Alan Meyer posted on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:04:55 -0800 as excerpted: > I can't speak for anyone else since, not being a believer myself, it's > awkward for me to say what the purpose of God and religion would be if I > were to believe in God and religion but not believe in an afterlife or > an immortal soul. > > But, since we're just talking among friends here, I'll take a shot at it > anyway. > > A believer in God who did not believe in an immortal soul might still > argue that life has a purpose, and that there are higher callings in > life and lower ones. In fact I'd go so far as to say that even a > non-believer might (though he might not) agree with that.
Thanks. That'll take a bit to digest, but it at least seems to work at the question I raised. FWIW, I'm familiar enough with the humanist no-God moralistic arguments, and see them in what you wrote, which is, to the degree that I could foresee the argument, what I expected. But if there's no god than I could see an ethical world-view that emphasized what was best for the species, etc, while it seemed to me, outside of "something more than this life", that reasoning didn't really make sense for someone believing in a god or gods. You seemed to address that, the core of my question, at least to some extent, but that's the part that's going to take some time to digest, and I can't rightly reply to it until it has done so to some degree as I have to fit a bunch of new stuff into place against previous knowledge and assumptions, first. Anyway, thanks again. That seems to be at least very close to what I was after, if not directly addressing it -- I can't yet say on that point. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
