What IS the "meaning of life"? Does it differ person-to-person?

[WECAMEASROMANS]

accomplish as much as you can before dying.

 

[Dragonking700]

God

The meaning of life is for me, to worship God. To those who say the world is accidental, think about this: When you walk into a building, do you think, "What accident made this?" No, you don't think that, you know someone put time and effort into building it. Do you think something just went boom and made everything around us? No way! Someone had to have designed this world because people are way to complicated for us to be an accident.

This is true. may I elaborate...
We do not believe that God CREATED us simply to worship him. Our purpose in life is, of course, to bring others to God and to praise and worship him, which we do willingly out of thankfulness to him.

Because God did something really amazing. see, God is perfect. and to be with him, he demands we be perfect as well. but obviously, we are not perfect. But God loves us so much, that even though we have sinned against him, he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

It's like this: we are in court, guilty of a terrible crime. then a man we've never seen before walks in and pays our fine, and sets us free. this man is Jesus, and that's what he did for us.
technically, though, the reason God has us live our lives instead of just bringing everyone to heaven right now is because we need to have faith in him. we need to really love and TRUST him. and that's what life on earth is about. the purpose of life is to trust in god, and then to serve him.

romans 3:23 for ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
John 3:16a but God so loved the world that he sent his only son, Jesus Christ, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

 

[Obsessed]

It's like this: we are in court, guilty of a terrible crime. then a man we've never seen before walks in and pays our fine, and sets us free. this man is Jesus, and that's what he did for us.

Actually it is more like your great great great great great grandfather twice removed committed a crime, and you are guilty for his crime despite the fact that he was already punished for it.

Also that would be a fucked up justice system. I'd rather pay for my wrongdoings than be indebted to someone that fucked over the justice system by buying me out of trouble.

 

[Tobes]

@ Dragonking700

Just noting that if there is a God he created pain and death. Ultimately that would make him responsible for everything bad. Which makes him an asshole. Not even close to perfect. It's even worse if Jesus was God, as that means he experienced both in one of the worst ways possible and still thought the world was all hunky-dory and the human condition was just fine. News flash, it's not. If you looked around you, you'd realize that if God exists he doesn't give a rat's ass about us. If you try to justify this by saying this life is a test, than I'm sorry, but Jesus/God flat-out failed it. As for the free will argument you're bound to throw at me, just note that "God" doesn't give you a choice over whether you die, who you are etc., and if there's a final judgment, where you go. Since he's "perfect", I doubt you think he can be argued with. Oh, and you wouldn't have any choice over what you could do in heaven/hell/purgatory/whatever. Making the whole point moot. I'm sorry, did I just completely tear apart the core beliefs of your religion? My bad.

I think you can guess I don't think life has any meaning. Hence my ironic name appealing to my nihilistic sense of humor.

 

[lati0s]

Actually it is more like your great great great great great grandfather twice removed committed a crime, and you are guilty for his crime despite the fact that he was already punished for it.

Also that would be a fucked up justice system. I'd rather pay for my wrongdoings than be indebted to someone that fucked over the justice system by buying me out of trouble.

He probably means sin in general when he says "a terrible crime" and not just the adam and eve fruit incident.

 

[Brain]

Because God did something really amazing. see, God is perfect. and to be with him, he demands we be perfect as well. but obviously, we are not perfect. But God loves us so much, that even though we have sinned against him, he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for our sins.

That sounds terribly convoluted. Why not just, you know, forgive us? What kind of imbecile would send their son to *die* just so that they could forgive sinners? If you loved everyone despite all the wrongdoings they did, would you really send you own fucking son for them to KILL, thereby giving them a way for you to forgive them and let them into heaven? What kind of twisted fuck would that make you?

It's like this: we are in court, guilty of a terrible crime. then a man we've never seen before walks in and pays our fine, and sets us free. this man is Jesus, and that's what he did for us.

No, it's like this: we are in court, guilty of a terrible crime (our ancestors ate an apple - go figure), then a man we've never seen before walks in, but he doesn't pay the fine. No. He DIES. No, worse. We KILL HIM (an even more terrible crime than the one we were previously guilty of). And somehow that sets us free. Because apparently, death is like paying a fine. Apparently, this is what God needed to see in order to let us off the hook.

It's as if God was some kind of devourer of souls, and to content him, just like Pagan gods, we had to make sacrifices, the ultimate of which would be his own son. A sacrifice so yummy that God is full and all is forgiven. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but maybe you should call your God by his rightful name: Cthulhu. And trust me, we are not made in his image, nor would we ever want to be.

 

[tawp64]

What kind of thread is this?!
Everyone is fighting about religion and crap.
Just enjoy life and forget the question.

