I believe in God and in free will. I don't think we are given free will, however. My reason tells me that I have free will and also that I would not have free will if everything I did traced to external causes. Thus I conclude that not everything I do traces to external causes. Which means I must never have come into being - so my free will is evidence that i have not been created. That is consistent with God existing. But it does mean that God has not given us free will's key ingredient. However, like I say, this is entirely consistent, for being God involves being omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect. It does not require having created everything. After all, God did not create himself, did he? So, on pain of incoherence, one must say that God has created all created things, not all things simpliciter. But we - like God himself - are not created things.

I have never encountered a good argument against free will, only bad ones.

The main bad one appeals to causal determinism. Causal determinism is the thesis that everything that occurs was necessitated to occur by prior events and the laws of nature. Many think this thesis is incompatible with our having free will (as you may know already, they are known as incompatibilists). And some incompatibilists also think determinism is true (again, as you may already know, they are known as hard determinists).

But there is no good argument for hard determinism. Here's the main argument:

1. If causal determinism is true, then we do not have free will
2. Causal determinism is true
3. Therefore we do not have free will

Both premises are questionable. Niether is self evident to our reason. Yet they are being used to refute a much less questionable premise that is self evident to our reason, namely 'we have free will'.

These are undeniably stronger arguments:

A1. If causal determinism is true, then we do not have free will
A2. We have free will
A3. Therefore causal determinism is false

B1. Causal determinism is true
B2. We have free will
B3. Therefore causal determinism is true and we have free will.

Argument A gives us libertarianism (the combination of incompatibilism and a belief in free will), and argument B gives us compatibilism (the combination of free will and determinism).

Both libertarianism and compatibilism are, then, more plausible views than hard determinism.

Someone has mentioned indeterminism above. But that's a red herring. Indeterminism can't provide free will as it doesn't prevent everything one does fron tracing to external causes (an in deterministic cause is still a cause). All it does is render ones decisions indeterministic, but that doesn't make them any free than they would be if they were determined.

You're just pronouncing. Why do you think you know it all already? Have the humility to provide evidence.

A) it is harmful to put people in an environment in which there are dangerous people and diseases and such like. If a parent put their child in a lion pit you wouldn't exonerate the parent on the grounds that carnage was due to the lions.
B) the world is not our creation. We are placed in it with scant knowledge of it. And we are born helpless. These things were God's doing. So either he's a total git - which by definition he is not - or these things are good. How could they be good? Well if they are our just deserts. Therefore they are.

really not.
No question was posed. I did not ask for speculation on the meaning of life, but offered reasons for thinking it has a purpose, namely retribution, protection and reform. But rather than engage with that case proof180 expressed contempt for the very project of trying to find life's meaning and then proceeded to list a load of cereal packet proposals. But you think it's an arm pumpingly great answer. Hmm.

Er, no it doesn't. What does that even mean? Sounds like something a creep would say to impress someone in a bar. No argument. No engagement with the argument I made. My b/s meter says 'pure'.

it's God, not the universe (a universe doesn't have plans). And it's retribution, rather than revenge.
You have provided no argument. Why would God harm us unless for retribution? Any other good goal could have been achieved without the harm (he's omnipotent). And if he just likes harming us for it's own sake, that's incompatible with being good. Retribution is the only plausible explanation.

I just think something like GOD is probably going to be too far out of reach for us to attempt to predict his actions. — I don't get it

So contrary to what you assert, you are playing the radical sceptic card. You are proposing that, as far as we can know, being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others might constitute a moral virtue in God. That's absurd - as absurd as thinking that 'for all we can tell' it might constitute one in us. Even if it is possible, it is not remotely reasonable to believe it. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that being good does 'not' involve being sadistic and/or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of innocent or guilty others. Therefore, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that God is not wholly unconcerned for our welfare, not if we're innocent anyway. and thus we can conclude that it is beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not woodchips from God's treehouse. I now fail to see how you can't see this. Your proposal - that, for all we can tell, we might be woodchips from God's treehouse - has been demonstrated to be false beyond a reasonable doubt. And invoking - in an ad hoc manner - scepticism about what goodness in God might consist in is just silly and doesn't begin to raise a reasonable doubt about my thesis or do anything at all to restore credibility to yours.

So are we just woodchips from God's treehouse? No. God is good and omnipotent, and good people are not indifferent to the fates of innocent sentient creatures, or guilty ones.

