Quote:The main thought that comes to mind is.... if there is no afterlife....then why are we here? Why do we exist?
Why we exist is a question I could ask either way.
No one can truly answer that question.
No human mind can comprehend something coming from nothing.
Or something simply having always existed.
It does not seem logical. Theories... hypotheses... this is all that we have and will ever have in this world.
Why are we here?
Are we simply an evolved form of animal?
Are we the finest creation of God, made in his image?
Are we ourselves all connected, one etheric God-like being, on Earth to explore and become more?
These things are certain...
1. This planet is the only planet with life as we know it in this solar system. Oh there could be traces of life but none to the extent of Earth.
2. We also know for a fact that the universe is huge. We know there are other huge planets and other "life giving" stars.
Did this God create all of this? Did he make a bunch of other planets and "MESS UP" several times till he got it right with the Earth?
Did we just happen out of pure happenstance? A reaction from many years of evolution and amazing explosions?
To most people the idea of a God seems more rational than some explosion.
Perhaps humans have evolved just like they say....
Perhaps humans have evolved beyond the need for a living body already?
Perhaps once our body dies our consciousness has evolved to a point beyond the norm and continues.
Or perhaps every living thing has this consciousness, this spirit.
Or perhaps we are just globs of living tissue with little purpose than to stay alive as long as we can.
One thing is for sure.... The answer is not going to come by itself.
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There's a couple of things woth noting here, T...
#1. SETI search attempts have all come up dry. From all directions
we listen in the galaxy, comes the soft crackle and hiss of natural
events, and nothing more. (Compare that to Carl Sagan and his
"billions and billions" of alien super-civilizations.)
Either we're somehow unique (and the only technological species that
has ever existed - an idea I find VERY hard to believe - OR could it be, that civilizations are common as dirt...)
But short-lived? SO short lived, that whatever messages they send out, are only sent for such a brief time that we'll likely never catch the signal?
Could intelligence, be self-destructive by its very nature?
#2. Do a google on "James Lovelock+global warming" and see how
we're probably a deader as a species, by 2100 if not sooner. (Apparently climate change is upon us, and it is too late to do anything about it.)
All this suggests to me, that life in general (and conscious, sentient,
self-aware life in particular) is a sad joke perpetrated by a mindless
universe whose only purpose (if you want to call it that) is the degradation of matter and energy to a maximum state of entropy.
We arer simply a means to that "end", as rather efficient degraders
of our local energy system... self-aware bags of chemicals, going about our business of reducing our surroundings to a maximum state of disorder until we die off and add the collective decaying corpse of our species to the dead pile of organic rubbish which used to be Earth's biosphere, perhaps fertilizing it for the NEXT round of entropy-increasing lifeforms that emerge on the planet...
The sadly comical thing about it, is how important we consider ouselves
to be, as if we even mattered in the grand scheme of things (such as there is such a thing.)
I wonder how many alien species went down just like us - all the time thinking that they were something "special?" Oh well. We'll never know and they never got to know, either. (And in the end, does it really matter anyway, outside of the pitiful little dreams and silly desires which churn in the fantastically complex, yet oh-so perishable little meat computers we call our "minds?")
Considering all this, what "purpose" does life need to have, that would require an "afterlife"???
B-man