Re 1st: Only Rick Perry want's to hold a massive prayer to ask god for taking care of climate change. He couldn't even fill the stadium. Not many christians belief that we should wait for divine intervention to sort out our problems.

2nd: I'd argue that, if anything, Religion is slanted towards it ALWAYS being our fault. That's why we need forgiveness and salvation, after all.

But besides the talking points (sry), my bigger problem with this kind of bravado, especially in the context of death, is that a few crucial things get lost.

- most people dying are old. What's the "tough it out for truth's sake" worth when roughly the only dignified decision you have left is whether you go kicking and screaming or with a smile on your face?
- The "experience life to the fullest"/"appreciate the preciousness of life"-trope equally is not taking into account the reality of those most likely grappeling with death. It's fine to think of the healthy 30yr old fighting his brain tumor. But what about the 80yr old with lung cancer? What's he fighting for? That's why I asked earlier on if people itt are seriously equating lenght of life with quality of life. No one responded; apparently it got lost in the noise.
- One of the non-religious counters itt are that life has, basically, it's own beauty. Life is fun and beautiful and exciting. That's all the justification one needs for living it - and I agree. But if so, then this extends to death too. The question becomes, quite literally, how do you have a good death? By proclaiming some Nietzschean aphorisms and admiring your own toughness-in-truth?
- Society doesn't really include death and suffering anymore. You may sing the tough-truth-and-honesty songs all you want, fact is that on a societal level, the sick and old are being shipped into some nursing home and kept out of sight as much as possible. We've lost our ability to talk about death because - what's there to say? "At least I'm not deluding myself" is not much of a positive (in the sense of substantive) statement.

On a more abstract level I think that life has very few possibilities of get in touch with our basic humanness, so to speak. Birth is one. Death is another. We can fight our entire life and we can choose to never give up. Death is a reality that is so overwhelming that it's impossible to even conceive of what "not giving up" could even begin to mean. Hence death forces us to look at us and accept that - finally - we've hit upon something that we just have to give in willy nilly. To me, that's a very important part of being human and it's importat to get right. Whatever helps you "get that right" is good, imo. If you manage that without belief - more power to you. Most don't. I wouldn't make this an argument at all. And if so, then more about "aesthetics". My life comprises my death too. And if my life is beautiful (that's why I'm living it), I want my death to be beautiful, too. And an experience worth having and I want to not squander it by fighting an unwinnable battle. If anything, believing that death is not the ultimate end is giving me the chance to take my mind of things that would distract me in that last important feat of my earthly life and let me focus on getting that last thing right.

Which is, basically, why I agree with zumby from post ~7 or so in saying wtf@topic. What do I say to someone who had a tragic accident? Whatever helps him, obv., to get his death right.

All very nice and poetic, but how do you go about "getting your death right"?

Yeah, I'd be willing to assent to the proposition that we don't actually exist, but that we experience the illusion of existence.

neeel,

first step would be to accept it as part of my life, and not only intellectually, but also emotionally.

Did you read Zumby's answer to this? See below:

I didn't say that my assent to the proposition "we don't actually exist, but rather we experience the illusion of existing" was based on his reasoning. My "yeah" was based on the fact that I agreed with his conclusion (or the conclusion he'd be forced to accept if he didn't posit the existence of god, or whatever other make-believe enterprises he's engaging in to try to salvage some idea of coherence to our ~80 years of unsummarizable perception-and-experience compilation).

Nature's reasoning is a lot more complicated than anything we can demonstrate via deduction. Induction is probably more valuable.

If I were to attempt a deductive scheme of "proving meaninglessness" (itself a meaningless enterprise), I'd probably set my P1 as the non-existence of free will.

But I've long ago proven it to myself, so I'm not all that compelled to do the work right now, when I feel that the burden of proof of meaning has been passed onto the world. I'll just down a couple more beers and see you all at some undetermined time.

Ugh, don't know why I'm revisiting this. But "purpose" and "significance" are roughly synonymous. Or at least, they can be taken to be synonymous--never did archimedesXX (whatever numbers) mention the word "significance". This is where Wittgenstein comes in...philosophy being wordgames and all that. I've long appreciated why he killed himself. But even if we continue along these lines...zumby is misrepresenting archimedes' argument. And my agreement with archimedes is loose--like I said previously, I agree with the conclusion, that existence and non-existence are ultimately indistinguishable.

I think that "existence" would hinge on having a free will. If we don't have it, which we don't, then we haven't really "existed"--and a separate argument against our existence could certainly be made on behalf of the fact that the universe will itself someday cease to exist...I could make an argument that the universe never existed, on the basis that it someday won't.

Whether or not that matters to you is up to you...except it isn't, really.

Life is one endless illogical mind****. Get used to it.

(endless in a metaphorical sense...thankfully)

?

?