We can know this by reflecting on the nature of goodness, but we can know it by reflecting on God's omnipotence as well. Our actions often have foreseen but unintended consequences. But that's because we do not control all of the consequences of our actions. God, by contrast, controls them all. Everything that happens either happens because God causes it to, or God intentionally permits it. Nothing that happens that God causes to happen is anything God is indifferent towards. For if God were truly indifferent to it, it would not occur. And when it comes to what God permits, rather than what God positively causes, he would only permit indifferent events - that is, events towards which he is indifferent - when doing so is a consequence of our free will being exercised. And he is not indifferent to that, even if he is often indifferent to what we do with it. But anyway, the world we live in is not a world we ourselves have freely created or freely placed ourselves in, and so the world we live and the fact we live in it has to be concluded to be God's doing, not ours. And as nothing God positively does is anything he is indifferent to, we can once more conclude that our being here is not a mere foreseen but indifferent consequence of something else God was doing, but is instead fully intended by God.

Thus, once one acknowledges that an omnipotent and good being exists, there is no reasonable way to escape the conclusion that our lives here serve a purpose, and a good one at that.

You act like I'm stupid and don't know anything when I say "God could put innocent people with dangerous, corrupt people, because his understanding or his morality is perfect and your's is not" — I don't get it

Yes, because all you're doing is pointing to a metaphysical possibility, not providing evidence that it is true.

There's what is possible, and there's what is actually the case. It is metaphysically possible that Elvis shot Kennedy. But it would be wholly unreasonable to think Elvis did it simply because no contradiction is involved in the idea. Brute possibilities are not evidence. They are the last resort of someone who has run out of evidence.

Similarly, as all things are possible with God (for all things are possible with an omnipotent being), it is indeed metaphysically possible that our lives here serve some purpose other than the one I am defending. I have at no point denied the possibility. What I have done is show that it is reasonable to suppose that our lives here serve the three purposes I described, and entirely unreasonable to think otherwise, at least after being confronted with the evidence.

For an analogy: a detective provides you with some very good evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. You reply: for all we can tell, Elvis might have done it.

Is that reasonable? No. Yes, it is metaphysically possible. And no amount of evidence that Oswald did it will establish the matter with 100% certainty, for deception can never be entirely ruled out. But is it at all reasonable stubbornly to stick with the absurd Elvis thesis on no better basis than that it 'might' be true? No, that's not reasonable at all - it's dogmatic and silly.

I think there is no amount of evidence I could show you that would convince you that our lives have the purposes I described. For whatever the quantity I provide, and whatever its quality, it is going to remain metaphysically possible that they serve another purpose, or none at all. And that, it seems to me, is, for you, sufficient to make it perfectly reasonable to reject my conclusion. Which is, of course, wholly unreasonable of you. But then unreasonable people abound here, do they not? This is a world full to the rafters with them. It's almost as if it was a place God was putting them!

To paraphrase Empodocles and Yeats, there's an oracle of Reason, an ordinance of the God, eternal and bound by broath oaths, that says when a soul foreswears Reason to follow its own path, it must wander, for thrice ten thousand seasons, away from the abodes of the blessed, and be born again in a multitude of mortal clothes. The air will drive it into the sea, the sea will spew it onto the dry earth, the earth will hurl it into the blazing beams of the sun, the sun will fling it back into the eddies of the air. Each will pass it to the other, but all will reject it. We are such exiles, wanderers from the God and the Good. And though we are fated to spend lifetimes searching through these hollow and hilly lands, the day will come when we'll find our way back to the orchard and the stream of forgetfulness where it all began, and then we can wander once more in its long dappled grass and pluck, till time and times are done, the silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.

Again, really poor reasoning. Nothing you say follows. Nothing.

First, from the fact we are not morally perfect, it does not follow that we cannot know with a high degree of certainly that a morally perfect being wouldn't do certain things. After all, we know we're not morally perfect - yes? To know that is to know that one falls short of a standard - a standard one has some awareness of. Second, you don't have to instantiate a moral virtue to be able to recognise one. That's as stupid as thinking that you can't recognize a good drawing from a bad one unless you're an excellent draughtsperson. I know Leonardo da Vinci is a great draughtsperson and that some six year old is rubbish despite the fact my own skills are closer to the six year old's than Leonardo's. So that's mistaken inference no. 2. And then there's the fact that you don't have to know precisely what moral perfection involves to know what it doesn't involve. I, for instance, don't know how many grains of salt there are in my house. But I do know that there are more than six, and less than five billion trillion. You, presumably, think otherwise. You think I can't know those things unless I know precisely how many grains of salt there are in the house. Which is, well, just very silly but typical of the youtube educated.

