the purpose of life.

Love is an adaptation for survival. Out brains are too big, so human woman evolved to give birth to "undeveloped" young. The other adaptation that goes with this is our close knit communities, in which we let the group help raise our young - unlike chimps or other apes, who wont let the babies out of body contact for a year or more....

Spirituality is partially the reason why we even have civilization. It seems to be the reason for the oldest magolithic structure known (gobleki tepe), it even predates farming (for the most part). Religion helped us survive the ice age belive it or not. It gave people a reason to meet and share food, stories and genetic lineages.

Also, i didnt mean to incinuate that you were only talkin about christianity, its just the most common belief.....

Those are good points, although I still feel that much of what we do/think has little to do with survival. Other animals even engage in playful activities not needed for survival. The selfish gene is a powerful thing but the brain allows one to experience other things beyond survival. We have the ability to create our own sense of purpose and meaning.

[lemex]

Originally Posted by slaga

Those are good points, although I still feel that much of what we do/think has little to do with survival. Other animals even engage in playful activities not needed for survival. The selfish gene is a powerful thing but the brain allows one to experience other things beyond survival. We have the ability to create our own sense of purpose and meaning.

Maybe just a little more, it probably less about the quantity but quality of it. Think in terms of the well being of the organism.

Originally Posted by slaga

Those are good points, although I still feel that much of what we do/think has little to do with survival. Other animals even engage in playful activities not needed for survival. The selfish gene is a powerful thing but the brain allows one to experience other things beyond survival. We have the ability to create our own sense of purpose and meaning.

Life IS survival, no matter how many Iphones we make lol

You have to be careful with genes as well. Many arent activated unless the environment we are in triggers them (for instance we have a "fat" gene, but this is only triggered in vitro when the mom is in a state of stress or starvation, or the "violence" gene isnt enacted unless we are in that environment). They are only half the story. Everyone has the "gay" gene and I dont see a world full of richard simmons!

And when you say "we have th eability to create our own sense of purpose...." that is the point I was making. It doesnt take a creator for us to have this "gift". Our early tools were an adaptation for survival, and by extention all tools after (going from a stick to collect ants, to making weapons and clothes to cell phones (which are an extention of our adaptation to communicate as widely as we can. This adaptation helped us survive the ice age, as well as the possible bottle neck which almost wiped us out)

Our problem is, we dont use our resources in a cyclical rotation. We dont act as a closed system which is essentially how the earth/universe works.

[H:O:R:A:C:E]

Originally Posted by ThoughtBroadcaster

i have read that basically god got lonely and he split himself into others and created life to hide from being alone. what are your opinions on this? here is a video about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ8JxAVmUNY

I have read something quite different.
"God", who is Love, the one, Prime Creator, grew so much that "he" could no longer contain himself.
This birthed duality; the formation of "other".
So, it wasn't lonliness that brought separation into reality, it was an abundance of Love.
It's much the same story; just the characterization is different.

But like the video intimates, life is joyful and playful, not so *serious*.

[Gem]

I guess people like to think it all began at some point, at least that gives a starting point, an origin, so we have things like Gods and Source and that sort of thing.

[H:O:R:A:C:E]

Originally Posted by Gem

I guess people like to think it all began at some point, at least that gives a starting point, an origin, so we have things like Gods and Source and that sort of thing.

An "origin" makes sense to me. The thing that many of us don't seem to "get" though is that Source is infinite and not bounded by the
constraint of our linear-time perception. When we get to the future, Source is already there!