What is the meaning of life?

Question

Why are humans on Earth? Why does Earth even exist? I'd love to hear Anyone's thoughts on this!

to those who's answers talk about God, can you tell me why God made us? Don't say to serve him please, I get that, but why would he need to make a bunch of people to serve him??

I'm going to let voters pick the best answer for this one. Thanks to everyone who answered!

-By meaning I think I meant why were we put here? Not necisarrily what are we supposed to do in life, but for example, if "God" put us here (wether it be the Christian God or any other religions God, or just a "supreme being") why did it put us on this earth, why did it even create the universe? Just for entertainment? To have creatures that would praise it?

Or, if you believe in a non-spiritual creation, why did whatever created life happen? etc.

sorry for the bad wording. and again, thank you very much to everyone who answered!!

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

We have a great need for meaning. It is the most asked question on Y!A.

Either that need was put into our nature by God or it is an accidental trick of evolution. If we choose to think it was by evolution, then we are to be pitied for we have this great desire for real meaning but there is none. For mindless evolution, like any natural process cannot give purpose or meaning.

But if God put our need there, it must have been to get us to seek God.

It is the Christian idea that God, our Creator, proposes to make us His sons and daughters. The phrases"serve God", "worship God", "praise God" and "glorify God" refer to an experiential and supernatural process that transforms us into His son or daughter.

It may seem like a terrible idea, but God didn't create us as His equal just as children are not the equal of the parents. In this world, we seek God, experience God and are transformed by God into a right relationship with Him.

Christians believe we seek God by obeying His command to love our neighbor for where love is, there God is also.

Answer 4

Originally we were here to worship God in obedience to His Perfect Will. Upon the fall of Adam there was the Old Testament which basically proved that man could not make salvation based on their own deeds. Christ came and gave us a mission, to preach the Gospel to everyone.

So that is why we are still here. To preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone.

Answer 5

Can we speak of a rainbow without colors? So too, we cannot speak of life without meaning. For meaning is intrinsic to life, and every part of life is meaningful.

Nothing about life is ever wasted. Everything you do counts. Every word you speak has its affect. Every thought that passes through your mind, lives forever. Your soul is the sum total of everything you do, every word you speak, and every thought that enters your mind.

So be careful how you nurture your soul. Seek truth throughout your life. Practice being loving always. And relish everything in this world that has beauty. That is all you need to know in life. That is all there is to know in life.

Answer 6

Aesity means self-existence. Aesity explains the metaphysical nature of God as a purely self-existent being that exists in complete actuality. God is not a being that is created by another god; neither does God create himself into existence. Rather, God has always existed as an unchanging, completely actualized being.


God has his Being of himself and to himself such that he is Absolute being and the definition of existence.
Since God’s essence is his nature and God’s existence is the same as his essence it follows that God is existence.

Answer 7

the purpose in life is to love and spread our positive vibrations into this huge vacuum we call earth. As we spread our positivity we create an energy and ambiance that can grow and push mankind into unlimited potential. as we grow and prosper we should continue to use our imagination to test the universes laws.

Answer 8

one of my good friends would say - there is no meaning life just is.
I think as far as I could understand, and I still don't completely, to give love and to receive love. To feel you are a part of it all, all this universe and all this spinning crazy world... and enjoy it as much as you can, even when it hurts sometime...

Answer 9

well... life itself is a word we made up and means the experience of living... the experience, for me is an interesting learning experience. why are we here? who knows, but there are some interesting theories, like the big bang theory/theory of evolution, as well as some less likely ones. why is this place here? see the previous part, heh.

Answer 10

There is no reason humans are on earth. There is no reason the earth exist.

There is no meaning for your life until you create one for yourself.

Don't think that is depressing. I don't. I find it very inspiring.

Answer 11

is the word meaning synonomous with purpose in this context? if so, then wax philosophical efw. right on, man.