So, God is morally good. And we know enough about what moral goodness involves to know that it doesn't involve being a sadist or unconcerned about the welfare of others. If your case against me depends on the ludicrous claim that 'for all we know' being morally perfect may well involve being a sadist or wholly unconcerned for the welfare of others, then you've failed to touch it. YOu might as well just say - as you know doubt do when any case escapes your understanding and seems to be leading to conclusions you dislike - "how do we know anything".

And God, being morally good, wouldn't let us suffer for no reason. And thus our lives must have a purpose. And the only plausible reason a morally perfect, omnipotent being would let people suffer in the way that we do, would be for the reasons I have given. For we ourselves do precisely this - we ourselves incarcerate and bring harm to those whom we judge to have done wrong of their own free will. And we do this precisely because our own reason tells us that this is a just thing to do. And as our reason is the means by which God communicates his own attitudes towards such matters to us, we now know that God has done this to us.

I don't need to deny a premise. It was nonsense.
1. We are immoral.
2. Therefore we can't know that God is good.

That, so far as I can tell, was your argument. But the conclusion doesn't follow and is false anyway as God is by definition good.

Here's an argument of a similar nature:

1. I like coffee.
2. Therefore we can't know whether bachelors have wives.

No we CAN'T. You yourself mentioned that we are not morally perfect, so it does not seem like we can reasonably infer anything about GOD'S morality. — I don't get it

That makes no sense at all. I think we can safely say that you're never going to get it.

I don't think you understand arguments. I provided a proof. You haven't challenged a premise.

I do not know what that is. What is it? Sounds like congealed whale sick.

Not 'caught out', just asked a silly question by someone not remotely interested in the answer. It's not my fault that an accurate description of what you did is insulting. It's your fault.

If you have caught me 'out', where was I 'in' previously. Please answer fully. I have follow up questions.

Your question is for psychology, not philosophy.

First, people obviously don't 'need' religious belief, for plenty do not have any.

Second, your inquiry is about motivational reasons, not epistemic ones. What someone's motives may be for believing something is a matter psychologists look into. Whether the belief in question is true is what philosophers look into.

So, one reason - probably the major one - why many people have religious beliefs, is because they think God exists and wrote this or that religious text.

The philosophical question is whether this belief - the belief that God exists - is true. And to investigate that one looks into whether there are any epistemic reasons for believing it, not the motives of the believer.

What do you mean by "imperatives"? If a mind is reasonable, it follows the laws of reason. It doesn't create them — litewave

That's flagrantly question begging. I provided a proof of what you have just flatly denied. So, you need either to locate a fallacy in the reasoning expressed by the argument, or you need to deny a premise. Specifically, you need to deny premise 1 or premise 2 and provide your reasons for doing so, for I defended both of those premises.

An imperative, incidentally, is just fancy for a command.

And yes, of course 'being reasonable' involves following the imperatives of Reason (or acting in ways that comport with them). That's irrelevant, for my argument is about what the imperatives themselves are (in terms of composition, not content), it is not about what it is to be reasonable.

Imagine I give you an argument that demonstrates strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries. YOu then reply "being a strawberry jam eater just involves eating strawberry jam, not making the stuff". Well, er, yes. How is that relevant - how does that challenge my case that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries? And then you follow that with nothing more than a flat denial that strawberry jam is made of boiled strawberries.

That is what you have done. I have provided an argument that appears to demonstrate that Reason is a mind and that the mind in question will have the attributes of God, and will thus be God. And you have now just pointed out that being reasonable involves following the imperatives of Reason and then asserted - on the basis of no evidence at all - that the imperatives themselves are not a mind's creation.

But which country has a justice system where the prisoner is denied knowledge of what he has been condemned for, even for the sake of causing him additional suffering by this ignorance? — litewave

It's called 'The World'. You're living in it. See my case for details.

I don't think you know what an 'answer' is. An answer you disagree with is still an answer. If I ask you "what's 2 + 4" and you say "it is 10", then that's an answer, even though it is wrong and I disagree with it.

You have asked me a silly question. You have asked me where people who are not here, are. Well, not here. That is an answer. You question is silly and reflects a lack of understanding on your part. But my answer is an answer to it. And you should count yourself lucky that I gave it, given how silly the question was. Now don't pretend you want more specifics, because clearly you don't and it wouldn't really matter what I said, you'd still just scoff. Like I said, they are at 73 Not Here street, Notheresville, in The Other Place. Why not send them a letter?

