Quote:How do you reconcile your continued existence with the seemingly pointless cycle of life and death on earth?
The cycle of life and death is not pointless at all. Without death, the world would be miserable. Imagine a world where nobody died. At first, the idea may sound good but once you dig deep into the philosophical issues, the proposition seems absurd and cruel. The child who has too much toys loses joy in them and becomes miserable. The seeker of knowledge who has learned too much will no longer have a need to seek knowledge and becomes miserable. The thrill seeker who has experienced too much will no longer experience thrills and becomes miserable. The idea of eternal life is wholly incompatible with the idea of happiness. The only reconciliation of eternal life and happiness is if someone deletes the contents—the knowledge, the memories, and so on; however, considering that each life is molded by experience, is such a brain-dump procedure any different from bringing a new life into the world?
Death allows one to live, to seek happiness, and prevents the beings from becoming completely miserable, but what makes it possible for a being to seek happiness? Life allows this to occur. Every newborn is a new opportunity to seek happiness. Again, death shall come to its rescue in due time to prevent absolute misery. The subject becomes more interesting when one considers the genetics of the newborns. The newborns share your genetic code so, in a way, it is as if you still live on, just that you do not know it. Your parents live on through you. Your grandparents live on through you. Your great grandparents live on through you. The Cro-Magnon people live on through you. Death has come to the rescue for all and life has continued as before.
I see absolutely no need to reconcile my existence with the cycle of life and death. Ever since the first life on Earth existed, I was, to this day, I am, and five hundred years from now, I shall be.
Quote: How do you cope with your insignificance in comparison with the universe (and whatever lies beyond that)?
I need not cope with my insignificance in this Universe. The Universe itself is insignificant. Woolsey Teller, in his book "The Atheism of Astronomy," gives an accurate perspective of the Universe: "It is estimated to have taken cosmic evolution somewhere between 10,000,000 million and 20,000,000 million years to produce our universe as we see it today, and this includes the entire period of transition from nebulae to stars and from stars to earth. It is an inconceivably vast stretch of time for the development of that which is the equivalent proportionately of six specks of dust in a great railroad terminal, and the wonder is that we look upon the 'result' as in any way striking or important. It is only because we are living amid these tiny, floating specks, and that we are star-dust ourselves, that the matter is of human interest." (Please note that the age estimates above are extremely old and inaccurate. A more accurate estimate is 13.7 +/- 0.2 billion years.) When one truly considers the amount of matter in the Universe, in comparison to the vast abyss of nothingness, and how long it has taken to get this way, the Universe also seems insignificant.
Quote:How do you view death? Are you afraid of it? Ambivalent?
I think I have already explained my view of death. It is a wonderful mechanism. I am not afraid of death. My only fear in relation to death is that I may not have enjoyed my life or that I may not have benefited the world before I go into that dark night.
Quote:But what is the purpose of your existence?
What am I? I am nothing more than an arrangement of matter, am I not? To say that my existence has a purpose is to say the existence of a rock, a crystal, or water droplet has a purpose for its existence. The intellectual and emotional faculties I possess do not differentiate me from the rocks, for those faculties are also the result of matter. I cannot entertain the notion that I am fundamentally different from the rocks. As such, hypothetically I can only entertain the notions that the existence of everything has a purpose or nothing at all has a purpose. How am I to argue that a piece of dust floating in the empty abyss of space, millions of miles away from anything, has a purpose for its existence? The only tenable notion is that nothing has a purpose for its existence.
