Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Don’t Worry
Be Happy!

Post 47. 07/26/2018 continued . . .

   The Meanings of Life

  Happiness in the Here & Now?

Religious believers not only have their roles defined by their holy texts and respected traditions, they also feel plugged-in to their faith community. So they typically report more “life satisfaction” than Atheists or Agnostics. However, there is a wide range of reported happiness within and between religious sects. “Our findings suggest that Protestants, Buddhists and Roman Catholics are happier and more satisfied with their lives, compared with other groups. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and the non-religious were in between, while Orthodox Christians were found to have the lowest happiness and life satisfaction rates.”4 Hence, the unplugged “nons” must actively seek-out their own keys to personal meaning and happiness.

A recent self-help book for the “un-churched”, Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even if the Universe Doesn’t5, by Dr. Ralph Lewis, presents reasons and techniques for those seeking meaning in a meaningless world. “His new book is about how human purpose and caring, like conscious-ness and absolutely everything else in existence, could plausibly have emerged and evolved unguided, bottom-up, in a spon-taneous universe.” Moreover, he “presents an inter-disciplinary view of how our purpose, morality and meaning evolved. With recent ethno-sectarian conflicts seemingly on the rise through-out the world, whether for religious or other ideological reasons, a more global, humanistic vision is sorely needed. . . . On behalf of reason—and purpose—secular humanists, too, would do well to become emissaries for compassion and understanding." Since Deists have no intervening gods to pray to, or holy scriptures for consolation, they may do well to join with Humanists in finding meaning in this temporal world instead of placing their hopes on a do-over afterlife in an imaginary Utopia.

There seems to be as many personal meanings as there are lives in this world. But religions & governments often attempt to construct communal meanings, greater than the self, for their constituents to partake of. For example, the folk of NAZI Germany were inspired by their myth of a golden Aryan race, and the revival of the glorious Teutonic reich that never was. And communist Russia fed the people idealistic propaganda about a nation ruled by the will of the multitudinous decent working class, instead of the few oligarchs of the evil capitalist class. We now know how those utopian fantasies turned out. And we can observe the Christians and Muslims, still “Waiting for Godot”6, 2000 years after the promise of a new kingdom of heaven, headquartered in Jerusalem. Despite its name, "city of peace", there never has been peace for God’s chosen people. So, we would be wise to learn from history, and treat such mass meanings as idealistic fictions. But not to give up hope for a maginally better world, or for the many little meanings that make life worth living.

For those who have become cynical about the ability of humanity to improve on their material and moral status quo, recent books reviewed in this blog offer rational hope for adding positive meaning and purpose to the real world. Enlightenment Now! tracks the upward progression of the human situation over the last half millennium. And the Moral Arc shows how we have learned to treat each other with dignity as fellow humans. So the reasonable expectation of finding meaning in a “god-forsaken”7 world doesn't rely on blind faith.  

End of Post 47

4. Can’t get no satisfaction
   Maybe ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is wisdom.
http://theconversation.com/are-religious-people-happier-than-non-religious-people-87394

5. Finding Purpose :
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Purpose-Godless-World-Universe/

6. Waiting for Godot :
   Absurdist play with existentialist themes of emptiness, randomness, and meaninglessness. One interpretation is that it’s absurd to wait for God, Jesus, to return after 2000 years.

“Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is a play that presents conflict between living by religious and spiritual beliefs, and living by an existential philosophy, which asserts that it is up to the individual to discover the meaning of life through personal experience in the earthly world”
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/w/waiting-for-godot/critical-essays/samuel-beckett-and-the-theater-of-the-absurd

7. Godforsaken :
Deism is often identified as a religion with an absentee deity. But the Creator didn’t abandon he/r offspring, s/he became one with the world. In PanEnDeism, G*D is both immanent and transcendent.

Nihilism :
   The belief that all values are baseless, and all beliefs are meaningless. Nietzsche said that Christianity had been proven invalid, and its empty promises of heavenly rewards had destroyed human hopes for transcending this vale of tears.
   However, he “believed” that rational people can recon-struct a system of value & meaning by exertion of the only thing under personal control : willpower. They could replace Transcendental Idealism with Immanent Realism.
   But the BothAnd Principle seeks to reunite those estranged values into a unified meaning of life.

Purpose :
A common refrain from Atheists on the topic of life’s meaning is “Purpose is bottom-up, not top-down; evolved, not bestowed.”
In my view, purpose flows both top-down, from the original intention of the creation, and bottom-up, as sentient creatures seek meaning as nourishment for the soul/self.

Meaning from Submission to God’s Will :
"the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord”.
Proverbs 9:10

Meaning from Expansion of Knowledge :
According to Plato and Aristotle, philosophy begins in wonder and seeks under-standing for its own sake. So the beginning of wisdom is knowing Nature.