What IS really amazing about life?

[Justforfun000]

I've been trying to formulate a way of seeing how close an atheist well educated in science and critical thinking can come towards a belief in something meaningful in life.

This is difficult to frame, but let me try...What things about life itself are truly incredible in and of them self? I mean I've heard the arguments about why the "grand designer" theory isn't necessary or even particularly compelling to suggest a God, and the origins of life can be explained and statistics show it's really not so impossible to imagine enough random mutations becoming organic and procreational.

So what parts of life itself could someone like Mike say "Well even though there probably IS no God, the mystery of how we became living, breathing creatures with consciousness , the WHY of our living and ability to create an unending chain of future living creatures is amazing because:..."

Do you see what I'm getting at? Are there any truly fascinating things about the mystery of life that even an atheist could wax philosophical about and wonder if there really could be a purpose to existence and therefore a possibility of continuing existence after death in some form?

I guess my head finds it so hard to wrap around the concept that I could have been born from "nothing" so to speak, at least in the sense of I wasn't PURPOSEFULLY cloned, structured like a robot, but created by two little cluster of cells and brought into being. I mean obviously one can CHOOSE to procreate, but it's really an unconscious decision made by your bodies with no mental help needed.

So as a now living being, I can think, see, experience and remember, etc. Yet all of this in the most pessimistic sense could be seen as completely purposeless, finite and destined to end in me just passing back out of consciousness with no future part in living or existing whatsoever. When I think of such a thing, I honestly wonder why it's even worth being born? A taste of existence that promises nothing but annihilation as a reward?

God I was so much happier when I was deluded by spiritual beliefs.

Are any of you atheists, agnostics, or even deists I suppose, able to reconcile science and nature with any hope left outstanding towards the possibility of us having a 'soul'?

[Broomstick]

I think one of the amazing things about life is that, on a local level, it reverses entropy by organizing matter and making it more complex without intelligent or conscious intervention.

(Well, OK, I'm not an atheist but we won't get into my religious/spiritual beliefs, m'kay? I'm arguing as if the atheist viewpoint.)

There's a bunch of other stuff that I find amazing about life, such as forming such complex chemicals as it does at room temperature with, really, a small sub-set of chemical elements. And that whole "store the information to generate a living creature in a DNA molecule" really is pretty amazing, that's a LOT of information to store and in such a tiny format. Life can also be surprisingly persistent, particularly the forms that create seeds or spores.

[Junghalli]

The thought of a self-replicating glob of oil and proteins eventually developing into us by unconscious emergent processes and a lot of time is pretty damn mindblowing if you think about it.

Another one is if evolution had gone a little differently man wouldn't exist at all. We really are quite fortunate to exist at all IMO.

You're right: true death is a pretty depressing thing to contemplate. Man invented religion in no small part because it was so depressing he couldn't face it. Religion is man's attempt at putting his fingers in his ears in the face of the awful truth that his existence will end and screaming "No! It can't be true! I won't believe it!" It may be comforting but doesn't that sound a bit ... childish?

[Rye]

Look at the stars. Think about the distances involved; some of that light is older than our planet and sun. Try to think how long that light has taken to reach your retina and the vast sequence of events and coincidences within those distant stars and those in our local space and on our planet that has come to fruition in that exact moment. Then try to realise that every moment is just like that one.

Think about your own awareness, how you now know you are a product of little active parts of the universe that have formed their own consciousness through evolution, from originating molecules born from fusion in the stars, and parts of you are made from the atoms created by supernovae.

Watch programs like the BBC's "planet earth" and pretty much any animal documentary with David Attenborough in. The joys in life can be found there, smiling when you see a reptile or frog waving at his neighbours to communicate whatever little gecko points of view he has.

