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Sucky Things You'd Rather Not Think About

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What we have here is a list of trite, mostly useless if not wrong, observations, followed by an explanation that "religious people were right all along", without anything to back this up.

The essence of religion is not "finding meaning by artistically living an authentic life", for several reasons :

Religion is not a way to find meaning. Religion gives you a meaning (Either revealed by a god to a prophet, or made up on the spot by the latter) that hopefully transcends your mortal life (i.e. the trite observations listed above). This meaning involves respecting things that are deemed sacred (divine commandments, symbols, rites or whatnot), in the hope of gaining something (going to heaven, escape this meaningless cycle of reincarnation, and so on)

"Living artistically", whatever that means, has nothing to do with religion. Artists may find their inspiration in their beliefs, but there are plenty of atheist artists, and there are even more religious people who have absolutely no kind of artistic talent, taste, or inclination.

Finally, the phrase "authentic life" is pretty much devoid of meaning. How do you decide which life is more authentic ? Is living a hedonistic life of excess ending by an overdose less authentic than dying alone at seventy-eight after years of hard work ? Or more authentic ? What are your criteria ?

Besides, to "creatively speculate on what values you want for life and why" is something most people never do and don't particularly care about. It's certainly not the only rational thing to do. It is just as rational to decide that yes, life is a pointless maelstrom of absurdity that never amounts to anything, and keep on doing what you do, just because.

For anyone who wants a dose of philosophical ultra-pessimism without any hope for the future, check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Against-Human-Race-Contriva...

It's basically a philosophical treatise written by a lovecraftian horror writer, containing discussions on existentialism, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, etc.

Don't say I didn't warn you, though.

On the flip side, there's "The Rational Optimist" http://amzn.to/Al7nQB (affiliate link)

I hate to use cliches, but I think you can look at reality and argue it either way -- it's truly arbitrary, a "glass half-full" thing. I'd the nature of being able to argue it both ways only emphasizes the necessity of taking Kierkegaard's leap: the nature of the problem is truly about working with incomplete information.

> Science will never be able to transfer your mind into a machine. Yes, maybe one day in the distant future some miracle will happen where all of your mind can be analyzed and copied, but that will only be a copy. The "real" you will die.

How about this? The -real- you dies every second (or, every "Planck time") and is replaced with an almost exact copy of you

Another philosopher discussing, with all of his empirical wisdom, what we can and cannot do in life... Who are they to say what is possible? Does this person understand and is up to the latest on every different branch of science? Something very few, if any, can do.

Philosophers are good at one thing, and one thing only: Exclaiming grandiose statements to make themselves appear intelligent so people take them seriously.

It's a wasted mind - what could he have done had he went into pharmacology, biology, technology, physics, something concrete that is pushing our species into the future, not hold it back with thoughts.

+1 for science, -1 for "philosophy"

> The religious people were right all along. Given all this uncertainty and almost pointless nature of existence, the only rational course of action is to creatively speculate on what values you want for your life and why.

And it was going so well. The first sentence has no relation at all to the second.

Knowing you have a finite life doesn't make you do any less good, I'd argue it does the opposite. Religious or not, you can consider your values. sigh

I was a little dismayed at that point too - but I think the rest of the paragraph clarifies the point well. I think he's talking about a sincere spiritual journey, not "religious people" as commonly encountered. I'm an atheist, but I also think there's a natural "spiritual" instinct that has to do with artfulness, reflection, and transcendence (eg. the attempt to transcend your view of the world as a single individual)

I think you've missed the point. "The religious people were right" refers to each individual having to make value decisions based on incomplete information, not conformity to an external value system. We completely agree.

I figured people would misread that section. I rewrote a couple of times, but in all honesty people see the word "religion" and then the conversation is over, as you have demonstrated. The problem is that the driver of religion -- creatively speculating on the unknown -- is a completely different thing than the application of these common myths in some kind of social structure. But the word has both meanings.

Sorry about that. I'll think about how to word it better.

EDIT: Reworded it a bit to try to clear it up.

I don't think it is poorly worded, though this sentence is a bit clumsy:

The existentialists argue that any formal, self-consistent religious structure is necessarily broken -- God is dead -- not that the essence of religion, finding meaning by artistically living an authentic life, doesn't work.

That cuts to the chase, but due to its structure, it can be easy to misread.

[Edit: grammar]

"creatively speculating on the unknown" - sounds more like philosophy than religion to me.

"unquestioningly believing what you've been told" - how about that?

So in what sense is your tagline "The religious people were right all along." correct? Certainly not making decisions based on incomplete information.

A core point of existentialism is the need to act without certainty. Ie the dizziness of freedom, as Kierkegaard puts it.

Fundamentalists are trying to satisfy their need for certainty by pointing at a certain holy text and going "this is the Truth!".

I think there has to be a way of satisfying the need for certainty without compromising epistemic rationality, however. I have yet to find it, though :(

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