and the point is...???

Originally posted by VoidSpirit
the point is to ponder the point.

Victor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning, argues that people need a purpose to live. His experience in concentration camps was that survivors had a purpose for living and those without a purpose died. His practice consisted in getting clients to discover a purpose for themselves. It did not consist in telling them what that might be.

Living (let alone the universe) does not have a purpose. Purpose is a psychological concept and something we have to devise for ourselves.

For some people, God supplies a purpose. Quite often, that psychological solution does not rest on any basis of belief and it will not be affected by appeals to reason. Belief and all the superstructure of religious affiliation comes from the initial choice and does not have to be deeply considered - but it will often be protected vigorously.

It is not the set of beliefs that is being protected - it is the psychological choice.

Atheists are attacked sometimes for offering nothing except despair in exchange for reasoned debate about belief systems. In reality, that is how their position might be experienced. In the Nineteenth Century especially, the "Death of God" was seen as an existential nightmare. If there is no God then what is the purpose of anything? Many people still are fearful of taking that decision and questioning their beliefs. Many others see religion as a route out of nihilism and for some poeple it is indeed a route out of nihilism - it does supply a purpose for them which maybe they lacked otherwise.

I think the fallacy is in looking out there (anywhere) for purpose when it can only be discovered within.

That does not, of course, mean that we must be Egoists. We are social animals and do not thrive as solitary individuals. In other words, it is not that "I" am the purpose of my life, only that it is my responsibility to give my life a purpose. It cannot be given to me on a plate. Accepting without question what others offer as a purpose for living is to my mind far too dangerous to be tolerated.