At the other end of the spectrum, watch a layman documentary on the double slit experiment and other quantum weirdness. Be completely bewildered by someone pointing out that existence itself isn't certain on such scales. If you want mystery, beauty and an incredible attachment to something ancient, look at the world, rocks and life all around you. That connection is both directly observable and much more real and mysterious than a tawdry belief in a book of mythology, which is more about putting man-like characters on all the things we don't understand.

"Purpose" is a value judgement. Values are assigned by human beings, it's an abstraction of cause and effect. We consequentially make all our own value judgements on what means most to us, our relationships with other people and the world. This is no less true with religious people, it's just that religious people tend to be masochists that require an existing system to apply their values for them. The universe itself is beyond purpose, it's much older than intention and desire.

Souls do not exist, you are a product of your constituent parts. Your constituent parts were all in other things before you, however, as the circle of life was put in the Lion King. If you have anything that can be called an afterlife, it's in the memories of those around you and in the parts of you that are reconsumed by the environment, consider it a form of reincarnation.

[Paolo]

I think one of the amazing things about life is that, on a local level, it reverses entropy by organizing matter and making it more complex without intelligent or conscious intervention.

Depends on how you choose your boundaries. A gravitationally bound system under collapse will also experience a decrease of entropy. Of course this means that the entropy of something it interacts with goes up (i.e., mass-energy that radiates into the surrounding environment) to preserve the 2nd law. Same thing with life, as you could plainly see in any alley in Times Square twenty years ago.

[Justforfun000]

And that whole "store the information to generate a living creature in a DNA molecule" really is pretty amazing, that's a LOT of information to store and in such a tiny format. Life can also be surprisingly persistent, particularly the forms that create seeds or spores.

I really find this amazing myself. If it was just these amazing capabilities that were paramount to our existence, they would seem miraculous enough to warrant 'divine' help, but I guess what I'm realizing is that the more intelligent and educated you become, the more you see how much is actually out there that is incredible. The size of the universe, as someone else said, the light reaching your retinas after an unimaginable amount of time passing, the sheer number of animals and fauna that has sprung up on the globe, under the sea...

Still it is this amazing life quality that still keeps me hoping that there might be some evidence of the 'soul' so to speak. But of course it begs the question....wouldn't then EVERY animal and plant have to have the same thing? They all have some degree of consciousness, no?

Funny, I was just listening to the radio show on Richard Dawkins and he was addressing this basic question in detail. It wasn't very reassuring. *sigh*. As he freely admits, we do NOT understand consciousness at all, but he still sees absolutely no reason to believe that it suggests anything permanent in relation to our existence.

Very depressing. I wish so much I could at least have some kind of near-death experience that convinced me otherwise. I may be completely wrong and simply fooled by a brain malfunction, but still....at this stage of the game I think I'd be so much happier if I believed it.

[Broomstick]

I think one of the amazing things about life is that, on a local level, it reverses entropy by organizing matter and making it more complex without intelligent or conscious intervention.

Depends on how you choose your boundaries. A gravitationally bound system under collapse will also experience a decrease of entropy.

I find that pretty amazing, too.

I fail to see how finding either one of those phenomena amazing would make the other less so.

Actually, I find the universe as a whole to be sort of neato and amazing. There's just so much mind-blowing stuff out there....

[Darth Ruinus]

If I remember that video I saw in physio class, then think back on your most cherised dreams, your most highest goals and your most deepest fears. Every tear you have ever shed, every smile you have ever smiled. All of it is the product just some chemicals in your brain and some electro-chemical signals. The same chemicals which can be found in most foods, and which all occured through random mutation.

[Darth Ruinus]

Still it is this amazing life quality that still keeps me hoping that there might be some evidence of the 'soul' so to speak.

Why, you got a brain and consciouness and all the chemicals required for thought and emotion, you dont need no pesky "soul."

Besides, it seems pesky dieties keep trying to steal it all the time.

[Justforfun000]

Besides, it seems pesky dieties keep trying to steal it all the time. Smile

That was comic gold actually.

Yes, but without a soul idea, the idea of immortality is REALLY remote....

