As far as the OP, I have two things to say. The first is that your opening statement is inaccurate. Philosophy, for thousands of years, has been a mental gymnastics domain for the wealthy, the educated intellectual, the sane, for the most part. The second thing I wanted to say ties into the first, and it is that philosophy is available to more common people and has far different utility than it did 3,000 years ago. It isn't for everyone, and it's never been for everyone. It isn't even for everyone who exhibits a strong desire to attempt to exercise some form of it.

These days, philosophy is more of a flippant pastime. Those who pay for an education in philosophy gain little more than a false sense of superiority and a trolling platform on social media, unless they're motivated enough to write a book or become a teacher and achieve some measure of success by passing on the useless 700 year old obsolete information on which they've been instructed. It's all just flowery words and broken logic, name dropping and religious fervor for ideas most of which weren't even good when they were first written centuries ago.

Some rather smart people, such as Aldous Huxley for one, Timothy Leary for another, would disagree with your separation of substance use from matters of the mind.

Why expend so many words, all you needed to say was "I don't like skeptics, they're self-centred and don't know how to experience things properly".

Everything in the OP is ad hominem, conjecture, speculation, assumption, nonsense. Experiencing an event or sensation and fervently attributing it to something imaginary that you don't understand is called "delusion".

It's alright, just people tend to highlight others' names and then misquote them badly, so I wanted to ensure I wasn't being affiliated with Gnostic here's commentary when he takes seven words out of context and attempts to apply his own context to them.

Why did you group me into that comment? It has nothing to do with me.

I don't "know" whether or not I exist either, but evidence strongly suggests to me that I do, and until such a time as evidence is presented to the contrary, I'm confident to call it "knowledge" of my existence. There is nothing to interfere with my "knowledge" that gods don't exist. There is an abundance of evidence to suggest that they don't and none to suggest that they do. It seems absurd to assert that something no one has ever experienced, that there's no evidence of, that there's no way to demonstrate, exists.

So what you're saying, in summary, is that Buddhism makes no sense?

I know that gods don't exist as confidently as I know that I exist. In answer to your question, I'd have to say that more people believe in gods than don't, so most people are unwilling to admit that they don't know whether the gods they "believe in" exist or not.

No, it's a parlour trick the mystery of which has long been unveiled, yet everyone still flocks to it. The illusion is whatever an individual creates in its own mind to justify its participation.

You're misconstruing my post again, and yours is so poorly written that I'm unclear what you're attempting to communicate. This thread is about the "meaning of life", which appears in its title. Free will is directly related to intrinsic meaning. As you wisely stated though, we don't have exactly the same view, so there's nothing to be gained from this conversation.

I have two questions before I even attempt to join this dialogue. How are we defining "hate"? How are we defining "hate speech"?

I'm not sure how long people will insist on using "Scandinavia" as a model for the supremacy of socialism parroting a moron socialist like Bernie Sanders, but those nations are capitalist, yes. They transfer heavy taxation from all economic classes into social programs and institutions, but neither the state nor the public owns the means of production, and obviously the primary factor contributing to their "happiness" is a state of cultural, ethnic and religious homogeneity (approximately 90%).

Where in the rule book does it state that all posts must be interesting? You're wrong about grammar, but you don't see that because you lack understanding, and that's okay.

"Morality" is a subjective extrapolation of base survival instinct, and it has been crafted throughout history in such a way as to categorize humans separately from other animals because humans don't understand the purpose of consciousness and because consciousness fears mindlessness as much as it fears death. I didn't claim that humans were no different from mindless organisms. I made a distinction between humans and the organisms they host.

I don't believe that we made up morality. I believe that morality is an automatic process within us that has many biological and evolutionary bases. I am arguing against free will, yes. The existence of free will has not been proven or disproven, but because we are conscious, we have a psychological inclination toward accepting the existence of free will--it confirms our biases. Considering that thoughts happen at a physical level independently from consciousness before they become comprehensible to the mind, it shouldn't be controversial to say that they are automatic processes. What makes this controversial is a strong desire for it to be untrue. It is evidence against free will.

"Meaning" is the wrong word--purpose, which suggests merely utility, is more accurate. Again, that one has "no reason to care about shallow thinking" doesn't make a thing true or untrue, but it's more likely to skew one's thinking toward a desired result than toward a true result. You continually mentioned in your post that I'm positing falsehoods, but you haven't substantiated this claim.

None of what I said is "juvenile"--to claim that someone's stance or phrasing is "juvenile" in this case only serves to dismiss you from further addressing a topic which you've already expressed an unwillingness to discuss. No one "praised" my comments.

The word "Christianity" is a name for a religion--if you're too stupid to understand this, then there's no point talking to you. I made no assumption that any omnipotent being exists. I said people want one that conforms to their whims. Nothing was assumed or implied.

The poor benefit exponentially under capitalism when compared to socialism or communism. It's obvious.

Prejudice can be rational or irrational, phobia can't be rational.

Observe as in obey or adhere to, not watch, and I'm sitting here waiting, go nuts. Also, provide a list of words I misused, and my post wasn't feral or vacuous, you apparently don't understand the meaning of those words, but I'll give you simplistic.

Prove to me that humans can even observe the morality they make up in their heads, let alone a morality greater than themselves that preserves and benefits all living things. Prove to me that humans are not automatons driven by organisms that comprise more than 80% of their own biomass. Prove to me that you've ever acted on anything but synapse and impulse and that life has meaning other than moving bacteria from Earth to another planet. That is what is evident.

