Agent Smith's argument (nihilism)

[Winter wind]

"I really should thank you for it, after all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end."

Is he right? Is life really pointless (meant more for Atheists, because I can already guess what Theists will say)?

[Jack]

Why does acknowledging where you're headed make the trip pointless? Life is a journey that ends at death. Everything in between birth and death is ours to make the most of.

This is why I suggest it's evident that religions were invented to really only answer one question; does life end at death? Death is so final, so off-putting, that most people can't accept it. They want and need to believe that life goes on. Even a person who has lead a miserable life and is convinced they're headed to hell will embrace that belief over accepting that life ends at death.

So no, accepting that life ends with death does not make life pointless. It makes it absolutely precious. Every moment should be cherished and enjoyed to its fullest, as it will never come around again.

[Sonart]

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I don't see life as pointless at all... my 'purpose' was to find my role in which I could make, over the course of my lifetime, a positive contribution to my society. In that way, I will "live on" after my death... through the lives of my children, through the lessons I passed on to my students (whatever form those 'students' take), through whatever works I leave behind and through the positive memories I leave with those with whom I shared this life. And even if I'm just some average schmo and those memories will likely fade within a generation, they're enough for me to face death with more peace and satisfaction than regrets. No, I'm not eager to leave, but it's been a great journey, I'm glad I had the opportunity to travel it, but hey... everything ends. Why do I need an eternity in heaven? How boring.

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[rez]

"I really should thank you for it, after all, it was your life that taught me the purpose of all life. The purpose of life is to end."

Is he right? Is life really pointless (meant more for Atheists, because I can already guess what Theists will say)?

Yeah, he is right. Only for him though. Nobody else. People create their own personal purpose in life. This is not really rocket science....

[Muckraker]

Why does acknowledging where you're headed make the trip pointless? Life is a journey that ends at death. Everything in between birth and death is ours to make the most of.

This is why I suggest it's evident that religions were invented to really only answer one question; does life end at death? Death is so final, so off-putting, that most people can't accept it. They want and need to believe that life goes on. Even a person who has lead a miserable life and is convinced they're headed to hell will embrace that belief over accepting that life ends at death.

So no, accepting that life ends with death does not make life pointless. It makes it absolutely precious. Every moment should be cherished and enjoyed to its fullest, as it will never come around again.

Very well said!

I always find it funny when people think that atheists wouldn't value life as much as theists. If anything, I would say it is the exact opposite. People who are truly Christian should feel that life is pointless since it is a mere doorway to the endless afterlife. For atheists, this is all we get so we may as well make the most of it.

Aside from accepting Jesus as their savior, and trying to get friends and others to do the same, what exactly is the point of Christian life?

If an eight year old accepts Jesus and then dies isn't that technically the same thing as an eighty year old accepting Jesus and dying?

Also, why does anything need to have a "point" in the first place?

[Chaossaber314]

Yeah, he is right. Only for him though. Nobody else. People create their own personal purpose in life. This is not really rocket science....

Of course recognizing that Agent Smith wasn't a human being...

[Jack]

From Corliss Lamont's excellent book, "The Illusion of Immortality",

"...When we examine closely their declarations, especially their sense of futility in a world without immortality, we find that, in their philosophy, a true value is only one which is conserved forever in a durational sense. To be valuable, meaningful, non-futile, the achievements and efforts of man must count ultimately and absolutely. They must add something permanently; there must be no chance of that addition being crossed out in some cosmic collision....The immortalist makes permanency an inseparable and necessary accompaniment of value. Anything that is not permanent accordingly lacks value for him. Hence the futility argument for immortality.

