What is the point of searching for a purpose of life?

[Scott Mayers]

Not at all, Scott. Myths define ways of visualising reality, and are very linked to the sense of purpose. Now, as mythic understanding of reality has been challenged, what challenges it is the general model of physical evolution. This was mentioned some posts up.

There IS in a sense no sense in searching for purpose when - as Sthith himself has stated - the 'purpose' of existence is procreation and conveyance of genetic stuff.

I agree with that interpretation as it simply regards nature itself, not our emotions. As to our emotions, I agree with you. Yet once we learn of reality, it is difficult not to recognize that we have no real "purpose" other than to our own emotional desire for it.

I only glanced at the present article you mentioned in the recent magazine discussion and it happens to be about the actual use of myths that Plato used, not that HE himself was necessarily mythical. I thought that your statement was referencing something against Plato's efforts as being intrinsically mythical itself.

By the way, I'm guessing by your misspelling of our OP here, we might by chance agree that this sounds like some mythical beast of some long-forgotten language! I had to open up a separate page to try to spell it correctly!

I am not certain where you stand personally on religion and evolution. What is your particular stance? Are you for or against religion or some particular one? Are you in acceptance of evolutionary theory or not?

[The Inglorious One]

...you might better assume that there is no god and so free to chose your own [purpose].

News flash: the "father" of existentialism (what you are proposing here) was a theist.

News Flash: You don't know what the fuck you are talking about...... as usual.

It comes as no surprise to me that Hobbes doesn't know that he was talking about atheistic existentialism when he suggested that atheists are free to choose their own purpose. Nor does it surprise me that he does not know that the freedom -- indeed, the responsibility -- to find one's own purpose in life was "fathered" by a theist: the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

Finding one's own purpose relies heavily on the subjective life -- which is something atheists don't seem to realize or pay attention to. Deep truths, purposeful and meaningful truths, are not found so much in the free association, arrangement and recombination of objective facts, but by plunging deeply into subjective life. That is to say, while objective facts are important, how one relates oneself to those matters of fact is absolutely essential, more important than any matter of fact.

The following will not resonate with most here. On the contrary, most will call nonsense, or worse. But the fact that it does resonate with some should, though I'm sure it won't, give pause to surface dwellers to consider that maybe, just maybe, there is something they are missing.

My Central Revelation

You evolve inwards, ever in the direction of my creator soul. This is the province of myself that does not indwell you, but indeed is separate from you as the stars are isolated from a deep cave. This place is the source and destiny of your existence, and from it, you descend into the cave of your animal-origins where my voice falls silent to your choices.

My plan for your ascendance embraces every creature in all dimensions of all worlds. I do this by divesting myself of every function that is possible for another of my creation to carry out. That which I create is given the power to perform my role, thus I am hidden from your view because you have come to believe that I am that which I have created.

I am First Source, and your knowing of me is a thousand times removed. I dwell in the Central Universe so distant from you as to make space an unfathomable abstraction, and yet, a fragment of my self is set within your personality like a diamond upon a ring, and it will endure as certainly as I will endure. While there are those who believe I am a myth, I express to you that my world is the beacon of all personalities in all times, and whether you believe in me or not, you are unerringly drawn to the source from whence you were created.

I would prefer to be known to you at all times and places, but if I did this then the evolutionary journey of my creation would break down, and the teacher-student ordering of my system of ascendancy would falter. I have cast myself into numberless orders of beings that collectively constitute the evolutionary bridge of your ascendancy into my realm. There is no step of your journey that another has not already taken on behalf of those who follow.

I have formed these words with the help of my inmost creation, known to you, through these teachings, as the Central Race. Their record is placed upon your planet to catalyze – within those of your kind who are ready – an awakening of me as I truly am. This record will last for many generations, sometimes hidden from view, sometimes abstracted into symbols, sometimes collected into doubt, but always it will be my voice revealed upon your planet.

