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Goodbye Jesus

Purpose, Ethics, Etc.


directionless

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I thought people might post places where they have found ideas for the purpose of life, ethical behavior, etc.

 

For example, there are things like confucianism, humanism, buddhism, masonic lodge, judaism, ... I've wondered if any of these would help.

 

Also maybe there are good books

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I find humanism helpful.  There is information about it here:  http://iheu.org/humanism/the-amsterdam-declaration/

Thanks, from skimming that link and the wikipedia article, it seems like humanism is about balancing the individual needs against the group needs? In other words, humanism seems to focus on government issues like democracy, human rights, etc?

 

Is there a part of humanism that deals with issues like:

- should I try to be rich?

- should I give all my income to charity?

- should I suppress my own ambitions to serve the needs of others?

- should I eat meat?

- should I turn the other cheek?

- what's the purpose of life?

- ...

 

I'm sure every ex-Christian struggles with different questions, because their personalities and circumstances are different. Some ex-Christians have their individual objectives figured-out and then they can focus on preventing society from infringing on their freedom to do what they want. Other people like me don't know what we want in life.

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Human morals come from our family unit.  What is good for the family is good.  This is the core from which all other ethics and laws are derived.  An individual person would not survive if it had not been for older family members doing what is best for the family.  Every single living person is the result of a mother's sacrifice and hard work.

 

Start there and you can determine your own value system.

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These general issues were big for me when I first deconverted and remain important to me almost eight years later. The very first issue I dealt with very soon after I accepted that Christianity was a false religion, was gay marriage. I began to think about why I had opposed it and came to see that it was only because I saw the Bible as being against it. Once I was able not to see the Bible as being authoritative, then I was able to think about the issue from a fresh perspective. It did not take me very long to come to the conclusion that there is no rational reason to oppose gay marriage. What is more, it seemed to me to be unjust to oppose it because of inheritance laws, tax benefits, and the like in addition to basic human freedom and equal protection under the law. Therefore, I did a 180 degree turn on that issue and fully and completely support gay marriage.

 

Other issues have not been so easy for me. One you bring up is the purpose of life. I think the first question is whether there is any purpose in life or whether it was just a random occurrence from the primordial soup of organic molecules. I don't know the answer to that question. But when we ponder such questions, we need not necessarily have verifiable facts to satisfy ourselves philosophically. So here's my purely philosophical and decidedly non-scientific answer to the question for the purpose of life.

 

The purpose of life is so the universe can be aware of itself. Life is not separate from the universe. Rather, it is as much a part of the universe as are stars, planets, asteroids, etc. By extension, we human beings are also a part of the universe and are not separate from it. In that sense, when we marvel at the photographs produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is really the universe marveling at itself. We are the universe's consciousness. Obviously none of what I said can be proved, but I find it philosophically satisfying.

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Even after more than 20 years I'm still fed up with organized belief systems.  Xianity ruined this in me for life I think.

 

My ethics are the ones I was raised with and haven't much changed from my believer days.  I don't (or at least to the best of my ability) do things that cause harm to others.  What has changed is I am no longer worried about those things that cause no one harm and are just arbitrary rules. 

 

Purpose is what you make of it. 

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The purpose of life is so the universe can be aware of itself. Life is not separate from the universe. Rather, it is as much a part of the universe as are stars, planets, asteroids, etc. By extension, we human beings are also a part of the universe and are not separate from it. In that sense, when we marvel at the photographs produced by the Hubble Space Telescope, it is really the universe marveling at itself. We are the universe's consciousness. Obviously none of what I said can be proved, but I find it philosophically satisfying.

 

 OF, This theory above somehow brings me peace. I don't know why..it just does. Whether it can be proven or not, I find some sense of serenity in this. We all come into being and we all burn-out like the stars. In this way, I think we are all one and should work together to get along on this earth. As a matter of fact, unless one looks at life like this, there will always be separation. I don't mean this to sound woo-ee, because there may be no element of spirituality or supernatual means to it at all (like you have addressed on another thread)...but it is a wonderful feeling to think that we should be one with the universe. The animals of the earth run on instinct, and of course, to a certain degree, we humans also do. But we as conscious animals have the instincts to choose to love and this is where I feel that greed and power has taken over.

