Extropy,
I call myself an atheist since my "I concept" has a negative relationship with "a paternalist god concept". If others (like Spinoza) choose to use "God" for "the unity of all" thats up to them.
This paradigm of "non-dualism" is the antithesis of "rhetorical analysis". You can wander round normal language as long as you like but you will not capture what is essentially an experiential and (by implication) an ineffable viewpoint. Instead you are indulging in what Wittgenstein calls "language going on holiday". All the terms you are playing with can be deconstructed. ("Meaning" yields to "usage", "Isolation" yields to "non-locality" as defined by quantum physics etc)
Your introductory question is essentially "meaningless" because it calls for a breaking of the traditional relationship assumed by "the paternalist God" paradigm. If it is a veiled attack on the aphorism "God moves in mysterious ways" it fails.My offering of an alternative paradigm which may or may not imply a "God concept"is a possible solution to "the meaning of existence". It may well be that those who susbscribe to this alternative see both "self" and "God" as arbitrary segmentations of an indivisible "reality". This segmentation amounts to a cultural consensus embodied and transmitted via language.
Of course my existence is meaninful. Every day that I wake up and take care of my family and pets and water my plants. I brought 2 people into this world and am helping to maintain life.
You aretweaking your cosmic resume?
Extropy wrote:What could you possibly do to make your existence meaningful?
Have a positive influence on mankind.
How meaningful is the word "meaningful"?
("meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful, meaningful . . . ")
to answer the question, no
to answer the question as god, no
Buddha sat under the bo tree.
Do I think my existence is meaningful?
No.
Do I think anyone's existence is meaningful?
No.
Do you think anything's existence is meaningful?
No. My existence is no more or less meaningful than the existence of this chair I'm sitting on. Of course, it's an old wooden chair, and its got its own history serving people and before that bound up in a couple of trees that were felled before their natural death.
I do think that most beings suffer and rejoice, and that those who suffer most miserably are, on the whole, probably more joyous in their rejoicing -- however rare it may be -- than those who do not, but that's nothing to the sand on Mars just as the sand on Mars is nothing to me.
But since I'm here, I might as well play the game as I'm not really equipped to do much else.
Which all sounds a little Buddhist, now that I read it -- but I think all those idols of Buddha are a little silly, and more than a little extravagant, and I don't see anything wonderful about the concept of nirvana, since it seems to me that it means I'll just rot, hopefully get recycled into flowers or maybe oak trees like the old town in Texas where the people were buried clutching acorns that now line either side of a ghost-town boulevard, growing over the decaying buildings.
Which I think is pretty cool.
Buddha farted.
I suppose it's all relative.
The true question should be "is your existance meaningful in relation to the world around you?"
