Are there any substitutes for having inner peace?

Watson by his use of language appears to be one who is self - absorbed and self - obsessed. He is unable to confront the awful truth that he is'nt important. Life (single celled) started 350m years ago and Mankind only arrived 600,000 yrs ago, and VERY recently penned the Bible to help other weak minded self - obsessors to come to terms with thier place in the great scheme of things.Taking comfort from a notion that has no evidence has the effect of closing ones mind to thought and investigation.I could come to the conclusion I might one day flap my arms and fly as this would give me comfort and something to look forward to.Presumably Watson MUST accept my flying expectation is a reality as I have faith. OR like us athiests, would he at least require some independant evidence?Can I not require him to give me some evidence?Faith = excuses for the weak and the troubled.

Can you go back to your childhood and recollect your memories? When you were a Child, you were afraid. Were you not? I remember my youngest brother who was 7. He came home late. It was too dark. Something happened and he was scared. He had severe fever. Why am I writing this? Because, my brother was sick. He was weak. He depened either on me or my father for his strength and courage. Life also poses severe problems and situations for us. This is when we need some one like Father. In this istuation, it is God whethere you believe Him or not. A child has blind faith in his or her father. Before God, we are also like children.

Personally, no , I wasn't afraid.So, you are saying that you have faith because you are afraid, and this is a nice little 'oh I will be protected' idea.

Ahem, excuse me? Do you realise how conceited you sound? What makes YOU the arbiter what what constitutes self fulfillment? Not everyone seeks (or needs) your brand of fulfillment.Like a previous poster said, I find fulfillment in this life on the assumption that when I'm dead it's game over.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

You find fulfilllment from THAT assumption?I don't see any fulfillment there. I see meaninglessness.

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"Your friends, if they can, may bury you with some distinction, and set up a monument, to let posterity see that your dust lies under such a stone; and when that is done, all is done. Your place is filled up by another, the world is just in the same state it was, you are blotted out of its sight, and as much forgotten by the world as if you had never belonged to it."--William Law

Well not that assumption alone! I meant to say:"I find fulfillment in this life and accept that when I'm dead it's game over." Heh, so do I. That's life! We're just a speck of inconsequential life in a vast universe.In any case, any "meanings" we do come up with will be superceded by the ideas (and sciences, perhaps) of future generations...Ever hear Monty Python's "Galaxy Song"?---------------------------------------------------
Galaxy Song by Monty Python"Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you've had quite enough""Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at 900 miles an hour
That's orbiting at 90 miles a second, so it's reckoned, the sun that is the source of all our power
The Sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour, of a galaxy we call the Milky Way""Our Galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars, it's a hundred thousand lightyears side to side
It bulges in the middle,16,000 lightyears thick but out by us it's just 3,000 lightyears wide
We're 30,000 lightyears from galactic central point, we go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions in this amazing and expanding universe""The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding, in all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure how amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space coz there's bugger all down here on Earth"

I see your point. However, we must realize that any fulfillment we might find is subjective in nature and thus in the long run meaningless.One person might say, "I find fulfillment in finding a cure for cancer."Another might say, "I find fulfillment in collecting matchboxes."Still another might say, "I find fulfillment in marrying the young woman with the finest legs in my county."Or one might say, "I find fulfillment in being the Prime Minister of Belgium."None of these choices can be said to be superior, in an objective sense, to any other choices.

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"Your friends, if they can, may bury you with some distinction, and set up a monument, to let posterity see that your dust lies under such a stone; and when that is done, all is done. Your place is filled up by another, the world is just in the same state it was, you are blotted out of its sight, and as much forgotten by the world as if you had never belonged to it."--William Law

Very amusing, ifen.Now if you do the Whitman thing, you can become me.

