What is your opinion on Existence?

[FalloutJack]

{1} We're here because we're here. I'm not too worried about why. I like being.

{2} It's a thing meant to be enjoyed, so it saddens me when others cannot or, in fact, make it so others will never.

{3} Well, from my perspective, the universe ceases to exist. Without me, you all may as well be gone because I won't BE anymore.

 

[Fbuh]

42

 

[mental_looney]

It's pretty fun, I'd rather it didn't have to end :<

 

[AmaterasuGrim]

Existence isn't something you can really know it's just what ever you want to believe it to be right.

We could say it's the matrix.
Could say we are already dead & don't know it.
Could say we made by some ultimate being for what purpose we may never know.
Could say we are made by some alien race or taken from other races & put here for some weird reason.
And a million more other possibilities but these are just my main one's from films & stuff

 

[penguindude42]

It's pretty fun, I'd rather it didn't have to end :<

It doesn't end. At least, if you possess a soul.

Which only I, as well the various other beings outside this simulation, possess.

I am the most homesick person who ever lived. Hm.

~Tom

 

[Dango]

Existence is nice, I quite enjoy it.

From a philosophical stand point, I doubt we'll ever know any point for existence beyond the one we make for ourselves.

 

[Iron Lightning]

As I wasn't expecting this kind of feedback, I believe it is now time to let you in on my personal perception of life. If you find my ideas radical, please do not express hatred or any similar feelings, just ignore me.

WHY ARE WE HERE?
Probably the first question to ever cross man's mind, along with "What will I have for dinner?". A question that, unlike the second, remains up to this day an unanswered one, as are most of our philosophical endeavours. Hard as I have tried, I haven't progressed far. So, Why are we here, on this planet called Earth?
- One of the very first things I thought is that there is no meaning (in the human sense) of life. As Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote, "the universe is fundamentally alien" and any attempt of man to understand it is futile. Something similar to this is the "universe within universe" theory, which states that our universe is nothing but a particle somewhere in the atom of another universe. Endless!

The notion of "universe within universe" is not a theory in the scientific sense as it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

- Perhaps, to continue my references to H. P. Lovecraft, we are an experiment. Yes, call me the real-life Fox Mulder, but it is highly probable that the "creator" is nothing more but an alien race, which created us in order to gain answers. Think of how we study bacteria: they build an entire civilization of their own in very short time, and we simply destroy them when we get our answers. Are we not Gods to them? Do they ponder about their existence as we do about ours? What if god is nothing more but an egotist, selfish, stress and hatred-ridden bastard just like man, who has created us for goals more "human" (to battle others like him/her, to boost his/her self-esteem etc) and less "divine"?

Why do we need a creator?

WHAT IS LIFE?

Consciousness

Indeed. Life is consciousness. But what is consciousness?
- Is it the opposite of death? If it is, why do we think of "death" as an "after-life", i.e. continued consciousness?

Consciousness is not the opposite of death (whatever that means) it is merely the stage upon which the world acts. We think of "death" as an "after-life" because the idea of continued consciousness is much more comforting than the simple end of consciousness.

- Could we actually be "dead"? What if all our life is nothing more but internal stimuli induced by our brain? In fact, it is now commonly accepted within psychologists' and neurologists' circles that one can never and by no means be sure about what one witnesses in life. I could actually be a crazed madman in an asylum and all this could be in my mind.

I know it sounds impossible, but it is. Think of it: How can one be sure about what we call "reality"? H. P. Lovecraft (again) wrote that "men of broader intellect know there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal".

Cogito ergo sum, true enough.

- Strictly speaking, life (as well as death) is nothing more but a time span.

Not really, it's pretty much just when the brain is alive (for humans anyway.)

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO US AFTER WE DIE?
Will we live again (religious afterlife) or perish forever (nihilism)?

Well, that's a bit of a mistake. The nihilistic viewpoint is that after death all consciousness will simply cease.

- What if, as I have mentioned above, we are already dead? I mean, the way life is, I would compare it more to hell than heaven. What if life is Purgatory? What if we are tested (wars, crime, truth, honesty, helping others) and, according to our actions, when we die, we are truly going to be born? What if this is nothing more but a miniature or a caricature of the real life?

Oh yeah I heard this idea in a couple ancient story books. I don't have any reason to believe that anything happens after we die. The idea of the afterlife is another unfalsifiable hypothesis.

- What about all our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences of this world? What about our conscious "energy"?

One of the first things you learn in Physics is that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another (chemical energy in wood is burned to create heat and light, etc). If there is such a thing as a soul, in the name sense of things, then I can only believe that it's just another form of energy... just a type we cannot detect (yet, if ever). When we die, said energy is released or moved into a different form... the next life, per se.

Exactly. Does energy get destroyed? No. Does it get turned into something else? Yep.
So, what does this all mean? Are we going to go through this hell we call "life" again, or are we going to live something different?

Well, any soul or spirit would not be energy. Energy is an exact measurable quantity and can take forms like heat, kinetic, potential, electric, nuclear, etc. No one has measured any form of energy in the human body that can not be explained by biological and physical processes. Therefore any soul or spirit would not be subject to the laws of thermodynamics.

This is a nice video on the subject of souls:

 

[JCBFGD]

Spoiler: I feel this is appropriate, and it sums up my feelings on the matter