What's the purpose of life...why live?

Question

One major question...if the goal of mortal men is to move on to the next realm, then why live in this one at all? If you know your time is limited, why fight to stay alive? Why is it, in our very nature, to survive down to our last breath? One may ask, who cares?...Don't worry about it...Stop and smell the roses and such. Bah! For what purpose? A man once said, "... everything that ever lived is dead, and everything alive is gonna die...". He's right.

Answer 1

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 2

I think we have no purpose. We are here because we are here. I think we have no more purpose here then Pluto has sitting on the out side of the solar system. But that doesn't mean you should get all depressed and start feeling useless. I love being here, and being able to sit and wonder why I'm here. In an infinite universe, the chances of intelligent life is infinite. It did, is and will happen again and again. Some time from now, someone will be feeling just as you are. And someone else will say the same thing I am.....blows your mind, huh? Well, YOU ARE HERE, so just sit back and enjoy the ride! Its wonderful to be able to contemplate the meaning of it all, but don't let it get to your head, or you'll ruin it.

Answer 3

of direction. there's a commonplace purpose of existence is to benefit expertise and strengthen expertise throughout the time of existence to alter into and strengthen as a miles better person. i will no longer be able to tell if its maximum human beings that believes in this purpose or the minority human beings. reviews we pass by using, human beings we meet, judgements we make and each little thing paintings at the same time to create an understand-how of what makes existence exciting. even nevertheless there are own purposes that someone has in recommendations, as an instance: I continually wanted to alter someone's existence for the better, earnings expertise and help reworking as many closed minded human beings as i will. while doing that and attaining my targets i might desire to have the reassurance I even have continually wanted. for this reason, doing something else that is going against my targets will shatter away all that i've got worked for and aimed for. And which will reason me the reassurance and alter it into products of recommendations. If a human has no purpose in existence, i might say he/she is a lost soul yet quicker or later that soul will discover the properly suited direction and starts off aiming for something, regardless to whether its good or undesirable.

Answer 4

The purpose of life is for you to answer the question;What is the purpose of life for me? You must find your own purpose. To do that you may need to suspend judgment for a couple of seconds and believe that everything that there is; is here on purpose.Nothing dies, because everything lives. WOW! If everything that lives just dies..then where could life exist in a dead planet. Why not investigate everything that you think you know and separate it from everything that you without a shadow of a doubt really, really know and work on obtaining the knowledge that will place yourself in a continual state of knowing what the purpose of your life is for you.

Answer 5

Wonderful. You have pinpointed the very reasons that religion is harmful for man - it makes you think and work for a promised hypothetical "other" realm not exploiting this one for your happiness and joy.

The purpose of life is in fact what you're doing right now - asking questions on the subjects you desire, finding solutions and putting them to finding and pursuing your life's goals. Richard Dawkins made an excellent documentary "Why Are We Here?" on the same issue. You can see it at http://youtube.com/watch?v=13NPZ5Nv_fc. Watch it - it'll flip your mind.

Answer 6

Look, when you play a computer game, do you want to play a very easy game? What fun can you get from that ? God set us up. It's a giant conspiracy!!! We have sin all because of Him. If we were sinless/perfect, life wouldn't be challenging anymore. If it was easy to become Christlike, after that( sanctification), what would be your purpose of life(after you fulfil the purpose of life)? Simply because we have sin and lt takes tremendous efforts to get rid of the sin, we must make a lifetime committment. On this tough journey, we can't achieve our spiritual goal easily, and therefore will nerver stop and will never get bored. Don't you think God deliberately offered a tough but interesting game for us to play with ? So, we didn't betray God, in stead, God designed our betrayal. The game is our purpose of life.

Answer 7

You are asking the greatest question in Yahoo answers?Men has been trying to find an answer for "To be or not to be..." from the time of their creation.As a religious thought Adam & Eve weren't in their place in heavens.So men should try to prove themselves to god to be allowed in heavens again.
My personal idea:I prefer to live even if it is hard and sour.There are such great things in life that can satisfy us as a man.After trying to reach the unreachable we may find the Answer.

Answer 8

This is how I look at it.

God created us to know him, love him and be happy with him in the next life. How do we go about doing that?

When God made us, he implanted within us a burning desire for his will. Knowing his will and following it will give meaning to our life. This implies that it is our responsibility to give meaning to our life. Our task then is to find out his will for us.

God's plan for our lives is etched in our desires. To discover God's plan we need to have a personal relationship with him. But because he gave us free will, he will not tell us to be a doctor, an engineer or priest. That's up to us. That means we have to pray and reflect on it a bit. Maybe even ask other people to help us discern it. No big deal, really.

All of us have received gifts from God. Our primary gift or best gift is an indication of God's plan for us. We will find in it the handwriting of God. It will point to our life project, our assigned purpose, our God ordained mission. It will also point to our happiness.
Peace and every blessing!

Answer 9

We all ponder that question from time to time...
But then we remember that there is no "built-in" purpose to life...
Why do you need a "purpose?
I'm 43-years-old, and the years are flying by like weeks...the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays come around so fast now for me, I feel like death from old age is right around the corner.
What's your hurry?
The old saying that "if you have your health, you have everything" left one thing out...
You need to have a "sense of humor."
Only that will save you in the end...
So I recommend that your reason to live ought to be "to make people laugh" or "to help others who need help" or "help yourself and others survive longer than they would if you didn't help."
Since you're already here, and didn't have any say in the matter, take advantage of the life "thrust" upon you by the crazy lustful moment your parents had long ago...
Help other people to live a better life than you have lived...they need your help...and you can't help at all if you're dead...we need you to live, because we need your love, help, and kindness (if you possess any) 'cause we're all in this crazy boat of life together. Keep living for others, if you can't find a reason to live for yourself...
Now go out there and have some fun while you're able...death is right around the corner...why the rush to meet it?

Answer 10

Death is nothing, it has no purpose. No beginning and no end. Don't be quick to glorify it, you have no idea how much they want to come back. It's not a describable feeling, really.

The purpose of life is to live. Don't get too caught up in it.