I don't think you know what an 'answer' is. An answer you disagree with is still an answer. If I ask you "what's 2 + 4" and you say "it is 10", then that's an answer, even though it is wrong and I disagree with it.

You have asked me a silly question. You have asked me where people who are not here, are. Well, not here. That is an answer. You question is silly and reflects a lack of understanding on your part. But my answer is an answer to it. And you should count yourself lucky that I gave it, given how silly the question was. Now don't pretend you want more specifics, because clearly you don't and it wouldn't really matter what I said, you'd still just scoff. Like I said, they are at 73 Not Here street, Notheresville, in The Other Place. Why not send them a letter?

For all we know, on the cosmic scale, the universe has the attributes of a mind. — Wayfarer

Not sure what that means or how it is relevant.

But which country has a justice system where the prisoner is denied knowledge of what he has been condemned for, even for the sake of causing him additional suffering by this ignorance? — litewave

It's called 'The World'. You're living in it. See my case for details.

What do you mean by "imperatives"? If a mind is reasonable, it follows the laws of reason. It doesn't create them — litewave

That's flagrantly question begging. I provided a proof of what you have just flatly denied. So, you need either to locate a fallacy in the reasoning expressed by the argument, or you need to deny a premise. Specifically, you need to deny premise 1 or premise 2 and provide your reasons for doing so, for I defended both of those premises.

An imperative, incidentally, is just fancy for a command.

And yes, of course 'being reasonable' involves following the imperatives of Reason (or acting in ways that comport with them). That's irrelevant, for my argument is about what the imperatives themselves are (in terms of composition, not content), it is not about what it is to be reasonable.

Imagine I give you an argument that demonstrates strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries. YOu then reply "being a strawberry jam eater just involves eating strawberry jam, not making the stuff". Well, er, yes. How is that relevant - how does that challenge my case that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries? And then you follow that with nothing more than a flat denial that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries.

That is what you have done. I have provided an argument that appears to demonstrate that Reason is a mind and that the mind in question will have the attributes of God, and will thus be God. And you have now just pointed out that being reasonable involves following the imperatives of Reason and then asserted - on the basis of no evidence at all - that the imperatives themselves are not a mind's creation.

You have asked me a silly question. You have asked me where people who are not here, are. Well, not here. That is an answer. You question is silly and reflects a lack of understanding on your part. — Bartricks

Typical of you: when caught out, resort to insult.

Not 'caught out', just asked a silly question by someone not remotely interested in the answer. It's not my fault that an accurate description of what you did is insulting. It's your fault.

If you have caught me 'out', where was I 'in' previously. Please answer fully. I have follow up questions.

@Bartricks what do you think of abiogenesis?

I do not know what that is. What is it? Sounds like congealed whale sick.

I provided a proof of what you have just flatly denied. — Bartricks

Where? You just asserted, even before your premise 1, that only a mind can create laws of reason. And I say that the law of identity and all logic that follows from it are not creations of a mind but necessary facts because, as I pointed out, there doesn't need to be a mind to ensure that a tree is a tree. You think that without the existence of a mind, a tree could be a dog? That a mind issues an instruction to the tree to be identical to itself? No, the mind can only observe the necessary fact that a tree is a tree and not a dog. A tree that is not a tree just cannot exist.

I don't think you understand arguments. I provided a proof. You haven't challenged a premise.

Well, I must say that your name is well chosen. You seem to be going out of your way not to get things.

No. I'm going out of my way to get things. Just not without skepticism. You really seem to think that you can just post a controversial piece, and then be blown away every time someone challenges you.

↪litewave I don't think you understand arguments. I provided a proof. You haven't challenged a premise

↪Wayfarer I don't think you know what an 'answer' is

Yes. Everyone on this philosophy forum is unaware of basic things, like an argument, or an answer, because they challenge your beliefs. You're like a Baptist kid who goes to a Catholic school and is just AMAZED that other people have different ideas.

↪litewave
But which country has a justice system where the prisoner is denied knowledge of what he has been condemned for, even for the sake of causing him additional suffering by this ignorance?
— litewave

It's called 'The World'. You're living in it. See my case for details

.

Yeah. Because the entire planet is one country. Try to keep your head in reality, you snobbish ad hominem-slinging armchair philosopher.

