Wednesday 24 June 2015

The Point

     My last post, like many others, precipitated a reply from an anonymous reader asserting that all my speculation is pointless without God. In the interests of keeping that conversation from taking over the subject of the original post, I'm going to raise the topic here: what does it even mean to have
"a point", and am I mistaken in thinking there can be one without God?

     Let me begin by acknowledging that I've said things like that myself. In particular, I have said that nothing in biology makes any sense without the theory of evolution, and that physics makes no sense without the concept of energy. I stand by those claims, because it really is unfathomably difficult to construct a meaningful, useful understanding of natural phenomena without the cognitive framework these theories offer. Maybe there is a way to do it, but no one seems to have come up with one that offers a smidgeon of a fraction of the predictive and explanatory power. So, I'm not necessarily hostile to the form of the argument: maybe there is a sense in which everything is pointless without a belief in God.
     What, then, can that mean? I will invite Anonymous (and anyone else who cares to comment) to explain this if I get it wrong, but as I understand it, the idea is simply that God is the ultimate source of all meaning and intention, and that to say that something has "a point" just is to say that it serves some purpose God somehow intends, either directly or indirectly. (Anonymous often seems to think that purpose ultimately leads back to a wish for all of us to acknowledge, love and worship God, but that may be getting ahead of ourselves. For now, it's enough to leave God's ultimate purpose unspecified, and just posit that God's will is ultimately the end and beginning of all points.)
     Now, I'm actually quite sympathetic to this as a logical statement. If we accept the premise that God exists as the omnipotent and omniscient creator of the Universe, then it could not be otherwise. The problem, however, is that it's a tautology, and devoid of any meaningful information. Everything that happens happens because such an omnipotent God wills it. Everything. Good and evil, it's all the same, part of God's plan. His Ten Commandments may say "Thou shalt not murder," but every murder happens because He wills it. He may will us to have free will, but he ALSO wills us to use it however we end up using it. He wills us to cooperate, and He wills us to strive against one another.
     This is problematic, because it pretty much pulls the rug out from under attempts to evaluate any moral choices at all. You no longer can tell me that I shouldn't commit this or that act because God says it's wrong, because obviously if I do it that's what God wanted me to do. The best you can hope for is to say that God also commands you to do whatever it is you ultimately end up doing to oppose me. And that is a really, really nasty path: anything goes.

     In contrast, I think that the only morally meaningful stance to take is to acknowledge that responsibility is ours, not God's. Whether God exists or not, it's up to us to decide what we should do, because whatever we ultimately decide, God will ratify it when we attempt it. So the real question is not what God wants of us, but what we want God to want of us. (Kind of like how Her Majesty traditionally gives royal assent to pretty much anything Parliament passes. It's kind of pointless for MPs to debate amongst themselves what law the Queen wants to sign; their job is to decide what to pass.)
     In other words, I believe we have a moral obligation to act as if God does not exist, or at least as if God's wishes are unknowable. The Point, if there is one, is for us to exercise our volition, to engage in our own moral deliberation, and to find whatever Point we can to our existence.
     I do not know if God exists, but at the moment I tend to think He doesn't, and I've been pretty stable in that suspicion for quite some time now. Whether He does or not, though, I do feel that there is some kind of Point. There may not be, but that's not really my concern. I'm wired to feel there is, just as I'm wired to get hungry from time to time, so I live as if eating is a good thing, regardless of whether or not there's anything intrinsically, cosmically Good about eating. If you tell me that without some Platonic ideal of Satiety out there, my hunger means nothing, I will stop chewing just long enough to laugh at you. Similarly, if you tell me my life has no point without God, I refute it thus, by continuing to breathe.

36 comments:

  1. Tom, I agree with you that our responsibility as moral agents is to do what is right, regardless of what any supernatural being WANTS us to do. And I also agree that we should not be swayed away from that path by promises of heaven or threats of hell.

    But Christian theology does not just posit a god who created the universe an endowed us with free will. It also posits a god who is benevolent, omniscient and drops hints about what course of action is the most morally good.

