.....out of Chaos comes Purpose?

robingood · Mar 19, 2011

Hey everyone. This is my first post in something other than the newbie forum but it is something i wanted to share.

I was watching a show about the creation of the earth on discovery channel and had one of those moments.

The dust and gas and and huge chunks of rock crashing into each other, eventually forming the newborn molten earth. The 4 billion year history, the atmosphere moving from completely toxic, to livable, and back again. A series of massive molten eruptions, the asteroid strike which the mammals survived and killed off the dinosaurs.

At one point the entire planet was a great ball of ice.

I finished watching the program and walked outside to have a smoke. I looked around at the neighborhood, and marveled. I mean no offense to anyone but god is a worm in the hearts of man. I am an atheist, but it is a constant battle-- one without end.

When i look around at the world through the eyes of a believer, what i see is complete and utter crap. Having watched this program i looked around with new eyes. We are born of utter chaos. Without god i looked around and was stunned by what i saw around me.

This life is completely and utterly amazing.

Anyway, to the point. We wind up in the realm of belief when we ask the questions that plague us as people. Why am i here? What is the purpose? Inevitably one winds up with the concept of god.

But i look at myself, or life in general, and i cannot deny that there is a purpose. In the most basic sense, for life itself, it is to propagate. I will not go into detail about my own purpose, but i believe it has been there throughout my life.

My question is rather simple. On a personal level, obviously you can have a purpose. In my mind it need not be in the hands of god.

On the other hand the simple desire to propagate oneself, though a great deal of fun, leaves me feeling rather empty.

....out of Chaos comes Purpose?

Any comments would be welcome.

zornhau · Mar 21, 2011

Humans seemed wired to point their empathy onto other things and treat them as if they have personality. Makes sense when hunting, or predicting the "mood" of the weather. (From there is a short step to imagining some kind of relationship maintained by gifts (sacrifice) and speaking the shared language (prayer).)

I think that's what you're experiencing, which is an interesting and fascinating experience in its own right.

robingood · Mar 21, 2011

Yeah... it is very hard to get away from. In writer-speak it is simply personification.
We also thought our planet was the center of the universe. I think that simply comes from the fact that we are, in fact, the center of our own universe.

Once again, projection and personification.

I do not know if i explained this well, but if you look around at everything having sprung from chaos and chance? That is truly amazing.

God, much like personification and projection, is pervasive in the human condition.

I think the issue of purpose is something one must answer on their own.

Thanks for your reply.

zornhau · Mar 22, 2011

One thing to bear in mind regarding the chaos>>>order thing is that you are only able to observe this because it happened - a sort of cosmic survivor bias is at work.

I think you're very right about a tendency to religion being wired into the human condition. Sometimes I'll stand somewhere ancient - e.g. Hadrian's Wall - and have a glimpse of the whole of History. Similar sense of wonder, I think.

It's just this sort of thing the theists say we can't experience - because we don't see god's hand in the universe, somehow it is emotionall dead to us. I think this exchange shows otherwise.

Maxx · Mar 22, 2011

robingood said:
Yeah... it is very hard to get away from. In writer-speak it is simply personification.

I think one of the benefits of being an atheist is that (somewhat paradoxically) you get to experience the pure presence of many
supernatural beings. I don't see why one needs to get away from
that friendly or familarily terrified feeling one gets when one encounters something awesome that bespeaks a world of dangerous or helpful, monstrous or wonderful presences. As an atheist you get to have these feelings with no editing or altering, just as they really flow from a
place or a change in the wind.
You can have your sense of a collision with the strangely familiar otherness of the cosmos just as it is: something about yourself that does a good job of reading a bit too much into the world.

robingood · Mar 23, 2011

Maxx said:
I think one of the benefits of being an atheist is that (somewhat paradoxically) you get to experience the pure presence of many
supernatural beings.

I truly do not want to be seen as someone who sits on the fence. One of my major issues with the concept of God, it that i see a thief. What we have is stolen from us, claimed by an entity that claimed something that is not true.

My position on the fence? The spiritual affects us throughout life. You are right Maxx. Atheists can have clear view.

To respond to Zornhau i feel as if my natural wonder and awe was stolen from me. It is what i found watching that program about the formation of the earth.