While it is not the first time I have spoken to your planet’s people, it is the first time I have spoken through my inmost creation and left an indelible, multi-dimensional record. On the surface of this record is a mythology of the Central Race, but if you find my voice within this mythology, you will see another facet to this record, of a personal inflection, that speaks directly to you, my child. It is this intimacy that I have encoded into this record that is symbolic of my hand reaching for yours, and it is this intimacy that will persist within your mind and heart when all else fails you.

My voice will help you reconnect with me. It will enlarge your vision of my domain, purpose, and my unyielding love for each of my creation, no matter where or how you live. When I have spoken before to your planet, it was through a prism of personalities that bent my voice and colored its tone. My mind’s voice will not travel to your world unless it is transmitted through my creation and translated into word-symbols your mind can grasp. My heart’s voice penetrates all worlds without translation as a sub-photonic light and inter-dimensional vibration that produces sound.

I am revealed to you in hopes that you will reveal to others what you have found in me. Not by sanctimonious words, but rather, by redefining our relationship and living in accordance with this new clarity. In so doing you will release what I have long ago stored within you – a fragment of myself, a dagger of light that renders your self-importance a decisive death.

Truly, this is my central revelation. I am here, beneath this mythology, to awaken your animal self to our relationship so you may slay your vanity. This is the distortion between us. It is not space or time that separates us and diminishes our conscious relationship. It is your desire to excel within the cave of your existence and derive gratification from this and this alone.

I will leave to others to define the psychological wisdom and common sense behaviors of success. My words penetrate elsewhere; to a place within you that is susceptible, innocent, faithful, and ever listening for a tonal hint of my presence. When it is found, this part of you – like an instrument entrained by a powerful resonance – will vibrate in accordance to my voice.

All of your religions teach the worship of a deity and a doctrine of human salvation. It is the underlying kinship of your planet’s religions. However, I am not the deity that your worship falls upon, nor am I the creator of your doctrines of human salvation. Worship of me in coin or moral consideration is unnecessary. Simply express your authentic feelings of appreciation to my inmost presence within you and others, and you broadcast your worship unfailingly into my realm.

This is the feeling that you should seek to preserve in the face of life’s distractions. This is the revelation of my heart to your heart. Live in clarity. Live in purpose. Live in the knowledge that you are in me and I am in you, and that there is no place separate from our heart.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Saludos Scott! I am not sure what you mean by 'misspelling'. Did I misspell or do you mean that in another sense.

When I mentioned evolution and such, I was attempting to capsulate Sthita's position (as I understood it). I think I can understand what you said earlier about that crafty and ironical demon Plato - or is it his character Socrates? - speaking in 'meta' terms about the myths. But when I referred to them I was taking them as face value: as 'exlanatory vessels'.

Personally, I think that what we are referring to here dryly with a somewhat clinical term of 'myth' is of vital importance. I might agree with you that such an 'area' or endeavor is emotional, except that I separate intellect and reasoning from the emotional engine (as it were).

Since Sthita is concerened that every post here is linked to the OP, I understand that 'cultural myths' define purpose and also value, relevancy, area of activity and much else. He is frustrated that the Creator-God, when he exited his mother's womb, was not standing there to welcome him into this plane of existence and hand him The Book to guide him through this troubling and not always pleasant sojourn on this planet-loka. Yet I would suggest that there is such material (if you will), and that it can be accessed.

While there is a scientific or philosophical current that desires to break all connection with mythic thinking, and to decry it as destructive to philosophy, as per the article I mentioned in PN, I go 100% in the opposite direction. And in this I am turning against currents and tides of the present. If this thread has not been 'eliminated' by the next go-round, and if I have not suffered some horrid voodoo-attack through the contempt channeled toward my noble person by 'my mortal enemies' here on PN Forum, I will include some regressive, some ultraconservative and reactionary thoughts by Thomas Carlyle inspired by the French Revolution.

