What is meaningless?

[Seth]

Or so you choose to believe

No evidence for anything else
So I think it is absolutely true
I could be wrong but so what
For once I am dead that is it

Is it? That is indeed the question.

[Brian Peacock]

Sceptic or doubter?

[JimC]

Sceptic or doubter?

Or delighter in the prospects of atheists roasting in hell?

[Seth]

Sceptic or doubter?

Rational thinker actually.

[Brian Peacock]

Sceptic or doubter?

Rational thinker actually.

Sceptical rational or doubting rational?

[Seth]

Sceptic or doubter?

Rational thinker actually.

Sceptical rational or doubting rational?

Skeptical of course, but the important question is "skeptical of what?"

[Brian Peacock]

No, the important question is 'What is Scepticism?'

[Seth]

No, the important question is 'What is Scepticism?'

I'm skeptical of your claim.

[Forty Two]

Everything I love and hold dear is meaningless in the "grand scheme of things. It just means to me what it means to me. And, that's enough.

OK.This is my point.

To ascribe meaninglessness to everything you love and hold dear, in the grand scheme of things, is to ascribe a meaning to everything your love and hold dear, in the grand scheme of things.

The claim that things are devoid of meaning is meaningless.

I wasn't saying things are devoid of all meaning. I was saying things have no "inherent" meaning or "objective" meaning. Things have meaning to me that are meaningless to most other people. And, most other people find meaning in things that I think are meaningless. Absent a brain, there is no meaning in anything. Take away life on Earth, and the universe doesn't mean anything. Put humans on it, and it means what humans think it means, and what it means can change over time and differs from brain to brain.

[Forty Two]

The only thing that is eternal is death

I would submit that death is not eternal, because death is not an "is." Death "isn't." Saying it is eternal implies that it is a state of being, when in fact it is not being.

And now
why that is something to be feared I have no idea but many do fear it including the ones who do not think that death is the end.

People fear death because they don't want it to be the end of their life and interaction with their loved ones, and because they don't know what it's like to be dead and are afraid it won't be pleasant. It's like that amusement park ride you never went on, and when you were a kid you were scared shitless of it, but then after you rode it you were like "that was no big deal." It's the unknown.

Says the Bard, "....for in the sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause...."

[Forty Two]

The only thing that is eternal is death and less you are going to ascribe meaning to that then everything is ultimately meaningless. Since
without life you cannot experience any of the things which give your life meaning. But I made my peace with death last year and so I am
now free as it is possible to be whilst still being alive. When I do die I will be in an eternal non existence free from all suffering.

Or so you choose to believe...

Based on the weight of presently available circumstantial evidence....

[JimC]

Forty Two wrote:

I was saying things have no "inherent" meaning or "objective" meaning. Things have meaning to me that are meaningless to most other people. And, most other people find meaning in things that I think are meaningless.

And yet there will be a range of phenomena or experiences for which there will be a pretty fair consensus as to their meaning, at least within a particular human society at a particular time. They will often be things which can have a significant impact on survival; in the past, a sighting by a tribe of early humans of a large, predatory cat had a rather definite meaning to the majority...

Science can be seen as an attempt to organise a systematic consensus of meaning concerning the patterns of phenomena in the observable world.

I agree that there is no point in thinking about "meaning" without a conscious being which can ascribe such a meaning, but, at least in some circumstances, that meaning can become universally (but perhaps provisionally) agreed upon by a group of such beings. At that stage, such a meaning is different in many ways from a fleeting, individual meaning shared with no one else.

[Rum]

I have a pretty nihilistic outlook and find it hard to motivate myself to do anything much. That's one reason I thrived and did OK in a profession with lots of deadlines, goals and targets, even when I hated it.

I do two things to avoid despair. One is to view other humans as survivors in the same lifeboat and take the view that it is worthwhile making their journey as pleasant as I have the power to - a humanistic approach if you like - to existential futility. The other is simply to hold on to the fact that if I let myself I would fall into despair and that would be the end of me and therefore don't!

In other words I kid myself along. Nothing wrong with that.

As regards death. I still fear it greatly. The process if not the end result. I am hoping for a great deal of morphine and Valium and a sensitive sister on the ward.

[laklak]

Tequila helps, too.

[Rum]

What he said.