For all we know, on the cosmic scale, the universe has the attributes of a mind. — Wayfarer

Not sure what that means or how it is relevant.

I deny this premise:

4. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnipotent

I don't think that instructions or commands of a mind constitute the laws of reason, as you put it. — litewave

That doesn't make sense - by premise 4 it has already been established that the imperatives of Reason are the imperatives of a mind. What premise 4 says is that the mind in question is omnipotent. So if you're disputing it, you need to dispute that the mind is omnipotent, rather than dispute that the mind's imperatives are imperatives of Reason.

So, if you want to deny that the imperatives of Reason are the imperatives of a mind, you need to dispute an earlier premise than 4. Which one?

Note, the law of identity is an imperative of Reason- so once more you are appealing to the very kind of thing that the argument demonstrates requires God.

‘Not here’ is not an answer. There are definitely people outside of jail, but where are the ‘innocent others’ who are ‘being protected’ from us living beings? — Wayfarer

It is an answer. What do you want? An address that isn't here? No. 73, Not Here Street, Notheresville, in The Other Place.

If God exists, then we are here for some purpose. For God is all powerful and perfectly good, so it is unreasonable in light of those facts to suppose that our lives here serve no purpose of his

I don't see how that follows at all. We could just be a byproduct of something actually important, like the woodchips from some divine birdhouse that is being made. You yourself refered to the "immoral natures that we ourselves seem to possess." If we do, how can you take God's 'perfect goodness' and infer anything from it at all? It seems like any value judgement you might make would be wild speculation. Just because he is all powerful does not mean that we are important enough to be punished. We might be way to insignificant to warrant amy effort on God's part. — I don't get it

Well, you don't see because you're not trying hard enough. God is all powerful and morally perfect. If we're woodchips from his birdhouse, then we can reasonably infer that he would make sure those sentient woodchips have a blissful existence. (Why? Because. He's. Good. And. Not. A. Git.)

Are you having a blissful existence? Even if you are, it won't last long. Only a matter of time before you walk into a door or are done an injustice or get a toothache or find something hard to understand.

So, we're not woodchips from a divine birdhouse, then.

We're in a dangerous world surrounded by dangerous people. God did that to us, or allowed it to happen. One of the two, for he's omnipotent. And God is good, so he wouldn't have done or allowed that for a laugh, for then he'd be a git. So, it has a purpose and the purpose must be good.

When does a good person put people in a dangerous place surrounded by dangerous people? Why, when those people pose a danger to innocent others, deserve to be trapped in a dangerous environment surrounded by dangerous people, and when there's a slim possibility that they might reform their ways, that's when.

So, if God exists we're in a prison doing bird, not chips from a divine birdhouse. And he does exist. So we are doing bird.

Well, I must say that your name is well chosen. You seem to be going out of your way not to get things.

When someone asks or wonders "what is the purpose of my life?" they are not wondering what intention their life has. Lives - as opposed to the livers of them - do not have intentions. They are wondering to what end their life was created to pursue. This is obvious to any competent speaker of English.

Purposes can explain things. Why is the bin outside my house? Well, I put it there becuase I want my rubbish collected. There, an explanation of something's location - the bin outside my house - in terms of my purposes.

Now, we can say, quite correctly, that the purpose of the bin being outside my house is to be collected by rubbish collectors. That doesn't mean that the bin itself has desires and wishes for its contents to be collected by rubbish collectors. Someone who is six may think this, simply due to not having undersood that sentences can have more than one meaning. Perhaps you are six.

When we talk about a purpose 'attaching' to something, we once more are not being literal - purposes don't waft about getting stuck to stuff. We mean - if we wanted to be technical - that the thing in question features as an object of an intention.

Going back to shoes. A shoe and an identical naturally occurring thing, differ in that one was designed for a purpose and the other was not. The fact that they look identical and that you are using them for the same purpose, does not mean that they both 'have' a purpose.

Imagine that the shoemaker writes on the shoe - because the likes of you need as much help as you can get - 'put foot in here' around the opening. Now imagine that the shoe plant also has strange markings around its opening that look, to competent English speakers, like the words 'put foot in here'. Is that a helpful instruction? It isn't, is it? It is in the context of the shoe-maker's shoe - because in that object's case those words express the purpose of a mind, namely the mind of the shoemaker. But in the plant-shoe case, they do not - they're just patterns that happen, by luck, to appear to competent English speakers to be an instruction.