[Hobbes' Choice]

It comes as no surprise to me that Hobbes doesn't know that he was talking about atheistic existentialism when he suggested that atheists are free to choose their own purpose. Nor does it surprise me that he does not know that the freedom -- indeed, the responsibility -- to find one's own purpose in life was "fathered" by a theist: the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.
]

Sk is simply not relevant. He's not the first to make that suggestion and won't be he last. Your futile attempt to steer the discussion towards the author of the only book you tried to read, yet fail to fully understand is noted.

But as I said before, you don't really know what you are talking about. Maybe someone else who gives a shit about SK will take the bait.

[The Inglorious One]

Sk is simply not relevant. He's not the first to make that suggestion and won't be he last. Your futile attempt to steer the discussion towards the author of the only book you tried to read, yet fail to fully understand is noted.

But as I said before, you don't really know what you are talking about. Maybe someone else who gives a shit about SK will take the bait.

Take it up with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, dimwit.

"Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the “father of existentialism.”

[sthitapragya]

If you do a search under The Myths of Plato you will come across a recent artticle in Philosophy Now on the topic of Plato's myths. The article, as I suspect is true across the board in PN, is critical of mythic thinking or the mythologising of reality. I was able to read the article when it came up through Google but could not access it directly through my browser. I am not sure you have familiarity with the presence and function of mythos within Occidental ideas and philosophy. But to understand the function of myth I think a good place to start would be the myths of Plato.

And this is how you keep hijacking topics. You can never give a straight answer, can you? The question is simple. Why has God not told you your purpose? I have no interest in myths and myths have no correlation what so ever with yours or my purpose in life. You are simply trying to divert the topic somewhere else.

You will keep asking this sort of question: "What truth? A way of seeing and understanding what?" and though answers will be given you, and have been given, you do not have the foundation to be able to take them in. I suggest that you gain more familiarity with the topic. There is no other way to respond to you.

You very well know that you keep saying you have given the answer and you have not. Otherwise it would be easy to repeat the answer which you will never do. And my question of the purpose can be extended to the search for truth too. If God wanted you to know the "truth", you would have known it. There is no reason for It to make you search for it.

Then you ask "What are you talking about?" when I state that the notion of evolution (the tenets of scientism generally) have replaced a mythic approach to understanding our existence here, in this place, in this plane, within this dimension of experience, as it might be called. You are asking me, a person who has seen his life moulded through his relationship with 'the invisible', or (to satisfy some here) who imagines this is the case, and who has, in a real sense, been given the life he has through his relationship with this 'invisible', to talk about how the invisible has NOT interacted with him and why I have not been provided with guidelines so to 'fulfil' a purpose in my life. But let's get clear here: This is your position. You do not have nor understand that relationship nor is it real for you. It can only be phantasy, delusion or delirium.

Again, distraction from the main topic. Your myth filibuster has nothing to do with purpose. And whether God is a delusion to me or not, you still cannot explain why It has not told you what purpose you are supposed to fulfill. There is no way a superior intellect will set up a system which is bound to fail.

The rest of what you write is a sort of frustrated 'Letter to God'

There is no frustration. I am simply pointing out that if there was a God, It would have told you what your purpose in life is. I am simply pointing out that your search for a higher purpose in life is not a noble pursuit but a foolish one because there is no escaping the fact that God would definitely have explained to you your purpose in life if It wanted you to fulfill that purpose. You cannot escape that conclusion.

Arguing about the existence of God is one thing, You guys are now actually trying to prove God to be inefficient. If there was a God and It had a purpose for you, there would be NO WAY It would not make it absolutely clear to you. Saying that It has done something so inefficient is an insult to God.

(I am making fun a little, don't get visciously upset and please - please! - don't destroy the thread) (and obviously I am still making hay with Lacewing's wicked and destructive act, please excuse).

You are the one destroying the thread with your constant digressions and distractions. I wish you would display some sportsmanship.

