Quest for a deeper meaning to life

[rug]

By James Kirk Wall, Sunday at 9:05 am

When I was a kid I couldn’t care less about religion. It simply wasn’t important. The important things in life were Speed Racer, the Cisco Kid, Lost in Space, and other TV shows. The important things were bikes and video games. It’s not even that religion was low on the list of priorities, it wasn’t on the list at all.

As a young adult I developed a deep hunger for knowledge and wisdom. I decided to read the Bible. After reading the Bible, I had the same gnawing hunger. The Bible no more quenched my hunger for knowledge and wisdom than a cracker would satisfy a starving elephant or feeding on a young earth creationist would fulfill a ravenous zombie. My quest continued.

I found what I was looking for in ancient philosophy. Living an examined life. Confronting the greatest questions of our existence and formulating answers. Continuously improving on answers by learning new things and gaining new perspectives. A dedication to philosophy is a commitment to the truth and greatest moral reasoning. These two things inescapably made me an antagonist of Western religion. For people like me, rejecting the Bible and the Quran isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.

An agnostic approach is the best for learning. An anti-dogmatic open minded method with broad horizons. Don’t get stuck in one buffet. If you want to visit and pick and choose a few things fine, but have the ability to walk out the door and visit other restaurants.

http://www.chicagonow.com/an-agnostic-in-wheaton/2015/02/quest-for-a-deeper-meaning-to-life/

[cbayer]

1. He so contradicts himself because his views on western religion are dogmatic.

He rejects the bible and quran complete but then talks about how you have to keep an open mind and use all the resources that may be available.

He says he has a "commitment" to ancient philosophy but found nothing in these texts that imparted any knowledge.

He needs to back away from his anti-theism and use some of the "fluid mind" he advocates. It is very possibly to get a great deal of philosophy from religious texts even if one is not religious.

[rug]

2. My question is why he thinks there is meaning to life.

Let alone a quest for it.

[cbayer]

6. He apparently has an unquenched thirst for the answer to that question.

But if there is meaning, where would it come from? Sounds awfully spiritual to me.

Philosophy is fun but I don't think it provides the answers as much as the questions.

[Htom Sirveaux]

3. He's interested in ancient philosophy, but didn't seek out the religious thinkers for whom

ancient philosophy was and is hugely important before deciding that religion had nothing to offer him other than "the Bible and the Koran"?

Ultimately, I blame Fundamentalism for propagating this "scripture and nothing else" mentality, but someone going on and on about openmindedness and broad horizons should still know better.

[phil89]

4. Doesn't seem like

Magic/supernatural aspect of religion didn't appeal to him.

[cbayer]

7. Where do you get that idea from what he has written?

One can certainly read these books without having a magic/supernatural aspect. They are stories and many of them are great allegorical tales that one can learn from without being a believer.

He feels a necessity to reject them but it is really unclear why. That's just dogmatic.

[rug]

5. If he just shucks the whole lot of religious thought, his quest for knowledge and wisdom is dubious.

[Brettongarcia]

9. but if all religion is related

It's all the same in a way

[Humanist_Activist]

8. I find his quest amusing, I don't think I understand why people seek a "deeper meaning to life"...

Looking outside yourself seems pointless and an exercise in vanity. There is no objective meaning for life, so why worry about it? Your answers to what is the meaning of life are going to be different than the other 7+ billion people on this planet, and none of them are incorrect in an objective sense.

[Htom Sirveaux]

10. Suppose someone finds meaning in oppressing the marginalized.

How would that stack up against finding meaning in defending the marginalized from oppression?

Or suppose someone had the talent to achieve greatness that would have benefited all humanity, but squandered that talent in a life of endless short-term pleasure-seeking that benefited nobody, not even themselves in the end. Would you say they had wasted their life?

On what you've said, it seems like we couldn't make any judgments about these things. One is just as good (or bad) as the other, objectively speaking. We'd be left with a bunch of subjective opinions all on equal footing.

[Humanist_Activist]

11. I was separating out actions from thoughts or meanings...

they are related, but perhaps I should preface by saying that there is nothing qualitatively different from meanings people come up for themselves that don't harm others. I'm not one of those cultural relativists who think that all cultural/religious practices should be protected, no matter how much they harm the practitioners and non-practitioners.