Anyway, not sure why I am bothering as I am sure you're going to play the 'idiot's veto' again and claim "me no understandy".

There's what something was designed for - that's the object's purpose, if purpose it has.
Then there's what you end up using it for. That's the purpose 'to which you are putting it', rather than its purpose.

If you read Othello and find it hilarious, that doesn't mean it's a comedy.

See, this is where i don't follow you. When we create something for a purpose, how does that something now have a purpose? — I don't get it

Well, when we say 'this has a purpose' that is elliptical for "this was created for a purpose".
What is confusing you is the ambiguity of the word 'has'. The claim that "this object has a purpose" is ambiguous between "this object has ends it is trying to pursue" and "this object has been created for an end". It is the latter idea that we are expressing when we say "the purpose of a shoe is to encase a foot". And this is also what we are wondering about in respect of our lives here when we wonder "what purpose does my life have?" For we are not wondering about our own ends. After all, if 'that' is what one is wondering about, then the question "what is the purpose of my life" would be better answered by a psychologist than a philosopher.

My point is specifically to challenge your idea that purpose must designed. — matt

That's confused. Designs express purposes. That is, the very concept of a design presupposes a purpose.

If this world is designed, then there is a purpose behind it. If there is no purpose behind it, then it is not designed.

So even if God does exist, this does not invalidate purpose emerging via natural selection (without design). — matt

You're confused. Those who proffer purely evolutionary explanations of the natural world are not showing how the world is, in fact, designed. No, they are attempting to show how the natural world can come to have the 'appearance' of design without actually being. That's why such accounts are commonly seen as challenging the argument from design.

Those who make them are quite right. If - if - such processes are the whole explanation, then of course there is no design, no purpose behind it all. There is just the mere appearance of it, and our tendency - adaptive no doubt - to impute it.

the question "why am I here?" could be relevantly addressed by saying "I am here because of my own motives." — I don't get it

No it couldn't, for that would require that you created yourself for that purpose, yet self-creation is not possible. It is hubris to think that you can give your life a purpose.

If we assume that the person who has put you here for some end is a good person - and I think they demonstrably are, but for now let's just assume it -

Okay, I will assume it- but i expect you to demonstrate it at some point or that leaves a pretty large gaping hole in your argument. — I don't get it

I did demonstrate it. Imperatives of Reason exist. Imperatives of Reason are the imperatives a mind - Reason - is issuing. That mind, by dint of being the source of the imperatives of Reason, will be omnipotent and omniscient. And given that he possesses those properties, it is beyond a reasonable doubt that he will be morally perfect too. Thus, the mind whose imperatives are the imperatives of Reason is God.

Yes. Quite. If there is no God behind things, then the processes of natural selection are blind, purposeless. And thus if we are simply a product of those purposeless processes, then we have no purpose in being here.

Of course, God is behind things. One cannot arrive at the conclusion that we are living in a world in which processes of natural selection are operating without making appeal to some imperatives of Reason. For one cannot make any argument for anything without doing so, as arguments themselves are essentially appeals to Reason.

And imperatives of Reason cannot exist unless God does. Thus God exists. But only those who have already undertaken to listen to Reason will arrive at that conclusion and believe it.

And if God exists, then this world and our lives in it have a purpose. It is a penal colony. Thus, we are in prison serving life sentences. Literally.

Yeah, I guess I don't see the point in punishing someone by making them forget what they have done wrong unless this also has an edifying effect. — litewave

Well, that's your problem and not evidence that retribution is not a purpose that God has. You're not God.

This has been the problem throughout - I have described the second purpose, central to justice being done. And that purpose is retribution. To harm us for what we have done. Not to improve us, not to help us, not to teach us anything, but because we deserve it - deserve to be harmed. Harmed, not benefited. And you are simply ignoring this and persisting in thinking that the only rationale for harming someone is to help them. This is patently false.

It is undeniable that we have retributive intuitions. Why is it worse, for instance, for something bad to happen to an innocent person as opposed to a guilty one? Why do we have a presumption of innocence rather than a presumption of guilt? Well, it reflects the fact that - to most of us - it is much worse to mistakenly punish an innocent person than it is to not punish a guilty one.

Well, that only makes sense on the assumption of retributivism.

