Our wonderful society teaches it's youth that 'you came from undetermined random matter' and therefore your life is meaningless. Whether you live a peaceful, kind, giving and loving life vs. a life of cruel murder and self indulgence means nothing...no reason in the world why one life is better than the other...none at all....in the end, to the 'nihilist/atheist', we are just random 'meat puppets' traipsing across a meaningless time and space continuum on our way to 'worm food' and eternal 'nothingness'
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No. Some people do take away that message because they have no real guidance in that area, and some people use that interpretation to attack something they don't understand well enough to take on with actual facts.
Because we do live in societies, it does matter what kind of life you live. Like it or not, we evolved this sort of group as protection from predators, for better mating opportunities, and a higher chance of getting to eat high quality food with more eyes looking for it and a requirement by the group to share (or get punished if you're caught not sharing). What we have now is a much more specialized version. There is a lot of leeway in there as to what you can do and still be accepted as a valid part of society (at least by those of us that don't have a narrow interpretation of a certain document), but you can't do absolutely anything. Basically it comes down to one person's rights stopping at the beginning of another person's -- this prohibits then acts like murder and stealing.
In the process of developing this sort of social group, we also gained things like empathy. You don't have to be religious or believe in gods to be empathetic; one can understand another's suffering just as well without, because everyone has suffered from a common set of things at some point and some of us can extend that to recognizing pain caused by things we haven't suffered. For many of us this is sufficient motivation to try to do something practical to reduce that suffering. This is part of why many of us also advocate for animals' "rights", because it is easy to recognize suffering in non-human animals as well.
I could keep going for some time, but I'll stop here, considering. I doubt this would convince you of anything, but maybe someone will see this is not a position that people take lightly, blindly or in rebellion.
Also, to a Christian, life is nothing more than what you get when you mix chocolate cake and oranges in a blender and feed it to a small animal from Chile.
Since when do you get to decide how other people determine the meaning of life?
"Whether you live a peaceful, kind, giving and loving life vs. a life of cruel murder and self indulgence means nothing"
Except that most normal people would not enjoy murdering everyone. That and that if everyone did start killing each other society would collapse and we'd lose all the benefits of it, which I think would outweigh any good that may come as a result of said murder.
And in your worldview life and humanity are meaningless in and of themselves, they only gain meaning when they are subverted to the will of an vague, uncaring deity whom no one has ever seen.
...yeah I'll take the 'worm food'.
we are just random 'meat puppets' traipsing across a meaningless time and space continuum on our way to 'worm food' and eternal 'nothingness'
Which sounds like excellent motivation to not be an asshole with the time you're given, doesn't it?
Meat Puppets? Didn't they do that "Lake of Fire" song that Nirvana covered?
Edit: Yes, more or less. Thank you, Wikipedia.
Er, at the risk of sounding existentialist, that's complete bullshit.
Read 'The Collector','The Stranger' or 'The Magus' and come back to me.
You must have some seriously low self-esteem, if you feel meaningless over events that happened thousands, even millions of years ago. I thought christianity was supposed to make people happy and at peace with themselves, I learned how wrong I was about that years ago. Maybe you need to rethink your beliefs too, or you're going to be stuck in this misery forever.
Our wonderful society teaches it's youth that 'you came from undetermined random matter' and therefore your life is meaningless.
For the sake of the argument, science may be teaching the youth that we all come from "undetermined random matter", it is you fundies who conclude from that statement that life is meaningless, because to you the only meaningful form of life is in the perpetual servitude of an invisible super genie.
1. Evolution is NOT random, it is the opposite of random.
....in the end, to the 'nihilist/atheist', we are just random 'meat puppets' traipsing across a meaningless time and space continuum on our way to 'worm food' and eternal 'nothingness'
Well, yeah. You got a problem with that?
I never saw 'coming from pond' scum as a bad thing. Maybe that's just me. It's like wondering if your great great great grandfather picked his nose. Why we're here never bothered me, there's no plan, no destiny.
It free's you actually. You wonder 'what's God like.' I don't.
Being nothing (in the grand scheme) is fine with me. Out-humbled you to the ground
See, the problem here is you've decided that something meaningless is meaningless. Instead, try to think of it as meaningless is freedom to be who you are and to do really, really nice things for people just because it feels good.
And anyway, aren't we all worm food? "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out..." Imagining being in heaven still won't stop the eternal munching after you're dead.
What's better for cosmic oneness than to know you are the same as the stars, the planets, and all life? The other alternative is believing you're no better than dirt and therefore can treat yourself as such.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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