(E-->P) --> (E-->S)
T T

He might've been saying this. Not entirely clear, but I can go with that if you'd like.

You said that he simply said:

P-->S

(this is all little-p for pedantic, but I can play that game for "fun" too)

second T was meant to be under E-->S, formatting issues

But what does that actually mean? These are meaningless words. Even existence, is meaningless. I encourage you to try to define existence, purpose, significance.

Demonstrate (E-->P) --> (E-->S)

(and this argument runs in to the point I made about tautology, though as you seem to be non-cognitivist about meaning, I don't anticipate an enlightening rebuttal)

Give me the definitions you are using in the (E-->P) --> (E-->S) argument and I'll let you know if they are the same...

You can try to equate existence with the biological life span. That is a defensible defintion--but not according to my criterion of free will. Just saying that it's all ultimately arbitrary. Because not having free will is not a wordgame. That is reality. Think about that ****. Think about what that actually means, and how it will somewhat-involuntarily affect your future thoughts and your future states of consciousness, in somewhat unpredictable ways.

The above realities are not subject to neat little syllogisms.

IDK, is a thing that exists equatable to existence?

IDK if I can trust my original thoughts

Okay.

You're the one who made the original dubious (at best; I would say erroneous) translation of archimedes11's statement to DL)

I'll wait for Archimedes to explain/justify his position, as you are unable/unwilling to define your terms.

You have failed to show error in my reasoning (though I may have made errors), you have failed to show that I have misrepresented Archimedes views (though I may have done so) and all you seem interested in is making amusing but uninformative "let me blow your ****ing mind!" rants. Given that I'm not interested in the rantings of an angsty teenager, I'll wait for you to improve your debating skills or Archimedes to return.

My only (logical) duty is to prove that his argument is anything other than what you initially stated it was. What you initially stated it was was:

P-->S
~P-->~S

which you (rightly) dismissed as a fallacy. Problem is, your characterization was wrong.

I had the field. His argument could've been any argument except which was stated above. Just by virtue of the fact that his argument depended on the variable "E", you lose, buddy. By failing to acknowledge "existence", your argument fails to exist, even as we all fail to exist, according to my argument about what "existence" entails.

Hope you get that last sentence, 'cause that was a gem.

My idea of hell is eternal life.

And about the 'What would I say as an Atheist to comfort someone in a time of need?' thingy, I'd just say:

"Everything is going to be just fine, don't worry..."

I don't see what 'God' even has to do with 'comforting' someone.

I addressed his use of 'existence' in his argument at the end of the post. This is twice you've failed to successfully read words in English. Archimedes made three slightly different arguments and I made three slightly different rebuttals. You are making a mistake in focusing only on the one part. But I'll make the points in my post more explicitly tied together. First let's look at a relevant part of Archimedes post:

P = non-existent things
Q = purpose

P1) P --> ~Q
P2) ~P = ~Q
C2) Therefore ~P (probably) = P

or

P1) Non-existent objects have no purpose
P2) Existent objects have no purpose
C2) Therefore existent objects are (probably) non-existent objects

This fails on the law of non-contradiction, as well as being a non-sequitur.

Hey Zumby and Matt, I'll attempt to clarify my position, because I do feel that it's been misrepresented.

First of all, I absolutely don't understand how what I've put in bold there represents my position; on the contrary, I'd say my position is just the opposite, especially for P2. What I said was (or at least what I meant to say):

P1) non-existent things have no purpose (how could they? they don't exist).
P2) if things that exist also had no purpose, they would be indistinguishable from non-existent things.
P3) therefore things that exist must have a purpose.

Perhaps my reasoning is circular, given that I'm pretty sure my thesis is based on acceptance of the premise that purpose makes existence worthwhile, or something to that effect. Obviously P2 here is the contentious point, but I still can't get over the fact that having no purpose would (in my opinion) make existent things no more valuable than non-existent things. But I'm open to suggestions about what else could distinguish existence from non-existence. And don't say the difference is that "existent things exist, whereas non-existent things don't exist" because that seems like a super flawed argument haha.

I agree that your reasoning would normally be sound here, except for the vital difference present in an (or at least my) argument concerning existentialism, namely that not only does purpose grant significance, but that it is the only way to grant significance.

In other words,

P1) If it is raining, the ground will be wet.
P1-A) Rain is the only method by which, on planet X, the ground can become wet.
P2) It is not raining.
C1) Therefore the ground is not wet on planet X

Hey Archimedes, thanks for returning to clarify. I think I'm going to disappoint you here, as I think the answer is "existent things exist, whereas non-existent things don't exist". It's true by definition.

With regard to the value of existence, I return to the point that you seem to be saying nothing more than that YOU personally don't see value in non-purposeful things. Beside, I don't think it's been established that we should discard subjective notions of purpose, and this point will be troublesome while you seem to be arguing that we should take seriously your own subjective values.