Sully…

…why do you conspire to make me bananas?

As I've said before, Sully totally reminds me of someone with whom I'd be friends, someone with whom I'd constantly argue and to whom I'd extend (and from whom I'd receive) too little credit for being an intelligent person, because his (my) arguments made me (him) so infuriated. I would constantly wonder how he could be so clever about some things and so daft about others.

To be filed under Daft is his response to an atheist who explains that s/he finds meaning in "my own possibility and will to act in this world. I have the opportunity to interact with others and to create things. I have the chance to leave this world a bit better than when I came into it... for my children and for the rest of humanity. I don't do this because a particular flying spaghetti monster ordained that I do it and will punish me with his noodly appendage if I don't. I do it because I have the power and I believe that it is better for me if I help those around me. What else would give my life more meaning than that?"

Sully replied: "But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?"

There are many things wrong with that response, not the least of which is its being so resolutely juvenile that my instinctual rejoinder is a desire to give him a noogie. I'll leave it to you to parse out in comments the myriad other reasons that was a very stupid reply, should you be so inclined. (Or you can swing by Evil Bender or Pharyngula, linked, above for their thoughts, too.)

I guess if that's the game we're playing, though, my question would be "Why isn't making the world a better place by my own definition more meaningful than murdering people in the name of God?" Laws and ethics notwithstanding, murdering a lot of people is meaningful, but so is, say, curing disease, which may fall under an atheist's definition of what s/he's done to leave the world a better place than s/he found it.

Who's deciding the answers to these questions about intrinsic meaning, anyway? How can we possible measure it, when we're talking not about what our lives mean to others, but what they mean to ourselves. Seems to me, it's really up to each of us to decide what gives our lives meaning, and to keep our fucking noses out of judging other people's definitions of the meaning of their lives.