Again, you have next to zero background in the philosophy (true? or not true?) of ideas and the history of religious thinking, so how could you understand any part of it? And yet - in sincere fairness to you - I do not think your questions are at all irrelevant. I think you are only working to build your case for your grasp of the atheistic platform. This knot of issues I feel I confronted - and resolved - a long time ago.

And still I have you cornered. You have not resolved anything. Show me one passage anywhere that explains why God did not disclose your purpose to you and which makes sense. I dare you. You have no explanation for why God did not explain your purpose to you. It is clear that a God would have made your purpose clear, Anything else would make God inefficient. If you still argue that God made you for a purpose but did not tell you what it was and wants you to search for it, you are calling God inefficient and therefore insulting It. You can continue to do so. You are the one who believes in It. I have more respect for the efficiency of the God I do not believe in and therefore cannot believe that It made you for a purpose and then deliberately kept it from you.

[The Inglorious One]

There is no frustration. I am simply pointing out that if there was a God, It would have told you what your purpose in life is.

Dimwit. Why must God be your butler?

My Central Message

I convey this message to you whom I have stirred with the sound of my voice. These words are my signature. You may bring your doubt, your fear, your faith, or your courage; it matters not, for you will be touched by the rhythm of my voice. It moves through you like a beam of light that sweeps – if only for a moment – the darkness aside.

I dwell in a frequency of light in which finite beings cannot uncover me. If you search for me, you will fail. I am not found or discovered. I am only realized in oneness, unity, and wholeness. It is the very same oneness that you feel when you are interconnected with all of life, for I am this and this alone. I am all of life. If you must search for me, then practice the feeling of wholeness and unity.

In my deepest light I created you from my desire to understand my universe. You are my emissaries. You are free to journey the universe of universes as particles from my infinite womb with destinies that you alone will write. I do not prescribe your journey or your journey’s aim. I only accompany you. I do not pull you this way or that, nor do I punish you when you stray from my heart. This I do as an outcome of my belief in you.

You are the heirs of my light, which gave you form. It is my voice that awakened you to individuality, but it will be your will that awakens you to our unity. It is your desire to know me as your self that brings you to my presence so perfectly hidden from your world. I am behind everything that you see, hear, touch, taste, smell, feel, and believe.

I live for your discovery of me. It is the highest expression of my love for you, and while you search for my shadows in the stories of your world, I, the indelible, invisible light, grow increasingly visible. Imagine the furthest point in space – beneath a black portal, cast in some distant galaxy, and then multiply this distance by the highest numeric value you know. Congratulations, you have measured an atom of my body.

Do you realize how I am unfathomable? I am not what you can know, or see, or understand. I am outside comprehension. My vastness makes me invisible and unavoidable. There is nowhere you can be without me. My absence does not exist. It is this very nature that makes me unique. I am First Cause and Last Effect connected in an undivided chain.

There is no supplication that stirs me. No prayer that invites me further into your world unless it is attended with the feeling of unity and wholeness. There is no temple or sacred object that touches me. They do not, nor have they ever brought you closer to my outstretched hand. My presence in your world is unalterable for I am the sanctuary of both the cosmos and the one soul inside you.

I could awaken each of you in this very moment to our unity, but there is a larger design – a more comprehensive vision – that places you in the boundaries of time and the spatial dimensions of separateness. This design requires a progression into my wholeness that reacquaints you with our unity through the experience of separation. Your awakening, while slow and sometimes painful, is assured, and this you must trust above all else.

I am the ancestral father of all creation. I am a personality that lives inside each of you as a vibration that emanates from all parts of your existence. I reside in this dimension as your beacon. If you follow this vibration, if you place it at the core of your journey, you will contact my personality that lives beneath the particles of your existence.

I am not to be feared or held in indifference. My presence is immediate, tangible, and real. You are now in my presence. Hear my words. You are in my presence. You are within me more than I am within you. You are the veneer of my mind and heart, and yet you think yourself the product of an ape. You are so much more than you realize.