And it is undeniable that we ourselves lock criminals in prison for the three reasons I outlined. They're not hospitals, are they? That is, they're not treatment centres. Not primarily. They serve a retributive purpose.

So, retributivism is a thing. And as God is the source of all moral norms and values, we can conclude that God himself has retributive attitudes, for that is what our rational intuitions express.

All one has to do is join the dots. We are immoral, yes? None of us is a saint. And we're surrounded by other immoral people. And we're in a dangerous world. And God exists. What gives? Well, we're in a prison, that's what gives.

No, I don't see how that's true at all. Almost by definiton, your shoe's purpose is to hammer in nails. If your end is to hammer a nail, that implies that your actions serve a purpose: "I am hitting this nail to hammer it into something." — I don't get it

If you use a shoe to hammer-in a nail, then 'your' purpose in using the shoe - so, the purpose of your action, not the shoe - is to 'hammer-in a nail'. But the purpose of the shoe, rather than your action involving it, is not to hammer-in nails, but to encase a foot.

What if the devleopers of the shoes developed them to be good for eating? — I don't get it

Well, if that is their purpose - to be eaten - then that is their purpose. Something can be very badly designed, can't it? And when is that? When it is not suitable for the purpose for which it was made.

So, it is not in dispute that there are purposes. We have them. Minds, that is, mint purposes. And it is when we create something for a purpose, or put something somewhere for a purpose, that the thing in question can then be said to have a purpose, namely the purpose for which it is made or put there.

Others can use those things for different purposes. But then the purpose for which they are using it attaches to the action or project that they are engaged in, not the thing that they are using for that purpose.

As such, there are two options where our lives here are concerned. Either there was some purpose for which our being here was designed to serve - which would require that some mind created us for a purpose - or we were created for no purpose whatsoever. And of course, it is possible to be created by a mind, yet for no purpose whatsoever (being created by a mind is necessary, but not sufficient for one's life to have a purpose).

If God exists, then we are here for some purpose. For God is all powerful and perfectly good, so it is unreasonable in light of those facts to suppose that our lives here serve no purpose of his. And given the nature of our existence here - an existence fraught with danger and surrounded by immoral folk and the immoral natures that we ourselves seem to possess - it is reasonable to infer that the purpose our being here serves, is as I described: to protect others from us, to punish us, and - least importantly - to reform us. I don't think any other purpose can reasonably be imputed to God (which is not to say that there could not be one, just that - given the information available to us - it would not be reasonable for us to infer it).

If God does not exist - and I have provided a proof of his existence above, so this point is going to be moot - then the purpose our lives serve would be determined by those who contrived to create our lives. Which, normally speaking, is going to be our parents.

Of course, this means that under those circumstances most of us have lives of no purpose whatsoever, or lives whose purpose is, to say the least, utterly mundane.

You haven't identified a premise that you deny. You're just expressing your conviction that I am wrong. But which premise in the deductively valid argument I provided do you deny?

Again, you earlier appealed to the law of non-contradiction. But that law is an instance of the very laws whose existence entail God's existence.

When someone provides you with an apparently deductively valid argument for a given conclusion, then you need either to locate a fallacy in the reasoning or you need to challenge a premise. Otherwise you're just demonstrating dogmatism.

er, no - by your lights we have excellent evidence that we all go to a weird other realm when we go to sleep. Good job! You're an excellent evaluator of testimonial evidence. Yes you are. You are.

Let me add something to my original OP.

If you think there is no God, then as well as being mistaken, the answer you must give to the "what's the purpose of my being here?" question will have to be "whatever my parents were trying to achieve by creating me".

I mean, how is it possible for your life to have any other purpose apart from that one? And of course if - as is likely - your parents were not actively trying to create you, but your existence was simply a foreseen byproduct of the sex they were having - then your life has no purpose at all.

Perhaps you think that 'you' can bestow a purpose on your life. But that's really confused. You did not create yourself or place yourself in this realm. So whatever purposes you may have, they're not going to become the purpose of your life here.

If I use a shoe to hammer-in a nail, that does not mean that the shoe's purpose is to hammer-in nails. It's purpose is determined by its designers and builders, not its users.

See, the suffering of amnesia does seem to have an edifying effect on you. — litewave

Again, you're missing the point: it's not supposed to have an edifying affect. You keep assuming that my view is that rehabilitation is the main reason we're here. That's not my view. That's partly why we're here, but it's the least important purpose our careers here serve: we're mainly here to protect others from us, and to get our comeuppance.