The claim that "this object has a purpose" is ambiguous between "this object has ends it is trying to pursue" and "this object has been created for an end".

This is the problem with this whole argument. You are defining the question "What's the point of life?" as a question that assumes that life is created. As you yourself said: "So, those who ask "what is the purpose of us being here?" already assume a divine purpose." A lot of people are "wondering about our own ends" when we ask that question. Many people don't want a predetermined purpose. Many attempt to create their own purpose. I am aware you disagree with this view, but you don't invalidate it by simply defining the question in a different way than it is often meant.

And then there is always the question "why should I follow that purpose?" If somebody else creates a sentient creature with a certain purpose, it seems inevitable that the creature and creator will disagree on "ends." My point here is that I don't see how the creator is really determining the creation's purpose/s at that point. That would be more like failure to determine the creature's purpose.

Anyway, not sure why I am bothering as I am sure you're going to play the 'idiot's veto' again and claim "me no understandy".

Funny that we're arguing about purpose. You seem to have missed the whole goddamn purpose of this forum.

[quoteGod is all powerful and morally perfect. If we're woodchips from his birdhouse, then we can reasonably infer that he would make sure those sentient woodchips have a blissful existence.][/quote]

No we CAN'T. You yourself mentioned that we are not morally perfect, so it does not seem like we can reasonably infer anything about GOD'S morality.

No we CAN'T. You yourself mentioned that we are not morally perfect, so it does not seem like we can reasonably infer anything about GOD'S morality. — I don't get it

That makes no sense at all. I think we can safely say that you're never going to get it.

It doesn't make any sense? But which premise do you deny?

That makes no sense at all. — Bartricks

Hey, try not to play the "idiot's veto," okay?

I don't need to deny a premise. It was nonsense.
1. We are immoral.
2. Therefore we can't know that God is good.

That, so far as I can tell, was your argument. But the conclusion doesn't follow and is false anyway as God is by definition good.

Here's an argument of a similar nature:

1. I like coffee.
2. Therefore we can't know whether bachelors have wives.

Wrong. I was saying that we can't know what God would do. If we are not good, and God is perfectly good, drawing conclusions about "what God would do" seems unreasonable.

Again, really poor reasoning. Nothing you say follows. Nothing.

First, from the fact we are not morally perfect, it does not follow that we cannot know with a high degree of certainly that a morally perfect being wouldn't do certain things. After all, we know we're not morally perfect - yes? To know that is to know that one falls short of a standard - a standard one has some awareness of. Second, you don't have to instantiate a moral virtue to be able to recognise one. That's as stupid as thinking that you can't recognize a good drawing from a bad one unless you're an excellent draughtsperson. I know Leonardo da Vinci is a great draughtsperson and that some six year old is rubbish despite the fact my own skills are closer to the six year old's than Leonardo's. So that's mistaken inference no. 2. And then there's the fact that you don't have to know precisely what moral perfection involves to know what it doesn't involve. I, for instance, don't know how many grains of salt there are in my house. But I do know that there are more than six, and less than five billion trillion. You, presumably, think otherwise. You think I can't know those things unless I know precisely how many grains of salt there are in the house. Which is, well, just very silly but typical of the youtube educated.

So, God is morally good. And we know enough about what moral goodness involves to know that it doesn't involve being a sadist or unconcerned about the welfare of others. If your case against me depends on the ludicrous claim that 'for all we know' being morally perfect may well involve being a sadist or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others, then you've failed to touch it. YOu might as well just say - as you know doubt do when any case escapes your understanding and seems to be leading to conclusions you dislike - "how do we know anything".

And God, being morally good, wouldn't let us suffer for no reason. And thus our lives must have a purpose. And the only plausible reason a morally perfect, omnipotent being would let people suffer in the way that we do, would be for the reasons I have given. For we ourselves do precisely this - we ourselves incarcerate and bring harm to those whom we judge to have done wrong of their own free will. And we do this precisely because our own reason tells us that this is a just thing to do. And as our reason is the means by which God communicates his own attitudes towards such matters to us, we now know that God has done this to us.

