> > What do you mean by "purpose" then? You seem to be both asking for an objective "meaning of life" kind of thing while at the same time saying that subjective definitions are okay.
> >
>
> Um. The only answer to this is Yes. Sorry

I'm not trying to be rude, but I didn't exactly ask a question. What are you saying yes to?

> Instead I say this: Why not die today? If there is no purpose, then what is it that keeps you going? Besides God.

I don't believe in a god, so that's not what keeps me going. You seem to believe that if my life has no purpose, I shouldn't bother with it. Here's why I don't die: because I enjoy my life, regardless of the fact that I don't believe there is any real meaning to it. The pleasure and happiness I experience, subjective though it may be, seems very real and rewarding to me. Since death would deny me this, I choose to continue with my existence.

I don't particularly believe in free will in the normal sense, either, but the illusion is good enough that I don't let it get me down. I believe that I'm ultimately no more special than any other collection of matter/energy in the universe -- the tree and I are made of the same stuff, anyway. This thought bothered me until I got used to it and realized that I can still enjoy life even knowing this.

> And what if your purpose is to lose? For your own reasons? Or to do something silly, make people laugh, like swim in a circle. You have gone against the rules set up by the creators of the contest. Do those purposes not count?

Not count? Okay, I think I see the problem here (and I'm ignoring the analogies since I'm going to talk about why we're not communicating well). You are trying to shoehorn value judgements about purposes into a universe devoid of objective values. This is a very serious philosophical problem that is largely unresolvable.

In the universe I believe exists, nothing is inherently better than anything else. There are just a bunch of particles and bits of energy that interact in interesting (errr, value judgement) ways. There is no purpose to anything. ALL PURPOSES ARE ASSIGNED BY HUMANS. This is the important point. I don't believe in any objective purpose. In this sense, all purposes count equally; i.e. they don't "count" at all since the whole concept of "counting" is non-existent.

Does this make sense? What is the purpose of a rock? It simply is. So too are humans.

Humans are different from rocks in that humans are capable of thought, which means that a human can say, "The purpose of my life is to eat Twinkies." Does this mean that this person's purpose is to eat Twinkies? Not really. To that person, it may *seem* that way, but to an objective observer the person is still as purposeless as the rock.

Why is this? Because purpose presupposes that a thing was *created* for that purpose. Or that a human is *using* that object for a purpose. In either case, some sort of objective consciousness is required to assign the objects purpose. But things that simply exist do not have purposes, objectively speaking.

> Yes.
> And no.
> I don't want to know what the ultimate purpose of life is. I want to know what other people think the purpose of life is. That is, I think, what people are not understanding. I am not saying there is a purpose, or there is not one. I am just asking. Again, a bad way to win, but a very Socratic way.

I don't know what you mean when you talk about winning.

If you're truly interested in knowing what people think the purpose of life is, why did you ask religion to stay out of the discussion? The vast majority of the world's people use religion to find deeper meaning in life. If you are simply interested in what people think, you are excluding 90 percent or more of the world from answering your question. And, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but if you ask non-religious people what life's purpose is, probably the majority will say, "Uh, there isn't one."

I still think what you mean to ask is, "What gives us fulfillment in life?" or "How do we live the good life?" as then everyone can answer it.

> No. I don't want to know what is really the purpose of life again. You suppose that I think we can find an answer by arguing. That is not the case. I, myself, have my answer which makes me comfortable. It is very unlikely that you can change my answer, because I am set in my ways. So asking you for the answer when I will not take your answer would not be helpful to me(unless I like hurting you and proving you wrong, which I don't).

Huh? Melanie, I assure you that proving me wrong would not hurt me. Quite the opposite -- I strongly encourage you to point out any flaws in my logic! One of the highest aims of logic and philosophy is to encourage people to be objective about their ideas and to give us a way to recognize our own faulty reasoning and correct it.

The problem you're going to run into, though, is that it's logically impossible to prove me wrong about what the purpose of life is if I insist there is no purpose. Relativism is logically consistent and cannot be disproven (since relativists can deny the inherent truthfulness of the assumptions logic makes it's hard to use logic against). I'm not a relativist, usually, but since I'm denying any objective sort of purpose to life I might as well be for this discussion.

> Again, I know what the religious viewpoint is for the most point, or I have had enough people tell me that point to have a general understanding of its various forms. And I am thinking more and more I shouldn't have said religious at all, but should have simply said, "Don't post that this is not worth arguing about because there is one answer and then not explain". Because religion is not the only thing I don't want people to talk about. That also kind of shows my disregard for religion(saying that people will say "God is the purpose. Wow. That was easy, let's go get some ice cream now", and then tell everyone else that their opinion is obviously wrong, because God is ultimate, so therefore there is no other question but "What is God?"). Of course, I also included the bit about a side thread in case there are people who do believe that they have a new, fresh perspective on how God gives life purpose, and who don't want to just end the debate.

I can understand where you're coming from, but there are *definitely* religious interpretations you haven't heard. You seem to equate religion with the idea of a supreme god; Buddhism is a religion and most of its sects don't even believe in a god. There are also many interesting Christian viewpoints about the purpose of life you probably haven't heard either. I understand that you want people to provide you with new insight, but you should also consider that religious people are probably going to be turned off by the way you worded that request.

> > Perhaps what you should ask is this: "What sorts of things should we do so that we are happiest? How can we maximize our own personal satisfaction and fulfilment?" This is the question tackled by so much philosophy (how to lead the "good life" was a popular subject among the Greeks).
> >
>
> Yes. All of those things too. I want to know the answers for all of those questions. Do people have ideas? This is already fun.

I, also, would like to know the answers.

Stephen