As for your proof of God, I think laws of reason or logic follow from the law of identity or non-contradiction, which means that every thing is what it is and is not what it is not. I don't see why a mind would be needed for that, let alone a conscious mind. — litewave

Because the law of non-contradiction is an imperative of reason. So, I've shown that imperatives of Reason entail God. You've said "ah, but imperatives of reason do not entail God, because they're derived from an imperative of reason". That doesn't make sense as an objection to my argument. To put it another way, which premise in my proof do you deny?

Yes, they knew - but so what? You're missing the point. We're here to be punished (and this is more important than reform, for reasons already explained). It is torture not knowing. When someone goes missing, their loved ones are tortured by not knowing what has happened to them. We are being tortured by not knowing why we are here.

There is a god. So there is a purpose in our being here. We don't know why we're here. That isn't likely to be accidental. What purpose could not knowing serve? Well, to harm us - to torture us. And as a good god wouldn't do that unless we deserved it, we can conclude that we deserve the suffering that befalls us here.

What you're doing is offering alternatives that are not plausible given God's existence. For any purpose other than the ones I have outlined, would be ones that God - being omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect - could have achieved much more efficiently and without subjecting us to any suffering and without making us ignorant.

We usually want prisoners to understand what they have done wrong so that they may learn from their errors. — litewave

That would only be if rehabilitation was the primary purpose. We can infer, then, that it is not. The goal of retribution - of harming a person due to the fact they deserve to come to that harm - seems to be as, if not more important.

When prisoners were made to do shot drill, it was not to reform them. It was to harm them. It was to fill their day with an arduous but obviously pointless task.

If God exists - and I have demonstrated above that he does - then we can conclude that our lives do have a purpose (for it seems entirely unreasonable to suppose that God would subject us to lives here for no purpose at all). Furthermore, the purpose must be a morally good one.

Why would an omnipotent, omniscience, morally perfect being subject us to lives in a place that is full of dangers, including dangerous people? Other people are immoral, aren't they? Have you met any saints? I haven't. Are you a saint? I'm not.

Well, a good person would want to protect genuinely good people from such folk, yes? From the likes of us. You don't have to be morally perfect to see the justice in doing that. And doing that - putting people who have freely done wrong into another place, away from those to whom they did harm and among those who have behaved in a similar fashion - doesn't imply that the person who does such things is not good.

And we know from our own rational intuitions that it is also good when those who have done wrong come to harm. So the harms that we risk coming to by being put here are also not harms that are necessarily bad. And as we know God exists and that our lives here expose us to such harms, we can conclude that the harms are deserved ones.

What about rehabilitation? Well, this seems the least important purpose that our lives have. When we ourselves incarcerate criminals, it is the other two purposes mentioned above that have priority - first and foremost we are protecting others (this is why we can sometimes justify incarcerating people who are not morally responsible for their behavior - they pose a risk to others). Second, we are giving wrongdoers what they deserve. The opportunity to reform is, well, frankly, not that important. A good person does not owe it to you to do anything to reform your evil behaviour. They might - out of kindness - try and do something. But they don't owe it to you. You misbehaved. That's on you. The good people you misbehaved towards don't owe it to you to reform you.

So, the third purpose our lives here serve - rehabilitation - is the least important and its total absence, if absent it were, would not reflect badly on God. But it is present - our evidence for that is the fact that we have faculties of reason that give us some awareness of how we ought to behave. We are aware, most of us, that there are ways we 'ought' to be behaving, character traits we 'ought' to be cultivating and so on. That - that awareness - is the evidence that our lives here serve a reforming purpose. But if that were the primary purpose of our being here, then it would be starkly obvious how we ought to behave - which it isn't - and furthermore there would be no need to expose us to the risks of harm that we are in fact exposed to.

So you ARE interpreting the question to presuppose an arbitrary assumption that someone has put us here, thereby limiting the scope of the question as stated. — Possibility

No, the question 'does' presuppose such a person. And it is not an 'arbitrary' assumption. It's what the question presupposes.

But who says that purpose must be conferred by a person? There doesn’t appear to be any evidence supporting this. It’s simply how you’ve chosen to define ‘purpose’. — Possibility

Brian. Brian says so. I mean, what do you mean 'who says'? It is self-evident to reason. What, you think that there can be purposes without persons? For there to be a purpose, there has to be some 'end' that 'someone' is pursuing.

