OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

What is the purpose of life?

What does it mean to be alive? (No, I'm not looking for a biological answer here! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif )

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

Why is the "Hot" always on the left?

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

To learn and grow.

Being connected to your physical body.

Because people develop habits and sometimes act without thinking.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

So that bli……..ah, visually challenged people don’t burn themselves. And because the building code requires it.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

To reproduce, then get fat, sleep a lot, and then die.

Your body takes in air, food, water, and excreats waste. You require sleep, shelter, and compaionship. If you hurt yourself, it hurts. You are self aware and can think. If were unable to do this, then chances are your not alive.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

Judeo-Christianity believes that we are here to glorify God.

(Every one else has given snippy responses, so I thought I would go with a more "charged" response.)

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

"This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." - LDS scripture.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

Just a few days ago, I was discussing the purpose of life with a colleague at work. He had recently watched a program on insects and their life cycles, and it was explained that the purpose of life for an insect is only to reproduce. They just have to grow and survive long enough so that they can reproduce, and then their job in life is done and they die. We hope that us humans have more of a purpose to life than just the biological function of propagating the species.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

The reall question is: Do we have free will?

If you believe in an omnipotent and omniscient god, then no we don't have free will.

If you believe in a purely scientific action reaction, relative forces, and all that mumbo jumbo, then no we don't have free will.

For each of these situations, there can be no true free will. If god is all knowing, we do not truly choose, because the path was already laid out for us when the universe was created. If everything is merely a mathamatical theoram of relationships between components of the universe, then we have no free will, because we cannot change how these things happen, because we ourselves are merely expressions of that equation.

In truth, I think the reality lies somewhere in between. I firmly believe that there is something more to life than a random collection of molecules, and that something is what makes us truly alive. Who knows? I certainly don't, but the reall question is, what is the point in debating it? Nobody can answer it one way or another, because ultimately, no on will know untill they reach the clearing at the end of the path.

Re: OT: Some of mankind\'s toughest questions
 

Well, I like to think that we have free will. It certainly seems like we have free will, that we have the power of choice in our thoughts and actions. I don't like the idea that everything is predetermined because then it seems like our lives don't really matter. If everything is predetermined, what's the point of trying to improve one's situation, working towards goals, trying to achieve things? But free will could very well be an illusion, as people like to point out.

I can say, "hey, I can choose whether to pick up this pen in front of me, or choose not to, so I have free will."

Then the other guy could say, "You only think you have a choice, but ultimately, you did the thing that you were supposed to and the free will is an illusion."

Then the related discussion is on whether or not we have souls. If our thoughts are merely chemical reactions in our brains, we don't have free will, because the chemical reactions must follow the laws of biochemistry and physics, and can only go a certain way. It doesn't make sense to say that chemistry follows the exact physical laws everywhere else in the world but not inside brains. Debating whether we have souls or not is hard, just like arguing whether god exists or not, because you can't see or measure it and there's no concrete evidence one way or another.