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    1. I would rephrase. It isn't that we should do what we think is right REGARDLESS of what any supernatural being wants us to do. It's that WHATEVER we end up doing must by definition have been what that supernatural being wanted us to do. It simply makes no sense to talk about God being disappointed or unhappy with our choices. The question then becomes, what do WE want God to be satisfied about our doing? Or rather, since the God term appears omnipresently on both sides of the equation, we can just drop it and still make the same moral judgments.

      As for God dropping hints about what is moral, that too depends on which sort of hint you're talking about. God is of course dropping hints about His Creation all the time, which is what scientists are in the business of following. As a philosopher, I might accept that God has in the same sense provided us with a similar bunch of hints regarding mathematics and ethics and other abstract systems. But a specifically CHRISTIAN theology goes farther and posits that some of those hints come from a book, and THAT particular assertion is the one that Anonymous seems to insist we should accept as the authoritative source of all Points.

      And it isn't just that I do not accept that claim. It's that it is so completely at odds with experience as to seem downright unintelligible. People everywhere and in every era have constructed coherent, viable value systems in complete isolation from Judeo-Christian texts. To assert that there is no point without the God of the Bible is just breathtakingly naive. Oh, okay, ALL those other people who have thought they had a point were just imagining a fantasy, but THIS story, this one here from this tradition, THIS one is the true point for everyone.

      I could maybe understand the claim that without some kind of religion, there is no point. I would still disagree, but at least I could make some sense out of what was being said and what I was disagreeing with. But to say without THIS particular religion? As I say, so bizarre as to be incomprehensible, as if saying that without unicorns there can be no such thing as mammals. All one can infer from such a statement is that the speaker must have a profoundly different meaning in mind for almost every word used.

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  2. Tom and Nikolai have gotten very close to the point, it seems to me. As long as we deal philosophically with truth we will struggle with the conflict between free will and determinism, and we will always bump against the inside wall of our own minds. The point that we can jump to, though, is the realization that the goal of it all is that human beings have a personal relationship with the God who made them. Our sin and failure is an impossible barrier to this, but He has sent His Son to be our mediator, and to bring us to God. Alexander cut the knot. God has broken through and given us His Son. Knowing truth is knowing the One who does understand, uphold and direct all things. It is the closest we get, but it entirely satisfies. It fills a human creature with joy.

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  3. You assert that the point of everything is a personal relationship with God. I find this unpersuasive for two main reasons.

    First of all, the claim that there is no point independent of this central point seems just obviously false, for reasons I mentioned in my comment to Nikolai: self-consistent and viable value systems without any reference to this personal relationship with God seem to work just fine. Perhaps YOU do not find them satisfying, but that doesn't mean they don't work for those who adopt them, and it's both arrogant and naive to privilege your own Point so absolutely.

    Second, and perhaps even more fatally, what then? You have your personal relationship with God. Now what? Should you have some ice cream? Or not? Doesn't matter. What's the point? You have a personal relationship with God; having or not having ice cream doesn't affect that. Maybe if you have some, the experience will bring you to a greater appreciation of that relationship, but also maybe if you don't, the deprivation will also bring you to a greater appreciation of that relationship. Praise be. Praise be for absolutely everything. Maybe that famine or that murder or that disease will bring you closer to God. So what is the point of opposing these things? What is the point of choosing one path over another, if all paths lead to the same ultimate objective?

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  4. Making decisions that endear you to your wife will enrich the life of your wife and of you as well. If your desire is alienation, it is your decisions that will accomplish this, too. What do you want? If we want God we will have Him. If we don't, we won't. We cannot escape the intellectual conundrum concerning free-will and sovereignty, but the outcome will always be according to our choice. So choose what God says is best, and don't think we can put Him over a barrel. He will receive those who come to Him through Christ. We will end up giving Him all the glory. You seem to understand the problem. Trust God and embrace His solution!