Anyway, like I say, the point is that 'if' God exists, then our purpose is as I described, or at least I can think of no plausible alternative.

Does God exist? Yes. I proved that a while ago. Here, in case you missed it:

A law of Reason is an imperative or instruction to do or believe something.

But imperatives require an imperator, instructions an instructor. And only a mind can instruct or issue a command. Thus this premise is true:

1. If there are laws of Reason, then there is a mind whose laws they are

It is also not open to reasonable doubt that there are laws of Reason. For if you think there are not, then either you think there is a reason to think there are not - in which case you think there are, for a 'reason to believe' something is an instruction of Reason - or you think there is no reason to think there are laws of Reason yet disbelieve in them anyway, in which case you are irrational. Thus, this premise is true beyond a reasonable doubt too:

2. There are laws of Reason

From which it follows:

3. Therefore, there is a mind whose laws are the laws of Reason

The mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason would not be bound by those laws, as they have the power over their content. A mind that is not bound by the laws of Reason is a mind that can do anything at all. Thus, this premise is true:

4. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnipotent

The mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason will also have power over all knowledge, for whether a belief qualifies as known or not is constitutively determined by whether there is a reason to believe it - and that's precisely what this mind determines. Thus:

5. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omniscient

Finally, moral laws are simply a subset of the laws of Reason (the moral law is, as Kant rightly noted, an imperative of Reason). And so the mind whose instructions and commands constitute the laws of Reason will be a mind who determines what's right and wrong, good and bad. As the mind is omnipotent, the mind can reasonably be expected to approve of how he is, for if he were dissatisfied with any aspect of himself, he has the power to change it. And if this mind fully approves of himself, then this mind is fully morally good, for that is just what being morally good consists of being. Thus, this premise is also true beyond all reasonable doubt:

6. The mind whose laws are the laws of Reason is omnibenevolent.

It is a conceptual truth that a mind who exists and is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent 'is' God. Thus:

7. If there exists a mind who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then God exists

From which it follows:

8. Therefore, God exists.

There we go: a proof of God.

Thus, we're in prison.

I don't see that. It's just not clear what someone is asking, hence the need to ask for clarification. After all "what's the meaning of life?" could be an inquiry about the meaning of the word 'life' (to which the answer would be 'it means the state of being alive').

They are probably asking a bundle of closely related questions, one of which is a question about the purpose of our being here. It is that one to which I am providing a plausible answer to. The only plausible answer, I think.

You've answered your own question. Not here, that's where.

The question ‘what’s the meaning of us being here?’ does not necessarily presuppose that someone has put us here. — Possibility

I didn't say that it did. The question, as it stands, is vague and ambiguous. Hence the need to ask for clarity. But if it turns out that the questioner is asking - as they almost certainly are - what the 'purpose' of their being here is, then their question most certainly does presuppose that someone has put us here. For it is persons and persons alone who can confer purposes on things.

And because the answer "whatever purpose your parents were pursuing by trying to create you" is so obviously not going to satisfy the questioner, we can see that their question presupposes some kind of a divine purpose giver.

I could make the same point another way. I could just say "If God exists, then most likely the purpose of our being here is to protect others from us, to give us our just deserts, and to give us some chance at rehabilitation".

And if the Earth was a prison or a rehab facility, wouldn't it be clear why we are being isolated, punished or rehabilitated here? What have we done? I don't remember anything from before my birth. — litewave

No, I don't see why one would expect it to be clear that we are being punished, or clear why. Ignorance of why exactly we are here is plausibly part of the punishment. To be punished one does not have to know 'why' one is being punished. And we - that is, we humans - sometimes punish people in a relevantly similar way. They used to give prisoners pointless tasks to do, for instance, and used to make sure the pointlessness was apparent (shot drill, the treadmill, etc.). Of course, it was not entirely pointless - the point of giving them pointless tasks was that by making them expend energy on something obviously pointless they would be harmed more than if they thought their activities were serving some purpose. Ignorance of why we are here could very plausibly function in the same way. Indeed, it is hard to think of another function for it that wouldn't imply a less than perfect purpose giver.

I didn't ask it. I offered an answer.

Those options don't seem likely though. If it was a job aside from the one expressed in c, then we'd expect clear instructions. The purpose of our being here would be clear. Yet it isn't. And there is also the problem of evil to contend with. The same points apply to your other suggestion. This doesn't seem like a playpen world. It's a dangerous place full of flawed people. The prison thesis seems much more plausible in light of this.

well that's clearly false.