As always, this is a very interesting post. It has raised a few questions for me. Why do humans seek relatedness and purpose? In evolutionary terms, there are explanations of how humans with a natural tendency to seek community relationships and cooperate with others would have a survival advantage over others that did not worry about relating to others and mutually benefit each other. Further along that vein, if you would find a way that you could uniquely benefit your group by having a specific purpose, perhaps as a specific kind of hunter, learning how to defend against threats, being particularly adept at memorizing terrain and resource locations and so on, then having a purpose would make you valuable to your community for survival. Pairing this desire with curiosity and our musings of religion results in this idea that we're here because a higher being wants us to be here and gets some value out of our existence. At the very least, we exist so that we can help others learn about religious ideas that we've discovered so that they can appreciate the ideas and benefit from what we've learned. So what does this mean for our future? Will we find satisfying purpose in our lives from something other than religion? Can we appreciate our role in evolution, species survival and intellectual evolution?
This is definitely possible, good idea. It could also be a by-product of intelligence and/or consciousness. I think it is particularly useful to think about the period of time when self-awareness was becoming stronger and stronger. The dawning of self-awareness should have led to a cascade of effects, one of them, I suspect, also including "finding a purpose". In this sense, the survival advantage of "having a purpose" would be to avoid insanity. If you believe your consciousness is infinite and that you are here because "someone has a purpose for you" then you are going to be able to run your incredible complex software and apply it to things it was meant to be applied to: survival. Individuals already do this. Ideally everyone can find a vocation in this life that they deem to be bigger than oneself. For me, it is science. For someone else, it might be art or music or whatever makes them feel amazing inside. The meaning of life, on an individual level, is all about finding your own meaning. I think it is the most beautiful story. So, I hope so.perhaps as a specific kind of hunter, learning how to defend against threats, being particularly adept at memorizing terrain and resource locations and so on, then having a purpose would make you valuable to your community for survival.
Will we find satisfying purpose in our lives from something other than religion?
Can we appreciate our role in evolution, species survival and intellectual evolution?