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Comment by Erlich_Bachman | Hacker News Reader

> As gods obviously don't actually exist

It's funny that you would write something like that as if it was a useful statement. Reducing that much complexity in such a nonchalant way... But nevertheless...

> that humans give meaning to their own existance.

If you have time can you share what you think is the reason for why humans have a capability, the will to give their life meaning? Where does it come from? Why is their ability to give life meaning able to produce actual tangible results in their lives and lives of other people? If that ability even implemented through some genetic mechanism, why does the world work that way that it produces this type of genetics, that can create meaning? Genetics could have worked in any number of ways, why this one?

Would you say that love "exists"? Would you say that an integral "exists"? What about if there are no mathematicians that know about it or use it? Does it still exist?

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I had no intention to offend, sorry if I came across like that. But this is actually illustrative to the point at hand: Neither in my family nor in my whole social environment do I know a single religious person, yet most of those people feel some kind of purpose or meaning in their live.

Why humans actually do this is of course a hot topic in both philosophy and psychology, for at least a few thousand years now. I think the cognitive root lies in us being social animals. Being social means needing to keep the group together, which makes communication necessary, to align individual actions to a cohesive whole. Communication is hard, though, misunderstandings lurk everywhere. We therefore have to interpret the signals we got from the others, fill the gaps of the unsaid. We necessarily have to infer intentions, meaning, relations to us and so on. If we couldn't to that, we couldn't form cohesive groups, and therefore cease to exist as a species. We could become some other species, but not the current one, having discourse over the internet, sitting in different parts of the world.

All higher order concepts like "love", "purpose" etc. are more elaborate functions to sucessfully and peacefully live together. They actually exist, even physically, as processes in our brains and bodies. But they aren't necessarily ojective. If we as a species would have originated in a physically different world, say as spherical creatures living in the oceans of Titan, we would also have different sets of feelings and emotions. The idea of "love" of such a species could be a completely different one than our human concept.

Thank you, interesting perspective.

> do I know a single religious person, yet most of those people feel some kind of purpose or meaning in their live.

Ah well yes, :). Being religious - vs - having an inner meaning/{what some people call god}/aka being spiritual - is like having gone through a CS program in an expensive university - vs - actually knowing how to code.

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