A statement of my disbeliefs

My own view is that we are accidental products of a mindless universe, and that therefore life is meaningless.However, there are 2 aspects of human experience that sometimes give me pause and make me wonder if my gut feeling is wrong:1. The mystery of consciousness.2. The concept of "conscience."

I meant it could have no objective meaning, due to a lack of grounding for any subjective meaning you wish to assign to it.I could decide, for example, that the purpose of life is to make the world blue, and then I could go around fulfilling my purpose by painting everything blue that I could, and eventually I could die having known I had done my duty.That plan would have as much or as little meaning as any other that one could contrive, assuming no Absolute.

I'm not sure why a naturalist should be particularly neurotic.A neurotic is someone who has irrational fears. If you are suggesting that a naturalist has a fear, perhaps unconscious, of God, I'm not sure that's irrational, if we mean the Christian God.

The horrible thing about it is that any purpose HAS to be arbitrary, assuming no Absolute.Helping babies is just as arbitrary a purpose as making the world blue.The fact that we recoil against this conclusion is what gives me pause.Suppose I was an underwater person and never went out of the water and did not know there was anything but water. In that case, I would not have a concept of "wetness" or "dryness."We seem to be these underwater people who DO have concepts of wetness and dryness.Sometimes I think along these lines.

It does if we are talking about an objective purpose. We can't come up with a reason for one purpose being better than another without begging the question.As follows:"We ought to help babies."
"Why?"
"Well, you were a baby once, and somebody helped you."
"So? I'm not a baby anymore. Let them look after themselves."
"They can't look after themselves."
"So, who cares? Let them die."
"But it's not right for you not to care."
"Why not?"
"We should help each other."
"Why?"And on and on. Eventually we get to the point where we have to just utter a tautology: "We ought to help babies because it's right, and it's good to do what is right."We haven't advanced our argument at all. We might as well have just stuck with the initial statement: "We ought to help babies." I understand what you are saying, and I would agree that it is impossible to live nihilistically.But why is the fact that there is something rather than nothing cause enough to celebrate life?There is no answer to this question.

Okay.Go ahead and explain consciousness and conscience to me.Let's start with consciousness:I want to know the following:How much does it weigh, on average?What color is it?Is it at rest or in motion? If in motion, what is its velocity?What is it made out of?

Good to talk to you again, Ned.My point is about materialism--i.e., there is nothing but the physical.If there is nothing but the physical, then all phenomena have physical characteristics. As you suggest, they pass away, but at any given moment in time they are material.
So that means consciousness is material in nature.What are its material characteristics?Here we have a mystery.Can it be described in terms of the physical--height, weight, color, movement, location?

Then what is this "you"?Are you saying it does not exist?Apparently you are. This thing I call me is my brain, a hunk of meat?This is puzzling. How can a hunk of meat discuss ethics and such?Explain that, please.

Ifen, this is not a "reason."There's no reason why we should be here at all.It happened, that's all.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 05-25-2005 10:24 PM

I'm not sure what this is all about.I just try to reason things out for myself as best I can.What I said above was a review of my "gut feelings."Perhaps it is foolish but it seems to me reasonable.