All people:
According to your respective religions/personal beliefs, what is the meaning of life?
I have a few 'beliefs', as a self-identified Agnostic Nihilist my views are somewhat... Varied. Rather, I don't hold to any single one of these, they're simply ones that I've thought of.
Possibility #1: The Nihilism God=False route. Simple. No meaning. At least, no
inherent meaning.
One can still make their own purpose but it must be realised that ultimately all actions you take are meaningless.
No reason not to take them though, since your inaction is equally as meaningless.
Once we die we simply cease to be. Infinite void, essentially incomprehensible to us and pointless to meander on.
Possibility #2: The Nihilism God=True route.
Slightly more complicated but similar to the above. No inherent meaning.
God or Gods exist, but they have basically nothing to do with humanity. They aren't omnipotent or omniscient, simply things beyond our understanding. (Think Xel'Naga.) May have instigated the big bang or even directly created humans.
May actively 'watch over' humans but the more likely one in my opinion in this scenario is that they simply don't care about us. Humans aren't some sort of 'special chosen race'. We are no more important than a particularly dominant strain of animal.
No afterlife, same as above. Everything (including the gods) eventually fade from existence. The universe may not end but everything that exists 'now' will have utterly no meaning 1000 billion years later.
Anyway, the primarily 'Nihilistic' views dealt with, the remaining ones aren't predominantly Nihilistic but there may be elements of it interspersed.
Possibility #3: The Christians are (mostly, details may vary) Right route.I'm going to be totally honest here. Out of all the other possibilities this one feels like the least likely one to me. It just doesn't 'click', so to speak. Regardless, I do hold that it is
possible but
highly unlikely. (To me. Don't take this as an insult if you're Christian.)
Anyway, in this case the meaning of life is to be God's playthings. Free will may or may not be proved to be irrelevant. God may use Its omnipotence to somehow make it possible when it shouldn't be.
Afterlife exists. Likelihood of being sent to hell dependent on various things I have no idea about. Taking God out of the equation (which is like saying 'taking the equation out of the equation') the meaning of life *should* be to be kind to others, be happy, be close to God, etc. Humans are The Most Important Thing so anything noteworthy occurring outside of our galaxy is unlikely. (It's like the out-of-bounds area in a video game.)
Quite hilariously, this is probably one of the routes that I most
want to be the correct one but also thing is extremely unlikely.
Possibility #4: The 'All Is One' route.Basically whatever LordBucket says when/if they answer this. I think the ending part of what I'm saying here is different to their belief though.
Essentially, All That Is
is God. Or, rather, parts of It.
Quite intriguing option. One of my personal favorites outside of the Nihilistic views because it actually seems quite likely (in comparison to some of the others at least.)
I wouldn't really consider 'God' an entity in this path and more of 'The Will of Reality' sort of thing.
I'd say the meaning of life here would be to collect as many experiences and as much knowledge as possible, eventually returning and bring it with you to the All. Interesting in that, depending on interpretation, this route suggests that things such as the Holocaust (no I'm not saying I support it personally) are not 'negative' events. Of course, while I hold that objective morality does
not exist anyway, in this case it suggests that all events that differ to others in some way are positive, due to being a 'different' experience that may be brought to the All. Using math speak it would be like everything was measured in magnitude.
Possibility #5: The 'Your Existence is an Illusion' route.Kind of weird. Differs to the Nihilistic viewpoint in that everything is what you believe it to be (which is somewhat true regardless. Humans simply cannot be sure that objective reality exists.) but also holds that everything is meaningless. Not normally meaningless, but super
ULTRA meaningless, in the sense that not only do your actions and their repercussions and their repercussion's repercussions become meaningless, but every single thing essentially never even existed to begin with. (Kind of like baking a cake and then not eating the cake compared to just not baking the cake.)
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DISCLAIMER: All of these things are simply personal... Thoughts? Regardless, being Agnostic I hold that every single one of these (and many, many more that I haven't written out. Also, all of these are more detailed, I've just kind of put down what I felt like) are possible, though in varying degrees of possibility. Also, please don't get offended by anything (like the Holocaust mentioning) since all of these are written with the assumption that the possibility they're describing is actually correct.
Sorry if I went into a little bit too much detail, but I felt that explaining the mindset that the meaning was being derived from was important to explaining why I thought it was that meaning, if that makes any sense.
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