Our union was, is, and will be forevermore. You are my blessed offspring with whom I am intricately connected in means that you cannot understand and therefore appreciate. You must suspend your belief and disbelief in what you cannot sense, in exchange for your knowing that I am real and live within you. This is my central message to all my offspring. Hear it well, for in it you may find the place in which I dwell.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Sk is simply not relevant. He's not the first to make that suggestion and won't be he last. Your futile attempt to steer the discussion towards the author of the only book you tried to read, yet fail to fully understand is noted.

But as I said before, you don't really know what you are talking about. Maybe someone else who gives a shit about SK will take the bait.

Take it up with the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, dimwit.

"Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b. 1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish “golden age” of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the “father of existentialism.”

Somehow I don't think Stanford is interested in engaging with you either.
Try and stay on topic.

[surreptitious57]

The spirit of this thread is indicative of how far the atheist camp will go in order to sow confusion
or muddy the waters. With so much information easily available it is hard not to imagine that this
kind of straw man argumentation is more out of vindictiveness than genuine questioning

I can only speak for myself but in doing so I can categorically state that this is totally false as my own world view does not require any
one else to think like me. I am an apatheist who does not think God exists but I do not care if he actually does since I can not prove or
disprove that. So if it could be established that he does exist then I would accept it without reservation. So how other atheists think is
beyond my influence as it should be for I have no desire to control how any one thinks. They should be able to do think for themselves

[attofishpi]

Let us assume that God exists and It created the universe. Let us also assume that It created us for a purpose. It seems to me absolutely ridiculous that IT created us for a purpose and then sent us to this world without telling us what that purpose is. So now we are not only supposed to look for our purpose but to fulfill it once we find it.

Doesn't it seem like a very inefficient system?

Yes... absurd.

No... YOU are absurd.
All you atheists are so boring that you think that if there is a God it should lay everything out on some sort of silver platter. Yeah - fuck having any mystery in life...idiots.

Can you imagine how many people have not fulfilled their purpose because they could not figure out what it was before they got run over by a manic truck or mammoth before trucks were invented?

Like a cruel game.

Boo hoo - boo hoo - why am i not in some sort of heaven if there is a God? Boo hoo i deserve, i deserve give me give me give me!!

Why would an omnipotent all knowing God do something like that?

It wouldn't. But a manmade god would because humankind can be that twisted and cruel.

Yes it would. Earn it...possibly much like the sages and perhaps even God itself had to earn it you pathetic tossers.

How can the search for such a purpose be considered noble?

Because people like to worship themselves for what they choose to believe and do.

Because not everyone that believes in God, or like me, that KNOWS there is a God necessarily believes there is any purpose any moreso than an atheist. I personally believe the purpose of life, if there is one, is to love and procreate.

Isn't it a blunder on God's part that IT wishes us to do something on earth but forgot to tell us what that something is?

Yep, it makes no sense.

Where are you getting this idea that God wished us to do something on Earth? If anything God attempted to tell us what NOT to do.

If a child can understand this in a span of a few years, why has God not figured this out in all these millions of years since we arrived?

Because the manmade god makes no sense.

Idiocy. Because God is not communicating with you personally you are arrogant enough to suggest it cant or worse hasnt worked out how to!!

Doesn't it make more sense to demand from God that our purposes be very well defined if IT wants that purpose fulfilled?

It would if god existed... but even those who believe in god don't demand/expect these most basic, obvious, logical things. And I think that's because god actually serves a purpose other than being god -- and that purpose (for an individual) requires/prefers NO ANSWERS or challenges that might make it dissolve. It needs to be maintained at all costs (for its own private purposes).

Blah blah blah - boo hoo boo hoo - God hasnt communicated with me, God hasnt told me that i have a purpose boo hoo.

Why is it our fault if we cannot fulfill a purpose that we were not even told about?

