Reading Time: 17 minutes First, let me apologise for the delay in this post. When I volunteered to help Jonathan with content, I opted to take a Friday afternoon slot, as that suits my work week. The sheer volume of sources that I pulled together for this piece has made this somewhat more than a 4-5 hour job (indeed, […]
Meaning & Purpose
Posted inEthics, Meaning & Purpose, Philosophy, Science
There’s No Such Thing as Free Will, But we’re better off believing in it anyway.
Reading Time: 6 minutes This is the title of a recent article, by Stephen Cave, in the Atlantic that is worth reading. Let me lay out its basic premises and see if you agree. If you have read any of my books or this blog for very long, you would know that I am a staunch believer that libertarian […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose, The Secular
Philosophy 101: Existentialism
Reading Time: 4 minutes Last night we had a Tippling Philosophers session in a lovely pub in Portsmouth, and covered existentialism. I thought it would be a good time to continue my philosophy 101 series which has so far covered: The philpapers results Socrates Plato Existentialism is a term that pops up a lot, even in the news these […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
On God Dictating your Meaning or Purpose
Reading Time: 2 minutes I have this problem with the idea of God impressing his own meaning or purpose on your life; that you must somehow adhere to these supposedly objective ideals. It’s like me designing a spade in order for the spade to dig up turf on a Tuesday morning. Imagine that the spade was sentient. Even if […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Does Faith Give Meaning To Life?
Reading Time: < 1 minute Religious believers say that faith gives “meaning” to their life. As a lifelong nonbeliever, I do not understand that. My life is what I make of it…what I DO with it. How does sitting and praying to God or believing in God give meaning to life? It may give some people solace…to believe that death […]
Posted inEvolution, Meaning & Purpose, Philosophy
Meaning & Purpose Concerning Animals, Including Humans
Reading Time: < 1 minute The big mistake made so often by both religious, and often non-religious, is that somehow we are a special animal. A not-really-an-animal animal. But we are not. Special, that is. Okay, so we’re special in that we are top of the class. We can do some seriously cool and clever stuff (and some downright terrible […]
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
Living Intentionally: The Reason-Guided Path To Success
Reading Time: 3 minutes How do we use reason to guide our path to success, meaning the ability to achieve our goals and have what we want? We need to focus on living intentionally, by following three basic steps: Evaluating Reality Clearly, to2. Make Effective Decisions, that 3. Achieve Your Goals. To learn more, check out this video, […]