Hacker News Reader

Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

When I step back and look at my life, I have to say it is pretty good. I get agitated when I lose perspective and magnify some particular bad thing. Also, as a Christian, this gives me the ultimate relief, because I can step back and say whatever unimaginably horrible thing is happening God is ultimately in control orchestrating things for maximal good, of which maximal good is also at some fundamental level in line with my intuition of maximal good, so I'll be satisfied in the end of it all. And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry? Either way, no reason to worry in any ultimate sense. Sort of like the opposite of Pascal's wager. Worry has no rational basis regardless of one's worldview.

View on HN

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry?

I'm not trying to start a pointless debate, your comment really made me curious.

Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering?

As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are these goals not valuable in themselves?

An atheist myself, but I imagine this has to do with the lack of eternal life after death in that case. Religious people find the idea of life after death comforting, and it's easy to understand why: most people fear death and can't comprehend their consciousness ending at some point, for the same reasons why we can't comprehend things like the big bang or infinity. There is, by definition, no example that we could perceive to comprehend it.

No, I mean something more practical, not based in religious reasoning. If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything. I believe this was pointed out by Epicurus.

why is death a "threat"? im not sure what you are intending to say.

Epicurus said death is the end of body & soul, therefore not to be feared. Im not sure I agree with that nor the inverse, if god exists, death is to be feared? Why?

The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other.

Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary.

>Hence, if God exists and there is eternal punishment, that is a little bit scary

Eternal punishment only exists if you arent a good person right? Heaven isnt eternal punishment?

> Heaven isnt eternal punishment?

It could be. Think of all the boring people that would supposedly be in there. Now think that you get to spend infinity time with them.

Newton and Pascal are boring, I suppose.

Certainly one wouldn't want to live in a place where J. S. Bach got to write music for eternity. Imagine the torture.

Also MLK Jr., Mr. Rogers, and Teddy Roosevelt. Very boring.

According to Christianity (and a number of other religions), no one is good enough for heaven. We have to be perfect, and no one is perfect. So, if Christianity is true, one cannot be a 'good atheist' and hope to get an eternal reward, i.e. being a 'good atheist' is not a loophole that works in both worldviews.

> The notion of God and and eternal reward or punishment are quite often tied together. It is hard to see one without the other.

The most brilliant marketing plan ever devised. It just awes the salesman in me... Brilliant!

It is strange that a creator would understand the motivations of his creation.

You can't think "rationally" about death. It's literally incomprehensible to a human mind, when the object of death is that mind itself.

What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death that we can make some pretty good guesses as to what the experience leading up to it is like. And it would be incoherent to talk about the experience of being dead, because it is no experience at all (as before we were born). We know quite a bit about what happens when we die, and we have literally billions of exemplars of the event. I would say in almost every meaningful way we can think about it fairly rationally. (Whether we choose to is another question.)

But they aren't "death" death, like Whoopi Goldberg would say. You can't comprehend something that requires your consciousness to cease to exist in order to fully comprehend it.

In other words, "we" have some abstract ideas about what happens when "we" die, but it's fundamentally impossible for you, the individual, to imagine what happens when _you_ die.

>What do you mean when you say you can't think about it rationally? There are enough survivable experiences physiologically similar to death

That makes no sense. There are some experiences of coming close to death, or what doctors consider death -- which is the mind/organs shutting down, etc.

There is (and can't be) no experience of actual permanent death though, nor has a dead person recounted their experience while a dead person.

The ones retelling the experience are always alive when they do it.

Of course. But I would think the experience of falling into a coma after a hypoxic event would convey all the same conscious experiences of death. That would be what it would feel like, until you were unconscious. Then, by definition, you would feel no more.

>But I would think the experience of falling into a coma after a hypoxic event would convey all the same conscious experiences of death.

I'd say so.

It was pointed out, but it was always a cheap parlor trick.

"You cease to exist after death, so what's to fear?"

"Well, my fear is that I will cease to exist, Einstein!"

Fear doesn't have to be with something in the future being painful. We also fear something not being how we want it to be (in this case, we want to continue existing, and death prevents that).

>since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything

That's an argument about we wont feel fear after death.

It's not an argument about we can't fear death itself...

> If you think about it, if God does not exist, then death has no threat, since once you are dead you cease to exist and no longer care about anything.

That is exactly the threat of death, if, while alive, you value your ability to continue existing and caring about things.

Threats inherently operate by reference to your preferences before they are realized, not your preferences after they are realized. Once you have the post-realization preferences, it can't be a threat any more, because there is no longer a possibility of not realizing the consequences.

If death is non-existence, you can't be threatened after death, but death can still be a threat. You can't use the complete indifference that comes with non-existence to say that death is not a threat: it is only not a threat if you are indifferent to death while alive, which is possible (as is it's opposite) whether or not death is non-existence.

Yes, but this reasoning seems to put too much value on the last moments of your life and the actual act of dying.

I would say it's all the other moments that make life valuable, not its end.

Things can matter to you, but they are not things that objectively matter.

Nothing objectively matters.

That's true even if God exists; the fact that some things subjectively matter to God doesn't make them matter objectively. It may mean that there are consequences that matter subjectively to you for not prioritizing them, though.

Even if God does exist, why does that make anything objectively matter?

What does that even mean?

>As a lifelong atheist there are plenty of things that matter to me: the well-being of people (particularly those around me), peace, justice, climate change, etc. Are these goals not valuable in themselves?

Well, they can be valuable subjectively. Then again, useless things can also be valuable subjectively (e.g. a person obsessing about hoarding BS at their home).

But objectively, and in the long scheme of things, everybody will just be dead forever, so what's the point?

