A puppet is free aslong as he loves his strings =============================================== "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well." - Andrew Ryan What does it mean to live a meaningful life? -------------------------------------------- Well, what does it mean to live a non-meaningful or worthless life? This is known as Existential Nihilism which asserts that life has no intrinsic meaning or value, no higher purpose, no reason for being, no end goal. So what are the possible ways to apply meaning to ones life? There are two assertions that make this possible, either (A) Some God or Gods exist or (B) We have free will. With assertion (A) one could apply meaning to your life by saying "My God or Gods have a purpose or a plan for me, it is my duty to fulfill this purpose and that is the meaning in my life", this is the viewpoint of the Abrahamic religions, that Yahweh has a plan for them. With assertion (B) you can apply your own meaning to life with either optimistic nihilism or possibly Ayn Rand's objectivism. These two assertions are not necessarily mutually exclusive some theistic viewpoints do allow for free will. What if you reject these two assertions? What meaning could one possibly apply to ones life? You couldn't. By reject, I don't mean the Agnostic A/theist viewpoint "God may or may not exist", but rather the Gnostic Atheist viewpoint of "God does not exist". There is no ambiguity there, with the Agnostic viewpoint you could say "I may or may not have a purpose, and thus I may or may not have meaning". Therefore when one rejects the assertions that "There is a God" and "We have free will" you cannot by any means apply meaning to your life, and thus are an existential nihilist. So with that in mind, let's reject these assertions. What does it mean to have free will? ------------------------------------ "The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present." - Sam Harris With this definition in mind, I will show why free will is non existent. Every choice we ever make in life can be boiled down to two possible reasons: (1) We were forced to do it (this includes accidental or unconcious acts) or (2) We wanted to do it. I'm sure we can agree being forced to do something is not free (forced in the sense that you could not resist even if you wanted to, such as mind control or sleep walking), but what about wanting to do something? Surely that is free will? Alas it is not, lets say when I wake up in the morning and put the kettle on, I have two choices, Earl Grey or Chai (I actually have like 2 dozen more, but lets keep this thought experiment simple), lets say today I choose Chai, for today I want Chai more than I want Earl Gray, is this not free will? No it is not, we can not choose our wants or unwants, they are a culmination of our genetics (evolution) and our experiences (environmental). Essentially, this means we are slaves to our wants, to the physical processes that make up our brain. Think of something you want, and now try to not want it, yo u can not do so. Likewise think of something you don't want and try to want it, again you can not. Your wants are facts about yourself that are self immutable. But what if we went a step further, what if I chose to have Earl Grey with the full knowledge that I would prefer Chai, to say "reclaim" my freedom or such? Unfortunately we come to the same problem, you would need to want to "reclaim" your freedom. Okay but what if I had the choice between say an unhealthy burger and a healthy salad, and I choose the salad knowing I would prefer the taste of the burger and thus want it more, is this not free will? Well no, there is still a want behind choosing the salad, such as to be healthy and/or live longer. You chose the salad over the burger because the want to be healthier in the long run overpowered the want for more pleasure in the short term, again you can not change this want. The takeaway from this is that any choice no matter how mundane has an obvious or hidden want behind it and as we can not control o ur wants we have no free will (there are interesting moral impications of this, are people accountable for their actions? Do they deserve gratitude? These questions are out of the scope of this document but I wanted to provoke thought about them). With that done lets tackle the Assertion of a God or deity. What is a God? -------------- "I've always found that when people try to convince others of their beliefs it's because they're really just trying to convince themselves." - Kira Nerys Before we can begin we must define what a god is, "the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe" - Merriam-Webster This of course is an unfalsifiable hypothesis. Agnostic Atheism ################ Assuming one starts at some form of theism, you may come to the conclusion of Agnosticism due to the lack of evidence proving or disproving the existence of a God or Deity. I'm not here to provide reasoning for the Agnostic Atheism point of view (I am also not required to prove by empirical evidence that God exists as the burden of proof does not lie on me). Rather to show that with rational thinking Agnostic Atheism inevitably leads to Gnostic Atheism. Athiesm is simply an umbrella term that means someone who lacks faith in God or a deity. Agnosticism and Gnosticism are about the knowledge, Agnostic being without knowledge and Gnostic being with knowledge. Therefore an Agnostic Athiest, is someone who does not believe in God on the basis of lack of evidence "God may or may not exist, I choose to act as if he does not", subsequently Agnostic Atheism and Agnostic Theism "God may or may not exist, I choose to act as if he does" are equally valid positions. A Gnostic Atheist is someone who outright claims "God does not exist". Gnostic Atheism ############### "Any non-falsifiable statement that attempts to define any aspects of the reality we inhabit is meaningless, agnosticism implicitly takes such statements as meaningful." - Uriel With the agnostic mindset you have to be agnostic about all non-falsifiable statements including but not limited to: Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, Russell's teapot and the fire-breathing dragon in Carl Sagan's garage. To paraphrase Uriel, "Why would we give special considerations to the existence of deities but yet not to the existence of all the other infinite non-falsifiable hypotheses?" Because it would be completely ludicrous to entertain these ideas as potentially a legitimate aspect of our reality, and this ludicrousy must extend to God. Read this excerpt from Carl Sagan's book "The Demon-Haunted World" The Dragon In My Garage - Carl Sagan ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity! "Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle – but no dragon. "Where's the dragon?" you ask. "Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon." You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints. "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air." Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless." You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible. "Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work. Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underesti mated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative – merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved." Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons – to say nothing about invisible ones – you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon. Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages – but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all. Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" – no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it – is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion. "Just because a delusion is a mass delusion doesn't make it any less of a mental illness." - Uriel My takeaway from this is that to the observer - to the human occupying reality, there is no practical difference between God existing and not existing; therefore he does not exist, as it would be irrational to act as if he does or possibly does exist. Lets create a thought experiment, say I propose the unfalsifiable hypothesis that an invisible field of acid permeates the entirety of a particular room in my house. This field is not detectable by any physical means. Upon entering this field our "soul" would be damaged or some other non physical part of us, this of course is also unfalsifiable. As such to the empirical observer there would be no difference in the field existing and not existing. So would it not be irrational to avoid the room on the basis that it could "injure" you in some unfalsifiable way? The Conclusion -------------- In conclusion for us to apply meaning to our lives at least one of two assertions must be true: (A) Some God or Gods exist or (B) We have free will. With the conclusion that we have no free will as we are merely slaves to our wants and the conclusion that God does not exist as there is no practical difference between him existing and not existing, where does that leave us? I see no other assertion that could possibly be used to apply meaning. This is existential nihilism, the belief that life is meaningless, purposeless, worthless, of no intrinsic value, et cetera. This is why I consider myself an existential nihilist and a Gnostic Atheist. Not a Gnostic Atheist in the sense of empirical evidence but rather rational reasoning as such I consider myself a Rationally Gnostic Atheist as opposed to an Epirically Gnostic Atheist.