Birth? Life? Death? Is there any meaning to any of it?

Question

Is it all a meaningless comedy being played out on a small planet speeding through the universe? Why do we bother? Why do we care?

I would like to read a novel (which I've never found) about a small group of anti-life terrorists who have as their goal the total destruction of Earth and all of its inhabitants. The twist in the plot is that this group believes that they are helping all life forms, including human beings, by putting them out of their supposed misery. Their philosophy is that by ending all life on earth, they will be ending all suffering for all time. And, of course, there is a rival group which tries to stop them. Who will win? Will the Earth and all life be destroyed?

Answer 1

The point of view I want to elaborate is radically different from what you express. But it is, consistent, clear and makes sense. It is based on what we know and makes logical deductions from there.
To explain it let us go a little further back from the moment of birth and start from conception. After we are conceived we start to develop in an aquatic medium that has very little similarity to this physical world. We can perfectly call it a different world. Our whole life depends on the umbilical cord from where we receive everything that we need for our growth. In the nine months that we grow in this physiological "world" is concentrated all the evolution of man, as a species, on earth. This is a very interesting point and shows that life on earth started in the ocean.
Maybe that explains why our tears are salty says Khalil Gibran, in a much more poetic way.
"There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea."
In this womb world we start looking like a tiny fish or frog at first, we go through various stages of development and there are even times that we look like a tiny monkey but we are always a human being in potential at every stage of our development.
Similarly in the physical world in which we live now mankind has gone through a long process of evolution and during this evolution it may have looked at certain times like a monkey but he was always a different species. Never a monkey who decided to be a man. This reconciles the theory of evolution and creation. Man has no doubt evolved on earth and may have looked like a monkey at times but he was always a different species from the animal. He was always a man in potential.

What was the meaning of life or the purpose of life in the womb world?
The purpose was to develop faculties and senses that would be used in the following world, which is the physical world in which he was born nine months later. He developed eyes that were of no use there, feet that he could not use, hands, hearing, taste and of course his brain that he could not use fully in that world.
When he died to the womb world he was born instantly to the physical world. So death means birth at the same time. The organs and faculties that he developed allowed him to live a normal life without being handicapped and enjoy all the benefits of this physical world.
Is there a purpose or meaning to the physical life on earth? Yes. The purpose is to acquire moral virtues which will be our faculties for progress in the spiritual worlds. Progress for man is never ending and continues forever since his potential for learning is unlimited. But the tools and faculties he needs in the invisible worlds are moral qualities not physical ones any more. So it is important to acquire qualities like kindness, generosity, veracity, truthfulness etc.. so that we are able to progress rapidly in the future worlds. This extrapolation is of course based on what has happened to man before his physical birth, as explained.
Existence can not become nonexistence. Not even our physical body ceases to exist after death. All the atoms of our body continue to exist. In another form.

Answer 2

There are two ways of getting the answer closer to the real meaning of life. Observe the environment or observe the self. There are many living beings around us including humans. Whatever conclusion you believe the purpose for them is the same applies to you also. There are no differences. My observation is that life is to perform the karma. Like Shakespeare says in "All the world's a stage", give at most importance to the critical activities of the life stage as once they are gone, it cannot be retrieved. If i observe more deeply, there is no special meaning to life... The real purpose of life is to just exist and experience the life to the most. The second part of the question is very ambiguous. The term "Better" is in reference to what? Both birth and death are the critical process steps in the earth life. The real answer is dependent upon where we came from before birth and where we will go after death. If the answer is known, then we can conclude this answer.

Answer 3

the comedy implies laughter and happiness. The opposite would be horror. Does it then become meaningless? As you fly by the stars in this universe you cannot help but to discover that you have a power that transcends from the natural to the supernatural. You will realize that love shared is not trivial but eternal and all creation will feed upon it so that creation can continue to bless those here and those in the here-after. How many people have been blessed by the life of Lincoln? Or King? Or Graham? To bring it closer to home, your Parents? Carry on Soldier and don't be dis-heartened by thoughts of dispair. Feed upon the lives of your ancestors and perpetuate your life forward for future generations.

Answer 4

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.

To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 5

Birth, life and death, I guess these are a person's life cycle. These things will remain meaningless unless you make a meaning out of them. Sounds like a paradox, huh, but it's not really. You see, your life is what you make it, you create the meaning in your life, if you believe that you're alive so that you can help people than you have given it your meaning! Death is the only truth in our lives, it's the pathway to another eternal life which will with high hopes be better, and birth is the beginning of life.!

Answer 6

I ask this same question once in a meditation. The answer came clear as a bell.

It said I have placed you here to learn the true meaning of Love. What ever it was that was answering then told me something that really set me back. It said that I felt the way I did about certain people because I did not understand the true meaning of love. I protested and said that I did my best to love all of the people who were deserving of love.

It replied "yes that is your misunderstanding. You see love as something that you dole out in tiny little portions here and there to people who you have judged to be worthy of it. This is not love at all, it is only judgment". This stopped me dead in my tracks. I suddenly realized that what it was saying to me was true. This realization brought me to tears. It went
on and told me, "You treat love as though there is some shortage of it. It is not something that you can run out of. The more love that you give, the more love that there is in the world. Its that simple. The only way that there can be a shortage of it is if you hoard it and keep it to yourself."

It went on to explain, that "this is what Jesus was trying to tell you when he asked you to turn the other cheek, to judge not and to love your neighbor. He made no exceptions in these things that he requested of you. Why are you making exceptions, and judging some as worthy of love and others as not? Jesus fully intended for you to apply this love that you are to all, in a universal manner without any judgment of any sort". By this time the tears Were flowing freely. I was crying because for the first time in my life I Understood what the message Jesus left for us in the bible actually meant.

This has become my truth. I can't say what yours is for sure, but I have a feeling that it is probably similar.

Love and blessings
don

Answer 7

The purposefulness (not purpose!) of life is fundamental to it. Like the axioms of geometry, they are opaque to our questioning or justification.
___So there is no answer to the question of meaning, not because there's nothing there, but because of the nature of reasoning, questioning, and answering.
___Modern science has set forth a paradigm of understanding that mathematizes reality and relies on the presupposition that reality is made up of distinct, intelligible units or packets. But this way of thinking casts integration, connectedness, and causality as anomalies, as second-class ontological citizens. The questions you ask are asked within this paradigm of intelligibility. But it is not inconceivable that another paradigm can be devised that, while perhaps not answering your questions, might show them in a different light. These very-abstract considerations lie deep amid the presuppositions that are employed in our descriptions of the nature of the world and the role, the possibilities, and the limitations of a person within it. When they evolve, so will the nature of your question.
___At any rate, don't be so hasty to jump to the conclusion that the unanswerability of your question necessarily entails that there's nothing there.

Answer 8

It is a sequence of events that relates to every thing.
The universe is finite and will one day go out of existence.
These questions were never asked until we came along.
When the universe developed the capacity to become aware itself we were the result.
We are the eyes and ears of the universe,so now it can ask "Why"

Answer 9

The only answer I've been able to come up with is to make the world a better place, for the future and in the present. Be the change. Make a difference in someone's life. Give more than you take. Contribute.

Answer 10

Have you been reading Shakespeare? The whole point is actually to laugh at it, if you can. It's all much ado about nothing.

I hope you find your book, sounds like your mind is expanding. I do not think though that the annihilation of earth would mean the eternal end of suffering. There are actually a lot of assumptions behind such a theory, but to go into that would be to go far beyond the scope of this question. If you want to explore that then you are destined to be a metaphysicist.