Like I said, a third party that possibly could sustain the species for an indefinite amount of time.. well then, that would solves the problem of the species going extinct and making all prior actions of that species insignificant.

So indefiniteness is the source of significance? But wait, we're dead, so I'm assuming you're talking about some magical part of us that goes on, like a soul? What good would it be to live forever in soul form? Presumably you can't touch anything, you're just floating, and material accomplishments probably wouldn't mean anything since you're in a different realm entirely. So ... well, how does shifting to another universe make your brief stint as a material creature more significant?

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So indefiniteness is the source of significance? But wait, we're dead, so I'm assuming you're talking about some magical part of us that goes on, like a soul? What good would it be to live forever in soul form? Presumably you can't touch anything, you're just floating, and material accomplishments probably wouldn't mean anything since you're in a different realm entirely. So ... well, how does shifting to another universe make your brief stint as a material creature more significant?

I thought I responded to this already.. but I guess not.

Um.. so ya, let me clarify, I do not need to exist indefinitely for me to find some significance in accomplishments, but rather humanity must.  If humanity does not, then no accomplishment I do, no matter how small or great, will not matter in the slightest on that day, humanity+1.

This is why I keep insisting that it's you making the judgment. You're assuming what the needs of humanity are, and deciding that after humans cease to exist, that humans will not matter. That's still the call of your "objective" viewpoint. The objective viewpoint that you have created.

The question still stands: how would an eternal existence of an unknown nature solve the problem of meaninglessness?

Why would anyone's earthly pursuits have a bearing in another non-physical environment?

Such people would be dead, but somehow still maintaining their significance?

I just can't imagine how that would work, that's all. I really can't picture that giving anyone any added significance, value, or importance.

Not just you - I'm not pointing this question at your needs - I'd like to know how you came up with the general case that our significance dies with our species.

You've only slightly altered the scenario, and not in any meaningful way.

One can hinge the significance of their accomplishments on future generations, but that those generations must persist indefinitely into the future is neither likely nor logical.

It's not the knowledge, or even the assurance that comforts you, anyway; it's merely the nebulous hope.

It's an irrational view, which isn't to say it's a harmful or inappropriate one.

Many hopes are irrational. What's troubling is that it doesn't accomplish anything when taken to its end. Humanity lives on forever -- so what? Why is that meaningful?

All each of us really has is a subjective experience, and an influence on other subjective experiences, all of which will probably end or otherwise cease to be recognizable.

So you can run after an electric rabbit, or you can simply run.

Oh, I see. So we'd exist for all eternity? Is that what you mean? I thought you were talking about eternal life as in souls, etc. Sorry I misunderstood - I shouldn't have assumed. So as long as our species continues forever, then our actions (accomplishments) will have significance?

Actually, we seem to agree on significance, in that it doesn't really have an objective meaning. It can't - there can always be a way to view things as having no significance.

So how are our views different, then? That I believe the actions of mortal populations can be significant, and you don't? Or am I misunderstanding again?

So as long as humanity goes on, we'll have significance. Where does the god come in? Is that to make sure humans go on forever? Or am I pegging you unfairly as a theist of one god?

Okay, sure. I wasn't trying to straw man you, I promise. I really am interested in other people's ways of understanding the universe. Obviously I understand what you're saying (ie that without the communication of memes, we lose the significance of those memes) but I couldn't let it go unchallenged. After all, there are too many ways to meaning and significance.

Both, if we hope to discuss it. If its subjectivity alone we're talking about, then I guess you're fucked.

I don't see a connection, and you don't present one; as though it should be obvious that persistence equals meaning.

I think you interpret the word differently. I might smile, say, thinking about tomorrow's plans. But tomorrow isn't a thing, nor do any of the situations I imagine exist. Only a potential in proportion to whatever my ability is to rightly imagine it. The same goes across any span of time. We can imagine a distant future, but its sole representation is our imagination.

You're pushing your lima beans around again!

Swapping the word "meaningful" for "significant" doesn't illuminate any chain of logic leading from persistence to those things.

By that reasoning, a smile is worthless because muscles tire and moments pass; tears are pointless, too, since whatever strife is experienced is temporary.

Any subjective experience becomes pointless by that standard -- which is really a Christian caricature of nihilism.

don't think the metaphor was lost on you, but I wouldn't dismiss it. To clarify, you can do what you do expecting what you have no right to, or you can do because you can, must, and want to.

You make my use of "hope" sound idiosyncratic, which I don't think it is. I still think it's an accurate description of your condition on meaning/significance. From what I can tell. Your subjective view doesn't communicate why persistence is meaningful/significant.

It's misleading to refer to a "larger view," since the human brain can only conceive of things of certain scales. It is, for instance, easy to imagine and empathize with the suffering of a single human being, or even a handful of them; but there's a threshold above which empathy doesn't scale, as when a death toll in the thousands is discussed.

While a person can be driven by the hope of contributing to the continued existence of their family, species, etc., their actual experience of it is crude, and by no means guaranteed, rendition.

The trouble isn't that a person smiling at one moment can't remember their overall situation and change moods; the issue is that you're expanding the scope of their concerns beyond the limits of possible experience, and beyond all possibility -- the only things we really have -- and making that the sole measure of significance, which means that meaning/significance is really impossible by this standard.

Feeling good imagining that humanity will persist forever is akin to killing yourself because the sun would eventually, billions of years from your natural death, become a red giant and fry the Earth.

bodhi smith wrote:

Do religions have a purpose? What do you get for "believing"? 

Think before you respond (if that's possible) it's more complex than you may realize.

I don't think they have a purpose at their core, but are just viral ideas we're somewhat helpless against, like Dennett described. They can be replaced later with other ideas, to which we're equally helpless.

I think we believe the maximum we're able to; whatever our wiring and experience can interpret some reflection in at a given point. Early in our lives, when we know very little, we look toward homogenous and monolithic representations of concepts; zero sum equations; all or nothing black and white propositions. And, in something I conceptualize as cell division, we gradually accept the exceptions, divisions, nuances, and outright corrections, that experience and thought derive for us. But it's not the world that's changing in that regard, only our conception of it; so at a given point we see how wrong we were, and we're left to wonder how accurate our understanding is, and whether we can ever expect it to become very accurate.

If you're not acclimated to the idea of proceeding in a way that you know may be a house of cards in some respect, clinging to earlier, more monolithic absolutes can be comforting to some. I know a lot of atheists I can't discuss descriptive philosophical ideas with because they interpret anything non-normative as apathetic. They enjoy conceptual absolutes to some extent, and it seems to comfort them no matter how little they move toward them.

So far we've established, then, that you really want there to be an extra party involved in keeping humans alive to continue the species, but what if that extra party is bizarrely responsible for inspiring a dark age? Look how much history (and thus significance) was lost when literacy evaporated after the fall of Rome.

Obviously this is a mischievous angle (as per usual) but the Judeo-Christian God inspired not just the copying of the few remnants of Latin scholarship available, but the destruction of a great many records of human achievement. Was this, in your theology, a misinterpretation of God's main function? (That is, to preserve a population of humans for eternity, and preserve their significance.)

And that "better reason" is okay as a perpetual mystery?

You believe the Bible was not "God inspired" is what you're saying?

I'm not pretending to have caught you at something - I doubt a biblical literalist would have been able to hold this liberal a conversation.

So far we have a male God

, one of whose functions is to maintain the human race for all eternity.

Do you figure we evolve over eternity?

Eternity is a long time, so I'm just wondering if he'd take care of only us, or if each being that develops sentience gets its own god.

Or would it be one God for any kind of sentience?