The world can be magical and spiritual without God.

zornhau · Mar 24, 2011

robingood said:
I truly do not want to be seen as someone who sits on the fence. One of my major issues with the concept of God, it that i see a thief. What we have is stolen from us, claimed by an entity that claimed something that is not true.

My position on the fence? The spiritual affects us throughout life. You are right Maxx. Atheists can have clear view.

To respond to Zornhau i feel as if my natural wonder and awe was stolen from me. It is what i found watching that program about the formation of the earth.

The world can be magical and spiritual without God.

Yes. When I stand in a room full of people doing 500-year-old martial arts techniques, I do not need a god to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Atheists look the universe in the eye, and it is good.

Maxx · Mar 24, 2011

robingood said:
The world can be magical and spiritual without God.

Quite true. You can elaborate the perception, but the essence remains: the idea of a single legitimate cosmic entity puts a real damper on perceiving the magical when it happens. One should not have to
second-guess the legitimacy of one's experience of the various othernesses of the world.

Teinz · Apr 18, 2011

robingood said:
Having watched this program i looked around with new eyes. We are born of utter chaos. Without god i looked around and was stunned by what i saw around me.

This life is completely and utterly amazing.

Religion has failed to matter for you, whereas science led you straight to a mystical emotion that pierced your conciousness with unbelievable clarity. Oh, the wonders of this... place.

You have answered your question for yourself, but you won't speak of it. You won't share your own perceived purpose, yet you ask us about ours.

Go forth and multiply? Nice yeah, but hardly the endstation for human endeavours. That's what every lowly creature does on this earth. And what if your gay?

Is existence without any purpose useless? That sounds a lot like Agent Smith. Before you know it, the purpose of life is to end.

The mystics of old used to speak about the Gods until they had said everything there was to say. But the real purpose of this exercise was to reach the limits of what was possible to be known, of what they could grasp through language. Then they could say: "The Gods are neither this, nor that", and this would lead them to a strange silence. And in this silence they would experience the same emotion you had after having seen the Disco program and they would be content.

Diana Hignutt · Apr 18, 2011

Google "Implicate Order" and get back to us.

Sarpedon · Apr 18, 2011

One thing I've been thinking of lately is that it may be a good idea to stop thinking of ourselves in religious terms. Stop using them. Discard them.

Why even talk about having a purpose, or not having a purpose? The concept of life having a purpose is a religious one. Not needed.

Also this seemingly mystical personification of Chaos. Not needed. Chaos is not a thing. It is a description of the appearance of a state of things. (<-deliberately murky statement) Nothing more. Don't give it more weight than it deserves.

Be.

veinglory · Apr 18, 2011

I agree. Why us there a need for purpose. Purpose is a task set by an outside power. I don't feel the need for any purpose other than one I might choose for myself.

Dommo · May 8, 2011

Sorry to dredge up a somewhat old topic, but I think one of the best things I studied while in school was thermodynamics (I'm a mechanical engineer). The reason I say this, is that it's like getting a chance to read a eulogy for the universe.

Basically, to understand how an air-conditioner works, you must understand and accept that the universe is doomed succumb to entropy (e.g. chaos). It's kind of a big mental leap, and it can cause a lot of discomfort for some people who are pretty spiritual. I ran into one person who actually had to talk to his pastor, because what we were studying caused a "Crisis of Faith". This was because what we learned basically stated that the universe as he perceived it, was not something that was built to last (in other words, he saw it as god including a fundamental flaw in the big scheme of things).

In any event, the universe has no purpose, and order has, and always will, be slowly succumbing to the forces of entropy. But if there's any consolation, I'd say that having an understanding of the nature of the universe, and where we stand within it, brings me a lot of wonder and happiness. We're infinitesimally insignificant, but by a fluke of nature we're around and can actually appreciate the universe and reality for what it is. We're just chunks of matter left over from the deaths of numerous stars, that just so happened to coagulate in a place where it eventually became aware of itself. In the far, far, future, when the stars die out, and the universe begins to die as entropy takes over, we'll still be here, just like we were here when the universe was born.

.....out of Chaos comes Purpose?

robingood

zornhau

Swordsman

robingood

zornhau

Swordsman

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here

robingood

zornhau

Swordsman

Maxx

Got the hang of it, here

Teinz

Back at it again.

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired

Sarpedon

veinglory

volitare nequeo

Dommo

On Mac's double secret probation.