what is the meaning of life?

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

The meaning of life is for us to discover that we are true children of an infinitely loving and merciful God, to find out what our responsibilities are to our Creator, and to fulfill those responsibilities.

In His infinite goodness, God could not keep all to Himself the happiness of existence He enjoyed in heaven. Just as we may love our pets very much, cats and dogs are just not able to share with us the happiness we feel from music and sunsets and Super Bowls. Only our children can do that. This is why God had to create us as His true children. But complete free will is the essence of His nature. So we, His true children, also had to have complete free will, only without the infinite power and wisdom. That makes things difficult. That makes it possible and even likely for us to refuse to accept God's authority.

For the rest of the presentation please go to this link.
http://www.meaning-of-life.info/themeaningoflife.html

Answer 3

"A Purpose Driven Life: Here to Serve"
by Ron Holmes

In our journey in search of a life of purpose, we’ve discussed, first of all, that the search must begin with God. That sounds like a no-brainer, yet we know the truth in our society today that many, many people are searching for purpose in life with no acknowledgment whatsoever of God’s place in their lives. Such a search is fruitless and doomed to frustration and failure. The starting place for meaning and purpose in life is in a relationship with Almighty God, our Creator who created us for a specific purpose. Next we discussed that the search for purpose takes us to worship—bringing our Creator pleasure through the worship we offer, not only on Sunday morning, but each and every day as we consciously and intentionally make God the center of our everyday, ordinary lives. Then we discussed that a life of purpose does not take place in isolation, but within the family of God where we openly share with one another, lovingly care for each other, and gracefully encourage one another. And, last week, we looked at how God loves us as we are, but He refuses to leave us there. God wants us to be just like Christ. Today, we build some more on the process of becoming more like Christ and finding purpose in life by hearing and responding to the call to serve others....

Answer 4

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Answer 5

Why do you want to know the meaning of life?

Often people ask this question when they really want the answer to some other question. Let's try and get those people back on track with some "pre-meaning of life" advice:

* If you're questioning the meaning of life because you've been unhappy and depressed a good bit,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/unhappy.htm
* On a related note, if you want to know the meaning of life because you feel useless and worthless,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/worthles.htm
* If you want to see our answer so that you can prove your intellectual prowess by poking holes in it,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/intellec.htm
* If something awful just happened to you or someone you care about and you don't understand why bad things happen to good people,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/badthing.htm
* If you would like to help the world but most of the rest of the world seems completely insane,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/insane.htm
* If you wonder why there is so much hatred in the world, click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/hate.htm
* If you wonder why there is so much violence in our society, click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/violence.htm
* If you really don't care about the meaning of life, you're just surfing and ended up here,
click here. http://users.aristotle.net/~diogenes/surfin.htm

◄╚╝╚ ╬╔@╔╦╗@╬ε╔╦╗►

Answer 6

Life just is. It has no intrinsic, or built in meaning of it's own.

All the meaning that life will ever have is the meaning that you give to it.

Looks like its up to you.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 7

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Answer 8

To be the eyes
Ears
And conscience
Of the Creator of the Universe
You fool.

Answer 9

To help others and treat them with loving-kindness and to always enjoy the wonders of the universe.

Answer 10

the word life is too general.
you have to be specific if you want people to understand your question.

Answer 11

This man found a new meaning to his life:

http://www.near-death.com/storm.html