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Old 01-24-2004, 11:49 AM   #9 (permalink)
wilbjammin
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Quote:
Existence is absurd because we are free and without purpose, yes? But we can only be without purpose if there is no God to give our lives purpose.
So how do you sort through all of the belief structures that have God in it and find the one that really address the nature of a God that is silent? He writes about choosing to believe in God as a way that people give their own lives purpose. In fact, this is one of the main reasons that I have spent so much time reading existentialist books. Even if there is a God, does that really give us an intrinsic purpose? - It only would in the circumstance that you understand and embrace the meaning that you think God gave you and find it meaningful. Believing in God, for me, wouldn't be meaningful and I would only do it out of spite for being condemned to an absurd existence where I don't know why I exist and having a desire to withdraw myself from the anguish of my own decisions and greatly simplify things.

This is the same dilemma that Stephen Daedalus goes through in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He had to choose between being a subject of God, or his own God.
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