What is your purpose?

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My purpose. Hmmm.....

I guess my role in the universe is to eat Asian food and to tinker with computers. I have been doing that successfully for the most part of my life.

FUGITIVE

Some concepts are elusive,
Slippery and inconclusive.
God and beauty, love, and art,
A dream, the evanescent scent
Of April rain,
The reason why we’re here
And why, someday,
We disappear.
Many people are Hell bent
On getting rich, staying drunk,
Some, desperate to pay the rent.
Some delight in being bitchy
Others to be a hunk,
Do good.
(Knock on wood).
I’m happy to exist
Where nothing hurts, I sleep OK,
Delighted in another day.
It takes a lot to make me pissed.
The magic in a good existence
Is purely, solely, tough persistence.

You a poet Sand?

Again in reverse order, for some reason:

Belief in god is subjective, but god itself either objectively exists or it doesn't, & to say a belief ought to be based on proof, probabilities, etc. is not to say that the belief isn't subjective, only that among several possible subjective beliefs we ought to pick the one that is most likely to be true. Any belief or opinion which isn't based on proofs & probabilities will be in all likelihood worthless as a guide to reality - it isn't even a guess, it's either closing your eyes & arbitrarily choosing whichever opinion you happen to point at or (I suspect more probably) simply picking the belief or opinion that pleases you most.



I'm not sure what it is I said that you agree with. All I will say about that is I am more interested in whether my beliefs are true than in whatever it is you're saying (I don't know what it means to say that language produces belief).



It might be a good practical reason for adopting a belief, on the basis that otherwise you wouldn't get anything done, but it is not a relevant consideration when attempting to work out if that belief is true.



The purpose in our perceiving & assigning meaning is to make the world more understandable, so that we can cope with it. Our purpose in life is something that we decide for ourselves, as much as we can, & inevitably informed by our instincts & urges. & the point of it is so that we can be busy & happy, because we are so made (or rather, we have so evolved) that we can't be happy otherwise.

I write poems, do comic strips, paint in tempera, oils, watercolor, bake original recipes, cook, ride a bicycle, design exhibitions, design products, design and make jewelry, drive a car, fly a plane, sculpt in various media, feed wild ducks and pigeons, raise sparrows, mice, rabbits, seagulls, speak English and some Finnish, and argue incessantly against irrationality and cut my own hair. Am I a poet? I'll be damned if I know.

Sounds like my idea of a good time except feeding, arguing, and cooking.

And I'm no poet /:

Would you say that beauty, truth, free will, justice, meaning, among many other things, exist objectively?

There is no reason why god should exist objectively when there are so many things people believe in, and which they find useful to believe in, which do not have objective existence.


What is truth? Truth is subjective. It's what works for any given person or group or structure.


Like believing in justice. When that symbol was first invented people probably argued about whether it existed too, before agreeing to believe in it, and construct society with that belief.


You wondered why I said that my belief in god was language based rather than reality based, and I realised that of course language is part of reality, and therefore as you said I could have simply said it was reality based, but it is the language element/foundation to the belief that particularly interests me just now so that is why I referred to that.


What do you do with the beliefs that you hold which are not true? In the final analysis none of our beliefs are true. What is important is whether they hinder or help you.


That certain words lead to certain beliefs. That beliefs are language, and nothing else. That all words are "beliefs" in and of themselves.


Truth again. You obviously believe in truth, and yet it has no objective existence.


What is the point of coping with life?

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Is there such a thing as a lie?

That's when you tell someone something that you do not yourself believe, generally with the intention to deceive, isn't it?

.

And what is something that a great number of people believe to be not true and you believe to be true and you tell that to someone as if it were true?

I tell people that I believe in god. I do believe in god, therefore I am not lying.

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I am interested by what you mean with the word "god"? Do you mean the Christian god of the bible or something more abstract?

Well, a child telling her parents that Santa Claus visited her house and gave her presents wouldn't be lying either.

Ah, but that is dodging the question. Nobody can doubt you believe in God. But if you try to tell people they should believe in God because God exists, that is something else altogether.

I am not dodging the question.

I don't tell people they should believe in god.

Nor do I tell people that "god exists", because "exists" has a very objective meaning in our society, and it doesn't mean the same thing as saying "I believe in god".

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God like in the book "I am David", ( by Anne Holm ), the one of the "still waters and green pastures", and the one writing the universe as we speak, ( that makes me laugh ), and "the first cause", and ... a loving god. The god of the Bible, probably, because that is the one I've read about most, perhaps mainly the one of the New Testament. But not "affiliated" with the Christian or any other church. A Universalist ( is that what they're called ) god?

I didn't consciously choose to believe in any god in particular. I just stood, over the fridge of all places, fed up of assigning agency and cause and meaning etc, ( not that I've stopped assigning cause and creating meaning etc, just the biggest one is dealt with ), after reading about the "god need" theory, and said "I believe in god" a couple of times and that was that; a "loving arms" sort of feeling, of "coming home", being "safe at last" etc. I cried with relief.

I "forget" sometimes, like forgetting to eat greens, and it takes me feeling increasingly grotty to remember to "renew" my belief. I think the god of the bible is pretty abstract actually, just expressed in language it is easy to take too literally, ( because they didn't have such a rich vocabulary of abstract terms, then, and had to rely a lot on metaphors based on the concrete to express what they meant/experienced ).
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Last edited by ouinon on 11 May 2009, 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.