Why are we here?

A lot of animals do seem to know that they are about to die.
But I dont expect that they know in their day to day normal living, that it is coming.

Like all other animals, our purpose is to ensure the survival of our species, but I suggest that humans also have a responsibility to other species and to the planet.

The trouble is that we know we are going to die, and presumably they do not.

And there are some who think that Life is its own purpose and who just get on with it accordingly, like every other living species.

There are plenty on Gransnet leurMamie - not me , as it happens, but they are here.

Astonished that not one gransnetter expressed a faith in God. Such faith gives life meaning and purpose above our own little selves. Grandchildren, however, add even more!

Life is a gift we live in the present

Yes, that's probably correct Niggly & Lucky but at least it wouldn't be in the name of religion. Greed, jealousy, power and stupidity are more likely sheltering under the banner of religious wars.

If nothing is; then I am not (Socrates tr. Jowett)

Indeed - we are programmed to be territorial I think, and humans will battle one against the other even without religion - but if it did not exist there would be one less major thing to fight over!

Don't you believe it Anya, human beings would/will always have found/find something to fight over! Sometimes you begin to feel that they actually enjoy it! baffling I know, but at times it seems that way!

Yes and just 'Imagine' if there was no religion, nothing to fight and die for?

I think that having "grave doubts" about an afterlife is entirely appropriate

But niggly's post sums it up - we just do not know and cannot know. Let's just try to get along while we are here.

I think that Gabriel told Mary that her prospective baby was boy, so that fact was known in advance and presumably a deliberate act of God, if indeed we believe it!!
I would love to believe in the after life, but somehow if I'm totally honest I have grave doubts, it's too complicated for a mere human to visualise and from the outside looking in completely impossible.
As to why we are here - well there's a question? Goodness only knows, some people it seems were put on this earth to do good, countermanded by those it would appear who were created for the exact opposite. Most of us muddle by and there appears to be no particular reason for our existence. Why do some live into old age and others die as babies. Is the earth the only inhabited planet? So many questions, most of them unanswerable. I don't know why we're here, who or what created animal life or what will be the end of it all.

It would have been labelled as another of the fertility cults that pre-dated the "God our father" religion. Female deities were definitely disapproved of - they had all those rituals associated with sex and reproduction that encouraged women to get above themselves and think they could do something that men couldn't. Can't have that!.

Bearing in mind the mores of the time, I mean...

I wonder whether Christianity would ever have got off the ground had the promised deliverer been born a girl?

I can't help feeling that a woman god would have got things right ordered the universes better. My remark was flippant, so possibly out of order.

God (if he exists, which is another subject altogether) is neither a man nor a woman, so those who would bar women from the priesthood or from taking an active part in worship are using their own prejudices. Male and female are only needed for reproduction, and for most of the world's history organisms reproduced by asexual means. A supremely powerful being who could create a universe in one stroke (if that is how it all started) had no need for a second (and subordinate?) being to assist.

Many creation stories involve two gods - one male and one female - but Judaism only involves one, who was considered to be male. When Jesus the promised deliverer was born in human form, there was a 50/50 chance of male or female.

So much beauty in nature. Seems to me our world would be much plainer if it was all by chance.

Of course god isn't a woman.

What if God's a woman? Not only am I going to hell - I'll never know why!
Adam Ferrara

Sartre: Hell is other people

TS Eliot: Hell is oneself

As they say in exam papers: Discuss!

I had a post on Fb which I liked. It said,

How others treat you is their Karma
How you treat others is your Karma.

I try to treat others well. I was raised Catholic and we were taught that there was Jesus in everyone we meet.

Don't know what I believe these days, but if we follow the above rules for living we will be better people and also if there is an afterlife where we are judged well, we did try to be "good."

Gerente Thanks for the verses, very apt. I often wonder what's it for, why are we here, what's the point of life, what purpose do we serve on this earth. Expect I will never know.