I Wear Pants;1157281 wrote:This seems like, using today's nomenclature, a spectacularly retarded standpoint.
Why do you need an eternal afterlife or some great "point/purpose"? There being no eternal afterlife actually gives greater importance to our lives. This tiny speck of time that we share with the others who are around right now is all we get, that's it. When you take that point of view it seems absolutely silly to waste it doing anything but trying to be the best person you can and enjoying the ride which if more people took that view the world would be a better place.
The thing is though, at what point? If you do everything today just to do it today, and have no ability to remember it in the future... why do it? Enjoying the present is great,... in the present. But today meant nothing if 1,000 years from now nobody has any memory of it. Effectively, you don't exist. And if there is no master memory of what happened, you might as well not have at all.
And regardless of our future, at some point the sun will burn out into a Brown Dwarf by which time we're all screwed even if we do manage to migrate from this little blue dot.
I'm not religious, but I'm not an atheist. There's too much out there that science CAN'T explain. Science can never explain 'why', it can only explain 'how', 'what', 'where', 'when'... The problem with 'why' is that it can always be followed up with another 'why'. The other four can, but to an extent. The 'why' questions can always lead back to one question. And, unsurprisingly, that is "Why?"
Sadly, that's the question that 'religion' fills through vagaries and superstition. And many people fall for it.
I'm not saying they're wrong, per se, but just that they're taking the easy way out. That 'leap of faith' morphs into rules and protocol where the person gives up control for a little piece of mind. They don't have to think about that void in their lives left answered.
Is there something out there? The question has an answer. So, yes, there is something out there. There has to be. Do we know what it is? No. Will we? Maybe. Why? Because we don't stop looking for it.