Well, no. It's a literal description of what you have to believe will happen if you don't believe in an afterlife. Now your "real" is the beginning of assumption.
Rather, the assumption here is that there can be no real and meaningful
earthly purpose without there being a
cosmic purpose. But there is truly no reason to grant such a premise.
To illustrate, consider a researcher who has set as his purpose in life to find the cure of a deadly disease; a purpose with a clearly positive significance. Considering in this scenario that finding a cure is actually possible and given the need for this cure in society; his purpose has a valid and meaningful rationale. In this case it is valid to say that the his life has purpose and meaning in a real earthly sense and this is not dependent on a cosmic purpose grounded in a religious belief of an afterlife.
In this and any number of similar examples, nature is able to ground and account for any sort of value from which this earthly meaning and purpose might originate.
When we come to life either we serve process itself or a point to the process.
I would actually reject such a dichotomy; rather, we give a point to the process.
Absent God there's no real, literally and actually true sum, only a number of things we choose for a number of reasons.
I‘d say that there is no more real and actually true sum as you seem to see it if God existed than if he did not. If he exists, God could have created a world where there is no afterlife, where humans simply live a finite earthly life and then die.
The real and actually true sum that you allude to is not really grounded in the existence of God
per se nor even on the idea that he created a world; but rather in the more specific notion that in order for life to have any real meaning and purpose, for it to be good as a whole, it must last forever.
But as I said above, there is no reason why one should accept such a premise. Just as an individual can look back at her life and judge it as not being good as a whole in light of it’s goodness, accomplishments, achievement of worthwhile goals and the like; so too an individual can judge her life being good as a whole using the same standard. Such judgement is not at all based on the length of the life itself.
Indeed, a short life could well be of great value while a long one may be of little value. If there were immortal beings, they could well lead lives of great or of little value. The mere fact that they last forever wouldn’t be a basis by which to determine the value of their life.
They can be but needn't be consistent and are indistinguishable in value from the next choice which may diametrically oppose it.
It wouldn’t be indistinguishable in value to the valuer.
Something else will continue for it's span, maybe. Maybe not. Whatever it is isn't you.
Of course, I didn’t mean “I” as if implying that some form of my consciousness would continue to live. Rather, my offspring, my legacy, the positive impact I have on others, what I contribute to society, in short, the fruit of that earthly purpose which I set out for myself during the course of my life lives on after I die. Our entire civilization as well as social and scientific progress is based around the notion of building upon the legacy left behind by others.
The cosmos is machinery. It isn't living.
But
we are living and, in a sense, are a way by which that “machinery” has come to know itself.
And in the absence of a rational way to distinguish, that which serves our natures best is the better choice.
Herein lies a fundamental difference in our approach to this issue. I disagree that there is an absence of a rational way to distinguish. It looks like you want to frame things so that we evaluate two “contexts” (one of which is not well defined) in an absolute vacuum sans evidence and without consideration as to what context is true; so that we make a choice on a rather fideistic basis by appealing to a subjective feeling of what we may
think serves our natures best or what we may consider “psychologically beneficial”.
But I think this approach is misguided. Even if I were to grant the pessimistic conclusion which you believe follows in an universe without God and an afterlife, it doesn’t follows that such a view is necessarily false. We may well regret that something justified by the evidence has pessimistic implications but that in itself is no reason to abandon it.
It isn't uncommon to get wildly different recollections on an event that is know, with certainty (empirically verifiable) to have occurred.
Things is, we can’t know with certainty that the event in question was an encounter with a God, let alone that all these people are referring to the same God. The Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian, the Pagan, the Muslim and the members of any other religion; all claim to have an experience related to and in accord with the tenets of their religion. In the same way that conflicting eyewitness reports can invalidate and undermine each other; so too the diverse and contradictory nature of these experiences. Taken collectively, they give no good grounds for believing anything about what is said to have happened to the person who has not had such an experience.
I've answered on the demand for empirical proof to settle the point and await the standard that when met would constitute that.
I’ve pointed out in some previous posts of this thread several ways by which such could actually be met.
The God of gaps? Sure. A thing may appear miraculous that isn't. That's not really an argument against miracles.
It is rather interesting that as our scientific knowledge and understanding about the world has increased, we have moved from an age where miracles were common place, where God personally made himself and his will known on a regular basis and where people spoke to God as one speaks to another person; to an age where God is basically hidden and miracles are very much nonexistent.
:cheers:
Evo