This linkage of value with everlastingness is a very dubious kind of procedure. In the first place, it is similar to setting up mere bigness as the standard of worth in that it pushes into the background the qualitative aspects of value. "The length of things," says Santayana, "is vanity, only their height is joy." And long ago Aristotle explained that good will not be "more good if it is eternal, since a white thing which lasts for a long time is not whiter than that which lasts a single day." The glory that was Greece did not endure forever, but that did not make it less a glory. Heroism may bring death to a man, but that does not make him less a hero. Can anyone doubt that spiritually, it is the quality rather than the duration of a life that counts when he considers the examples of a Shelly dying just short of thirty, a Jesus dying near that same age, a Keats dying at twenty-six, and a Joan of Arc dying at nineteen?

Does anyone who has listened to a symphony of Beethoven seriously think its intrinsic beauty and grandeur depend on the number of times it is played in the future? A great joy that has been felt remains a great joy that has been felt, no matter how many worlds collapse. Neither immortality nor the lack of it can alter the fact that there was a great joy and that a human personality experienced it. While it is true that things must have some minimum duration in order to be experienced at all, neither the consummatory heights of experience nor small innocent pleasures wait on any assurance of life after death; they come without reference to the problem of immortality. The futility argument of the immortalist almost totally neglects these considerations; it throws into the discard [heap] the rich and unquestioning experience of every child, every artist, every lover, every partaker in the life of the spirit and the intellect.

In the second place, it is perfectly clear that the great values which the immortalists wish preserved forever are the very values which human life has generated here and now in spite of its brevity, tragedy and suffering. They themselves recognize this point in granting that there are "values in living that inhere in every day's experience and do not ask ultimate questions about eternity." Their argument itself compels them to this admission. For if values existed independently and eternally in another realm, as suggested in Plato's Dialogues, then they would go on existing whether or not human personalities survived death. This is not the immortalists' view, however. And so their argument forces them to say, in essence, that the values produced in this life are not really values and that the highest human accomplishments are not really worthwhile unless they are all set in a framework of everlastingness....

This stand, if held to uncompromisingly, would imply that, were it by chance established that Plato and Paul, Luther and Lincoln, and all the other great and good figures of the past had not, as a matter of fact, survived death as conscious personalities, their lives, in spite of ennobling effects through long centuries, would now become futile. And human life today, were a future life in some way disproved, would at once become worthless."

The quote from Santayana, "The length of things is vanity, only their height is joy", sums it all up very nicely for me.

[Orangutan]

Also, why does anything need to have a "point" in the first place?

Cos otherwise it would be pointless.

:)

[triad]

I think everything from my standpoint has been said already.. I just wanted to add a little something.


If the purpose of life is to end, then that is not a purpose - but a fact. All life ends. Ending is not purposeful; living gives life purpose. Being alive has a point; you breathe oxygen to fuel your body to move. It is what you do with that motion that gives life purpose. I figure it is a 'Don't live to die, die to live.' take on this. Anyways - the Matrix rules.

[ZNFYRH]

Winter Wind

You're confusing "purpose" with "point."

The purpose is to end, it's inevitable, but that's not the point.

[linda_mary_13]

The purpose of life is to live. To live you must die. When I say live, I'm not referring to this life on Earth, I'm referring to Eternity. So, the purpose is to live for Eternity.

You guys sound young and healthy. You may change your attitude when faced with your mortality. Suddenly you see the speck you are. Suddenly your wordly accomplishments become insignificant.

Life without a point is pointless, I agree. And you only go around once, so you better get the point!

[triad]

Winter Wind

You're confusing "purpose" with "point."

The purpose is to end, it's inevitable, but that's not the point.

That could be argued. Purpose is a subjective outcome*; what one aims for when performing an action. Since living is objective, as is death, then the death of life is not a purpose - because it is not anticipated in a general sense. Before I dig a hole - I realize everyone anticipates death and can predict it will eventually happen, but not in an objective sense. Of course there are exceptions (suicide), but most people can't predict their death and aim to reach that prediction.


Therefore, in my perspective, an end is not a purpose, it is not the objective (goal), you don't purposely die... but it is how life operates. BAAHH, am I going anywhere with this?? I can't quite word this how I mean to... life is the cause of death. Therefore can death be the purpose of life?


don't hurt me.