[z2442]

yea

so i belive in a god and a savior ignore my spelling for this but i think that it helps up try to make a understanding of our place in the universe so we can fell secure and a sense of a high being is both a evolutionary advantage from our larger brain capasity and the fact that we all need to belive in something or you have no direction

 

[Zero]

I have been in catholic education throughout my life, and was brought up in a somewhat religous household. My understanding of Humanism is the advancement of mankind for the sake of mankind, and can be attatched to both religous and non-religous worldviews. As such, I consider myself to be somewhat humanist. I do not believe that the hand of God will reach out and solve all of our problems, it is us which must correct the wrongs in our world.

 

[Chathurga]

Then, to be glib, what's the point of acknowledging god at all?

I'd say I'm an Atheist Existentialist, there is no intrinsic meaning in life. Whatever meaning you land on will essentially be arbitrary but you still need something.
I suppose I'm a Humanist too since I believe the betterment of the human race is extremely important and that helping realise that belief would probably be my self constructed meaning. It's hard to explain why I think this, I guess it's to do with humans being the most intelligent lifeforms we know to exist and I'd like to think that's important.

Morality is just something we evolved to survived, it is not absolute or easily defined. There is no action everyone will agree is immoral, for instance.
I fully believe that morality would exist without religion, it's just beneficial to everyone if we don't live in chaos all the time.

As far as I can see there is no afterlife, there's nothing to point to it even being a possibility. When you're dead, you're dead. That's it.

@z2442: I'm sorry but look at the section this thread is in, Smart Talk. It's a place for high quality posts yet your post doesn't contain any punctuation marks at all, that should have been your first clue that this wasn't the section for you.
If English isn't your first language... tough. I don't want to see any severely broken English in this section.

 

[eldiablov]

For most, the idea that your existence is meaningless is too hard to deal with. This is why for milleniums we have been giving the masses a reason to believe there is a god (or gods) out there that will help you through life and that the end isn't really the end. Like Chathurga said, there is no reason for anybody to believe in an afterlife as religion is just blind faith.

It also worries me how out of sync with nature the human race has actually become, every animal has it's place in the Earth and works to serve an equilibrium. It seems we are have actually grown out of touch with nature, we are more like (quote from The Matrix) "a virus".

I to believe in existentialism at the core, but I like to think that my life has meaning, just a thought that gets me through the day. And as far as morality goes, “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is." - Albert Camus. This does not imply (for me at least) continual worship of an unknown being, but rather encourages everyone to act morally upstanding, something which the society of today lacks.

 

[z2442]

Then, to be glib, what's the point of acknowledging god at all?

I'd say I'm an Atheist Existentialist, there is no intrinsic meaning in life. Whatever meaning you land on will essentially be arbitrary but you still need something.
I suppose I'm a Humanist too since I believe the betterment of the human race is extremely important and that helping realise that belief would probably be my self constructed meaning. It's hard to explain why I think this, I guess it's to do with humans being the most intelligent lifeforms we know to exist and I'd like to think that's important.

Morality is just something we evolved to survived, it is not absolute or easily defined. There is no action everyone will agree is immoral, for instance.
I fully believe that morality would exist without religion, it's just beneficial to everyone if we don't live in chaos all the time.

As far as I can see there is no afterlife, there's nothing to point to it even being a possibility. When you're dead, you're dead. That's it.

@z2442: I'm sorry but look at the section this thread is in, Smart Talk. It's a place for high quality posts yet your post doesn't contain any punctuation marks at all, that should have been your first clue that this wasn't the section for you.
If English isn't your first language... tough. I don't want to see any severely broken English in this section.

@Chathurga Oh I'm sorry I was on my ipod i didn't notice

 

[FreePlay]

To me, life is a too-short span of time during which we get to explore the universe and hopefully leave it better than we found it. The idea of an afterlife is, at the surface, a comfort, since it means that death isn't the end. But once you get into the concept of living forever, and the fact that it would never end, it quickly turns into a nightmarish concept - not to mention that it means that life itself is absolutely meaningless, since it was just a speed bump on the way to eternity.

I don't believe in the idea of an ultimate, objective morality. It may be true that, in any given situation, there is a best moral course of action to take, but I think it's both irrational and dangerous to follow a strict, inflexible set of moral dictates to guide your actions. I see morality as a means to the end of having a functional society where the most people possible are living the best life they possibly can, and therefore, an action is more moral if it prevents harm and promotes people's well-being. Morality may be subjective, but it's not arbitrary; it's situational. You can be good without God; in fact, given that so many Christians would have us believe that we get our morality from the God of the Bible - a being with a predilection for wholesale slaughter and holocaust (just look at the flood story and the book of Revelation!) - I'd say it would be harder to be moral with God.

