What is the meaning of life.
Well...
In my own words, life is what one makes it, one's own choices, ethics, morality, and indeed actions based on the above.
Respect for the individual and the belief that man (and woman), creates his or her own worth based on the value he/she creates and how he/she interacts and exchanges value for value with his/her fellow humans.
Man/woman are free to pursuit his/her own happiness, so long so he/she does not infringe upon the basic individual rights of his/her neighbors.
There is no government or institution that can morally guarantee such happiness, those who do or believe in such and or promote the same are nothing more than frauds.
As basic individual rights I define them as the right to live, to be free and independent (i.e. self determination of his/her own destiny), the right to own property, to express himself/herself, and free to associate peacefully with others.
With those rights, specific obligations are implied primarily to respect the same rights of others, including abiding the law of the particular place he/she chooses freely in which to live.
You can spend hours speculating/debating about it with reasonable men and women, however, in short.... here are a few choice thoughts that better explain my own feelings:
Enjoy...
"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."
"The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it."
"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man."
"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. .... The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."
"Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn."
"Government under democracy is thus government by orgy, almost by orgasm."
"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable."
"I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind--that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to
clear and honest thinking."
"Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice."
"Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself."
"...the proof of an idea is not to be sought in the soundness of the man fathering it, but in the soundness of the idea itself. One asks of a pudding, not if the cook who offers it is a good woman, but if
the pudding itself is good."
"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."
"Consider the six days of Genesis as a figure of speech for what has in fact been 4 billion years. On this scale, one day equals something like six hundred and sixty-six million years, and thus, all day Monday and until Tuesday noon, creation was busy getting the world going. Life began Tuesday noon, and the beautiful organic wholeness of it developed over the next four days. At 4 pm Saturday, the big reptiles came on. Five hours later, when the redwoods appeared, there were no more big reptiles. At three minutes before midnight on the last day, man appeared. At one-fourth of a second before midnight, Christ arrived. At one-fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution began. We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark raving mad."
"All the leaders of groups tend to be frauds. If they were not, it would be impossible for them to retain the allegiance of their dupes..."
"The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy."
"The fact, however, that threats of Hell have their social uses is not an argument in favor of the truth of religion; it is simply an argument against the human race. More, it is probably libellous, for the overwhelming majority of men and women are not nearly so vicious as the fancy of theologians makes them out [to be]. Very few men, if Hell were proved to be a fiction tomorrow, would take to the highroad and cut throats, and very few women would turn drabs. "
"The God of love that they preach invariably turns out, on examination, to be a God of harsh and arbitrary penalties and brutalities, just as the brotherhood of man that they preach, brought to the test, turns out to be only a kind of hatred. Hell is still their headquarters... "
"Shave a gorilla and it would be almost impossible, at twenty paces, to distinguish him from a heavyweight champion of the world. Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian. "
"Christian theology is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking."
"It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism. "
"Nothing is more patent, indeed, than the fact that charity merely converts the unfit - who, in the course of nature, would soon die out and so cease to encumber the earth - into parasites - who live on indefinitely, a nuisance and a burden to their betters. "
And finally.....
"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."
Z.
p.s. to the religious zealots, don't waste your time in indoctrinating me, I am quite happy, content, and have peace of mind. These are precious commodities that are indeed in scarce supply, and not enjoyed by many.
Further, I do not believe in a single word of your gibberish, nor I have interest in debating with people that by definition, lack reason.
You believe in what you want to believe and likewise I do, I do not try to sell you on my ideas, so reciprocate and save your own efforts to save me of whatever the hell you think I am at risk.
In short, I am not interested. |