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Thanks for those ideas, everybody. smile.png

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To me, my purpose in life is mainly in growing and learning and changing.  What makes humans good at survival is adaptation, and adapting to new things and new situations and new ways of thought is, to me, really important.

 

I love reading, I love learning new things, I do like meeting new people and finding out what they know and how they think and the disagreements are interesting.  Travelling to different places is good because it reminds me that everybody doesn't live and think like I do.  If I can't travel around the world I can read about people in other countries and cultures that are radically different from mine and it makes me aware that what I experience isn't the norm, it's simply what I experience.  There are over a billion people in the world with no easy access to clean water, and from what I've read their lives certainly seem harder than mine but not necessarily less happy or content because of their circumstances.  I've read about multi-billionaire Saudi oil-kings and how their families live; I've seen pictures of the most expensive hotel rooms and resorts in the world and they are mind-blowing!  $80,000 a night!!!!  It's all interesting - so many ways to live, so many viewpoints. 

 

It's interesting hearing people's stories -- "How did I get to this point in my life?" or "What made me change or confirm my beliefs?" -- and thinking about my own stories.

 

I've gone through different things in my life.  I was wealthy in my first marriage, but not loved.  I'm loved in my second marriage, and we're broke.  Is one better than the other?  Not really.  Well, being loved is nice!  That's better!  And I might be broke, but I now work harder than ever and can do more than I ever thought I could.  Sometimes that's a happy thing and sometimes it's not!  Well, we are "broke" in the context of this country, not of a third-world country.  Life isn't so bad!

 

And I go through times of existential crisis and don't really know why I'm here or care and feel very down.  That is very hard.

 

All in all, it's a fascinating life.

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I hope this link is helpful, Directionless.

 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

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Directionless, my ethics come from one sentence that is stated differently in two religions.

1. Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto you -- Confucius, way before the NT

2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- Jesus

 

No need to reject the good parts of a religion, just don't swallow any dogma.

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Directionless, my ethics come from one sentence that is stated differently in two religions.

1. Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto you -- Confucius, way before the NT

2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- Jesus

 

No need to reject the good parts of a religion, just don't swallow any dogma.

That has been my goal, but sometimes I wonder if it is actually a good goal. Maybe a person has a responsibility to pursue and defend his/her selfish interests so that others will know their boundaries?

 

Confucius was a very realistic person, so I wonder how he justified that? Jesus, of course, was only interested in preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven, so he may not have cared about how the golden rule would work in real life.

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I hope this link is helpful, Directionless.

 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

Thanks, BAA, I only skimmed the first part of the link, but I haven't read it yet. I've been depressed the last few days, but now I am coming out of it. smile.png

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Directionless, my ethics come from one sentence that is stated differently in two religions.

1. Do not unto others what you would not have others do unto you -- Confucius, way before the NT

2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you -- Jesus

 

No need to reject the good parts of a religion, just don't swallow any dogma.

That has been my goal, but sometimes I wonder if it is actually a good goal. Maybe a person has a responsibility to pursue and defend his/her selfish interests so that others will know their boundaries?

 

Confucius was a very realistic person, so I wonder how he justified that? Jesus, of course, was only interested in preparing for the Kingdom of Heaven, so he may not have cared about how the golden rule would work in real life.

 

It's not a goal, it's a guideline. And there are exceptions for all guidelines. To have wisdom is to know when to apply these things and when not to. Remember pearls before swine? Every wisdom tradition has contradictory aphorisms, because there are times when one is appropriate and one is not.

 

In Proverbs it says KJV "Be good, but be not overly good, for why shouldst thou destroy thyself? These kinds of things from religion I keep because I find them valuable. I left the dogma behind, not the wisdom.

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I hope this link is helpful, Directionless.

 

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

O.k. I finally read the link in detail.

 

As I was reading about the scientific measurement of empathy in apes, I started wondering if these same methods could detect psychopaths. There was the example where watching another ape grab something caused similar regions of the observing ape to light up as if he/she had also grabbed. I suspect a psychopath's brain would still respond in this way, because it would be so difficult to function in human society without that capability. On the other hand, maybe forcing the psychopath to watch another person suffer would not show the same brain activity as a normal human observer. Also it would be interesting to find out if apes can be psychopaths, and if they tend to be the leaders.

