what is the meaning of life; Whats our purpose? Would like to see what others think.?

Question

Is our being to serve a supreme God, just what is our purpose here. I don,t believe that we are capable of comprehending a source smarter than ours.

Answer 1

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.
Popular beliefs
"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to be always satisfied
...to live, go to school, work, and die
...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to eat
...to prepare for death
...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
...to seek and find beauty
...to kill or be killed
...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything
...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions
...to expand one's perception of the world
...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
...to lead the world towards a desired situation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical
...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to become like God, or divine
...to glorify God
...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement
...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
...to discover who you are
...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced

Philosophical
...to give life meaning
...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
...to know the meaning of life
...to achieve self-actualisation
...all possible meanings have some validity
...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:
...to die
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other
...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)

Answer 2

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 3

Answerers 11 and 12 are cut and paste artists. And wordy ones at that.

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell

So unless there is a God, the One who created you, you cannot have real purpose. You can invent something that may give you a feeling but it is just a feeling without any reality. Or you busy your life so you don't think of such things.

But what if there is a God who created you? That changes everything. Our purpose would be to seek our Creator; to know our Creator and to have fellowship with our Creator. Of course we cannot fully comprehend God but He can come down to our level just as parents can come down to the level that enables them to interact with their children.

Serving God is not an end/purpose to itself. To humble ourselves to serve God and our brothers and sisters is the practice that establishes in our minds that we are the children and we are not God. It is the prerequisite for a relationship with God.

Answer 4

Proverbs 2:20-22 the objective is which you will walk in the way of solid human beings and that the trails of the righteous ones you may save. For the upright are those which will stay in the earth,and the harmless are those which would be left over in it. As regards the depraved, they are going to be decrease off from the very earth;and as for the treacherous, they are going to be torn far off from it. Ecclesiastes 12:13, 14 13?the tip of the situation, each and everything having been heard, is: concern the genuine God and save his commandments, for it is the whole criminal accountability of guy. 14?For the genuine God will choose each and every deed, inclusive of each and every hidden element, to whether it is solid or undesirable.

Answer 5

i think that our purpose is pretty simple. just like all other animals, we must procreate so that our kind does not face extinction. we must obey the same rules like all other beings on earth.
our only difference is that we can destroy our home, destroy earth...animals cant do that. so, besides reproduction we should take care of our planet and be careful because it has reached its limits a long time ago. the supreme god you are talking about..the source..gave us something really valuable and we are constantly denying it. believing in god but demolishing his creations..the earth, the other human beings...its just hypocritic..you pretend to be a good christian or muslim or anything but you are actually making fun of your god. you dont respect your world means disrespect to your god.

Answer 6

Hi S! Meaning of life? see the movie with the same name, by the one and only, Monty Python! Gives a pretty and clear answer to all of your questions about the meaning of life thingy. Our purpose is to learn how to become descent and humble human beings, who forgive his next, before he uses violence. And see what others think? well it would be handy while checking up your future man/wife of course, but no, I prefer not to. Have a great summer, peace and love from Norway

Answer 7

Being a spark of God, I think it is the purpose of man to each experience his/her own creativity.

Sometimes our creativity is judged as unworthy. But we even create ourselves through adversity.

Some sparks of God like power though, so we also need to assure that our creative genius isn't used for malice.

Answer 8

Life is as I define it for my self. I can pick up the version that was prepared for me or create my own version of how it happened. Can I live without it.

I believe I am in this source experiencing whatever is in front of me. Whatever it is that I am in seems pretty lenient towards my belief and that of others.

Look at all of our answers it works for us individually.

Answer 9

God create us with a purpose... Its to serve him... Just remember, every single thing that we do, we do because of God, that mean , we have to do the good thing.. Each time we do anything, God count it...

Answer 10

The meaning and purpose of your existence is the fullfillment of one's nature in accord with virtue.

Answer 11

There is no meaning or purpose. And there definitely is no supreme god.