The Lemon Fool

Having the answer, my imaginary friend and I pause our headlong rush to hell just long enough to ponder on the question.

There is little doubt amongst contemporary philosophers that the greatest metaphysician to tackle the ultimate question about the meaning of life was Peter Cook (sound only)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3WzlZT10Es

He is also reported to have said that the meaning of life is to pass time pleasurably. He added that there might in fact be a more serious meaning of life but he had been too busy passing time pleasurably to have noticed.

Didn't Monty Python have a movie about this?

That didn't wrap things up enough?

Ok...The debate continues I suppose.

RR

The "42" quote comes from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which was the answer finally spat out by the computer Deep Thought after millions of years when asked the famous question.

"The Meaning of Life" was a Monty Python Film which was basically just a collection of roughly related sketches possibly the best being "the Galaxy Song".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

The search goes on...

John

Or, as had been suggested to me in the past, it comes from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.....

"Be excellent to each other". One of the greater philosophical films of our age, I imagine.

RR

Why does life need a meaning? Is there even an answer?

Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death

kempiejon wrote:Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death

You're an existentialist, clearly.

stooz wrote:Why does life need a meaning? Is there even an answer?

I think that is where the problem starts. It was random and meaningless, but people want to assign this meaning via thoughts of political, philosophical or a religious nature. You know...there seem to be some that have it all figured out.



RR

Perhaps the meaning of life lies within the struggle to find some meaning to your life.

John

For whatever reason, the meaning of human life seems to be to replicate.

NomoneyNohoney wrote:For whatever reason, the meaning of human life seems to be to replicate.

Had we humans not had a drive to replicate we perhaps wouldn't have made it to the stage where we could contemplate whether life has a meaning.

I think therefore that replication seems to be part of life's meaning because, at least in our case, it is a necessary prerequisite.

This hasn't stopped me in the past though citing having children as the only hard and fast thing that seems to make any sense.

Regards,
Chris

On a more serious note, I do not think life has any meaning. It just "is" until you die and then it isn't. That is not to say that searching for meaning is a bad thing, although desperately needing there to be meaning might be worrying.

This book takes a decent stab at the question, by someone who had a number of years in a concentration camp to inform his views on meaning:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning

Lootman wrote:

kempiejon wrote:Life is a long agonized illness only curable by death

You're an existentialist, clearly.

a fan of Sartre and Spike Milligan

My apologies for giving this board the title of "meaning of life". I was trying to get away from the TMF equivalent name, so a new tone could be set. But it is a rather glib title.

As a non-believer, I don't think that there is a meaning (i.e. purpose) to life, - and I am quite comfortable with that idea. But while I'm here, I want to enjoy it and I don't want to cause harm or upset to others. Of course, one can create 'meaning' by doing good or being a parent but there is no designed purpose of life.

My observation of those with a faith is that they feel a need to see a meaning in life. Over the years, my wife and I have played ying and yang with her protestant work ethic and my atheist-can't-always-be-@rsed ethic

Hey, I'm a metaphysical solipsist: All of my friends are imaginary. (Both of them!)

Ok, I'm not, but can you (if you exist) prove otherwise? I have no real evidence that anyone-else or anything-else other than my own consciousness (and whatever that needs for its own existence) exists. Other people seem to be a lot like me so I assume that they are just as real. I don't even know how long I have existed. For all I know, I was switched on, fully pre-programmed with all of my memories, five minutes ago.

Julian F. G. W.

In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant—it is said to be conserved over time. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another. Therefore after death our atoms cannot be destroyed and so can appear somewhere else or indeed as someone else. Which has religious connotations of course.

Being slightly pedantic for the moment, your atoms are quite likely to be destroyed after death (even during life) and reform into something quite different. Conservation of energy, not matter.
But it's a funny sort of 'law' that just assumes that all available energy was just always 'there'.