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Over the past few weeks (and sometimes in the past), I've been thinking why we or any organism exists. Taking a look at evolution, life began as single celled organisms, and after countless millennia, the dna of those single celled organisms mutated trillions of times into the complex multicellular humans of today. Now unlike any other organism, only humans were given the power of knowledge that led to the society of today, but why didn't any other organism gain such intelligence? It's as if we humans were chosen to become intelligent, yet I see no purpose for this intelligence, which sometimes leads me into depression....

What's your opinion of this?

My opinion is this: Evolution. Intelligence is a survival trait--no choosing is necessary. Why didn't other species get this ability? Because when you're a killing machine on legs you don't need it. Somewhere along the line, mutations made the ancestor of humans and apes. Since it couldn't survive any other way, it evolved intelligence. Now, you say, the odds of this are very low. I won't argue with that. But with so many planets in the universe and so many varieties of life on this one, SOMETHING was bound to become inttelligent.

So I would say, no, there isn't a grand purpose to intelligence.

But is there a purpose to being alive? In the grand cosmic sense, I would say no, there isn't. The universe doesn't care if we live or die. But in the personal sense, I would say that yes, there is plenty of purpose to being alive: to experience things, to learn, to grow, to enjoy what you can--to exist. In my mind, being alive is, philosophically speaking, its own purpose.

All that exists exists for some scientific reason. Every species has their own degree of intelligence, it just so happens that this species (us) is very intelligent. The way I see it at least.

One word: Reproduction

Do we have to start this all over again?

If there is no purpose to life, then why should it be physically possible for life to come into existance?


The purpose to reproduction is to allow new generations of life to exist, though people now mainly do it for pleasure....

If I did not exist, I would be very bored.

You would have never felt any emotion, thought, or instinct feeling if you would have never existed.

Nope, no reason or meaning. Welcome to Nihilism.

That statement makes no sense. Justify it, please; I'm curious to hear your reasoning. Not everything needs to have a purpose. Asteroids, for example, don't exactly do anything important for the universe. If you believe in God, then yes, he must have had some reason for creating the universe. But there doesn't necessarily need to be a philosophical reason justifying a thing's existence to let it exist.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

There isn't any purpose for life to have come into existence. All that life is about is simply reproducing to create additional organisms into existence, burdening them with natural selection, so that the organism will either reproduce and die, or will be killed before the possibility of reproducing. Even worse, organisms that are born without reproductive organs or have lost them before reproducing will have lost all possibilities of ever reproducing, making it's existence completely pointless and uncontributing to the existence of its own kind, sometimes even resulting in extinction to the extreme. A perfect example of this is us humans of today. There is a great chance that we may wipe out our existance, along with millions of other species of life, just for immoral reasons. Even if humans or other life forms somehow manage to exist, the sun will expand into a supergiant red star in a few billion years, obliterating all life on Earth. And if somehow, we manage to survive that, then what? Finding other planets around the universe that may possible suitable for life? Inevitably though, the universe will continue to expand indefinately and all the stars in the universe will eventually lose all of its heat and it will be impossible for life to ever exist, making life truly pointless. In my poinion, life is ultimately nothing but torture until death.

Although my family is of Christian belief, I lost belief in it after taking science, so
no, I don't believe in God.

Now I feel worse after rereading what I posted....

What are you posting about?

He's talking about Douglas Adams and that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

So you believe that life is torture? That since we can't ever win, we should just give up now? Life is pointless? For the universe's purposes, yes, life is pointless. The universe doesn't care if you live or die. It doesn't care if any of us lives or dies. But that's like saying that since you'll die anyway, you shouldn't bother eating.

The purpose of your life is what you choose to put in it: every one of us makes his or her own purpose. It doesn't matter to me that the Sun will eventually destroy the planet or that the Universe will die. For one thing, I won't be around for it. For another, there's nothing I can do about it.

If you can't prevent something from hapenning, you might as well enjoy what you can while you can. Not that I'm proposing hedonism or irresponsibility, but I don't see why we should worry too much about the end of the world when it's inevitable and we have much more enjoyable things to do with our lives.

There probably were (Neanderthal ring a bell?), but they would be a threat to the species. Thus, they got killed off. They weren't modern humans who would sit around in a Congress and declare war, they would just kill them off.

Yes, the chances of me getting Royal flushes every single poker game is also unlikely. But, come on, with the infinite amount of universes out there, I juts happened to be in the one where I win every poker game ^_^

Ants also reproduct, but have a less developed brain.

Did I tell you that the ants are more smarter then beetles and cats? And one ant colony equals 1 humans brain.

But if you think that life is nothing then guess what. Another thing is death. Every human eventually falls to it. So if you do for 3 months mope about life then every second of your life is being wasted.

But I always think that animals know the secret of life but humans must figure it out for themselves.

Maybe if you sum their IQ's Can a colony of ants calculate 3*3 ? I doubt it.

That's my new goal in life. If I acomplish this goal I'll mention you.

We can race.

There is no point in life, there is no point in not having life though either. There is no point in anything, but why not do it? You can go live a life of doing nothing, I will go and live life to the fullest simply cause I can.

The reason why we live is that evolution has taken us to this stage of life.

ADDITION:


If you have lived your life doing nothing, then you would have been filled out your life, because if you haven't filled out your life, it would be holes in your life where you can't say if you had lived or not.
That's just my subjective thought of life.

Are you implying that intelligence = extinction?