Thank you for being honest.
You’re welcome.
But why do you think you made this blind assumption (about there being no point to existence) in the first place? Isn't it because you want to reject at every turn the possibility that existence is sentient apart from us?
I would characterize my comment as my subjective assessment. Why would you characterize my comment as a blind assumption, i.e. one made without any relevant information whatsoever?
I would also strongly emphasize that it does not matter what I want, need, or desire, nor should it matter what you or anyone else wants etc. when making such assessments. The greater wants, needs, and desires play in one's assessment, the greater one's vulnerability to confirmation bias.
It is not about rejecting the speculation that “existence is sentient apart from us”, rather, it's a question of why entertain the speculation in the first place. What, beyond blind speculation, supports such a notion?
Or that whatever the sorce of existence as we experience it is, that it may also be sentient in some way? Why? Why is it so important to you that these not be recognized as a possibility?
What people believe affects everyone. When folks believe that artificial constructs of reality are real yet beyond physical perception, populated by imagined entities that are imagined to impose requirements on all human beings, there is no way to challenge such entities or hold them to account. Once the premise of this unreachable realm is accepted, anyone can populate the artificial construct with whatever entity they choose, with a whole different set of requirements to be imposed on man. It is for these reasons that care and discernment is important when evaluating the wide variety of speculations concerning existence.
Why is this your preference? What do you gain by holding onto this particular bias?
Why do I prefer knowledge over ignorance? Lots and lots of reasons. Increased life expectancy and comfort to start. Would you prefer to live in a state of nature as a pre-linqual homo sapien? That’s fine if you do.
Yes, but when it becomes apparent that one cannot know what one wishes to know, how should one react to this? And why? This is the real question we face regarding the mystery of our own being, because how we react to not having access to 'the answers' defines who we are and who we are becoming.
I, and others, are quite sanguine about the fact that there are many things we wish we could know but realize are not knowable in the foreseeable future and may never be knowable. Is that simply a personality quirk of some percentage of the population or is it something most can be socialized to? Given what would be required for a controlled study, I don’t think it is possible to conduct one. Instead, we can only observe society over time and track trends.
It seems to me that the trend appears to be moving toward more folks being sanguine and accepting of the unknown and moving away from the fixed, pre-packaged answers to existence despite being indoctrinated in the ready answers of religion. I suppose only time will tell if there really is a trend and whether it will continue.
But this particular preference cannot be satiated. All we can ever know are some of the physical mechanisms. And they are not the reasons. They do not answer the real existential questions that we humans ask about it all.
As I implied above, one either accepts the fact that we aren’t going to have all our questions answered in our lifetime, or one doesn’t. Not accepting doesn’t change the facts, though.
You seem rather dismissive of what we have achieved to date in our understanding of the Cosmos and ourselves. Perhaps because you do not like the growing picture developing from that knowledge. Wanting or needing a particular outcome leads to confirmation bias.
Now you're slandering me. That is not what I posted. What I posted is that it's illogical to pursue answers that are not available to us. Sure, we can learn things about the physical mechanics of existence, but those things are not going to answer our questions about the source, sustenance, or purpose of it all. If you are choosing to distract or delude yourself by chasing knowledge of the mechanisms and pretending there are no bigger questions to be asked, that is your choice. But it's just one of many possible choices one might take in regard to this human dilemma.
Did not intend slander. I strongly disagree with the position that it is illogical to pursue answers that are not available to us. It is that very effort that ever expands our sphere of knowledge. Your position, if maintained over the last 100,000 years of homo sapien existence, would have only served to maintain and preserve the state of ignorance of 100,000 years ago.
You claim that learning about “the physical mechanics of existence” is not going to answer questions about the source of all that exist. Why? How do you know? What informs that position? You claim there is a “purpose of it all”. To claim a purpose displays bias on your part, yes? Shouldn’t the question be whether there is or isn’t a purpose instead of assuming a purpose? I suppose even asking the question of purpose requires the existence of an entity to which a purpose belongs or is attributed to. Has such an entity been established? To my knowledge, no such entity has.
Well, we can't know anything for certain, and we can't know what anything we think we do know means in relation to the whole. So although we can learn a few things about the mechanics of physical existence, and we can use them to try and control the world around us, none of this really adds up to our acquiring any valid wisdom or truth. Which seem to be a very populsr delusion these days among those who for whatever reason really want to reject and dismiss the idea of any form of "god'.
Given our limitations, our flaws and fallibilities, I would say that the knowledge that we hold, we hold with varying degrees of confidence, some with great confidence and some that are on the edge of our understanding, held with much less confidence. As I indicated above, this process of the many millennia has formed an ever clearer understanding of the world.
To say that we can’t know how what we know relates to the whole of existence is true, but there is no getting around that. We don’t know what we don’t know. That is just one of the things we have to accept and be sanguine about.
As to wisdom, that is a whole different kettle of fish. Having full and complete understanding of the cosmos and existence does not necessarily equate to wisdom in my opinion. Wisdom, morality, ethics are all subjective and come down to managing human behavior. Recognizing that we are still instinctual animals is a good first step.
As to rejecting any form of “god”, it is not about rejecting. It is all about acknowledging human flaws and fallibilities first and foremost, disregarding the needs, wants, and desires of the individual, and looking at what our current body of knowledge and understanding supports. The label ‘god’ can only be said to label a particular category of mythical entities. Outside of that it is currently meaningless. Even if you only want to claim its use as a label for an abstract concept, it is currently used with such widely varying sets of characteristics and properties that it makes the label useless.
It hardly seems delusional to hold knowledge with varying and appropriate degrees of confidence, acknowledge and be sanguine about what is unknown and may never be known, and to not simply answer unanswerable questions to suit one’s own personal needs, wants, and desires.