It's not. We're doing our best in dealing with all of this... and there's clearly nobody at the helm. We are a free-floating ship across the ocean of space... and the sooner we accept that, the sooner we can hang over the bow and let the cosmic wind whip through our hair!
Even though I'm guessing your questions were aimed at theists... it was fun responding!

Yes it was fun responding - and im not a THEIST.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Once again, the only way (the only way) to get to the bottom of these 'questions' and also the conflict and variance between two sets of perspective about the nature of reality is to examine the tenets and the presuppositions that inform each perspective-set. I can think of no more clear statement. So, Sthita, noble atheist philosopher, I'd like to ask you if you agree? Do I need to make the question more clear?

OK: Your question is not really a question, it is an assertion, a platform, a set of conclusions. From that platform you have cobbled together a perspective which, in your mind and among those who share your platform and perspective, 'makes perfect sense!' and 'Dammit! Just answer the question, man, and stop messing with my mind!' What you are asking, in fact (and I suggest now seeing your question as a 'game' and I have said this before), is that I accept for predicates, your perspective, and agree with you.

You hope to wrest agreement if you cannot 'win' it conversationally. To me, this is an amusing - even a rather cute - spectacle and I cannot conceal from you that your display is entertaining. I am getting a kick out of observing the escalation in tone, and the underlining! and the repeated 'accusation' about hijacking. I prefer to see it like this though: Your mind has been hijacked by an absurd little fellow who imagines that he can 'insist' as-against the created world, and who carries on in something like a temper-tantrum. Underpinning this little fellow, his emotive engine as it were, is a certain amount of frustrated anger. But at who? The answer to that is A whole world that sees and thinks differently than you. The anger that you express - dark and a little mean I think - is shared by other folks here so it becomes a shared rehearsal. Politically, it will be interesting to see what you-all will be able to achieve. Elimination of threads? Banning?

But let me make it plain to you once again, and if I have to do it again it will come with insults: You don't tell me or anyone on this forum what to think, how to think, what thought is relevant and not, nor how to organise responses to the questions that are asked in a philosophical context.

There is very certainly, and definitely, and beyond and doubt, a point for searching for meaning any purpose in this life. I understand completely that you ask your 'question' because you cannot understand why life is as it is, or more properly that you understand it is like that because it is random, unplanned, there is no 'god' nor 'divinity' and thus no purpose to be revealed, but purpose to be chosen or decided by an individual or group. Your position is intelligible. Your position is registered, understood. But I have a strong sense that those who are here arguing with you do not accept the predicates that inform your position. Each in different ways, and from different background, offers alternatives. And I don't think any one of us is willing or interested in walking into a verbal corral, sitting down in the chair you have placed, and agreeing to your terms. Don't you think that would be sort of ... stupid?

My essential answer to you is that something indescribable, an intelligence, has very certainly made itself known to me in all the events of my life. With this statement I defeat your insistance that 'God has not revealed purpose'. Except I'd say that it is less about 'purpose' and more about 'quality of being'. I tend to think in terms of 'the purpose of an incarnation' or the purpose of a sojourn in this flesh-world. I would say then that many many different 'purposes' have been served and many many things have been made clear to me. I live now from that platform. Now, for you to get more insight into the processes by which these matter can be better understood, that is what is needed. Not in any sense the other way round.

[Lacewing]

Compared to the many theists I have had (and do have) personal relationships with, I can only conclude that the currently most vocal theists on this site have something seriously distorted and corrupted about them. I have never seen such childishness, idiocy, ego, projection, and contempt such as they continually demonstrate. These few who speak of knowing god in one capacity or another, reflect all of the darker aspects warned of by religious teachings, and NONE of the light! They simply keep trying to claw their way to the top of some imaginary heap of their own deluded making, and bathe themselves continually in their own putrid ooze.