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    1. But no decision I make can enrich the life of God, or (equally) no decision I make can FAIL to enrich the life of God. What it comes down to in all of this is that the choice is mine. Now, you seem to recognize that on the one hand, but then you keep urging me NOT to make the choice by my own standards, but to follow what you believe to be God's standards instead. Really, you can't have it both ways. If the choice is to be mine, then it really must be made by my mind using my standards of evidence and reason. Your urging me to adopt what you claim are God's standards is just not going to work. It's ME you have to convince, and it's YOU, not God, who has to convince me.

      You urge me to choose "what God says is best", as if it's clear that God says anything is best at all. It's not. As I've often explained here, I DO NOT BELIEVE that the Bible is in any meaningful way authored by God. I could give you all sorts of reasons, but really, they all boil down to a complete absence of any reason TO believe. What you really need to do here, then, is to provide me with some kind of evidence that the Bible is what you say it is. Yet all you ever do is just urge me to accept it first, and that the "proof" will follow. That won't do.

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  5. Hebrews 11:6: "And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him". You have to start with faith. All reasoning is circular reasoning. You have to start somewhere. The only way I can help you to is preach the Gospel. The only way you can be saved is to believe. You need to humble yourself, and you seem to be very far from that.

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    1. Then you cannot help me at all. Your preaching is, to me, filled with more vanity than you know; you think I need to humble myself because I am not deferential enough to your pronouncements about the Bible, because I decline to privilege your perspective over mine.

      What you consistently fail to recognize that all of your claims about the authority of the Bible are subject to your own lack of authority. That doesn't mean I won't listen to what you have to say; it just means that you must provide reasoned arguments just like anyone else would before I am persuaded to accept it.

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  6. I Corinthians 1:20. Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom, did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

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    1. You honestly don't understand a word of my objections, do you? I have explained again and again how I do not accept the Bible as a reliable authority. What sort of reaction do you hope to get by citing that? Your text praises foolishness, so I should abandon my quest for wisdom and embrace foolishness on your sayso?

      Let me illustrate this for you. "Abandon ye now the Bible, for it leadeth astray all who seeketh a rock of certainty. Seek ye Truth instead in the Book of Admonishments, for there alone wilt thou find it." Admonishments 3:14-15

      Will you abandon your worship of scripture, on the authority of the Book of Admonishments? No? But the Book of Admonishments clearly says you are being led astray!

      But you don't accept that the Book of Admonishments has any authority whatsoever, so my pointing out that it SAYS you should accept it gets no traction. This is exactly the problem you need to overcome with me. I do not accept your Bible, so quoting from it about why I should accept it just never even gets off the ground.

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  7. You grasp the foolishness of faith more clearly than anyone I have discussed this with.. Thank you for showing clearly where man's reason will bring him. Man by his wisdom cannot know God. Yet there is hope. God is in control of every detail of your life, and He can show you the emptiness and futility of what you have built for yourself. Your mind will not satisfy your soul. You are bigger than your mind. He is ready to receive you on another plane altogether . He is willing to forgive you, and able to do so because He has provided a sacrifice to atone. When He touches you in the area of your weakness, listen to Him,and come to Jesus.

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    1. As Godel showed, Reason does not promise to bring one to all truths; it only offers some assurance that it does not lead to falsehoods. You disdain Reason because it does not lead to your "truth", and you urge me to abandon it on that basis. Perhaps yours is one of the unprovable truths, but I think it much more likely to be simply another falsehood among many. Reason does not lead me to heroin, either, though I'm sure that if I took that leap of faith and injected my first dose, I'd be thoroughly convinced I'd found The One True Purpose.

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  8. But your subsequent life would clearly show that you had been wrong. Your subsequent life has already shown that your personal choices are wrong. You do not have the marvelous equilibrium you convey. You are not at peace. Life is not easy for you. Relationships are not what you would want them to be. Aspirations have not been realized. What you want to think would satisfy has not done so. This is the human condition, and Jesus came to rescue us. You don't want the answer to come through preaching, but God has ordained that it shall be so. You are welcome to Jesus, if you will turn from your pride to receive Him.