 

[Tobes]

It's as if God was some kind of devourer of souls, and to content him, just like Pagan gods, we had to make sacrifices, the ultimate of which would be his own son. A sacrifice so yummy that God is full and all is forgiven. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but maybe you should call your God by his rightful name: Cthulhu. And trust me, we are not made in his image, nor would we ever want to be.

rofl. I might just sig that.

 

[Dragonking700]

That sounds terribly convoluted. Why not just, you know, forgive us? What kind of imbecile would send their son to *die* just so that they could forgive sinners? If you loved everyone despite all the wrongdoings they did, would you really send you own fucking son for them to KILL, thereby giving them a way for you to forgive them and let them into heaven? What kind of twisted fuck would that make you?



No, it's like this: we are in court, guilty of a terrible crime (our ancestors ate an apple - go figure), then a man we've never seen before walks in, but he doesn't pay the fine. No. He DIES. No, worse. We KILL HIM (an even more terrible crime than the one we were previously guilty of). And somehow that sets us free. Because apparently, death is like paying a fine. Apparently, this is what God needed to see in order to let us off the hook.

It's as if God was some kind of devourer of souls, and to content him, just like Pagan gods, we had to make sacrifices, the ultimate of which would be his own son. A sacrifice so yummy that God is full and all is forgiven. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but maybe you should call your God by his rightful name: Cthulhu. And trust me, we are not made in his image, nor would we ever want to be.

Allow me to explain:
1st of all. If someone commits a crime, they deserve to be punished. If a man raped a child, you would obviously want him to be punished. what would you think of a man who thought the rapist should go free?
now, what if your coworker was fired. you might be sad for him, but considerably less people would care if their coworker was fired, as apposed to a child being raped. those are people we would judge as "a little bit selfish" not to care if their coworker got fired.
God is SO perfect, that he cannot stand the SLIGHTEST sin. imagine how good you must be if you can't stand even the smallest sin. that's why God cannot just forgive us. because he is JUST!
and also, the court thing was an analogy. the judge is God. the fine is the punishment for sin, which is DEATH. Jesus paid the fine, which was DEATH. but since he had lived a perfect life, his death counted for every single person.
And Jesus loved us, and did lay down his life because he loved us.

I hope this answers your questions ;) sorry if anything was unclear. I also hope I cleared up some misconceptions.

God bless.

Oh, and the sins we are guilty of isn't just adam and eves sin of disobeying God. not by a long shot! It is every sin that we have commited.

 

[Dragonking700]

@ Dragonking700

Just noting that if there is a God he created pain and death. Ultimately that would make him responsible for everything bad. Which makes him an asshole. Not even close to perfect. It's even worse if Jesus was God, as that means he experienced both in one of the worst ways possible and still thought the world was all hunky-dory and the human condition was just fine. News flash, it's not. If you looked around you, you'd realize that if God exists he doesn't give a rat's ass about us. If you try to justify this by saying this life is a test, than I'm sorry, but Jesus/God flat-out failed it. As for the free will argument you're bound to throw at me, just note that "God" doesn't give you a choice over whether you die, who you are etc., and if there's a final judgment, where you go. Since he's "perfect", I doubt you think he can be argued with. Oh, and you wouldn't have any choice over what you could do in heaven/hell/purgatory/whatever. Making the whole point moot. I'm sorry, did I just completely tear apart the core beliefs of your religion? My bad.

I think you can guess I don't think life has any meaning. Hence my ironic name appealing to my nihilistic sense of humor.

I'm sorry you believe this. and no, it's okay, you didn't tear apart the core believe of my religion :). no harm done!

The reason the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was made in the first place was to give man a choice between God and sin. see, true love involves a choice. if there was no tree, adam and eve would love God be DEFAULT. not because they had a choice.
when we go to heaven, we will lose our free will, so we will not even have the ability to sin, because we have already shown that we can trust in God, and chose him over sin. Heaven will be a paradise, not a dull place. It's not going to be floating on a cloud playing the harp, that's for sure! lol

I hope that answers your questions.

god bless ;)

 

[MrIndigo]

Allow me to explain:
1st of all. If someone commits a crime, they deserve to be punished. If a man raped a child, you would obviously want him to be punished. what would you think of a man who thought the rapist should go free?

Actually, there's considerable debate about this principle. The mere retributive factor can legitimately be considered incidental or even nonexistent. Other motivations for sanction are: deterrant (whether before the crime is committed, preventing recidivism or extended audience), reparations/compensation, rehabilitation, protection of the public.

Depending on what you subscribe to, the actual types of sanctions become differently valued.

now, what if your coworker was fired. you might be sad for him, but considerably less people would care if their coworker was fired, as apposed to a child being raped. those are people we would judge as "a little bit selfish" not to care if their coworker got fired.

