Ok now I know what you mean by metaphysics. And until you or somebody shows me that any metaphysics actually exists in the real universe, I am just going to be content living a life blissfully thinking that what I read in Science Daily everyday is both real and amazing.
You think the Islamic State (or al Quaeda) does not drool for the science of nuclear annihilation? You think they will be denied forever? Upon inevitably having it, do you fantasize they will be deterred for a nanosecond?
Absolutely, ISIS as well as other groups are working hard to get anything that they can to advance their ideology. It is their religious fanaticism that is so dangerous. If they can deluge 19 men and woman in the West that somehow jihad is the way to heaven, they will do anything. Once someone is delusional enough to believe an afterlife is available to them, their lives becomes expendable. That is why the ideology is so dangerous. That is why we must educate our children against the delusion.
I want to add the nuclear deterrence works between nation-state, it doesn’t work for ideology groups like ISIS who would welcome a nuclear attack on the lands of the Middle East.
ok got it. My metaphyics is materialism and my religion is atheism. Thanks.
Of course only you can determine what your life’s purpose and meaning are.
The point is that when you determine your life’s purpose and meaning you are making decisions based metaphysics if you are doing it rationally. Now if you are making decisions based random chance, you are not really making decisions, so you are not thinking on the basis of metaphysics.
Now of course some people like Daniel Dennett believe that people do not have the ability to make decisions, that life is materialistically predetermined, so humans do not make decisions based on metaphysics. However if humans have freedom of choice they determine their life’s purpose and meaning on the basis of metaphysics.
I try to live mostly in the present not thinking much about the past and trying not to “plan” to far ahead.
Each day decisions are small gradual choices within the present situation I am in. Decisions are not random nor predetermined but in a fairly tight probabilistic range given past priors. More like Bayesian statistics on last priors than a random process. For example, when I go to an ice cream parlor for ice cream, I usually pick a fairly tight range of flavors, but I wouldn’t rule out trying a new flavor that just came out. But I would always avoid those flavors I didn’t like previously.
We are not talking about what you want to eat. We are talking about values and meaning.
You are clearly interested in science. Why? Why not sports or politics or any other the many interests that fill the lives of other people?
How do you spend your money? Books, travel, clothes, housing, charities. etc?
You say that you determine your life’s purpose and meaning? How do you do this, rather than allow it just to happen.
We are talking about Darwinian evolution which puts emphasis on reproduction. Making life decisions for oneself may seem relatively simple, although important. Making life decisions based on meaning and values within a family is more complicated because it involves more people with different needs. Yet this is what evolution calls us to do and we can only do it based on faith or metaphysics.
One does not have to be a scientist to do science. We all do science to one extent or another. Also we do not have to be schooled in metaphysics to make these kinds of decisions, they are a part of life. The only way to avoid them is to be a life dropout, like the Harvard graduate student who committed suicide, but this makes another kind of metaphysical statement.
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From your line of questions, I don’t think that you can wrap your head around, that somebody can really be a friendly, moral, well adjusted, career successful, good family life, great sons, well off atheist who values life, has meaning, is fully aware of the world around him, traveled the world, follows politics, successful investor, highly educated, social liberal, fiscal conservative, university professor, successful career, husband, father, son, brother, neighbor, friend, patriot, citizen, healthy. Realize that there are millions like me, Pew research calls us the “nones”. Living life without the gods, spirits, superstitions, or anything you call metaphysics.
Morals, values, justice, go back much more than 2000 years. A hunter-gather group of 100,000 years ago had morals, values on how to treat each other including the old and young. Empathy goes back even further as mammals such as elephants show feelings of grief. Human morality, feeling, emotions, empathy evolved over millions of years.
I won’t say that Christianity has a prized place in the evolution of human values and human rights. Morals and values have evolved in societies for tens of millennium. In a huntergather group of a 100,000 years ago, it won’t have been morally repugnant to leave an old person under a tree with no food or water while the group moves on. Today we would find that to be immoral.
Today it seems Christianity is more concerned about keeping ancient traditions about what is good and what is evil instead of viewing the definitions of good and evil are constantly changing.
What I am saying is that beliefs taken to an extreme can go wildly wrong. Take ISIS, nobody would argue that their view of Islam is not wrong, evil and immoral. ISIS is an easy one we can all agree on. But how about the county Clerk in Kentucky? Something is not right there. What is your assessment on what is right and wrong down there?
Thank you for your response.
Unfortunately you are confusing two aspects of life, philosophy and theology. Metaphysics is part of philosophy which is the human effort to understand the basic moral order of the universe. Theology is the human effort to understand the basic spiritual order of the universe. There can be some overlap, but not necessarily. Bertrand Russell and many others are/were atheists who are also deep into metaphysics.
The disciplines of philosophy and metaphysics were set up by the ancient Greeks to understand life beyond the myths of their traditional faith. They surmised that since nature was governed by rational physical rules, that we now call natural law, so morality, which is part of the universe, but not physical, must be governed by moral law. That seems to me to be a very reasonable position, but the New Atheists of today say that there is no such thing as moral law.
Now what you seem to be saying is that people can be good and indeed are good without rational values and morality, which is the role of metaphysics. Are you saying that people do not have to think rationally about values and morals? Are you saying that people do not need values and morals?
People do not need to be trained in metaphysics to do metaphysics, just as people do not have to be trained in science to do science. If one has to understand science to be an atheist, what do we do with all those people who for many reasons who cannot be “enlightened” because they have not studied science?
I am not saying any of this. What I am saying is you don’t need to be a theist of any kind to live a good purposeful life full of meaning. That’s all.
I never said that you need to be a theist to live a good purposeful life full of meaning. However I would like to see how YOU lead a good purposeful life full of meaning when YOU say when you say that life is not objectively good or purposeful or full of meaning. Smoke and mirrors?
You said that you could do this without theology and with philosophy, but you have not given any indication how it can be done. That is a strange claim.
I agree. It would be nice if certain vocal atheists would, in exchange for this acknowledgement on the part of people of faith, grant that you don’t have to ditch all faith commitments to prove you have a fully functioning mind. Both assertions seem fair to me and an important part of common ground in a civil discussion.