The Comfort Of Religion And The Purpose Of Life
This you tube section https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jEzJiErYCQ
Richard Dawkins is a intelligent and wise man. No matter how wise or intelligent a conscious being is when knowledge is either lacking or incorrect the wrong conclusions can be believed as true. Superimmortality is not a pseudoscience. See: Why superimmortality is not a pseudoscience
"X is comforting does not mean that x is true."Superimmortality can be very comforting but this does not mean it is false just because it can be comforting.
See: Why superimmortality is more comforting than religions
At minute 1:34 Dawkins says:a related plaint A purpose for life to quote one Canadian the atheist right about god who knows but god or no god it is clear that something in the human soul requires a belief that life has a purpose that transcends the material plane.
The purpose to conscious existence produced by human life does not have to be connected to anything transcendental because conscious existence or life can be connected completely to physical reality because life after death can be completely connected to reality with out any supernatural, superstitious, pseudoscientific or religious belief systems.
"If you are afraid of death, for example, you might superficially think that a priest who tells you you're not really going to die would be more comforting than a scientist would tell you it is highly implausible that our individuality could survives the decay of our brains."
Superimmortality does not say that your individuality survives your death. Your individuality is produced by the structure and functioning of matter that your body is made of, not by the specific matter that your body is made of. The structure and functioning of matter that produced your individuality over time is reproducible any time before or after your death.
We are going to die and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats. Scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumber the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness that are here. We privileged few who won the lottery of birth against all odds how dare we whine at the inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred.
This observation of Dawkins gives us extra reasons why superimmortality gives meaning and purpose to life. Helping in the present and future production of awarepaths that has never been produced before gives meaning and purpose to those that have and help raise children. Producing awarepaths that have different ixperiencitnesses that has never existed before gives the living even more meaning to their lives.