[Justforfun000]

...sorry, I couldn't resist. Personally, what I think is amazing about life is exactly that there is nothing more to it. We're just a bag of chemical reactions, no different than anything else in the world. I think that's really cool.

cool?

I can think of many adjectives to describe how that makes me feel, and somehow "cool" is nowhere near them....In a way I envy you.

[Darth Ruinus]

Yes, but without a soul idea, the idea of immortality is REALLY remote....

And with a soul its somehow realistic?

[ray245]

The thought of a self-replicating glob of oil and proteins eventually developing into us by unconscious emergent processes and a lot of time is pretty damn mindblowing if you think about it.

Another one is if evolution had gone a little differently man wouldn't exist at all. We really are quite fortunate to exist at all IMO.

You're right: true death is a pretty depressing thing to contemplate. Man invented religion in no small part because it was so depressing he couldn't face it. Religion is man's attempt at putting his fingers in his ears in the face of the awful truth that his existence will end and screaming "No! It can't be true! I won't believe it!" It may be comforting but doesn't that sound a bit ... childish?

It keep wondering if our religion is part of our evolutionary package in a sense.

Just to allow us have a easier time in accepting death.

[Darth Ruinus]

The thought of a self-replicating glob of oil and proteins eventually developing into us by unconscious emergent processes and a lot of time is pretty damn mindblowing if you think about it.

Another one is if evolution had gone a little differently man wouldn't exist at all. We really are quite fortunate to exist at all IMO.

You're right: true death is a pretty depressing thing to contemplate. Man invented religion in no small part because it was so depressing he couldn't face it. Religion is man's attempt at putting his fingers in his ears in the face of the awful truth that his existence will end and screaming "No! It can't be true! I won't believe it!" It may be comforting but doesn't that sound a bit ... childish?

It keep wondering if our religion is part of our evolutionary package in a sense.

Just to allow us have a easier time in accepting death.

I think like all things, certain chemicals in our brain give us a wierd funny feeling, just like hallucinogenics (sp?) do, and they may be the reason we have religion and shit.

Of course, early man was pretty stupid anyways, so he may have used that to explain things he didnt understand.

Similar to "a wizard did it"

[ray245]

Well...I keep thinking that the religous founders could be the liberals in their time. By trying to explain stuff as compared to the conservative, who refused to let anyone explain anything at all...

[Patrick Degan]

Consider that we walking bags of water and chemicals have the legacy of about 14 billion years of cosmic evolution behind us. That you and everyone else who has ever lived is a product of a two billion year process of molecular activity and life. That we arose to the point of being able to fashion language, comprehend existence, devise formulas, compose sonnets, design aqueducts, bridges, spacecraft and nuclear reactors and have the potential as a species for immortality if we make it off this rock. That every life lived, including yours, can contribute it's infinitesimal part toward making that immortality possible.

If I die tomorrow, I can die knowing I've made that contribution. It will be up to all those who come after me to realise that potential. Whether after death there will be non-existence or some form of afterlife I cannot know. But I figure I'll find out one way or the other when I get there. And if the former, well, that's a problem that's not going to bother me all that much.

[FSTargetDrone]

I guess my head finds it so hard to wrap around the concept that I could have been born from "nothing" so to speak, at least in the sense of I wasn't PURPOSEFULLY cloned, structured like a robot,

If that's hard to comprehend, just think about how the Universe itself is without purpose in the sense that there is no plan for its formation or need for it to be. It simply is.

So as a now living being, I can think, see, experience and remember, etc. Yet all of this in the most pessimistic sense could be seen as completely purposeless, finite and destined to end in me just passing back out of consciousness with no future part in living or existing whatsoever. When I think of such a thing, I honestly wonder why it's even worth being born? A taste of existence that promises nothing but annihilation as a reward?

One might say humans are cursed by the awareness of their own eventual death. But that would imply someone to do the "cursing."