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    1. This is a tried and true marketing technique, but it's a crappy argument. Are there things in my life I'm dissatisfied with? Of course there are. But that doesn't mean that your promise that everything will fall into place if I just accept Jesus has any credibility. My point about heroin was that one illusory peace is as good as any other; what makes YOUR illusion so much better, apart from the fact that it is yours? And why is YOUR testimony that your life is everything you want it to be any more credible than that of a drug addict's euphoric testimony to the power of smack?

      I will be frank. I look at your arguments here (which is all I have to go on to evaluate your credibility) and I see very little evidence that you are any better off than I am. Are you happier? Are you more balanced? I have no idea, and no reason to suppose that you are truly any happier or more balanced than I am.

      I WILL say that I think you have it exactly backwards. You tell me that my speculations about philosophy and science and law are pointless without God. But it is you, with your God, who sees no point in them, as you flatly refuse to engage in any discussion on any topic that doesn't lead back to embracing Jesus. That shows me that, at least so far as you are concerned, there is no point to these pursuits WITH God.

      The answer will not come through preaching. This is not simply a matter of what I want. It is a matter of how my mind works, and how I formulate beliefs. I simply do not choose to believe things; I am persuaded of them by the weight of evidence and reason, which I am powerless to resist. I have learned to distrust those who urge me to ignore reason, and your preaching puts you deeper and deeper into that category. Why should I trust you more than anyone else?

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    2. You are frustrated by my not arguing you into my position, but I do not do so because arguing a person into the position is not the way a person is saved. Bring your mind to God and ask Him to show you the truth. He can convince you. It is not a matter of surrendering your reason. It is rather an acceptance of data that you now steel yourself against. It is reasoning with all the available data. There is another way of looking at all you now see. I do not want you to trust me or to follow my example. Trust God and look to Jesus.

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    3. When someone complains that a tool doesn't work, there are two possibilities. The tool might not work, but it could also be that she doesn't know how to use it properly.

      You are telling me that argument can't bring me to salvation, and maybe that's true, but maybe you just don't know how to argue properly. Me, I use reason a lot, and I have a lot of confidence in the capabilities of it as a tool, so when you tell me it doesn't work, I am much more inclined to think the fault lies with you.

      You come along and tell me reason is useless and you have something better. But if you don't actually know how to use reason, why should I take you seriously?

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  9. Scripture tells us plainly that men by wisdom cannot find God. I Corinthians 1:20-25. Lawyers are taught how to win every argument. You enjoy arguing and you are very good at it. But there is an Eternity and your soul is at stake. You cannot win your case with God, but you can settle out of court. Jesus paid the penalty for sin, but you must avail yourself of God's way or you will perish.

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    1. Lawyers are NOT taught how to win every argument. A moment's reflection on the outcome of actual court cases should make it obvious that lawyers must lose cases as often as they win. We are taught, rather, how to reason about the law, how to identify legal issues, how to anticipate the outcome of a case. We use this knowledge to advise clients how to manage their affairs so that they do not come into conflict with the legal rights of others (including the State), or to be well-poised to defend their actions if they do. If it does come down to litigation, usually some mistake has been made along the way.

      Yes, I am good at arguing. But do you know why that is? It's not that arguing is a skill that lets you prove whatever it is you want to prove. It's that arguing works ON ME to convince me what positions are likeliest to be correct. I have changed my opinions on many things over the years, as the strength of arguments for or against have persuaded me. The opinions I hold now are not arbitrary preferences, but the result of years of deliberation and struggle. I don't win arguments about them because I'm good at arguing; I win arguments because I choose positions that I can win arguments about, and back off from positions I can't.

      I have come to suspect that there probably is no such thing as a soul that persists after death. I have come to believe that this belief of yours, that my soul is in peril and can only be saved by Jesus, is entirely explainable as a cultural/psychological phenomenon like any other religious tradition, and that it need not be true (and probably isn't) in order to command such fervent adherence from people like you. I believe that you BELIEVE very strongly every word you say. I just believe that you are as capable of being wrong as I am.

