Why do we exist?

Prophesy is NOT hearsay ---this is the wrong word for your usage here.

You mean Scripture is hearsay.

All ancient civilisations had everything! Sewers, ships, enegineers military schools gold coins etc . . . each a guild of knowledge available for hire by governing bodies with the legal tender to commission their services.

You are conflating the un-washed masses' lot in life since antiquity as the status quo of past civilisations.

Just as the library of Alexandria lost its books so common history books are composed for the neatherlands, far away from the cream of the crop.
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Originally Posted by Amergin
Evolution is a fact. We have ...
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Amergin,

Who is "WE"?
Most people are looking for a job.
A taxi driver knows the street directions ---which you don not.

A motor mechanic knows the engine's workings.

How is it that you know about evolutions FACTS?

Are you collecting funding at your university for your field trips to your archiology sites?

Was WW1 & WW2 fought over religious differences, or over real estate and natural resources?

Why was WW1 & WW2 call WORLD WARS? Because 99% of the population was vigorously involved in the war effort?

How do you know what occurred or is truth unless you have first hand knowledge past down person-to-person?

Similarly, your Post #79 is filled with your Guru's texts ---how do you varify the veracity of your Guru's proclamations [if they are at all relevant to basic needs in life] before propragating it to eager readers of "Popular Science Weekly".

In the 1950's the world was going to be a world of ease and leisure with all the new technology . . . it was just a long-winded sales pitch . . . long enough to send their children to the best schools while others vote for the labor party.
 
bhaktajan said:
Prophesy is NOT hearsay ---this is the wrong word for your usage here.

You mean Scripture is hearsay.
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Of course, scripture based on claims of divine contact with one or a few individuals is hearsay. It is then expected that other people must accept the hearsay as truth without proof. We know scriptures are hearsay because each differs from the others in various matters. It is obvious to me that scriptures and gods are made up in the human imagination. That is OK with me, but be honest enough to admit that revelation may be imaginative speculation, delusional, or hallucinatory events, OR simply lying to influence people. I do not object to people believing in delusional scriptures, as long as those beliefs do not threaten violence against me and my family.

All ancient civilisations had everything! Sewers, ships, enegineers military schools gold coins etc . . . each a guild of knowledge available for hire by governing bodies with the legal tender to commission their services.
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Most of this was based on common sense, early advances in mathematics, logic, and reason. Invisible magical beings had nothing to do with real achievements.

You are conflating the un-washed masses' lot in life since antiquity as the status quo of past civilisations.
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Wrong.

Just as the library of Alexandria lost its books so common history books are composed for the neatherlands, far away from the cream of the crop.
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Rubbish.
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Amergin,
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Who is "WE"?
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Sorry. We is me and 99% of my fellow scientists. Evolution is as obvious as the spherical Earth to "us."
I realise many people still believe in Magical Creation and all humans descended from two Jewish people created from dust 6000 years ago. I do not care about that. I just believe that magical myths should not be taught in science class but in comparative religion class (optional) while religious parents can have their children take comparative religion in place of science.

Most people are looking for a job.
A taxi driver knows the street directions ---which you don not.
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What is the point? I know more about the brain than non-Neuroscientists. I know less about fixing a motor car than most auto mechanics. So what?

How is it that you know about evolutions FACTS?
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Aside from a number of college courses, I have done extensive reading, participated in palaeontology digs in North Africa, Brooke Provincial Park in Alberta, Montana, Wyoming, and central China. I put in the harder work of examining and classifying the fossils. I actually saw and felt the fossil of a raptor dinosaur with feathered wings.

When I lived in East Africa in a medical practice, in my off time I visited several digs in Ethiopia, Lake Turkana, and South Africa. A substantial proportion of my vacation time on Archaeological digs. I also visited the museums in London, New York, and Drumheller, Alberta.

All of that is something one cannot do with stories written down supposely by people who claim to have had direct experience with the unknown and unknowable. These scriptures clearly qualify as hearsay. Belief qualifies as delusion.

Are you collecting funding at your university for your field trips to your archiology sites?
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Please use your spell-check. No, my funded research in Neurocognition is the only work supported by British/Scottish universities. I am lucky enough to be from a prominent Scottish Family. I have used a substantial portion of my inheritance to learn about the real universe. All of my cousins, brothers and other family spend money on yachts, sports cars, private planes, and extravagant homes. I live in a modest cottage, no yacht, no sports car, not a single golf tournament. I don't regret how I used my holdings.

Was WW1 & WW2 fought over religious differences, or over real estate and natural resources?
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All of the above. Hitler, a Christian, ranted against the Godless Bolsheviks in Mein Kampf long before the war. WW1 was more territorial and a series of senseless blunders. Most of them did not want the war.

Why was WW1 & WW2 call WORLD WARS? Because 99% of the population was vigorously involved in the war effort?

How do you know what occurred or is truth unless you have first hand knowledge past down person-to-person?
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I do vaguely remember the air raid sirens and being in the underground. My mom had taken me to Badenoch during the war. Later, in York and London, I remember seeing all of the crumbled ruins, partial buildings, large areas of devastation, a lot of people including children with amputated limbs. My grandfather and great grandfather survived service in Flanders and the Somme but died in their house hit by a German bomb.

