Life has no meaning other than our own pleasure and suffering

But we evaluate pain and pleasure itself by a higher good. The pain I may feel working out is a "good pain" since it is towards an end of bodily strengthening. The pleasure I feel doing drugs is otoh a "bad pleasure" since it is against the end of health and mental stability. This means we have a sense of good and bad independent of any immediate pleasure or pain: some end we want to accomplish that evaluates pain and pleasure as a means and not an end. There are even some who view pain as inherently good in that it instills patience, determination, and willpower in those who endure. I'm not so sure of that though.

 

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If I accept death as total extinction that doesn't make me fear it more. On the contrary, since it would then be a state of non-experience, there is no possibility of anything like a hell or (even worse) eternity of groveling before a psychopathic God. It would be as harmless as a state of eternal dreamless sleep. And what does this have to do with "being out of the closet." Do you think gay people are all lecherous hedonists just because they are open about their sexuality? That is a hateful christian stereotype that has persisted for too long in our culture. I'm out and yet I live a completely normal and pretty much sexfree life. Being out simply means you have no qualms admitting your orientation to others. It doesn't mean one is suddenly partaking in a debauched and sex-obsessed lifestyle.

 

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If life is neutral so is death. But we all know that can't be true as to get there you need to hurt and transgress which can not be possibly good. Life is the gateway to emotion and thought. Sadness or depression is a state of dead happiness, other insides and 'how's' can and need to function through this thus the living sadness. But you art dead. Life is only good, any pain is the root of death. Any sucky part of life is actually dead nature, the lack of thing. Tis why know cant hate, transgression is not there. If you are make believe you only let in transcendental things like determination, hope, and destiny. Any hate is the lack of belief.

 

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Based on materialism and naturalism which state that everything in life is meaningless (neither good or bad) functioning of atoms and particles, this would even mean that our own thoughts/meanings we create in life such as good or bad are all meaningless (neutral). However, as I have explained before, it is actually all things in life besides our pleasure and suffering that is neutral. Pleasure and suffering are the only good and bad things in life despite the fact that they are also the functioning of atoms and particles. But if you are going to say something such as that just because these feelings feel good and bad still means that they are just a bunch of meaningless atoms and particles, this would be false because there is no separation between these feelings feeling good and bad and them being a bunch of atoms and particles. Good and bad are the functioning of those atoms and particles that yield pleasure and suffering just like how the atoms and particles yield other materials and chemicals.

 

But you yourself, by your very thesis, are placing value on pleasure thru reasoning, which you already dismiss as the meaningless interaction of atoms. So even you assume an ability to ascribe value to feeling pleasure that is not a value neutral event. And you do this as a matter of habit. It may be more painful to bear the freezing temps of outdoors but you still do it in order to go out and work at your job. Or it may give you more pleasure to smoke cigarettes, but maybe you refrain because you know it is bad for your health. So by your own behavior you are attributing value to pleasure and pain beyond just it's immediate felt impact. There is a rational determination of value that occurs in the mind itself that is not reducible to the mere movement of atoms.

 

First off, I am going to use this as an example which is that since all atoms and particles are separate from the atoms and particles of our pleasure, then to say that harming someone in order to give you pleasure makes your pleasure bad, this would be false because the combined atoms and particles of the person suffering and other things do not have the same properties of the combined atoms and particles as a whole that make up our pleasure. It would be no different than saying that, since the combined atoms and particles of a piece of metal possess a certain function and properties (which, in this case, we would call "bad"), then that also makes the combined atoms and particles of other materials the same as well (that this also makes them "bad") which is false. Therefore, our thoughts cannot define our pleasure as being something bad or neutral or our pain and despair as being neutral or good.

Second, pleasure always feels good in of itself no matter what. Therefore, even if I never placed any value towards my pleasure and even if I had no knowledge or thoughts whatsoever and experienced pleasure, my pleasure would still feel good to me. So our thoughts and created meanings do not make pleasure either good, bad, or neutral since pleasure always feels good in of itself no matter what. Therefore, everything else in life besides pleasure and suffering is meaningless atoms and particles. But our pleasure and suffering are the only good and bad things despite the fact that they are also the functioning of atoms and particles.

 

So if it gives me pleasure to rape a child, it's not bad? That's a pretty screwed up notion of good and bad.

This all depends on if we already ascribe value to the immediate feeling of pleasure. Many times we don't do this. A recovering drug addict learns to see the pleasure of being high as a bad thing to be avoided, even though it feels really good to be high. IOW he values the longterm goal of being clean and sober over the immediate shortlived pleasure of his fixes. That something feels good or bad is thus not the sole basis for evaluating it. We are purposing beings capable of rationally judging the value of experiences beyond their immediate sense of pleasure or pain.

 

This would be correct. Although, I am a compassionate person and would never do such a thing despite my beliefs.

As I just stated before, our thoughts such as that our pleasure is bad or that our suffering is good, these thoughts cannot define them as such since the combined functioning of the atoms and particles that make up our thoughts is not the same as the combined functioning of the atoms and particles of our pleasure and suffering.

 

I'm also a materialist. I don't think life has any inherent meaning, but it does have meaning that we create. Pleasure and pain as a guide to meaning is just arbitrary, also inadequate to fully capture the subtleties of existence. Our well-being as social apes depends as much on our own pleasure as that of others. It's pleasurable to live in a society where most people are happy and not in pain. It causes pain to live in a society full of suffering. To deny this is to deny the material existence of other people. Furthermore, pleasure and pain can be conditioned, so society is as much of a cause of your suffering or happiness as the material conditions of life. Pleasure and pain aren't always an inherent condition, they are learned.

 

Wouldn't the compassionate respect for the child merely be just random atomic activity as well? So why should it supercede the value of the mere pleasure of the sex?

 

Because it is in the evolutionary design of many people to have respect and compassion towards others anyway. However, the fact that I have compassion and respect would be delusional since I am viewing life from the perspective of this meaningless universe (which would be through the perspective of materialism and naturalism) despite my compassion and respect.

 

The absolute lack of meaning doesn't negate the existence of meaning within the context of humanity.

 

But here's the thing though which is that you would be delusional to find meaning in your life since life has no meaning.

 

But if thought is just the random movement of atoms, then the very assertion that life has no meaning would have no meaning. It might as well have been said by a parrot. Saying anything assumes meaning and a universe in which what is said is meaningful.

 

But there are things in science that do have objective meaning. For example, the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun is a scientific fact and you would, therefore, be delusional to think otherwise. Same thing with creating our own meanings in life if materialism is true and that life really has no meaning.

 

All life has no meaning, but my life can have meaning. All particles have no direction, but an individual particle can have direction. All light has no image, but I can still take a picture. It takes a frame of reference to be able to define things.

 

Go ahead and read my previous post I just made because I think that refutes what you just said here.

 

It doesn't.

A fallacy of division occurs when one reasons logically that something true for the whole must also be true of all or some of its parts.

 

If you are going to say something here such as that this is a logical fallacy I am presenting here, then what I would have to say in return is that your own personal viewpoints in that people would not be delusional in creating their own meanings in life, this would also be a logical fallacy since finding your own personal meanings in life when life has no meaning is a contradiction.

 

A life is different from All Life, which is different from All Things. I wouldn't expect the universe to care about anything, it's just space, and dirt. Where's the contradiction?