Comments

1. Posted by: Scott on March 10, 2009 at 5:07 pm

   I am not Dallin. However, as a former mormon, I have some thoughts…

   This question is so confusing to me. It is confusing because I have not heard a mormon answer it all that well either. The typical answer goes something like this: “The purpose of this life is to get back to heaven — hopefully the highest kingdom. That is, this life is a test.” That sounds good… until you dig a little deeper. A couple of points:

   (1) Why were we sent here for the test instead of completing it in heaven. We apparently had free agency there — remember how Lucifer was able to choose a different path and apparently convince 1/3 of heaven to go along with it? Why send everyone down, with no *real* information about what to do,in order to figure out who is worthy? Doesn’t this sound odd?

   (2) If the purpose of this life is to get to the next life (and again, hopefully in the highest kingdom), what is the purpose of the next life? Mormonism, again, provides little by way of an answer. Most believe that it is to, basically, repeat the above cycle. Create a new world, send people down for a blind test, and hope for the best. But, what about those who don’t have “God” abilities (only those in the highest kingdom can make worlds, right?). What is the purpose of their lives? Mormonism has no answer for this. And, what is more interesting, any answer provided to this question would also work for the purpose of this life for an atheist.

   As an atheist, the purpose of my life is to learn and love in order to leave this world a better place for future generations. It is why I went to school, why I work, and why I try to make meaningful connections with people.
2. Posted by: Joshua Steimle on March 10, 2009 at 5:54 pm

   Well, since Dallin is taking his time responding we’ll give this column over to Scott for the time being.

   I can only answer according to what I know, and perhaps you’d get a more complete answer from someone else in the LDS Church who knows more than I do, but I would say it’s rather presumptive to assume that because you haven’t yet heard Mormonism provide an answer to your question that the answer isn’t provided at all. But to try and answer your questions with my speculative answers:

   1. Why have the test on earth rather than in heaven itself? In my mind, being in heaven means being in the presence of God, and it’s not much of a test if you know God’s there looking at you all the time. Obviously some were willing to rebel against God in spite of that, but what about those who wouldn’t rebel against God to his face? The beauty of us being separated from God’s presence and forgetting everything is that we’re free in a way we weren’t completely free in heaven. We’re in a sort of “limbo” here on earth, where everything is uncertain and nobody knows for sure what’s going on, and therefore everyone has a tendency to do what they want to do. If people want to believe in God in a certain way and therefore live their lives a certain way, they do, and if they don’t want to believe in God, they don’t. Either way, they prove what they want, although far be it from me to judge what somebody really wants based on their actions. I suspect when we get on the other side we might be surprised as to who was doing well on the test and who wasn’t. But the point is that it’s an ingenious way to separate those who want to be like God from those who want something else, and it works out such that when we’re all judged there won’t be any disputing it, because we’ll see that every one of the hundreds of choices we make each day went towards proving who we wanted to be and what we truly wanted to do for the rest of eternity. Without separation from God this couldn’t happen.

   2. Mormonism is pretty clear in its teachings that the purpose of all life is happiness. This is a rather logical conclusion, since if you’re happy, then nothing else matters, right? Therefore it’s not the purpose of life that is the mystery, but how to achieve true happiness, and for many–defining what true happiness is. The purpose of this life and the next is happiness, and so let’s think about things from God’s perspective. He knows everything, so learning can’t make him happy because he already knows it all. He can do anything, so there’s nothing he can control or do to make himself happy. Playing pool wouldn’t be any fun if you could make every shot and there was no challenge to it. Maybe it’d be fun for a day, but it’d get boring pretty fast. But what if you could teach others to get good at pool? You might be able to find some fulfillment in that. And the only way God can find fulfillment is in having children and helping them to become like he is. As he has more children who become like him and experience the joy he feels, it increases his joy, the same way a father in this life gets joy out of seeing his children grow up to become productive, happy adults.

   What about those who don’t become like God? The scriptures say they become angels/servants if they’re in the Celestial Kingdom, but that doesn’t tell us much, and we know even less about what the people in the other two kingdoms end up doing for eternity. And I’m not sure if they’re happy and at peace because they end up living the lives they wanted to live anyway, or if it’s a bittersweet happiness because they live for the rest of eternity knowing they could have had so much more but they chose something else. I don’t know, and I suspect the reason God doesn’t tell us much about it is because what’s the point in talking about anything less than the ideal? If I know that doing a certain something will make my children happy I’m not going to spend an inordinate amount of time telling them how to get halfway there. I’m going to focus on helping them do things 100%.
3. Posted by: Dallin Woolstenhulme on April 18, 2009 at 1:01 pm

   Ok… so I took way more than my allotted time to respond to this… sorry about that.

