Chemicals... · 9:31am Dec 29th, 2014
This has been something that has been on my mind a while, and I thought it may or may not be better to put this down here if for no other reason than to record my thoughts...(if they can even be called that anymore...)
Oh! But before we begin. I'd like to get this out of the way now so you don't get all uppity or emo on me, but...
WARNING! Depressing content ahead! WARNING!
I have been thinking about this(and I use that term in its loosest sense) for a while now and I have come to the conclusion, that we are nothing more than a series of chemical responses to the various chemical responses in the environment. Every action you have performed in your life, every thought you have ever had is nothing more then a protracted series of chemical reactions, in a chain of groups chemical reactions in response to whatever created everything(and it maters not what created everything in the first place, as whatever it is, is also bound by the same chain of action and reaction that makes the universe what it is). Every thing you have ever done, everything that you are, and everything that you will ever do are meaningless actions, because you were pre-determined to do them.
Not even that. We are the slowly fading noise of an explosion.
2685145 Wouldn't that be more of a side-grade than an up/down grade?
^Implying meaning requires free will.
Meaning is the end, purpose, or significance attributed to something. The only thing that can attribute things such as purpose or significance is a mind (or a society, which is merely a collection thereof). But your mind is merely a "series of chemical responses to the various chemical responses in the environment". Every attribution your mind makes is predetermined by the system of rules that form the environment! Therefore, aren't they invalid?
No, idiot! Even if an event is predetermined, its occurrence is not invalid. If a building falls and crushes a person, do you say the person wasn't crushed because the building has no free will? The human mind is a computer made of chemicals, and has been programmed to make attributions. Just because these attributions are predetermined by the programming of the mind, does not somehow nullify the mind's act of making the attributions.
Meaning is a social construct designed by people to make understanding the world easier. Just because we only seek to understand the world because of chemical responses doesn't mean that our pursuit has no meaning. It just means that the meaning was set in place by the same system that designed us.
And isn't understanding that system that basically what science is? Force = mass times acceleration wasn't the result of a brilliant mind conjuring up a magical formula that broke the laws of the universe, it was the result of a brilliant mind discovering the boundaries placed upon the universe and putting it into a formula our limited minds can understand. And just because that brilliant mind was predetermined by the laws of the universe to do so, does not lessen the impact of what occurred as a result.
Cry about fate all you want, no matter how predetermined your world is, the impact of the events that occur are still meaningful to you because you give them meaning. Just because the universe does not care about you, it does not stop you from caring about you.
TLDR: I'm going to devour all of you fetid mongrels anyway, so stop crying and enjoy the precious moments you have left.
-LORD SMOOZE, EATER OF WORLDS
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents - the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts - i.e., Materialism and Astronomy - are mere accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.
-CS Lewis
TL;DR: Nihilism babies are 2cute.