      Would you accept MY testimony if I simply asserted that you're wrong? Would you be convinced that there was no God if I just kept telling you over and over and over again that there is no God? If I were to tell you that none of your beliefs or experiences or instincts mattered because regardless of what they say there is still no God?

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  10. Arguing about the existence of blue with a person who is blind might be fun, but it could not result in agreement. If the blind person is very clever and very determined to remain blind, it stops being fun. You know that God exists and that you must answer to Him one day. The Enemy has been very successful in encouraging you to resist this knowledge. The hope is in Jesus, who opens blind eyes and employs our intellects for His glory. May He do so for you, Tom, and may you know the joy of serving and honoring Him!

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    1. A blind person can learn to use the word "blue" so that the casual listener might not realize she does not actually know what it looks like. She might even come to believe she knows exactly what she's talking about, although she may not actually know the subjective experience of blueness itself.

      I feel like this is what you do with words like "reason" and "doubt". You THINK you know what they mean, but then you use them in ways that suggest to me that you really don't get it. You talk about your beliefs with such certainty that only makes sense coming from a person who really hasn't seen the blueness of doubt that comes from an appreciation of what human fallibility really means.

      I see that fallibility as plain as day, and you assure me you understand that all humans are fallible next to God blah blah blah but you still don't GET that it means you are also fallible and liable to being completely and utterly wrong about God. You think I don't believe as you do because I just haven't opened my eyes to see, but you forget I was not always an atheist. I was raised in a Christian culture, sent to Sunday school and made to attend church. I developed doubts early on, but I did at one time believe. And I know what it feels like to believe, to be sure of something, and to be wrong.

      You are convinced that I am blind to your blue. Have you seen mine?

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  11. You have always functioned in the realm of reason, so that you cannot conceive as real something that must come in a different way. Your upbringing did not involve a personal relationship with Jesus. Now you reason away any possibility of such a thing being real. But it is real. You can know Jesus Christ. Coming to know Him personally will change presuppositions and free you to think with all the available data. The unwilling can be made willing in the day of His power, the blind can be made to see, and the dead to rise to life. Sight, life and freedom can be yours. Turn from your sin and seek Him. Love, Anonymous

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    1. There's a really elementary logical error you're making here. You complain that I "reason away any possibility of such a thing being real." I have not, and cannot. Rather, the entire core of our disagreement is that I have not rejected the possibility that you might be wrong.

      Do you not understand this distinction? It isn't that I claim to know you're wrong. It's that I do NOT claim to know you're right. You may be right, you may be wrong. That is my position at the present time. I admit that I lean rather heavily towards you being wrong, but I am open to either possibility.

      You try to cajole me with appeals to open-mindedness, but what you're actually asking me to do is close my mind to the possibility that you might be wrong. You're trying to get me to unsee that blue.

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  12. It doesn't matter at all whether I am right or wrong in my thinking. What matters is that there is such a thing as knowing God personally, and you have not gone to Him to get your answer. He can convince you. Ask Him to. Out-arguing me is no great achievement. Your being so closed to Him is the problem. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you, and follow where He leads. "You shall seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

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  13. It very much DOES matter whether you are right or wrong in your thinking, because it is your thinking that you know God personally upon this whole argument rests!

    You THINK you know God. You THINK I can too, if only I do as you have done. If you are wrong about these things, if your version of God is just a comfortable delusion, then it would be a mistake for me to embrace it.

    You can't even assure me that you are not mistaken, because you cannot seem to bring yourself to seriously consider the possibility enough to dismiss it properly. You just say it is ludicrous. Well, why is YOUR judgment that it is ludicrous something I should take more seriously than my judgment that your position (which I HAVE considered at length) is ludicrous?

    Let me state this again: YOU ARE NOT GOD. You do not speak for God, and I am not doubting God's authority when I doubt your beliefs and assertions about your personal relationship. You have fallen into the trap I warned of in The Epistle of Thomas to the Creationists: you are mistaking your own judgment for God's truth, and thinking yourself pious in refusing to question your own conclusions and beliefs.