I hadn't intended to joke. I was offering Whitman's poetry as a testimonial for being over becoming."I am" is subjective. "becoming me" is objective. Two different directions, or focuses. Whitman was talking about the appreciation of just being. I think there is fulfillment in that. I think that is one of the things Whitman's poetry is celebrating.lfen

I continue to disagree, Robin. Subjective does not equal meaningless. All meaning is constructed, whether by gorillas or gods.Consider the alternative: is the purpose of human life is to adore the being who created us? That purpose seems no less subjective to me, since it is made by a single intelligence for its own pleasure.In the cases you referred to, we define and seek our own fulfillment; in the latter, someone else makes it up for us, and we are either spiritual sycophants and lackeys or (many or most of us) eternally tormented losers.What's objective about that? It remains an individual perspective--the very essence of the concept of subjective--that determines that meaning.We all have the gift of creation. Either a god formed us in that Creator's image or we emerged from chaos with it as a birth-right: I make it up, you make it up, He makes it up.We all make it up. You can make your own meaning, or you can accept the meaning that someone else made for you. I'd rather make my own.

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God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, ”Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’
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If one assumes that a purported God's mentality is like ours, then his purposes would be subjective as ours are. But one doesn't have to assume that. Maybe God's mentality is always objective; maybe his purposes are objective. If such is the case, and he had a purpose for us, then that purpose would be objective.The existence of God would not automatically guarantee an objective purpose; it just allows for the possibility of one (in my humbly, informally logical view).In the case of no God, however, there can be no such thing as an objective purpose. But one can go a bit further than that. In the case of no God, there is no way to refer to one thing or being or action as any more important than any other thing or being or action. There is no such thing as something being significant in comparison to other things. All things and actions are of equal significance or insignificance. There is no such quality as "significance" (except subjectively).Now to me, what I do today is much more significant that the movement of a grain of sand across the surface of Mars. But objectively speaking, they are equal in significance.

I think this is a semantic glitch of some sort. Whatever purpose is given to the created beings by a creator being is objective, it's "what we were made for." It would be something built into the created beings, something that would seek fulfillment because of that, despite all other purposes the created being could invent. It would be the very nature of the created beings. I think this is what is meant by objective purpose or formal purpose. You treat the purpose given by a creator as extraneous or arbitrary, something the creator just "made up" for you and imposed on you, but in fact his purpose would be part of the very created thing he would create, not at all subjective but the very definition of objective. {Leaving the hypothetical for the Christian context for a moment, If we are made in the image of God, some part of us is always seeking God. It's part of us, it's not imposed on us. It's complex because of the Fall, which buried this part of us that seeks God and brought out our own desire to be little gods lording it over life, which I add merely to explain why we often don't experience this yearning after God, or we misapply it in the wrong directions.}

And why shouldn't we give the 'purpose' as purely arbitary? And, what is that 'purpose'? How do you know what that purpose is?? (and I am not talking about quoting some book).It appears to be that trying to claim that the purpose is objective by defintion is not a very convincing arguement at all. It is entirely subjective.

I didn't say I knew what the purpose is, except when it comes to the Christian definition of God, which I avoided until the end. The purpose of ANY creator is not arbitrary to the created thing or being, it's what the thing or being "was made for" -- "built into" the created thing or being. That's what MAKES it objective. It's a definitional thing.A created being would have a felt tendency in the direction of that purpose -- and I think this is amply borne out in the case of human beings by the fact that the religious impulse has been pretty much universal -- up until modern atheism anyway -- that is, the impulse to set up objects of worship and propitiation. (A case could be made that this is no less true of modern atheists but for the sake of avoiding confusion I'll just stick to "pretty much universal up UNTIL modern atheism.") This is a hopelessly muddled statement. As long as such a basic thing as what "subjective" and "objective" mean can't be agreed upon, discussions about such things are hopeless.If the creator's purpose is not an objective purpose for the created thing then nothing makes any sense at all.This is simply the definition of "objective," but apparently few here really believe there is such a thing as an objective purpose at all ever under any circumstances. Everything is "subjective" it seems. I believe this shows a lack of grasp of the concept, but in any case discussion is simply hopeless because of it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.