Rather, the assumption here is that there can be no real and meaningful earthly purpose without there being a cosmic purpose.
No, it's distinguishing between a temporary purpose that can be asserted or invented and the potential for a larger purpose outside of our will and invention that we understand is possible.
As between the two the former is necessarily inferior.
But there is truly no reason to grant such a premise.
There is, of course. If I'm aware that the choice I made isn't necessarily true and that a competing choice, if true, is necessarily superior...
I would actually reject such a dichotomy; rather, we give a point to the process.
We do or we don't. And we must understand that and it should color our choice, at least at the outset.
I‘d say that there is no more real and actually true sum as you seem to see it if God existed than if he did not. If he exists, God could have created a world where there is no afterlife, where humans simply live a finite earthly life and then die.
I think that's an invitation to a much longer argument on what we can know about God and His nature. I don't believe that God could fashion sentient beings under your notion unless He was something less than what we should mean when we say God and certainly less than what the Christian does.
The real and actually true sum that you allude to is not really grounded in the existence of God per se nor even on the idea that he created a world; but rather in the more specific notion that in order for life to have any real meaning and purpose, for it to be good as a whole, it must last forever.
Rather, it asserts that the larger purpose of God is inarguably superior in both aim and impact. If we can think of a greater purpose and understand that it might exist it will then color our own attempts to usurp, at least on the plane of ideas.
But as I said above, there is no reason why one should accept such a premise.
There is, beginning with the purely utilitarian and moving into the notion of that dissonance we've been pushing about.
Indeed, a short life could well be of great value while a long one may be of little value.
Depends on the consideration. It can be true within a given context, but within the context of this argument, no. That is, the eternal is preferable to the finite, which is why you don't have to fight down the urge to kill yourself (one hopes) at the end of a particularly satisfying and complete day.
If there were immortal beings, they could well lead lives of great or of little value.
Not if their immortality was grounded in God. The latter would be logically impossible.
The mere fact that they last forever wouldn’t be a basis by which to determine the value of their life.
And I'm not isolating the eternal in that fashion. It is tied, absolutely, to that larger context and absolute arbiter.
It wouldn’t be indistinguishable in value to the valuer.
Depends on the consideration and rationality of the valuer. In the case of anyone capable of understanding the larger potential it should and I think will, inevitably, to one degree or another, depending on the intransigence of the valuer.
Of course, I didn’t mean “I” as if implying that some form of my consciousness would continue to live. Rather, my offspring, my legacy, the positive impact I have on others, what I contribute to society, in short, the fruit of that earthly purpose which I set out for myself during the course of my life lives on after I die. Our entire civilization as well as social and scientific progress is based around the notion of building upon the legacy left behind by others.
A sunny scene painted over an open grave and with as much potential and meaning, accepting your current premise. And, again, to be rational is to understand that there are other contexts and invite that consideration to hang about a potentially inferior choice, no matter how doggedly held, over time.
But we are living and, in a sense, are a way by which that “machinery” has come to know itself.
Again, poetry, but not a real statement. The universe, the mechanism isn't sentient, won't fight for its existence or value anything. It doesn't exist except as a way we have of looking at that interlocking process.
Herein lies a fundamental difference in our approach to this issue. I disagree that there is an absence of a rational way to distinguish. It looks like you want to frame things so that we evaluate two “contexts” (one of which is not well defined) in an absolute vacuum sans evidence and without consideration as to what context is true; so that we make a choice on a rather fideistic basis by appealing to a subjective feeling of what we may think serves our natures best or what we may consider “psychologically beneficial”.
But I think this approach is misguided. Even if I were to grant the pessimistic conclusion which you believe follows in an universe without God and an afterlife, it doesn’t follows that such a view is necessarily false. We may well regret that something justified by the evidence has pessimistic implications but that in itself is no reason to abandon it.
There's no real reason that can rise to the empirical level of proof, no objective way to decide the issue. So it is a matter of contexts and neither need be at the outset defined by more than the finite as process serving no particular and the infinite in service to the good.
I say that even if a man is mostly convinced the former is true, he owes it to a better hope and nature to give that fatalistic mechanism the middle finger of sorts, to declare against it a will to and for more. I think that life and that death mean more, with or without more undeniably following. And I think that's true as it relates to the demonstrated nature of man past, present and likely to come, as a purely rational proposition.
Things is, we can’t know with certainty that the event in question was an encounter with a God, let alone that all these people are referring to the same God. The Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Pagan, the Muslim and the members of any other religion; all claim to have an experience related to and in accord with the tenets of their religion.
Where I'd say all claim the experience of God and do their best to describe that by the light they walk in...understanding that as with Lewis and company, I hold there to be more light at the foot of the cross.
In the same way that conflicting eyewitness reports can invalidate and undermine each other; so too the diverse and contradictory nature of these experiences.
They can invalidate the particular impressions, while underpinning the reality of the larger moment.
Taken collectively, they give no good grounds for believing anything about what is said to have happened to the person who has not had such an experience.
Piffle, Evo. They speak to something fundamentally important to our being. Understanding that we are imperfect mediums for expressing anything shouldn't undermine that.
I’ve pointed out in some previous posts of this thread several ways by which such could actually be met.
I defy you to set the standard. I've never read you or anyone meet that simple challenge. Invariably people speak to their own desires and God becomes less a thing tested and more a genie who failed.
It is rather interesting that as our scientific knowledge and understanding about the world has increased, we have moved from an age where miracles were common place, where God personally made himself and his will known on a regular basis and where people spoke to God as one speaks to another person; to an age where God is basically hidden and miracles are very much nonexistent.
Where I think your former church would disagree on the point and the secular context that dominates Western culture tends to look upon what may well be miraculous and simply assume we'll figure it out eventually. Science has then, to some extent, become a god of the gap. So a spontaneous remission is just a biological event whose process hasn't been figured out yet. And it may very well be...and it may not.
:cheers:
. I didn't go to Church growing up. I mean I was baptised Catholic but the faith was never imposed on me. I was very much indifferent about religion until around that same age as you and it wasn't until around when I was 24-25 that I eventually enrolled in RCIA to join the Catholic Church.