Similarly, your Post #79 is filled with your Guru's texts ---how do you varify the veracity of your Guru's proclamations [if they are at all relevant to basic needs in life] before propragating it to eager readers of "Popular Science Weekly".

In the 1950's the world was going to be a world of ease and leisure with all the new technology . . . it was just a long-winded sales pitch . . . long enough to send their children to the best schools while others vote for the labor party.
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More rubbish. I do not have guru's or gods. I do have people whom I admire great men and women who have contributed much more to knowledge than I did. They are thinkers, mathematicians, scientists, leaders like Thomas Jefferson and Washington, and Buddha. Christian and Islamic prophets, messiahs, priests, saints, imams, etc. are not on my most admired list.

Amergin

"The Clergy hate me because they know, that I know, that they do not know." -Robert G. Ingersoll (American)
 
At the moment, you exist to read my post. What higher calling could there be?
 
Unless, of course, you take the old stone tablets into account which could, possibly, allude to the idea of us being some sort of monkey hybrid, designed to carry a burden...
there is no real "why" and, therefore, no simple answer as to why.

We're simply one expression of the creative force.

It's like asking a painter why they paint.
 
This is an illusion:
I do not have guru's or gods. I do ...

Allow me to remind you:
24 hour long day
minus 8 for sleep and
minus 8 for work and
minus approx 3 hours for bodily upkeep and commutes,
Leaves you and the everyman with approx 5 hours of leisure time per day.

All those other 19 hours are given over to requirements of your benefactors [Not your Guru] Bosses and work-lords [from whom you relay your 'earnings' to your land-lord].

Do you fit this common scenario?
Too much more fortunate than this?

As Alphafa said,
"The larger they are the harder they fall"
[BTW, Alphafa died of a gunshot in a LA Bar in his 20's]

So, now in the human form of life,
let us inquire as to what is The Absolute Truth" --rig veda 1:1

The seasons repeat. The soul is a leaf. It will return to peat.
Again the Sun attests to yearning forth away from withered roots to higher elements.
Sublime the ether's sonic echoic speech.

Home exists provided for all modes and lyrics.
would one suggest quite-ness as an inspiration?
would one suggest symphonies as an inspiration?

Both transpire where the mundane instrument strains forward for the sublime above the peat.

Bhaktajan
 
Eudaimonist said:
If "why do we exist?" means "for what purpose do we exist?"... we exist for our own purposes.

This question suggests another question: "which purposes matter to us?" In other words, "which purposes are choiceworthy?"

That's where things get interesting.


eudaimonia,

Mark
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Purposes are our own goals and guidelines which our brain has developed for us. It is a combination of genes and experience/learning.

Why do we exist is an unanswerable question? Why are circles round and squares, well "square?"

The better question is How did we come to exist. Nobody knows that. I would call our existence to come from a huge complex Chaos Theory. Religious people make up fanciful stories of humanoid gods conjuring us out of non-space using magic words. Naturally there are thousands of Religious explanations competing for credit but none with so much plausibility as the bearded cross-eyed old man eating mesquite berries, mushrooms, and smoking a dried plant in a pipe.

Even today in primitive tribal people, a wacky, muttering, hallucinating old man who talks to invisible entities is felt to be gifted with a line to the gods. Many Christians and Muslims still believe in a series of old codgers smoking weed and ducking from invisible Pterodactyls formulated their religious beliefs.

Amergin
 
Even today in primitive tribal people, a wacky, muttering, hallucinating old man who talks to invisible entities is felt to be gifted with a line to the
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I have come to think that Monkey's could type a Great Novel ---long before they arrive at the idea that there is a Single-God.

The notion of God ---must be imparted . . . and then maybe accepted & argued.

The notion of a Transcendent God does not seem to be a logical conclusion of anyone's logic . . . unless it was introduced from outside.

That is my observation.

The invention of the wheel is logical [via the principle of "Neccesity is the Mother of Invention"].

If public schools and medical research institutions stopped operating --the low-rent slackers would not re-invent more efficient means to "Educate themselves". They'd just Riot.

IE: The existence of an Absolute Personality of Godhead ---or the Existence of the Queen of Spain . . . was introduced from the outside, to the Incas of South America.
 
To answer the original question. Why do we exist? There is no objective reason. We exist because we exist. Now then, let's examine existence. Is it really obvious that there is a fixed purpose? No of course there isn't, unless you want to insist that there is. We can however look at the circumstances we are in, and improve them for all sentient beings.

We are here to play. We are here to have fun, to live in happiness, and eliminate suffering as much as possible. This is of course quite obvious to any person regardless of religion or spirituality, unless it is a religion that worships suffering and serious purposes. We do have suffering and so many challenges in life, but that is all apart of the cosmic game of life.
 
Everything in life has a purpose, beyond just being.
So it is a simple step to say that, then, life too, must have a purpose.
 
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