From: "s3raph...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2015 4:27 AM Subject: Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Ramayan in Human Physiology-with video links "Meaning" is a human invention, and one that as far as I can tell has no relationship to reality on any level or in any universe.
If meaning is just a human invention (and not something handed down from a higher power) then what difference does that make to the disillusioning effect of the Many Worlds Theory? If all possible worlds exist then whatever you freely choose as a path to give your life its own personal value and meaning - becoming a humanitarian, producing beautiful works of art, combatting injustice, searching for truth via science and philosophy, etc - is invalidated in the other possible worlds. The Many Worlds Theory is nihilism magnified to infinity. Every combination of particles exists somewhere - values don't come into the equations. I don't understand your point. NOTHING is "invalidated" by the Many Worlds Theory because these "other worlds" are pure theory. The only world that ever exists *even if that theory were true* is the world you live in right here, right now -- one's sense of self. There is no external POV from which to view all these different worlds from the outside, simultaneously, so at every point in time everyone is still what they are now -- a self living in the only world they know. Although you (Barry) are happy to dispense with any overarching meaning to life, the apparent senselessness of life clearly leads to an existential crisis for many others. Name one. Seriously. THAT has been my whole point throughout this mini-discussion. I don't think that there are more than a handful of people in any world so weird and so stuck in their heads that they'd be plunged into "an existential crisis" over a silly thing like science claiming that their lives have no meaning. Are those searching for direction in life just weaklings? Perhaps they intuit that something vital has been ignored by reductive science. But *where* and *how* are they "searching for direction in life?" Seems to me that what you are describing is people who have decided to settle for what someone else tells them is the "meaning of life." Now one big advantage of seeing life as lacking any inherent meaning is that our existence can then be viewed as a game. Now we like games. Games can be fun. So our lives can be lived out in a playful spirit. (And I've nothing against fun and games!) But when we come face to face with the horrors of our fellow humans playing the game by an alien code - kidnapping women to be sold into sex slavery, burning POWs alive, committing genocide - it becomes tricky to simply regard those others as doing nothing more than playing the Game of Life by a different set of rules. I get it. You want to reserve the right to be judgmental, and declare that some things are Good and other things are Evil. Whatever floats yer boat. :-) You seem to be ignoring the obvious benefit that life having no absolute meaning offers. That is, that you can make up your OWN "meaning," and then live your life that way. That's IMO what *everyone* does. Non-believers are just more honest about it. You also seem to have this internal definition of atheists as nihilists with no values. Most of the real atheists I've met have much higher ethical values than the "believers" I've met. They know that the only thing enforcing their sense of ethics is themselves, not some made-up God, so they never cheat -- they practice "honest ethics." Whereas Christians (for example) think they can get away with almost anything and then get forgiven for it on their deathbeds, so they're some of the most unethical people I've ever met. Thanks for holding up your end of all of this. I think what it comes down to is that you are more interested in theories about life than I am. I find the abstract and the theoretical pretty much a waste of time, and try to focus on living life, here and now, and doing fairly well at it. Dealing with some imaginary scenario like "OMG...science has determined that life has no meaning...should I panic or not?" is so silly as to not be worth my time pondering it. And I'd be willing to bet that more sentient beings are in my camp (pragmatic here and now-ism) than in yours (imaginary theoreticalism).
