what do you think is the meaning of life?

I just live my life the best I can, and be the best person I can everyday, and if that isnt enough for whatever god there is then I don't really feel that god deserves worship.

 

Yep. I live the exact same way, and it seems to be catching on amongst people.. which is good. I am a good person because I know it's the right thing to do, not because I fear punishment after I'm gone from this world.

If I live my entire life a good person, and some god decides even still I am to burn for all eternity even still, then I will accept that fate as opposed to worshiping him out of fear of torture.

 

The meaning of life is to make more life = SEX

 

What does this question mean, anyway? The "meaning" of life. I mean if you ask me what the meaning of cheese was, I'd be confused on how to answer that. But when I see this question, I assume it's synonymic with asking what the purpose of life is.

 

The meaning of life is subjective.

/thread

 

Its all about chillin' out under bridges and eating delicious goat meat.

 

Totally agree with your sexy chin, I think the bes thing to do is live your life as best you can how you would like to. Happiness and love should be our ultimate goals in life.

 

Yep, the deity is the least important part, but the way of life and how to live part of religion I still disagree with. (I have nothing against religion btw, I just don't see what people get out of it, I have friends of various religions) As it often a set of RULES and is about DEVOTION, thats not you living your life, thats yo living your life how someone else want you to live it. I don't care if that person is god, I will live MY OWN life.

 

Serious answer:
The meaning of life is to improve everything around you - to make the world a better place, slowly but surely.

Not-so-serious answer:
It's forty-two. We've already established this.

 

Prove it.

 

42 has been conclusively proven.

Now what about the other answers huh?

 

I think people try hard to elaborate a too complicated answer to that question, to find a purpouse for humans. To see life as a miracle, ourselves beings with the ability to reason as something above all other animals, is something I find ridiculous.

We are a physical body that is nothing but a bunch of atoms arranged in a specific way, which faces life just as a challange of not dying. Isn't it ironical that all our actions everyday (sleeping, eating, working, playing) are just done just to avoid dying? There must be something we have to do apart from staying away from death! Otherwise life would be like working to recieve more work tomorrow as a reward. That, I think, is the source of such a desperate need for a "meaning" of life.

I believe there is not any meaning at all. Some religions attempt to answer that question by making our pointless life a preparation for our hypotetical afterlife. But for those of us who aren't religious, it is up to us to decide what we'd like to do before turning into dust.

However, couldn't such special objective (e.g climbing Mount Everest) be just another attempt to stay away from death? In that example, facing new challanges to provide intellectual stimulation, be socially admired, etc. improves our emotional health. Which is linked to susceptivility to physical illnesses...

 

I think Drok's signature is interesting.
("If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.")

I consider good to be defined by punishment and reward. Those good things were developed over centuries of human survival. The things you consider good are good because they're ideas that sustain the people who hold them. More specifically they're ideas that sustain themselves. Ideas that don't sustain themselves, like a religion that involves eating your babies, destroy the people who hold them. That's why they're bad ideas. Every odd combination of particles that can't hold itself together just destroys itself. Every group of people who can't get along with each other, hurt each other. Do you see a pattern here? Everything that exists follows that pattern. If it works it will keep working; if it doesn't it will disappear.

As a human being, though, that exists in this universe, I automatically follow this pattern too. If I do something that doesn't work, I'd be dead. I have to follow the pattern. I have no other choice. I could kill myself, but no matter what my desire to live, I have zero desire to die and be gone. I mean, why bother? I feel like living. That's what my body is telling me to do. I have to do things that grow and sustain me. To help this pattern along I could spread ideas, build things, create systems, and do all sorts of other things to sustain the people around me. That's all that can be done so I'll do it as best as I can.

Not that it matters. By this pattern, no matter what we do, as long as we do something, we will keep growing. Maybe there's an end to all this, or maybe in the end we become so convoluted that we decide the next step to expansion is to destroy everything, or maybe it's a kind of fractal thing that just goes on forever.

Anyway, just do something. Generally things that a likely to keep you alive or multiple people alive. Hm.

 

I say the purpose of life (in general) is to evolve. Seeing all the biological organisms fight, fend, and co-exist seems to serve no positive end other than to adapt genetically and dominate via self-replication.

A single person's life, your life, could have a much more complex meaning. Perhaps this reality is an imagining, a farce. I cannot even fathom the possibilities, but I find it ironic that the possibilities imagined might be what holds reality itself. But that's a bunch of hypothetical, philosophical, mumbo-jumbo.

Now, I don't know for certain, but after thinking about it for quite some time, I think the purpose of life may be intelligence. Intelligence is, at least as far as we can know at this time, the most advanced product of evolution. I think my life's (perhaps mankind's) purpose is to help evolve the way intelligence works; to help it grow exponentially.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos