"It’s not a sin to know that there is no such thing as sin." #SundayFunday

How to be happy and create personal meaning in a fundamentally uncaring and meaningless universe « Random Xpat Rantings: "Truth and meaning are very often at odds. Chances are, if you have meaning in your life, either you realize that it is manufactured and you believe it in the same way that you believe in a dream, (exactly like believing in love merely because it’s fun to do and why not?), or you compartmentalize facts so that they can’t rub up against each other in contradiction to your “real” meaning...

Morals and justice and equality and true love and each and every thing that you could ever hold dear are evolved responses.  It is not real outside of your head.  That’s fine.  It’s fine to have these thoughts, and to believe in the dreams we have, if they make us happy. But if you also want to manipulate reality, it’s best to also realize and make peace with nihilism.  It’s not as scary as people assume.  It just takes several decades of constant adjustment.  We can watch and get off on the movie, and at the same time know it’s a movie, and delight in why each aspect of the movie moves us.  We can understand that our responses are evolved.  It’s not a sin to know that there is no such thing as sin.  And it’s human to behave humanely, even knowing there is no sin.  We are evolved to be happy acting as if there were; we are evolved to get pleasure by contributing socially. That’s not a bad deal. No afterlife and no god is not any sort of let down.  This mystery is a pretty good deal, for whatever it’s worth, or not worth."