It always mystified me a bit when someone shares their opinion on the internet and the response it to tell them to calm down. I've been at this a decade. Nothing on KMC moves my emotional needle anymore. But you're welcome to address the points I made. You likely saw some sort of antagonism where none was present. I merely don't mince words when I believe something to be utterly false. But I'd welcome a discussion.
Gender: Unspecified Location: With Cinderella and the 9 Dwarves
Well, I think in essence I agree with Digi that meaning is made and not a given. So in that aspect I don't think Religion can be less meaningful, cause nothing has intrinsic meaning. However Religion can definitely make someone's life less impactful, for example by deferring to an afterlife rather than seizing the life one has, that could potentially be an interpretation of "meaning" in which Religion is a detriment.
Impact is something that comes from a sense of meaningfulness. If you feel that your actions have meaning then you are more likely to act. You're suggesting the reverse, which doesn't necessarily hold.
But seriously, the way you worded your initial assertion lends itself to different interpretations than "nothing has intrinsic meaning." Let's take a quick look:
At surface value, this seems to agree with the OP's premise that I refuted in my post(s), that religion has intrinsic meaning and "can't be less meaningful."
So even if he agrees with it in a technical sense, I wouldn't espouse that particular phrasing.
And for reference, I wouldn't agree with it. If meaning is personal and subjective, and someone defines that meaning more strongly in a secular worldview, religion can absolutely undermine it. Finding anecdotes of any of this is next to impossible because we're talking about primal internal motivations, so we have nothing to point to. But in theory your premise here is eminently refutable.
I think you may be confusing ideas here, but allow me to try to clarify.
OP's question concerns defining the meaningfulness - or lack thereof - of one's life. In that sense, nothing has intrinsic meaning until we ascribe it.
Your question seems to want to turn this on its head, and suggest that I'm saying that others have no meaning. Which it does not. Questions like "are they important?" or "do they have meaning?" are separate from "do they give your own life meaning?" The answers to the first two can be 'yes' without necessitating that the latter question also be a 'yes.'
Abstract it a level or two and it becomes easier to see. Take a family you've never met. Their existence means nothing to you personally, so it doesn't make your life meaningful. You don't define your intrinsic meaning through their existence. Yet, if you have any human decency - and of course you do - you'd also answer that their lives are meaningful. Two separate ideas, and I'm only talking about one of them.
Of course it does.
If i say "Good morning" to someone, and they reply with some Undercover Brother off the wall: 'Let me tell you something about the word "good," Riv. Good is an ancient anglo-saxon word, go-od, meanin the absence of color. I.E. it's all good, which it is, OR Good Will Huntin', meanin...'
What i say next is going to be based on that, rather than if the person had replied with a "Good morning" of his/her own.
Its all about context, imo. If someone is too unethical and stupid to follow the golden rule, perhaps it's a good thing that they might believe in some angry dad in the sky waiting to whoop their ass in the afterlife as a consequence of their misdeeds..
__________________
Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul, but listen instead to your anger and your rage.
On the other hand, if someone is too unethical or stupid to follow the golden rule, he can convince himself that everything is relative and there is no right or wrong.
__________________ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.
An' he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won't be treated all the same.
There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.
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Oct 9th, 2015 11:12 PM