Their delusions are of very limited value to engage in. Doing so only seems to feed them and encourage them to spew more. At least they serve as a good warning of the self-serving absurdities that humans can convince themselves of. They falsely claim to have such specific knowledge of atheists (an extraordinarily diverse and immense range of people), and yet they demonstrate a complete lack of awareness (and focus) about their own god. That their agenda is really all about glorifying themselves is completely transparent. Although it can be shocking to see that there are people like this, it explains a lot about the ways humankind remains stuck by its intoxication with itself, rather than realizing that there is SO MUCH MORE BEYOND IT, AND THAT IT IS A PART OF A LARGER SYSTEM. I suspect that a RAMP UP in psychotic delusional behavior is in response to an equally powerful force of transformation that is evolving our consciousness... which clearly threatens the old and limited as it brings in the new and expanded. Those who can't shift/evolve and accept their place WITHIN a larger system, will try to destroy everything that they see as a threat to their own delusional glory.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Let's review:

This is an oddly-structured attack, for it is suggested that you know theists who are not children, idiots, projectors, and contemptful. But those who write here are the bad apples. We represent what theology needs to purge itself of to be qualified to be a good friend of Lacewing?

There is no argument here at all, neither for nor against any aspect of this conversation at an ideational level. The purpose of this sort of post is only to accentuate the conflict, to augment it, and to further frustrate defining a ground where some level of exchange is possible.

By making this personal, you invite a thread to go way off-topic. (But this 'on-topic, off-topic' argument is not mine, it is yours).

The only real assertion is that 'humankind is stuck' but that there is 'so much beyond' humanity and that humanity is part of a larger system. But what 'system'?

And what is this 'force of transformation' that is 'evolving our consciousness'? That is an odd-sounding claim and implies some level of intention on the part of 'consciousness'. Yet nature has no will. By your own definitions any decision made, any goal sought, is only as a reult of a personal and human choice ...

[The Inglorious One]

I am an apatheist who does not think God exists but I do not care if he actually does since I can not prove or disprove that.

If what you say here is true, you live at the level of an amoeba and therefore have no reason to whine about life's apparent lack of purpose or complain about God not acting like your butler-teacher. If, however, you are a human being with hopes, dreams and aspirations like any other normal human being, then, from a purely logical point of view, without God...

...man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

You can say that the above is overly pessimistic, but you cannot say it's not true. To say you are not moved by such matters because you are strong enough and realistic enough to accept the truth of the human condition without entertaining unwarranted beliefs is only to admit to a lack of depth-perception. When you read My Central Message, for instance, you see words and the definitions of words, but what you do not see is the depth of what is being said: that the mind-numbing conceit and pettiness expressed in the OP (not to mention Lacewing's response) is pathetically inane -- something to be pitied rather than struck by a 2x4 as per my usual way of doing things.

It kills me to say this, but Hobbes is right about seeking our own purpose. But doing so without God in the mix is a pipe dream. It is antithetical to the human condition -- and there is real science to back up this claim. If you really don't care enough about life to delve deeply into it's biggest mysteries, then your existence is so dull, drab and meaningless that you might as well put a bullet in your brain.

[sthitapragya]

No... YOU are absurd.
All you atheists are so boring that you think that if there is a God it should lay everything out on some sort of silver platter. Yeah - fuck having any mystery in life...idiots.

How is asking God to specify the purpose for which he put me here so that I can fulfill it absurd?

I am assuming you work and have someone working under you.

Well, tell him to go on an errand somewhere.

Just don't tell him what to do.

And then insist that he finds out for himself what he is supposed to do and bloody well do it.

Then see how he looks at you.

It is ridiculous that you are supposed to find your purpose in life ( I specifically mean the one people believe God sent them to earth for). Any interpretations and conclusions one comes to on their own about there purpose in life are their own.

If however you do not believe that God sent you here for a purpose, there is no need to get so angry about it. This question is directed at those who believe that God sent them here for a purpose. If you do not, then cool. Chill and have a beer.