   The original question here to me was: “What is the purpose of your life?”

   Well, the easiest and simplest answer to it is “do I need a purpose?” The way I look at life is “as long as I keep waking up in the morning and making it through the day without dying, then there’s another day for me to do stuff.”

   That’s actually a really broad question, but what I’m assuming you’re getting at with it is similar to what the Church proposes – They put the questions in your head, and then answer them. For example – “where did I come from?” “why am I here?” and “where am I going after I die?” And the answers for those being, respectively, “pre-earth existence” “to make the right choices and get back to Heaven” and “depending on what I choose – one of the three kingdoms.” BUT what if none of that really matters? As a believer in evolution I believe that people are just really smart animals. How many chimps do you think wonder about where they came from, or what will happen to them when they die? My point is that it is not essential to life to know these things, or really to even wonder about them. Does pontificating about the answers make your life any better than mine – when I don’t spend time thinking about it?

   From what I know of the church, the argument for having these questions and answers is that it will make you happy and be a better person, so lets examine that.

   Here is the moral code that I live by: [simplified for time/space requirements]

   # helps me or others, or generally makes life better for me or others = good > go for it!

   # harms [or has great potential to harm] myself or others = bad > don’t go there!

   Does the Church have a leg up on my moral code with all it’s extra rules and regulations? You might believe so, but I really don’t agree.

   [I hope none of this comes across as confrontational - it's not meant to be.]
4. Posted by: Joshua Steimle on April 20, 2009 at 9:54 am

   I won’t take anything you say as being confrontational as long as you give me the benefit of the doubt as well I think we’ve probably both matured a bit since 1994, or at least that appears to be the case with your hairline and my gut.

   I think what’s interesting about examining “purpose of life” questions for religions vs. atheist people is that so much of my motivation stems from my religious upbringing that sometimes I have to sit down and think “Do I really want to do this, or am I just doing it because that’s how I was brought up, or because I think I’m going to get a future reward for it, or because it’s my duty, etc.?” Whereas perhaps for you and other atheists the only question is “Do I, of and for myself, really want to do this independent of any outside influence?”

   Sometimes I feel like Rex Banner on the Simpsons where he says “It’s not up to us to choose which laws we obey. If it was, I’d shoot everyone that looked at me cock-eyed.” except I’d change it to say “If there were no laws…I’d shoot everyone that looked at me cock-eyed.” That is, if there were no laws (meaning God’s laws) what would I really do with my life? Would I become a hedonist seeking nothing more than maximizing my own pleasure with women, strong drink, and Ben & Jerry’s, or would I go out and become the next Mother Teresa because that’s what would really make me happy?

   I then project this onto atheists by thinking “Well, if these people aren’t governed by any law other than ‘if I want to do it I will’ then what’s to keep them from raping my women and burning my villages?” But then again I’ve never heard of any villages being burned by roaming bands of atheists, hence the purpose of this post to help me understand better where atheists are coming from.

   Ok, I gotta get to work and leave this stuff for Sundays when I can concentrate better.
5. Posted by: Dallin on April 20, 2009 at 10:58 am

   I don’t know the exact statistics for people in jail, but I’ve heard it said that less than 1% of them claim to be atheists. In other words – about 99% of people who did something wrong still think that there’s a God up there watching them do it… so why do they still do it, and what is it keeping the atheists out of jail? As you state, one might expect that a person with no “external controls” of right or wrong would then feel completely free to do whatever they wanted… but that is indeed not the case.

   Here’s my explanation for it: Atheists obey laws because they don’t have to be convinced of the reasons why. We don’t wait for someone else to tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. Even if there were no law, there would still be reasons not to rape women and burn villages – because what goes around comes around. There would at least be retaliation, if nothing else. Contrary to some people’s belief Jesus didn’t come up with “Do unto others as you would have done to you” – it’s been around since the beginning of civilized society/recorded history.

   This line of thinking brings to mind an article someone posted a little while back on my atheist group message board:
   http://www.humaniststudies.org/enews/index.html?id=219&article=7

   There’s a great deal of discussion that can go on just in relation to that article, so maybe after reading it you might want to start a new thread or something.
6. Posted by: Joshua Steimle on April 20, 2009 at 11:08 am

   Maybe the criminals get religion after they get thrown in jail