 

The last paragraph made a good point by describing morality as a filter for empathy.

Emotions trump rules. This is why, when speaking of moral role models, we talk of their hearts, not their brains (even if, as any neuroscientist will point out, the heart as the seat of emotions is an outdated notion). We rely more on what we feel than what we think when solving moral dilemmas.

 

It’s not that religion and culture don’t have a role to play, but the building blocks of morality clearly predate humanity. We recognize them in our primate relatives, with empathy being most conspicuous in the bonobo ape and reciprocity in the chimpanzee. Moral rules tell us when and how to apply our empathic tendencies, but the tendencies themselves have been in existence since time immemorial.

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Directionless,

 

I'm not really sure that the empathy measurement techniques for apes would be effective for humans.  Psychology isn't my field of interest, so I'd be speculating about things I'm not at all familiar with if I were to try and respond to your last message.

 

My initial purpose for posting that link was to introduce a new idea to you.

The idea that we might not have to look to 'human' ideas about ethical behavior... (Confucianism, humanism, buddhism, masonic lodge, judaism, etc.) ...because evolution has given us the ability to empathize with others.  We can therefore use our innate empathic abilities to behave in more moral and ethical ways towards each other.

 

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

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Directionless,

 

I'm not really sure that the empathy measurement techniques for apes would be effective for humans.  Psychology isn't my field of interest, so I'd be speculating about things I'm not at all familiar with if I were to try and respond to your last message.

 

My initial purpose for posting that link was to introduce a new idea to you.

The idea that we might not have to look to 'human' ideas about ethical behavior... (Confucianism, humanism, buddhism, masonic lodge, judaism, etc.) ...because evolution has given us the ability to empathize with others.  We can therefore use our innate empathic abilities to behave in more moral and ethical ways towards each other.

 

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

o.k., I see the idea you're suggesting now. It's a tricky problem.

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You know, I find myself increasingly cynical about any attempt to find purpose and ethics anywhere than in one's own consciousness.  In the same way as I regard morality as a conceptual non-starter because it is an imposed belief system, so it strikes me as the same for a given individual's purpose in life and ethical standards.  I doubt if there is an easy way round this.  What I see as a valid purpose may seem ridiculous to you, and vice versa.  What I am told is ethically valid I might find totally illogical.  Bottom line, you need to find your own purpose and standards within yourself, according to what makes sense to you..

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I've appreciated this coffee-table book:

 

3D_cover_1024x1024.png

 

"I decided to travel through the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom and put together a book of photographic portraits. From the airline pilot, to the musician, I wanted to document my fellow atheists and ask them what brings meaning and joy to their lives. The goal of the book was to visually capture the diversity of non-believers and the ways they maintain a better life, not in spite of their atheism, but because of it."  --  A Better Life: 100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy & Meaning in a World Without God.
 
For every person there is going to be a different "meaning of life";  and meanings are going to change over time.  I agree with Amateur that the most realistic "meanings of life" will incorporate change itself as a reference point.
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I thought people might post places where they have found ideas for the purpose of life, ethical behavior, etc.

 

For example, there are things like confucianism, humanism, buddhism, masonic lodge, judaism, ... I've wondered if any of these would help.

 

Mark Twain. Michel de Montaigne. Their basic message was that the human race is very weird, very absurd, completely destructive and occasionally noble and ethical. Don't spend too much effort trying to make sense of it all or correct it. Concentrate on what makes you happy. It's all fleeting and that's OK. 

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Wisdom cannot be a goal. It's what happens if you live long enough and have enough sense to learn from your mistakes. 

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Thanks, everybody, those are more good ideas. smile.png

 

I like that quote from Blood: "Wisdom cannot be a goal. It's what happens if you live long enough and have enough sense to learn from your mistakes."

 

I know also that I tend to worry more about "purpose" when I'm depressed. Probably the questions only indicate that the person is unhappy, and that person should focus on being happy instead of trying to answer those questions?

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