As for the meaning of life, I think it's important to distinguish between 'meaning' and 'purpose'. There's a trend in religions to say that God gives people's lives purpose. I don't see the value in that. If something has a purpose, it's a tool for achieving that purpose. I don't think people are tools, and I think it's contrary to human dignity to say that we should seek to be tools. I think meaning is the more appropriate word. We give our lives meaning by doing things that are meaningful to us and to others. There is no "ultimate" meaning; it doesn't come from somewhere outside of us.

z2442's comment reflects something I've noticed about religious belief. Yes, it helps you feel secure; it's a security blanket. Believing something comforting doesn't mean that it's real. It's a defense mechanism - a response to the undeniable reality of how tiny we are in the universe and how brief our lives are. We're a bunch of mostly hairless apes floating through an unimaginably vast void on a tiny speck of dust and water. Most of the universe is hostile to any kind of life that we can imagine; even our own planet is largely inhospitable. If you don't develop an idea of some sort of protective higher being, it can quickly become overwhelming and terrifying. But the fact that you believe is not an indication that the being actually exists; it's just an indication that we're fearful creatures.

Also, z2442, yes, I agree that you need to believe in something to have direction. I just don't think it needs to be something supernatural. There are plenty of things in the real world that we can use as our compass. The capacity for human compassion in response to suffering, the struggle for justice and equality in opposition to tyranny; that sort of thing. It's much better for us to get to work and try to fix these things ourselves than to pray to an imaginary friend as a means of making ourselves feel better about our perceived inability to effect real change.

 

[madsoul]

Also, z2442, yes, I agree that you need to believe in something to have direction. I just don't think it needs to be something supernatural. There are plenty of things in the real world that we can use as our compass.

Exactly. I dont believe in any powerful being watching over us or not even an intelligent force that lies behind all logic in the universe. There is nothing like that. Instead I believe in the true wonder of life. The amazing wonder of nature and the incredible force of natural selection. Evolution. The fact that I am very very lucky to be sitting here writing this nonsense. Thinking of all the things that had to happen for me to be alive. Thats the meaning of life. To enjoy it and do your best to make it good.

I am agnostic. Its highly unlikely that am intelligent god exist, but there is neither proof for him or against him. But still there is MORE proof for him NOT existing.

For some life changing thoughts, take a look at some videos on this youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/richarddawkinsdotnet

---------- Post added at 04:42 PM EST ---------- Previous post was at 09:43 AM EST ----------

Also, besides reading the Richard Dawkins The God Delusion, read his newest book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Its very good.

 

[elite]

I am agnostic. Its highly unlikely that am intelligent god exist, but there is neither proof for him or against him. But still there is MORE proof for him NOT existing.

Please, do elaborate.

 

[eldiablov]

Please, do elaborate.

Have you ever seen him?

No.

That's sufficient proof to doubt his existence.

 

[NoEffex]

Have you ever seen him?

No.

That's sufficient proof to doubt his existence.

What's the point of doubting his existance? To know everything? Last I recall, knowing everything doesn't make you happy (Insert exceptions here), which is what people live for, regardless of what they claim.

People just want happiness, and they think that since they know everything, it makes them happy, which is not the case.

 

[Adiuvo]

Have you ever seen him?

No.

That's sufficient proof to doubt his existence.

Not really. Claiming that just because our species as a whole hasn't seen something implies we're the most powerful beings in the universe, and things are created only due to us seeing them. You wouldn't doubt the existence of life on other planets, right?

 

[Chathurga]

Not really. Claiming that just because our species as a whole hasn't seen something implies we're the most powerful beings in the universe, and things are created only due to us seeing them. You wouldn't doubt the existence of life on other planets, right?

Life on other planets hasn't supposedly had huge influence on us without leaving any traces at all.

Do I doubt aliens built the pyramids? Yes. Why? Well because there's absolutely no good evidence to prove it.
Do I doubt god exists? Yes. Why? Well because there's absolutely no good evidence to prove it.

It's all about using the train of skeptic logic you use to treat crackpot theories and applying it to things we are suppose to take as fact.

 

[madsoul]

You wouldn't doubt the existence of life on other planets, right?

No, since there is ALOT of evidence that points in that direction. Just looking at our own planet makes it very easy to imagine other planets with rich life out there. Its that simple. Then there is ofcourse more complex theoretical proof for life, that im not up to date with.

Still, there is nothing that points to there being and intelligent creator. By learning and understanding natural selection its easy to rule out "god" as a prehistoric answer to everything. From a time where we didnt know much. Where we needed an answer we couldnt get. Its an easy comforting feeling.

Really, check out some of the videos in the link i posted earlier.

 

[Slasher]

No, since there is ALOT of evidence that points in that direction. Just looking at our own planet makes it very easy to imagine other planets with rich life out there. Its that simple. Then there is ofcourse more complex theoretical proof for life, that im not up to date with.

I think Adiuvo was just pointing out the flaw in Eldiablov's point. I don't think he was actually applying it to prove the existence of god.

 

[Adiuvo]

I think Adiuvo was just pointing out the flaw in Eldiablov's point. I don't think he was actually applying it to prove the existence of god.

Correct. That train of thought can't be used to validate anything at all, nor can it's counter.

 

[madsoul]

I think Adiuvo was just pointing out the flaw in Eldiablov's point. I don't think he was actually applying it to prove the existence of god.

Yeah heh, read it a little wrong.

 

[Chathurga]

Correct. That train of thought can't be used to validate anything at all, nor can it's counter.

By your standards we should both equally believe and be skeptical of everything that could possibly be?

This argument has be proven to be frivolous over and over again, The Dragon In My Garage anyone? Occam's Razor really applies to this situation.