    I understand much better than you perceive what it means to recognize God's supreme authority, even if I do not necessarily believe He exists, and I confess that I am shocked and appalled at your hubris and arrogance at purporting to speak for Him. I would NEVER presume to elevate my judgments to those of absolute truth as you do. My conscience, my humility, and my honesty forbid it.

    You think I am putting my judgment ahead of God's, but you have it (as with so many other things) exactly backwards. I am REFUSING to do so. It is YOU who are putting your judgment ahead of God's, by thinking that your judgment is not yours but God's. But it isn't, and it can never be. Your pride is pulling the greatest trick the devil pulled: convincing you it doesn't exist. I can see it, though, even if you can't. And you will never subdue it if you cannot truly acknowledge and confront it.

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  14. Still locked in a mindset that keeps God out! Still speaking as though answering my arguments were the issue! I am not God. But God is! Hell is real. You deserve His judgment for eternity, but He does not want you to perish, so He has provided a way that you may escape. That way is in His Son, who came to earth to live the life you couldn't live and die to pay the penalty for your sin. You may come to know God personally by turning from your sin and seeking His forgiveness in Jesus. Millions throughout the world today have come to a genuine experience of forgiveness and acceptance in Christ. You may come, too. Give up on me and turn to Him. He will receive you, though you do not deserve it. You will understand why we are praising Him.

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    1. I'm open to the possibility that either or both of us could be wrong, and I'M the one locked into a mindset?

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  15. You are not open to the possibility that your approach to knowing is wrong. You are strident in your defense of your own reason. You cannot reason yourself into a personal relationship--you must meet the person in question. Meeting God is not the same as reasoning toward Him. In this you are not open minded at all.

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    1. Oh, be serious for a moment, please? The ONLY reason you think I'm not "open-minded" is because my mind is still open to possibilities you utterly refuse to consider, and which you'd like me to abandon in exclusive favour of the beliefs you hold. It isn't that my mind isn't open to various beliefs; it's that I refuse to evict the ones you don't like. If I adopted your beliefs exclusively, you'd be perfectly happy with my being close-minded against everything else. So don't preach open-mindedness. It's disingenuous of you.

      You're right that I cannot reason myself into a personal relationship, but you overlook the fact that I do not think this personal relationship with God is likely to be real. That is, I think you probably live in a fantasy world, in which you believe you have a personal relationship with an imaginary being. In principle, I could share this delusion, but why would I want to?

      I don't believe your God exists, so I honestly don't care to develop a personal relationship with Him. If I thought He did exist, I might, but I don't, and I don't see any reason to. There's no evidence, and you're not going to provide any because you don't believe evidence is relevant; you think my approach to knowing is wrong. But right or wrong, it IS the way I know. If you can't persuade me by reason, or demonstrate in some meaningful way the inadequacy of my reason, you have nothing to offer me here, and should stop wasting your time.

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    2. The reason you say there is no evidence is that you have already decided that all the evidence has another explanation. God is displayed everywhere, in all His works. You see the order, the majesty, the power, the beauty of the Universe and you decide that it all happened by chance. Your presupposition blinds you to what humans are designed to see. You ignore the promptings within that alert you to accountability to God. I am afraid for you. If God desires to have you, He is able to destroy personal relationships, alienate loved ones, fracture your health, take away wealth, reduce you to nothing, that you might be humbled. He can shatter your self-confidence and make all your heroes fall. He does not willingly grieve or afflict the children of men. But, if He will have you, He is able to make you see how empty you really are. I would desire to warn you to humble yourself before it is too late. The worst case scenario is that He simply leave you in your ignorance and pride and bring you into Judgment when you are entirely unprepared. It need not be so, and I urge you to seek the Lord whilst He may be found.

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    3. Again with the presuppositions. I do not presuppose that the evidence HAS another explanation; rather, I simply decline to presuppose any particular explanation. Multiple explanations have been offered, and so it is a matter of historical fact that all the evidence has at least one other explanation. What I presuppose is that I should prefer whichever explanation performs best in terms of logical consistency, predictive power, and parsimony.

