[ExI] Meaning in life (Was: Who has a vote that counts?)

[William Flynn Wallace]

Yes, fewer people. Why? Lazy, credulous, non-critical thinkers.  Lack of
alternatives.  We need a church.  Another thing:  when did you encounter
atheists?  If you weren't raised by them, you likely did not encounter any
before, say, high school, or even college.  Then you have to overturn a
lifetime of belief.  And mostly people, me for one, did it by themselves.
This is hardly a good way to expand our 'membership'.   And we have no
p.r.  When did you ever see some goodwill kind of thing attributed to
atheists?  We apparently have no motivations for do-gooding and turning
people.
.  Maybe it's because we want to be left alone and so we do that to
religious people.  bill w

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 2:23 PM SR Ballard via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> I don’t think that linking a decline in religiousity to a decline in
> meaning of life is a negative statement about people who are not religious.
>
> Religion provides an emotional answer to the questions — “why am I here?”
> “how am I special?” “what am I supposed to do with my life?” — Without
> religion, the answers to these questions are non-emotional, but rather
> factual.
>
> A while back (months?) on the list I saw a few emails about how “we create
> our own meaning of life” and that’s exactly my point.
>
> If group A has it spoon fed to them they have 100% meaning of life. If
> group B has to figure it out, then the population can approach but never
> achieve 100%.
>
> Similarly if group A attends or can attend regular religious meetings,
> 100% of them have a vast social network. If group B has to make any form of
> effort to create a social network, then the population can approach but
> never achieve 100% access to that size of social network.
>
> This doesn’t imply anything negative about religious feelings, or lack
> thereof. Any religious person or person who is not religious can have a
> meaning of life, a vast social network, and achieve what they will.
>
> But what I am saying is that social connections and goals make people
> happy, and one group has prefab connections and goals, and the other had to
> make conscious effort to achieve the same.
>
> If effort is required, automatically less people will do something,
> because of opportunity cost.
>
> SR Ballard
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