At best it's better enjoying a small intermission bookended by an eternity of nothing.

The universe, for one, doesn't care. It could just throw some asteroid at earth, and kill everybody removing all traces of history, culture, civilization, etc too.

The point is that life has value, that good experiences have value and that you should build a future for the life to come and not be so self centered. Thank the ones who came before you to make your life possible.

And challenge the political ways of these who came before you.

I inherited and wear my grandfather's hat, I remember him, I drink tea in his honour, but I fight against some of the things he believed and fought for.

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry?

I would argue the opposite: if god does exist, then nothing really matters anymore, except the whims of a powerful entity.

Not having a supernatural power meddling in our affairs liberates us to do great things.

It's a shame that we've done such a poor job at teaching the wisdom brought to us from the abrahamic religions (judaism, christianity, islam).

The real seed of the message is that the one true God is not a noun, it's a verb. Can a verb have an agenda and a plan?

By my own experience, the common misunderstanding that God is a noun is nothing more then a projection of our human egos. In a way, using God(verb) to project through our minds and out our mouths/hands that there is one true Supernatural Organizer(noun) is idolatry.

By my beliefs you're acting at a very high level of spirituality by avoiding servitude to any Supernatural Organizer.

I like your idea, and I will add a bit to it.

If we could have a potentially infinite afterlife, or potentially infinite reincarnations, then just one life doesn't matter much.

But if there's no such thing, if there's only this life and nothing after, then every single second being alive is the most valuable thing ever.

> Let's imagine the Christian god doesnt't exist. How does that logically lead to nothing mattering?

The entire book of Ecclesiastes is about this. I wouldn't presume to summarize it all in a comment box, but it does cover a lot of grounds in different approaches to the meaning of life. It claims none of them really work all that well.

And no, it doesn't say, "But you die and go to heaven or hell anyway" over and over. It's not very supernatural at all, actually.

Things that matter to you, as with anything else, do not matter by themselves.

Things are. Their value is determined by a mind. Only God's mind can determine the value of a thing. Whether God exists or not, the statement stands.

Because, we do not know all the consequences an action but God knows. By your own set of values, by some twist of fate, what you are doing could be counter-productive.

That's funny, because as an atheist, I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk.

So I find satisfaction in that nothing matters anyways, and the best we can do is try to live a good life while we're here, and not take any of it too seriously. Because it's all random and largely out of my control, there's no rational basis for worry.

It's nice to see a Christian that reached the same conclusion with a totally different process :)

> I can step back and say that for whatever unimaginably horrible thing that's happening, it's all just a random walk

Can you, really? Say your kid disappeared a week ago after soccer practice, and the police has no leads about their whereabouts. Could you really distance yourself and "not worry because everything is just a random walk"? Or would you spend all night restless, like a normal human being?

Yes, that is the flaw in my reasoning. If someone used my reasoning to just check out and not be concerned about their children being abducted, then we'd rightly believe there is something wrong with that person.

And if the parent became manic and left no stone unturned in their search for their child, like Taken, we'd be understanding.

Yet, our world is not the world of Taken, and we are not ex-CIA agents capable of destroying anyone in our path. There are truly evil people in this world capable of harming us, whom we have no power to thwart. Think of people living in the land of a drug lord, who can swoop in and take their children if he feels like it. Or the Uighurs and Falun Gong of China, who are regularly captured and organ harvested, and there's nothing they can do about it. There is great evil in our world, and little we can do about it but do our best to fight it and never give up, and even then there is no hope of truly eradicating evil from our world. What is the appropriate response?

Significant trauma will shake any belief or philosophy.

To an extent I agree. But, a counter point, I've experienced significant depression (very first world problem), and reasoning about my situation objectively has actually helped me. I try to distance myself from my feelings and acknowledge what my real state in life is, and make choices accordingly. That has kept me out of some trouble, and also helps turn my feelings around.

The very act of choosing based on reason instead of feeling gives me a feeling of power, and depression tends to be accompanied by a feeling of powerlessness. This seems to be the mechanism of how reason helps me with depression.

Of course, it is not a complete cure, and it would be trite to say so, but reasoning does help.

Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me? And if the kid never comes back, what's an appropriate "normal human" duration of restlessness?

People go to therapy for years to get over that restless stuff and replace it with some version of accepting that the world is not under your control.

No doubt that upsetting things are upsetting, but the guiding principle is that you have to accept the things you can't control, and do the best with the things you can control.

>Maybe? Let's say I had a kid that got kidnapped, and I spend all night restless like a normal human being. Where has that actually gotten me?

People don't respond to things just because it "gets them somewhere", and even less for such events.

One doesn't do a calculation "I'll grieve for X amount of time, because this has the best effects", except if they are a sociopath.

At best they can say after some time "I feel like I've grieved enough now, I should try to get back with life" -- and even that is not a decision, it's a gradual process with regressions, etc.

We're in agreement. I'm just saying the goal is to process events, grieve, and find a path back to "normal". Where, ideally, "normal" isn't constant anxiety and existential crises. Eventually, you have to learn to let even the most traumatic stuff go, or it'll haunt you forever.

I believe I say the exact same thing in the second half of my comment.

> And if God doesn't exist, then nothing matters anyways, so why worry?

"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder." - Homer Simpson

You've not considered this possibility, that there is an entity out there who would punish you for being Christian.

I'm not against religion but I wouldn't say there is some rational reason to believe one thing or another.

As an atheist, I take quite a different approach. There is no God with an ultimate plan of good, so the only ones who can address "unimaginably horrible" things is us.

Yes, in the end nothing matters, but in the present and near future many things matter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com