Comment by MattPalmer1086

3 months ago

You seem to assume that you can only have a meaning to life if there is an afterlife.

Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.

You may ask "but what does it matter if we are all dirt". It matters to them, even if there is no godlike perspective above it all. To be honest, I'm not actually sure why having an afterlife or some super-being would create any more explicit meaning for an individual life.

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MattPalmer1086

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mlrtime  3 months ago

One can make the argument that certain religious practices would help a person realize what OP is feeling all the time about morals, not just in front of their death bed.

Lots of replies here about after life, and just doing the right thing because you're supposed to or "empathy", yet there are a set of people like OP who only observe this when their life is put in front of them for review, maybe they do need religion?

smitty1e  3 months ago

> Most people judge themselves against a narrative that matters to them. Most people do not want to cast themselves as a villain in their story.

This is a reasonably assertion as far as it goes.

At the risk of being a dripping faucet, I'm poking at "Why?", given an inevitable return to the dust from which all came.