If your case against me depends on the ludicrous claim that 'for all we know' being morally perfect may well involve being a sadist or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others, then you've failed to touch it. YOu might as well just say - as you know doubt do when any case escapes your understanding and seems to be leading to conclusions you dislike - "how do we know anything".

I wasn't being that skeptical about it. I agree that we can vaguely understand morality without being able to act it out. I just think something like GOD is probably going to be too far out of reach for us to attempt to predict his actions. I have to admit, I didn't word that as well as I could.

And as our reason is the means by which God communicates his own attitudes towards such matters to us, we now know that God has done this to us.

This is where i fundamentally disagree with your whole argument. I don't think you have any basis to believe this. I'm not just trying to be agnostic, however, maybe there's just something I'm missing here. I'm not trying to claim that we can't know anything about God or morality, I'm just saying that when you say "God does this in this manner" it seems impossible to say that with really any understanding. It doesn't make sense to say "God would never put innocent people with dangerous people, because I wouldn't do that and I understand morality." You act like I'm stupid and don't know anything when I say "God could put innocent people with dangerous, corrupt people, because his understanding or his morality is perfect and your's is not" but then you turn around and say

No, I don't see why one would expect it to be clear that we are being punished, or clear why. Ignorance of why exactly we are here is plausibly part of the punishment. — Bartricks

So when you claim ignorance, it's suddenly a valid position.

I just think something like GOD is probably going to be too far out of reach for us to attempt to predict his actions. — I don't get it

So contrary to what you assert, you are playing the radical sceptic card. You are proposing that, as far as we can know, being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others might constitute a moral virtue in God. That's absurd - as absurd as thinking that 'for all we can tell' it might constitute one in us. Even if it is possible, it is not remotely reasonable to believe it. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that being good does 'not' involve being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of innocent or guilty others. Therefore, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that God is not wholly unconcerned for our welfare, not if we're innocent anyway. and thus we can conclude that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not woodchips from God's treehouse. I now fail to see how you can't see this. Your proposal - that, for all we can tell, we might be woodchips from God's treehouse - has been demonstrated to be false beyond a reasonable doubt. And invoking - in an ad hoc manner - scepticism about what goodness in God might consist in is just silly and doesn't begin to raise a reasonable doubt about my thesis or do anything at all to restore credibility to yours.

So are we just woodchips from God's treehouse? No. God is good and omnipotent, and good people are not indifferent to the fates of innocent sentient creatures, or guilty ones.

We can know this by reflecting on the nature of goodness, but we can know it by reflecting on God's omnipotence as well. Our actions often have foreseen but unintended consequences. But that's because we do not control all of the consequences of our actions. God, by contrast, controls them all. Everything that happens either happens because God causes it to, or God intentionally permits it. Nothing that happens that God causes to happen is anything God is indifferent towards. For if God were truly indifferent to it, it would not occur. And when it comes to what God permits, rather than what God positively causes, he would only permit indifferent events - that is, events towards which he is indifferent - when doing so is a consequence of our free will being exercised. And he is not indifferent to that, even if he is often indifferent to what we do with it. But anyway, the world we live in is not a world we ourselves have freely created or freely placed ourselves in, and so the world we live and the fact we live in it has to be concluded to be God's doing, not ours. And as nothing God positively does is anything he is indifferent to, we can once more conclude that our being here is not a mere foreseen but indifferent consequence of something else God was doing, but is instead fully intended by God.

Thus, once one acknowledges that an omnipotent and good being exists, there is no reasonable way to escape the conclusion that our lives here serve a purpose, and a good one at that.

You act like I'm stupid and don't know anything when I say "God could put innocent people with dangerous, corrupt people, because his understanding or his morality is perfect and your's is not" — I don't get it

Yes, because all you're doing is pointing to a metaphysical possibility, not providing evidence that it is true.

There's what is possible, and there's what is actually the case. It is metaphysically possible that Elvis shot Kennedy. But it would be wholly unreasonable to think Elvis did it simply because no contradiction is involved in the idea. Brute possibilities are not evidence. They are the last resort of someone who has run out of evidence.

Similarly, as all things are possible with God (for all things are possible with an omnipotent being), it is indeed metaphysically possible that our lives here serve some purpose other than the one I am defending. I have at no point denied the possibility. What I have done is show that it is reasonable to suppose that our lives here serve the three purposes I described, and entirely unreasonable to think otherwise, at least after being confronted with the evidence.

