/lit/ - Literature

Accepting - or at least contemplating - suffering and death is the wisest thing you can do if living an "examined life" (I don't actually believe we will ever be able to live truly examined lives, as we will forever remain ignorant about almost everything concerning ourselves and the universe) is your goal. If you're an intellectually honest person, turning to religion will only lead you further down a spiral of despair once you inevitably realize you won't be able to fool yourself anymore. You may be able find wisdom and solace in religious texts, but forcing yourself to believe will never "cure" your nihilism. It works for people who never had to force themselves, your grandpa being one of them. He remained illiterate until the day he died, and was relatively happy until his death - according to you, at least. We can never know. The point is that once you've accepted certain truths and integrated them into your world view, turning to religion becomes impossible. Your grandfather never had to deal with what you, being literate and relatively well read, had to. That's why he could use religion as an existential crutch. You will never be able to find happiness and meaning that way. "The examined life" is neither meaningful nor meaningless. It just *is*. Living a life of contemplation won't lead to any rewards other than the satisfaction that comes with contemplation itself. You will still have to deal with the practicalities of life, and a whole host of other philosophical questions you can ask, but never truly solve. Unless you end up killing yourself, the only honest way to deal with your problem is contemplating suffering, death, loss and emptiness and hoping for a relatively pleasurable life.

Accepting - or at least contemplating - suffering and death is the wisest thing you can do if living an "examined life" (I don't actually believe we will ever be able to live truly examined lives, as we will forever remain ignorant about almost everything concerning ourselves and the universe) is your goal. If you're an intellectually honest person, turning to religion will only lead you further down a spiral of despair once you inevitably realize you won't be able to fool yourself anymore. You may be able find wisdom and solace in religious texts, but forcing yourself to believe will never "cure" your nihilism. It works for people who never had to force themselves, your grandpa being one of them. He remained illiterate until the day he died, and he died was relatively - according to you, at least. We can never know. The point is that once you've accepted certain truths and integrated them into your world view, turning to religion becomes impossible. Your grandfather never had to deal with what you, being literate and relatively well read, had to. That's why he could use religion as an existential crutch. You will never be able to find happiness and meaning that way. "The examined life" is neither meaningful nor meaningless. It just *is*. Living a life of contemplation won't lead to any rewards other than the satisfaction that comes with contemplation itself. You will still have to deal with the practicalities of life, and a whole host of other philosophical questions. Unless you end up killing yourself, the only honest way to deal with your problem is contemplating suffering, death, loss and emptiness.

>>18191331
The obvious reply to this is that both God and morality only exist in the human imagination. That's the point. We know how our Gods and moral philosophies - religious or secular - came into existence, so to speak, and it wasn't through the discovery or revelation of objective knowledge. Humans made it all up. That does not, however, mean that religion and moral philosophy aren't interesting or historically and philosophically significant. It just means that none of it is actually true. The majority of self-styled atheists deny this. Instead, they claim that, while moral knowledge isn't revealed to us by a higher being, it both 1) exists and 2) is attainable. Sam Harris' work concerning this topic is a perfect example of this kind of arrogant attitude that's so prevalent among atheists. The argument you're making only works on atheists who subscribe to moral realism, which is a pseudo-religious view.