How can you live without a religion?

He did answer why. It's not very comforting but seems likely to be true.
>Q: WHY does my hair look the way it does?
>A: Because of genes.
>Q: Not how, WHY?
There really is no way to have a meaningful discussion with this line of thought.

It answers both to some extend.
Short of it is: why are we here? humans are nothing but complex gene machines.

Because physics.

I believe in God but not in that sense church forces.
As for afterlife I don’t really care.
If there is an afterlife - cool. Might be fun to explore it after this life comes to an end.
If not - eh, I focus on my current life most and foremost. It’s not something I can check while being here and no dead I ever knew when they were alive told me about it.
I just want to enjoy the life while I can. Memories of you will be forgotten soon anyway.

I pondered it a lot and came into conclusion
Religion is just a coping mechanism in the face of inevitable death
Humans are merely complex as hell biological machines, and once that machine "breaks" (dies) there is no longer a you capable of experiencing either afterlife nor death itself, thus there is no reason to be afraid of death
There is no higher purpose in life, but people are free and should pursue goals which are meaningful for them

it haunts me every day

I have a book for you if you want to crystallize your cope knowledge
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

I'm the first post and it's the main block towards true faith, but I do feel that with age I'll start to believe more even if it is cope. Death really becomes scary once it stops being an abstract thought

Are you me? That's exactly how I feel about life too.

Looks like an interesting book.
>Human life exists [...] symbolic world of human meaning.
This stuff always makes me feel like a brainlet.
I'd argue for an explanation through the lens of evolutionary psychology.
Death triggers a negative response because negligence of death is intuitively maladaptive.
Of course, we also generally feel for our kin and even strangers to some extend, but that would take a loooong post.

Why does it make you feel like a brainlet?
From my perspective he means that we find physical life very bland and lacking any sort of comfort when it comes to actual meaning.
So we build symbolic things like culture, religion and society which don't actually exist in physical concrete nature and are just artificial constructs that provide us with meaning.

there wasnt a before life and there isnt a afterlife
you pop in and out of existence for 50-80years and thats it make the most out of it

I don't need to believe in a human construct to feel better, I can just listen to music.

religion is something for ppl whove got dealt a bad hand in life to cope with their hardship
telling yourself all your suffering gonna be rewarded in the afterlife makes you able to endure is easier
if your lifes great theres no need for that

I've always been a bit envious of religious people, but unfortunately I cant bring myself to believe in any of that. So, yeah, I worry about mortality, but its not liek there is anything I can do

So you've had babbys first existential crisis? Good for you.

fine
no
to fuck and procreate (the last one i have failed so far)

>How can you live without a religion?
I just don't belive in a god or simmilar concepts.
>I mean arent you scared of death
Define scared, I don't want to die or anything, but I know I will die eventualy.
>or wonder if there is an afterlife or not?
It is rather unlikely, but sounds nice.
>Dont you ever wonder why we are here?
We are here because we where born, there is no given purpose to life.
Make of it what you want from it.

I do wonder about all of those things, and i do not believe religion is the answer. If you believe in a religion, you are not believing in a god, you are believing in humans. And you are believing these humans have witnessed the answer, without exploiting it for self benefit. Any actual god could present himself any day with ease, and would become the true world leader, yet 0% of them do. My problem with religions is not distrust in gods, but in humans. I feel like it is a dishonesty to oneself to blindly follow religions and not learning about how fascinating our existence is trough science, and how fragile yet perfect our universe was created, how if we changed the value of gravity just a tiny bit, no stars could be created in the universe. If you believe science disproves anything about any higher beings, you do not know anything about science. I respect that for the millions of years human have wandered without the answers to the universe, i might be one of the ones who will never know, and that no matter how hard i search, i will not find an answer today.

Music is a human construct

wanting to understand the universe is setting you up for failure

Personally I get all my advice in life from comics

Attached: z3i8X.jpg (1235x766, 404K)

Yes, but it's something I can directly experience and not at all comparable to religion.

I am really struggling here.
How you put it, it does sound very appealing and intuitive.
But I still fail to reconcile this view which appeals to culture and meaning with my ideas.
Do humans create culture (as a result of bland physical nature) or simply adopt and spread/mutate ideas?
I can't even begin to question what meaning might be without doubting myself at every turn.
It's just too easy to woo around a topic, semantically molding words to fit the arguement.

You can interpret music itself as a religious experience

>Do humans create culture (as a result of bland physical nature) or simply adopt and spread/mutate ideas?
They do both, someone gets the ball rolling and then everyone adds his input (or not). Culture in the end is just ideas, they're not separate things. And the evolution of culture happens through the mutation of ideas.
Humans create culture in order to cope with death. The artist creates works of art that he hopes will outlast him and keep him in the memory of others, the scientist does the same with his discoveries. The writer does the same thing, religious people take the view that there's something after this physical world (again an artificial construction that assures their immortality).
Basically life is meaningless and all our efforts are to cope with this meaninglessness by creating meaning.

>I can't even begin to question what meaning might be without doubting myself at every turn.

Meaning is hard to pin down, basically its the thing that makes life worth living for you

That's how I see it

Like.. when i set up my record player and amplifier, put on a vinyl.. it's a sort of little ceremony, followed by bliss os sound. It's not the real deal, but i'd argue it's close enough

Hardly, anything (from going to the bar to cleaning the bathroom) could count as a religious experience then.

>Humans create culture [...] assures their immortality
I can see your argument, and it's true if your see works of art, science and works of writing as units of culture, I see no reason to not to.
But surely these people (artist and alike) also in part performed their arts/made their discoveries for money. To sustain their families, feed themselves, donate. More or less give in to perhaps evolutionary evolved drives.

>Humans create culture in order to cope with death and sustain themselves
Would be just as correct and perhaps even then too shallow.

Sorry for the long reply if you still see this, I have a hard time collecting my thoughts.

There is no doubt that the reasons people have for their behavior is multifaceted. But at its essence it can be reduced to the same thing, you will die at some point and evolutionary speaking you don't want to die. The fear of death is programmed into you.
People can try to escape the fear through a lot of ways, but even their need to sustain their family can be reduced to a way for you to become immortal and surpass your limited physical existence. In your mind, your kids are part of you and if they survive then in a a very concrete way you continue to live in the world even after your death. It all comes down to your so called immortality project as shown in the book.

Again don't take anything here as a definitive argument. It's just one of many arguments people have regarding the meaning of life, and you can only find truth by taking all of the arguments within you and letting them fight out to see which is the strongest.

I am freeeeeeeeeee