Are we here (on this planet) to help each other or to compete/control each other?

[Mind_your_head]

.

[anigbrowl]

1. IMHO, we're just here, not for any particular purpose

You help some people and compete with others. Who are in those two categories varies from person to person.

[noamnety]

2. It's not an either/or

Sometimes controlling one person's actions is the way to protect another person.

[madeline_con]

3. That depends on one's spiritual beliefs, or lack thereof. n/t

[ashling]

9. "depends," . . . Not necessarily

that assumes as a premise that spirituality/spiritualness/spirit/or whatever would inevitably lead to answer A and that non spiritu... would lead inevitably to answer B (or vice versa).

That is a faulty premise.

[madeline_con]

10. Is an atheist a sprirtual person?

Honestly, if so, I don't understand how.

[ashling]

13. But you assume that an athiest would

answer one way or the other.

Do you assume that an athiest - lacking your "spirituality - can only make one choice?

The question assumes that we are hear - a valid assumption, I believe - but does not question how we got here.


I was looking at the question in terms of what would be the best or most ideal way to proceed, given that we are already hear, not how we got here.

[madeline_con]

14. I'm not assuming anything, I'm seriously asking if

atheists consider themselves spiritual. I've only known one professed atheits. He always chuckled about attempts to define the soul. What spirituality means my differ from person to person. Some one who does not believe in a diety may still consider themselves spiritual. I don't know.

[Mind_your_head]

4. Lots to think about.....these responses so far.

God/Godess is in 'control' (oversight) .... who can see past, present and future (simultaneously ~ b/c God/dess is "outside of time".)

[madeline_con]

11. So spake many teachers.

The eastern "new age" (actually pre-Abrahamic) dudes believe something of that nature. A causal thought or being that just "IS" can't participate in trivialities like time and matter.

[southerncrone]

5. Help each other, otherwise there is no PROGRESS!

[Stardust]

6. WE are here to help each other. THEY are here to control us. Simple, really.

[Greyhound]

7. How about this. We are here to overcome the control of the parasites by helping each other? n/t

[Hannah Bell]

8. apparently the latter.

[RC]

12. Which ever has the best survival prospects for us.

Just like the rest of the animals on this planet.

[Deja Q]

15. On 'Star Trek', they claim it's to help...

Of course, a group of musicians that called themselves "Monkees" really did leave in a beach house and vie for music record contracts... and then there's that real work of fiction involving some bloke named "Jesus"...