      Your explanation didn't win that contest, and you're complaining that I "presupposed" a different winner. I didn't. Your explanation is simply inadequate, and I prefer another one.

      You fear for me because you lack faith. You lack faith in me, and you lack faith in God. Sure, you have lots of belief. But you lack faith.

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  16. How could I be afraid of you when I see only emptiness in your strengths? I care that you are using your mind to throw away your life. Why I should care is the great mystery, and I do not intend to reveal that. Perhaps only you and I read your blog. I am hoping there are others, however, and that my words may resonate in some of them. It may be that through this blog Jesus is calling to those who recognize that the path they are on is worthless. Jesus said, "Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." Jesus reveals Himself to those who seek Him.

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    1. I said you fear FOR me, not that you fear me. In fact, I was repeating what you had said, that you are afraid for me.

      That you are worried about me is touching. I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it. I would like for you to be at peace, and not to worry, and to that end it is very tempting to just tell you I've seen the light and I'm saved.

      But that would be a lie. I do not believe. I really just don't. Moreover, I feel deeply that honesty is an important virtue (indeed, the foundation of all other virtues) and so it would be an egregious sin to pretend. (Needless to say, an omniscient God will surely see through such a pretence.)

      I do not mean this with any hostility. Your words just do not resonate with me. Partly this is because, despite your insistence, my life is not empty and my path is not worthless. To YOU, perhaps, it may seem that way, and maybe you believe I am in denial here, but you're just wrong, and I can prove it: I am still alive. If I felt my life empty, why would I persist? Remember, I do not believe in any dreams to come after I have shuffled off this mortal coil; why have I not made my quietus? Do you think it has never occurred to me, or that I've never had an opportunity?

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  17. Solomon was extremely intelligent, expertly trained, unspeakably wealthy, in a position of complete power in his government, with a harem full of women he could have any time he liked. Money, Sex, and Power. But He saw the utter emptiness of it all when pursued "under the sun", leaving God out. Every human being will see this one day, but for many it will be too late. Now is the day of Salvation. Your faith in the Bible not being true may get you to the experience of suicide, but it will not get you through it. On the other side you will realize the truth of what Hamlet feared. May it become "the rub" for you before it is too late!

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  18. There aren't a lot of things I claim to be an actual authoritative expert on, but the emptiness of MY life is definitely one of them. Other people know more about law, philosophy, games, science, math, or the other things I write about here, but if you want to know if my life is empty, I am the guy to ask.

    So when you try to tell me my life is empty, and I tell you it isn't, that's kind of the end of it. There's no debating this. How I feel about my life is not something you get to correct me on. Maybe you think I'm in denial, and fine, think what you want. The only reason I mentioned suicide was to provide you with a bit of evidence to show that I really do mean it when I say my life is not empty, in the hopes that you might be spared wasting your time trying to establish that premise.

    Seriously, abandon that approach. It will get you nowhere. And you might do well to consider if you WANT to get anywhere with such an argument. Do you REALLY want me to believe my life is meaningless, especially after I've cited the fact that I haven't committed suicide to prove that I don't believe that?

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  19. It is much better for you to be told that life is meaningless before you discover it for yourself, so that when you do discover it you remember that there is an escape. Buddha will tell you not to worry about it. Taoism will tell you to go with the flow, Confucianism will say to shut up and do your work, Islam will say to submit, Hinduism will tell you to work on your Karma or you will have to come back to this stinking world, Judaism will say to be perfect, and Christ will make you free. But satisfaction with this world is not an option--it is a hope that will never be realized.

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    1. I'm a little shocked that you assume I haven't discovered this for myself. I mean, I haven't exactly made it a secret here that I spend a lot of time thinking about things philosophical. I've earned two degrees in philosophy and one in law, and I've lived long enough to see my son reach adulthood. I've endured life-threatening disease, and I've seen many friends and relatives die, some by their own hand. Do you honestly think it's never occured to me to ponder the meaning or meaninglessness of life? Do you really think my conclusion that, for me, there is meaning, is just a prejudice I've never examined?

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