Comment by beltsazar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beltsazar | Hacker News Reader

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The person you replied to didn't say "the purpose comes from any why", but:

> The purpose comes from why the creator created it.

Some higher being might impulsively created the universe out of boredom, in which case there would be no ultimate purpose at all. But maybe they created it intentionally, with a purpose, which is the ultimate purpose of universe and everything inside it.

So no, it's not what you condescendingly said "wordplay at best." There can be a relationship between the purpose of a creation and the reason why the creator created it. In fact, for many everyday things, the purpose of their existence is exactly the reason why the inventors created them.

(I'm not arguing that there exists a creator of the universe. I'm just showing how irrelevant, to put it mildly, your seemingly strong argument is to the post you replied to.)

I get that, and my response did probably not convey what I meant to explain very well.

How about this angle: Does that creator itself have any purpose or meaning? If God exists, is he utterly nihilistic and void of meaning? After all, there was no creator to give God purpose.

If God does have purpose somehow, that shows that purpose does not only come from being created. Problem solved.

If God does not have purpose, then that creates a rather strange situation where a being without purpose can create beings with purpose. Presumably we too can create things with purpose, in a godless universe, and thus infuse the world with purpose ourselves.

Personally, I think people are too quick to mix up purpose (the how) with meaning (the why). There are all kinds of mechanical reasons as to how you came about, from nature, your parents, circumstances. And some of those reasons even include agency, for example, your parents might have decided to have a child. That's a decision they took, not just random luck.

But these are reasons as to how you came about to exist, not the actual meaning behind your existence. Meaning is something else entirely, it's a very difficult topic to struggle with. But we diminish it greatly by dumbing it down to "the meaning with your life is whatever intentions behind what created you". Our lives does not belong to our parents, nature or our creator, but rather, ourselves. And thus it's only we who can imbue that life with meaning, nobody else.

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