Quote:
Originally Posted by MattyC
Can you call it an "open lie to himself" if it's what they truly believe? Seeing as we don't know the answer to the question, coming up with our own answer and living by that is just as much of an option as anything else, isn't it? Is it anymore of an open lie to oneself than the idea that being good during your life on Earth grants you access to a heavenly kingdom of righteousness?
I would also say that you can hold that your life carries moral weight without the necessity of an afterlife to strive for (for lack of a better term). I could think that our lives are all completely meaningless from the standpoint of "we have 80-90 years hear and that's it", and still be of the opinion that my life has a moral weight in the way that I would still like to see a moral progression of humanity overall and I contribute to that during my life by being a good human and treating others with respect.
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See, I don't think they really do believe that it is all for nothing. And if they do, then they are far more helpless then they pretend.
As Solzhenitsyn put it, beneath all of our glad-hand, happy consumerism, therapeutic talk, is the howl of existentialism.