Can anyone articulate why a god exists?

Originally posted by darkroom ↑

It's not a contest.
I don't want to convince you of anything because I haven't got a clue.
But I am exceedingly happy if you are able to convince me of something because that would mean I possibly learnt something. I don't even understand how or why there are two sides to what has become for most on HC a battle of attrition. Because neither side has any answers at that event horizon where natural order and science no longer function and religion tries to deliver understanding of the abstract in metaphorical terms.

Not always but very often and seldom by yourself, the olive branch is extended by either side, but the rhetoric still contains snide and derogatory remarks, loaded words. I do it myself. Fortunately both side reject me.

All I am doing with my pathetic little brain is trying to make sense of life, my life in particular. Birth, death and all that is between, and then I question, is there anything either side of this blink of a life?

If there is not then life is completely pointless. Every scrap of knowledge, goodness, the loves of my life, the accumulation of my life have been no more than a passing, meaningless flicker. It is worthy to question this, especially when personal experience suggests that there may be more to a human than it being just an animal that will come into existence and go out of existence to be completely obliterated.

Nothingness does not cause me any concern. I've been knocked out, I've been out for days after a major car accident, I've been operated on, so nothingness is good.

All I can do is appeal to your stated belief in science. That is what I am working with. I'm as rational as I can be with what I have to work with. You don't seem to appreciate the complexity from molecular to rainforest systems, the symbiotic and complete web of life connections. Time and natural order is all that is needed. Do you really believe that? Science describes a mechanistic world beautifully, what then does art and poetry, music and dance, religion and philosophy describe. I would say the human soul.

Sure, religion is a mess. It's beliefs for the most part are no better than a Grimms' Fairy Tale, but there has been plenty of dumb science as well. Fortunately science is self regulatory, religion just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper.

Religious people make statements that can't be supported or refuted by rational evidence, and then claim victory. I have never claimed victory, least of all over myself. The evidence is hiding in plain sight. You may describe every detail of this world in mechanistic detail but that in no way takes into account the total human experience of a spiritual component. This is universal. Shall we dismiss this as what, some cultural relic from a family group in Africa 5 million years ago?

And then there is the personal experience. The otherworldly experiences that defy natural order. I think both sides have contaminated the water and have imprinted us all with baggage we can't put down.

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If there is not then life is completely pointless. Every scrap of knowledge, goodness, the loves of my life, the accumulation of my life have been no more than a passing, meaningless flicker

Don't you think it's more poignant this way though? Your life does not have to be meaningless just because it was brief. At what point would it become meaningful....if you got to live for a trillion years?
If you got to go to Heaven and got to 'float around, and hang out on clouds', at what point would it become tiresome; at what point would a consciousness go insane at the interminable passing of time?

For life I'd use the analogy of being washed up on a desert island with a bunch of other people. No one asked to have it happen to them, but while you are there (here) are you going to make it worse, or better for the people around you? And in that way, making things better for others, can you therefore have a life that does have meaning?

If God lived for a trillion years and then died, and no one knew of his existence, did he live at all?

Do you have to have been 'created' for your life to have 'meaning' - and if yes: why?

What is the meaning of life? It's an odd question. Seems like poor English. It's like saying 'what is the meaning of glass?' I think 'purpose' is the word.

On a species level, it seems to me that the meaning (purpose would be a much better word) is to 'maintain the species' - that is to say, hold the line - don't retreat, and lets build a bridge to the future and see where it takes us. Each generation passes the baton forward. The individual lives merge into 'we are species'.