I am an atheist and don't dwell on the fact that I will eventually cease to be. If I started to think about it, I might become glum to say the least, but there is nothing I can do about it, so I don't live my life thinking about its end.

There is a quote attributed to Mark Twain that sums it up rather well:

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

God I was so much happier when I was deluded by spiritual beliefs.

Are any of you atheists, agnostics, or even deists I suppose, able to reconcile science and nature with any hope left outstanding towards the possibility of us having a 'soul'?

I was no happier when I was a believer, but then again I was never much of a believer.

[Oskuro]

When I think of such a thing, I honestly wonder why it's even worth being born? A taste of existence that promises nothing but annihilation as a reward?

That's what leaving a legacy is for. Take the following quote for example:

Mark Twain:

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

He's been dead for almost a century now, and we still remember him. Even the most anonymous human being helps shape our world in one way or the other. If you really want to reconcile a scientific worldview with spirituality, try looking at the bigger picture, instead of focusing on your own mortality.

The marvels of nature are, by all means, impressive, but the fact that our civilization still exists despite our general free-willed egocentrism, is no small feat at all.

Anyway, if you get the "mortality blues", just think "Carpe Diem", and enjoy yourself. I feel the only ones who actually fear death, are those who did not live their lives.

[CaptJodan]

What IS really amazing about life?

I can sympathize with your struggle. Though I have no belief in a soul anymore, there's always that "Then what the hell's the point?" argument, and I admit to having struggled with it myself from time to time. It's a bit easier to dismiss now when I'm relatively young then I imagine it'll be when I'm older, but it still comes up. You want there to be something of yourself, tangible, that survives not just a few hundred years, but for the rest of time, possibly after the stars themselves turn dark and the universe cools.

But if you think about it, what would you have your soul do? Your wish for a soul not only begs the question of other plants and animals having a soul, but more importantly, what would be the point of one?

Long before I deconverted, I had already begun to think in terms of Mark Twain's quote there, though I hadn't heard it yet. I began to realize that I have no memories, no thoughts, no experiences even going back to the womb, let alone before that. I've been on medical drugs that allowed a person to be awake and (relatively) alert, but would have no memory of what happened during a specific period of time. If I can't be linked back to anything before conception (no thoughts, no memories, no "being"), and if my experiences and memories can be so easily manipulated by a simple drug, then what can I possibly gain in death?

Put another way, the "soul" has always been described, at least to me, as being the core "you"...what and who you really are, or whatnaught. Those traits can be and have been easily manipulated by drugs, or by brain damage, throughout the centuries. Actually, the concept of "you" changes just with living. I'm not the same person I was when I was 10, and my values have changed fairly dramatically. What would you have your soul be, then? The person you were at 8? The person you were at 18, or 80? If we're stuck with who we were when we died, then patients with Alzheimer's or dementia will have an unfair shake, indeed (it's always interesting to see the religious squirm around Alzheimer's. It's such a horrific disease that is a living embodiment of the self-destruction of self). Assuming our souls existed prior to birth would our lack of any relation to them then make them existence without continuity? I daresay that's not much better than nonexistence.

Eh, I'm no better at expressing myself than you are, and there are people on this board far smarter about both sides of the issue than I. Still, your desire (and on some rare days when I'm feeling depressed, mine) is an immortality after death, the fear of non-existence. I'd say the best way to alleviate your depression is to make your mark on the world now, while you're still alive. Whether a soul exists or not, there's nothing you can do about it. You can't wish your soul into existence if you wanted one but they don't exist, and you can't wish it away if it does. But by leaving your mark through family, friends, maybe a particularly memorable (and hopefully positive) deed, you ensure a lot longer life beyond physical death.

Afterthought: I'll admit, after getting rid of the idea that the Bible was a literal truth, and seeing the logic of a lack of a designer, I cannot help but be more amazed at our universe. We often times think very highly of our species, being the dominate species of this planet, but we are so infinitesimally small compared to the rest of the vast and wondrous universe. After realizing this, I began to see how self-centered it was to believe that the universe somehow owed us something beyond death.