For an analogy: a detective provides you with some very good evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. You reply: for all we can tell, Elvis might have done it.

Is that reasonable? No. Yes, it is metaphysically possible. And no amount of evidence that Oswald did it will establish the matter with 100% certainty, for deception can never be entirely ruled out. But is it at all reasonable stubbornly to stick with the absurd Elvis thesis on no better basis than that it 'might' be true? No, that's not reasonable at all - it's dogmatic and silly.

I think there is no amount of evidence I could show you that would convince you that our lives have the purposes I described. For whatever the quantity I provide, and whatever its quality, it is going to remain metaphysically possible that they serve another purpose, or none at all. And that, it seems to me, is, for you, sufficient to make it perfectly reasonable to reject my conclusion. Which is, of course, wholly unreasonable of you. But then unreasonable people abound here, do they not? This is a world full to the rafters with them. It's almost as if it was a place God was putting them!

To paraphrase Empodocles and Yeats, there's an oracle of Reason, an ordinance of the God, eternal and bound by broath oaths, that says when a soul foreswears Reason to follow its own path, it must wander, for thrice ten thousand seasons, away from the abodes of the blessed, and be born again in a multitude of mortal clothes. The air will drive it into the sea, the sea will spew it onto the dry earth, the earth will hurl it into the blazing beams of the sun, the sun will fling it back into the eddies of the air. Each will pass it to the other, but all will reject it. We are such exiles, wanderers from the God and the Good. And though we are fated to spend lifetimes searching through these hollow and hilly lands, the day will come when we'll find our way back to the orchard and the stream of forgetfulness where it all began, and then we can wander once more in its long dappled grass and pluck, till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.

And thus that, it seems to me, is the best and most plausible answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" The purpose of your being here is threefold. A) it is to protect innocent others from you. B) it is to give you your just deserts. C) it is to rehabilitate you.

I have issues with B. The universe/god/one-true-mind is not revenge-based.

it's God, not the universe (a universe doesn't have plans). And it's retribution, rather than revenge.
You have provided no argument. Why would God harm us unless for retribution? Any other good goal could have been achieved without the harm (he's omnipotent). And if he just likes harming us for it's own sake, that's incompatible with being good. Retribution is the only plausible explanation.

:strong: Nice answer!

"Gift purpose
On certain occasions — birthdays, anniversaries, dinner parties, the end of the year — it's customary. Underlying that custom is an important purpose: appreciation. We give people gifts to show them that we are grateful for them and value the role they play in our lives."

Our purpose comes from that which we are grateful for.

Er, no it doesn't. What does that even mean? Sounds like something a creep would say to impress someone in a bar. No argument. No engagement with the argument I made. My b/s meter says 'pure'.

really not.
No question was posed. I did not ask for speculation on the meaning of life, but offered reasons for thinking it has a purpose, namely retribution, protection and reform. But rather than engage with that case proof180 expressed contempt for the very project of trying to find life's meaning and then proceeded to list a load of cereal packet proposals. But you think it's an arm pumpingly great answer. Hmm.

God doesn't harm us, we harm ourselves.

You're just pronouncing. Why do you think you know it all already? Have the humility to provide evidence.

A) it is harmful to put people in an environment in which there are dangerous people and diseases and such like. If a parent put their child in a lion pit you wouldn't exonerate the parent on the grounds that carnage was due to the lions.
B) the world is not our creation. We are placed in it with scant knowledge of it. And we are born helpless. These things were God's doing. So either he's a total git - which by definition he is not - or these things are good. How could they be good? Well if they are our just deserts. Therefore they are.

So from your initial scenario, would a prisoner would be in jail^2?

yes. There are prisons within prisons, are there not? We are all in prison, but some are in human-made prisons in the God-made prison.

Will God consider letting us out for good behavior?

Presumably. We do, don't we? That is, we recognize the justice of releasing someone after they have done their time - that is, after they have received their just deserts - provided they no longer pose a risk.

So then what is death in relation to the chains of existence? And if God lets us out on good behavior (presumably our waking hours), do we experience "heaven" on the new earth as we usher in God's true vision for the world? What is death?