What led you to God?

A car has an objective, formal purpose.Humans have subjective purposes. All subjective purposes are in the long run arbitrary. One might say, my purpose in life is to help poor people. Another might say, my purpose in life is to turn all corners into curves, because curves are more beautiful than corners.
These two purposes are both equally subjective in the long run.

Robin,Well, can you relate purpose to children or the caring for children?lfen

It's another subjective purpose. Take your pick.

This makes no sense to me. It seems obvious to me that the formal purpose of a car is to propel people around from place to place.
As I said before, one might devise all sorts of other purposes for a car, but none of these are the formal purpose. You could use it as a decorative item. Young boys could use it as a place to hide out and smoke. You could use it as a music-maker and never drive the thing at all. You could use it as research project on toxic emissions. You could use it as the subject of a poem--"Ode on a Chevy." These are all personal purposes, not formal.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-18-2006 10:03 AM

I suppose that it is debateable whether the purpose is entirly within ones own mind or whether it arose outside of the mind.This message has been edited by Phat, 01-18-2006 09:13 AM

Well, that's perfectly sensible. I'm telling you what seems to me the fact about the nature of human life. Our lives are ephemeral, of no more significance than the howling wolves, or for that matter, the fly we just swatted.I'll tell you in what sense this fact matters to me: I'm not interested in maintaining a view of human life that is laced with sentimentality.

Robin,Are you using "purpose" as synonymous with "function" as in use? Humans use things, even other humans. You are wanting humans to have been designed by something else to be used for some purpose this something else has? Why? Why can't humans have their own purpose(s)?I'm really not understanding what this discussion is about, or why or where the problem is.lfen

What is the purpose of a stick?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

That's right. It's not a matter of what I want. I'm just stating what seems to be the nature of human life. We have no objective purpose in living. We have purposes that we make up--that's all.

Just a reminder that threads close at 300 posts.Carry on

Robin,Emotion and sentiment are a part of the function of the human brain. They are part of our experience, of the way we view life. I suspect only sociopaths are capable of holding a viewpoint that doesn't contain something of sentimentality that is to say are capable of not caring about anyone or anything else in the world.Have you read any of U.G. Krishnamurti?lfen

We could test that, by observing your behavior. If we discover that you are the CEO of a corporation that makes its income by ripping off poor people, we would have excellent reasons to dispute that it is your purpose. Here is how to determine the purpose of a car.Start the motor. Put the car in gear. Then jump out. Now watch the behavior of the car as it carries out its purpose.After that test, I think you might agree that a car has no purpose. It has a use (for us), but not a purpose.What you are calling a "formal purpose" of the car is really your purpose for the car. It isn't the car's purpose at all.Humans don't have a formal purpose (as you use that term), only because we don't have purposes for other people. There were times in the past when it was common to have purposes for other people. But, thank God, slavery was abolished and we don't do that any more.

What you are saying is so clear and logical, why doesn't anyone get it? And you DID say it better than I did, in fewer words. More than once.

Subjective purposes (or what I called lower-case plural purposes), are determined by ourselves or by the thing itself.Cars don't have subjective purposes.Objective purposes (or what I called capital-P Purpose), are determined by the maker of the thing, including human beings IF we have a Maker, and IF He had a reason for making us rather than just tossing a bunch of nuts and bolts together, or making a chemical soup to see what it could do.RR is right about the objective Purpose of cars. Yes, their use is their formal Purpose, or their objective Purpose. What they were made for.If we have no Maker, he is also right about there being no formal Purpose or objective Purpose for human beings. We have only our varied subjective purposes.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-18-2006 01:03 PM

I'm not talking about "not caring." Of course one cares about other people and about one's activities. A sentimental view of human life is one in which one adopts a certain belief because it makes one feel good (or bad, for that matter), or one slurs over what human life is really like with vague, pleasant-sounding comments, or one ignores what human life is really like completely. By "human life," I mean human life as a whole, not the life of this or that person.