[FSTargetDrone]

I can sympathize with your struggle. Though I have no belief in a soul anymore, there's always that "Then what the hell's the point?" argument, and I admit to having struggled with it myself from time to time.

I find it interesting how believers can't imagine or see that there is no "point" to life. They cannot fathom that the totality of the universe is, well, pointless. Of course, they believe in a Creator of some sort, so it naturally follows that the Creator must have created this Creation for a Purpose, (if no other reason that his/her/its/whatever's own amusement).

We may give our own lives "purpose," of course, but the world and the universe around it isn't here for us, or for its own sake, or for anything. That's never bothered me in the slightest.

[SCRawl]

Frankly, if I were a believer, I'd have a harder time with the aspect of life itself. I mean, really, if we're destined for immortality in heaven, why should we be subjected to a few decades in this mortal coil? What is it about life that makes it worth holding back the bliss of the hereafter, if it's supposed to be so great? I guess they don't call it the "vale of tears" for nothing.

[Darth Wong]

I think one of the amazing things about life is that, on a local level, it reverses entropy by organizing matter and making it more complex without intelligent or conscious intervention.

Umm, no. That is incorrect on two levels:

1) Increasing structural complexity is not necessarily an entropy decrease. A complex structure, especially a living one, is going to contain much more entropy than a simple dead one.

2) A local entropy decrease, even if it were occurring, would not be a reversal of entropy; it would be a shedding of it.

[FSTargetDrone]

Frankly, if I were a believer, I'd have a harder time with the aspect of life itself. I mean, really, if we're destined for immortality in heaven, why should we be subjected to a few decades in this mortal coil? What is it about life that makes it worth holding back the bliss of the hereafter, if it's supposed to be so great? I guess they don't call it the "vale of tears" for nothing.

Life is a test.

Seriously, I have a bigger problem with the idea of a god that permits evil done in its name. It's more comforting, in a way, to know that all that is right and all that is wrong with the world is a product of the humans who live here, not the whims of some distant god.

[CaptJodan]

I find it interesting how believers can't imagine or see that there is no "point" to life.

While I think there are many explanations for this, one of the key reasons might be that need for destined greatness. We are the most powerful, most influential, most intelligent species on the planet. And yet with all that power, we're still subjected to that final fate. The sense of unfairness and powerlessness one gets if some ill befalls them, like if someone murders a family member, is difficult for many people to come to terms with. They can't accept the randomness of events. They want it to mean something, they want to know that that ill that befell them didn't just happen because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that there was a purpose, and that they aren't really gone forever.

It also is a strong feeling that resides in socio-economically poor areas. They look around and say "This can't be all there is to life, this sucks". Unfortunately, there's a book and group of people around that say all you have to do to improve your lot in the next life is to believe in God and his son (and most of the rest of what we say), and you won't have to go through all that work hard work to improve your position in this life. The idea that God has a plan for you personally is one of the first lines someone trying to convert you will use. You are special. You are great. You are chosen. An appeal to ego.

Little Tirade: Actually, it brings up something I was reminded of a couple of days ago when Mike put up Rebecca's deconversion story. I find it perplexing that you often find religious people support death penalty sentences more than you find your average atheist in support of them. I would think it would be reversed, given that, as Rebecca wrote, murder seems even more heinous without a god to dispatch final justice or an afterlife where the victim will live in peace.

I've gone through those kinds of scenarios in my head, and I can't honestly say that I'd respond with life in prison being sufficient if it were my family member or someone I cared about. That sense of loss is so much more final.

[CaptJodan]

Seriously, I have a bigger problem with the idea of a god that permits evil done in its name. It's more comforting, in a way, to know that all that is right and all that is wrong with the world is a product of the humans who live here, not the whims of some distant god.

Yes, I take great comfort in that as well.