Amritas responds to Faith and Reason (part 1) while I’m offline, and before I can post even once, he posts 11 more times! (Is Amritas going postal?) In any case, I will now belatedly respond to his response. Amritas thinks:
that humans make meaning. I believe that life should have (as opposed to "has") meaning, so I create my own mission which may or may not match anyone else's.
That begs the question: Can I choose any meaning I want – and it will be meaningful? How about watching TV? Can I dedicate my life to watching TV, and have a meaningful life? Some of you will think: If it’s meaningful to you, why not? Well then, how about killing Jews? Hitler went to the grave consoled by the fact that though he didn’t succeed in conquering the world, at least he destroyed European Jewry. Now I hear you say: It was meaningful, in a bad way.
I can agree with these sentiments, but it implies at least one of these articles of faith:
1. Some things are meaningful, others not.
2. Some things are good, others bad.
So we’re back to faith. (As an aside, I am exploring the idea that only the first is true: That bad things have no lasting impact – are ultimately not meaningful – and the fate of bad people, to the extent that they are bad, is to have their memory erased, while good people, to the extent that they are good, will live forever.)
What makes something meaningful? I think that most people would agree that doing something meaningful means advancing, in some way our “core values” – those values that are most fundamental (as opposed to secondary values which we hold because they promote our core values). Where do our core values come from? Again, faith. After several months of (religiously) reading Amritas’s blog, I would say that he has quite a complex network of faith, which he sums up with the word: prolife. It just so happens that some people call their faith a religion, and others don’t.
Speaking for myself, I “know” what is meaningful, even though I don’t know why it is meaningful. But I must believe that it is meaningful for some reason, perhaps incomprehensible to me. To believe that we are free to choose a meaning is to me the same as saying there is no meaning at all, merely human attempts at self-deception.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at July 18, 2004 04:32 PM