Why are they a little bit selfish? They're not self-concerned here at all. Let's say, to help your argument, that the coworker was fired for something they didn't do and everyone knows it wasn't their fault and that they should not have been fired. Even if that's the case, the fact that they find the baby-rape more offensive doesn't make them self-interested; they simply recognise that the baby has less of a way to protect itself against attack, the person who got fired can replace their work (whereas a victim raped is raped forever), the nature of the crime.

God is SO perfect, that he cannot stand the SLIGHTEST sin. imagine how good you must be if you can't stand even the smallest sin. that's why God cannot just forgive us. because he is JUST!

Perfect and good are not the words you mean here. Perfection would normally imply some sense of tolerance and acceptance, but that's not here. A better word is probably 'pure' because it has the secondary meaning of being "entirely homogenous", i.e. it is the embodiment/avatar of a particular group of concepts.

Being unable to tolerate the slightest sin doesn't make you 'good' by the conventional meaning of the word, either. A good person is one who does no wrong, not necessarily someone who hates others for their failure to live up to the same standard.

and also, the court thing was an analogy. the judge is God. the fine is the punishment for sin, which is DEATH. Jesus paid the fine, which was DEATH. but since he had lived a perfect life, his death counted for every single person.
And Jesus loved us, and did lay down his life because he loved us.

This paragraph is fine in terms of logic (i.e. the death of someone sinless counts for more spiritual value than one who has a certain level of contamination), although since we die anyway, I'm not really clear on death is the punishment... do you mean damnation to hell after death or something?

 

[NatGeo]

Nothing. God has been around since the beginning of time, and even before then. He is timeless.

Amen to that.

The meaning of life to me is to become a world famous musician or a paleontologist who discovers a new dinosaur species.

IF any of those two happened I would be complete.

 

[Starbuck]

I guess I'll take my chance and ask seemingly orthodox Christians what their picture of heaven is. The very fact that that you'll be there FOREVER makes it difficult to imagine. Let's take one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone. A burglar is shot and killed and we follow him into the afterlife, where he meets Pip, seemingly his guardian angel. The burglar explores heaven and enjoys it: he wins his card games, sinks every billiard, nails every chick, has everything he could ever want. About a week later he tells Pip that he is bored and wants to go to "the other place", to which Pip immediately begins laughing. He says, "Whatever gave you the idea this is heaven, Mr. Valentine? This is the other place." Then we hear Serling say, "Mr. Valentine now has everything he could ever want. And he's going to have to live with it forever."

Point being that paradise + infinity = hell. Ever since my philosophical blooming, I've thought life was a loop where our spirit goes to another body in another world and our memory gets wiped, barring a few deja vus or whatever. And it goes on like that.
Anyway, how do you imagine heaven?

 

[Obsessed]

Dragonking: Quick set of points and a question regarding them.

1. You are promised eternal paradise, or threatened with eternal damnation. Basically, you go to a specific place forever after you die.

2. God cannot stand sin. He also is all about forgiveness, and he wants us to have free will.

Why does God not accept forgiveness once you go to Hell? Why does Hell have to be an eternal punishment for failing to be perfect?

Also what do you think would happen if you sinned in Heaven? God promises eternal paradise. Would he go back on his promise and send you to hell forever, or are you incapable of sin while in Heaven? If it is the latter than I would imagine that you are somehow robbed of your free will while in Heaven.

 

[Wafflez]

Well this is a question weve been asking ourselves from the beginning of society..What is the point of existence? And we still havn't found the answere.
IMO I do believe in god because i cant imagine all of this being just an accident.Life has advanced this far with what you may call unbelievable strokes of "Luck".Something so convenient as a perfect planet which is at a perfect distance from a star which also is of the perfect size to burn for billions of years in which life can evolve.I really dont see why religion is taken as "Anti-Science" or w\e.Yes some people are just blindly following religion but there are also people who are reasonable.In science we see the world or "Nature" as our god and in Religion we take an ultimate creator as our god.Personally i dont think gods existence is far fetch'd and i strongly believe god does exist.And as for the meaning of life?Well i think that if we knew the answere to that then life would loose its meaning.The meaning of life is to see the vask sky and to wonder why we were created.So basicly to find the meaning of life is the meaning of our lives.And i think it is a question we will never know the answere to.
I think the reason people get angry whenever someone brings in god is because they dont want to accept that the whole meaning of their lives is to live according to someone elses blueprint and do as he has told us without our say into this.But tbh thats the way the world works.A cow is born in a farm and from the very start of his life in a farm he is given an unevitable destiny of being cooked and eaten in Burger king.Then plants and grass eaten by the cow are also fated to be eaten by the cow.Why would we be so lucky as to choose?

And obsessed if God did create us dsnt he have the authority or right to take our free will? Because thats what we do...

 

[MrIndigo]

IMO I do believe in god because i cant imagine all of this being just an accident.Life has advanced this far with what you may call unbelievable strokes of "Luck".Something so convenient as a perfect planet which is at a perfect distance from a star which also is of the perfect size to burn for billions of years in which life can evolve.