Okay then, refer to things humans are doing to enhance the planet and enrich their own lives as well as those of other species, and explain what was achieved by causing at least several thousand species' extinction. My post very well might have poor grammar and sentence structure because I was ranting and didn't claim I was writing an essay. I posted no falsehood, and I invite you to prove it.

Anyway, I don't know the meaning of life, but I know the purpose of human life--to transport bacteria to other planets.

The moment you exempted "Buddhas" from instinct, whatever that means, you made the rest of your monologue just a bunch of blah blah garbage most people would presume is written from a place of incompetence.

Reading all of your poor grammar was not at all worthwhile. You spewed a bunch of bad ideas with no reasonable explanation in order to carry yourself to an ultimately bad idea. This is redundant, and the word pedantic would come to mind if I thought for even a split second that this was based on education. Sycophantic, that's the word, talking to hear yourself but with no destination. To even pose a question of the meaning of existence is narrow-minded, but to spend so much time beating around the bush to arrive at a place where all anyone can hear is a resounding whistling of wind in arid earth--there is no meaning. There is no meaning to life. You had me for a second, for a split second when you mentioned reproduction, and I was thinking to myself "maybe he'll say the only point of existence is to propagate existence", but you had to mention good and evil as if it's a struggle that actually exists innately. Humans are derived from basic organisms who think nothing of murder, nothing of morality, nothing of rape, nothing of inclusivity, nothing of religion. What drives human beings is incomprehensibly simplistic, feral, vacuous.

I don't think any self-respecting scientist believes in inherent meaning in science without applying their spiritual outlook onto it. For some people, "greater than myself" only means "for the benefit of others in addition to myself".

Did you exit the birth canal philosophizing, what do you mean by naturally inclined, and if you're implying that philosophy is human nature, then what makes you think anyone could avoid philosophizing whether they wanted to or not, therefore making their reason for doing so not only irrelevant but beyond comprehension at an individual level?

Classical philosophy is not much more refined than Yahoo Answers.

Firstly, Nietzsche's primary concern seemed to be the freedom of others, and anything within his texts that suggests otherwise can often be ascribed to cynicism or some literary device. I believe he was better with language than philosophy. Secondly, I'm continually accused and have seen others accused of materialism for reducing beings and substances to rudimentary components. Thirdly, there's no reason to suspect that anything other than the material world exists, and it has occurred to me that many religious tenets were intended to promote survival of the species, or at least the community--some were better than others at achieving it.

I can't comment on the specific philosopher in question, but to separate religion as if it was external, as if it was anything but a cognitive process seems absurd. Many classical philosophers eek religion into their exhibits of rich-kid mental gymnastics and a version of ethics. Both religion and morality predate recorded history, so do the chicken and the egg, and they're all conditional.

I'm still waiting for the OP to define "Gnostic Christianity" for me.

Okay, two things. The first is that God has in every case been described, either as a physical thing or series of physical things or as something that exists in all things, and God has yet to describe itself. The second is that something that has no physical manifestation doesn't need to be evidenced until it has manifested--until then, it's a puff of "aether" with no impact on reality.

Your comment seems to be intended more as offensive than offended, in a passive aggressive sort of way. I'd like to know what you think "philosophers" have been doing for the past few millennia--if one strips away their terminology. Traditionally, philosophy has been a Yahoo chat room for the children of the wealthy.

Wouldn't "Gnostic Christianity" be better labeled as "Gnostic Anti-Gnosticism", or perhaps "Anti-Christian Christianity"?

Alright, well now I looked up "Gnostic", and it defies at least the English-translated writings of "Christianity", so I'm led to conclude that "Gnostic Christianity" is a contradiction of terms. I suppose my opinion would now be that your original post contains a contradiction of terms and still needs clarification. You can't expect me to have an opinion about something that is completely unclear.

If Gnosticism suggests that matter is bad and spirit is good, but Christianity states that there are bad spirits and that all God's creation is good, there's a contradiction. If Gnosticism suggests that God is unknowable, but Christianity suggests that each individual can have knowledge of and a relationship with God, there's a contradiction. If Gnosticism suggests the "Creator" is a lesser being and Christianity suggests the "Creator" was the "supreme being", there's a contradiction. If Gnosticism suggests there's no "sin" only "ignorance", but Christianity suggests there's "sin", there's a contradiction. If Gnosticism suggests "knowledge" leads to salvation, but Christianity suggests only "Jesus" leads to salvation, there's a contradiction.

"Infinite" is irrational, and "assuming" is illogical.

Physicists are pretending to be placeholders for rational thought by presenting statements based on mathematics non-geniuses and non-specialists don't understand. I think it's strange to comment that something is true or evident based on what someone has said unless you can make sense of it yourself mathematically and incorporate that math into the discussion--also having an audience or debate opponent with expertise in the same mathematics and a lot of time on everyone's hands.

Please help me to understand your terminology--specifically how you differentiate between "Christian" and "Gnostic Christian" and how one of these would believe in an "evil God" while the other doesn't, yet they're both called "Christian".

A problem I see throughout this discussion and in the original post is that people are going to say whatever they feel like saying about a given religion, and as a result, there are as many impressions of a given religion as there are followers of that religion. Saying that a religion isn't a religion doesn't make it so. I think that denying religiosity helps fulfill a selfish desire to conform an omnipotent being to an individual's whims. It also gives freedom for groups or individuals to cherry pick beliefs and values from antiquated texts much of the content of which is antisocial and doesn't at all conform to modern living.