This calls for an explanation of what they call the Anthropic Principle.

It is not "lucky" that the planet is the perfect distance away from the perfectly sized sun. It is, in fact, the only way it could be. The fact that we are here to observe the condition automatically means that the conditions must be suitable for life. We could never observe that our planet is unsuitable for harbouring life, because if it were, we wouldn't be there to observe it.

Consider a puddle in a pothole in the road that happens to look like Texas. From the puddle's point of view, the pothole is the perfect shape for it. The puddle is shaped like Texas, and the pothole is shaped like Texas. The puddle thinks that someone must have created this pothole just for it to sit in, it fits so perfectly.

 

[MrIndigo]

Also what do you think would happen if you sinned in Heaven? God promises eternal paradise. Would he go back on his promise and send you to hell forever, or are you incapable of sin while in Heaven? If it is the latter than I would imagine that you are somehow robbed of your free will while in Heaven.

He mentioned this above. Within heaven you don't have free will.

 

[Wafflez]

This calls for an explanation of what they call the Anthropic Principle.

It is not "lucky" that the planet is the perfect distance away from the perfectly sized sun. It is, in fact, the only way it could be. The fact that we are here to observe the condition automatically means that the conditions must be suitable for life. We could never observe that our planet is unsuitable for harbouring life, because if it were, we wouldn't be there to observe it.

Consider a puddle in a pothole in the road that happens to look like Texas. From the puddle's point of view, the pothole is the perfect shape for it. The puddle is shaped like Texas, and the pothole is shaped like Texas. The puddle thinks that someone must have created this pothole just for it to sit in, it fits so perfectly.

Yes i do agree that if we didnt have this "Luck" we would not be able to observe this condition.But i just take the fact that infact the earth was "lucky" enough to exist in a perfect galaxy in which all the necessary ingrediants were there for life so that i could observe it as a sign that there is master creator.Idk thats just the way i see it
Im sorry if this seems blurry but i suck at english >_<

 

[Wafflez]

Sorry for the double post >_<

 

[MrIndigo]

Yes i do agree that if we didnt have this "Luck" we would not be able to observe this condition.But i just take the fact that infact the earth was "lucky" enough to exist in a perfect galaxy in which all the necessary ingrediants were there for life so that i could observe it as a sign that there is master creator.Idk thats just the way i see it
Im sorry if this seems blurry but i suck at english >_<

The upshot is that there is nothing 'lucky' about it; there is nothing at all significant about the 'perfectness' of the galaxy because there is no other way it could be. Purely because there is life in this galaxy, it follows that the galaxy MUST be capable of supporting life.

Note that this is not an argument against the existence of God per se; it simply says that the appropriateness of the universe to support life is NOT positive evidence/reason to believe in God.

 

[cim]

If we didn't get "lucky" with life, we wouldn't be having this discussion. We don't exactly have "unlucky universes" to compare to, since we have trouble observing what isn't in our own.

Since there are theoretically an infinite number of universes, it logically follows that despite any odds at least one turned out the way ours did.

 

[Mikazukinoyaiba]

I think it is odd that Dragonking registered here solely to reply on this topic alone.

Anyways, I don't see any point in discussing anything with him. Nothing anyone will say will shake his faith because the logic of Christianity is fundamentally "Just accept it and believe it. Even if you don't know how or fully understand, just place faith in God and his word".

Faith isn't something you can argue against logically, because it isn't rooted in it to begin with. Either you have it or not. :/

Frankly, I think his beliefs are ridiculous but I'm not interested in arguing against them because I know I certainly can't win him over nor if I did would it be a "victory" because there are still millions of people with his belief out there. I'm just comfortable with having my own beliefs and being able to follow and practice them unimpeded.

But i just take the fact that infact the earth was "lucky" enough to exist in a perfect galaxy

There is no such thing as a 'perfect' galaxy Noob.

Also considering the billions upon billions of stars in our galaxy alone, it doesn't seem so unlikely that satellites to these stars would exist or even that on one of them life could form given the abundance of certain elements throughout the universe.

Hell life isn't even "perfectly" adapted for this planet alone, as some species of bacteria and microorganisms have shown the capability of surviving in the vaccuum of space for extended periods of time.

 

[cim]

Hell life isn't even "perfectly" adapted for this planet alone, as some species of bacteria and microorganisms have shown the capability of surviving in the vaccuum of space for extended periods of time.

Just curious, which ones?

 

[Mikazukinoyaiba]

Just curious, which ones?

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-08/bacteria-survive-553-day-exposure-exterior-iss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_Bear

 

[Dragonking700]

once again, in heaven we will lose our free will. we will not be able to sin. when God first created man, they were perfect EXCEPT they had the free will to sin. this was necessary to show true love for God.