What is the purpose of life?
Before you can answer this question, you have to determine what you really know. This involves epistemology, the study of the nature of human knowledge. I have discovered that much of what I was taught in school or read in books and magazines was half-true or total nonsense. So what is real?
The French philosopher Descartes proposed in the 17th century that the only thing you really know is that you are thinking, so you must exist. Every perception of the world is subject to distortion or illusion, but at the very least you are sure that you exist.
Twentieth century philosophers such as Wittgenstein have added that language can hardly be used to discuss such issues meaningfully (though ironically he uses plenty of language to try to explain this). Some modern philosophers fall into the sinkhole of solipsism, which asserts that nothing beyond the self is knowable.
I consider this a rational but sterile endpoint. If philosophy is the "love of wisdom," and wisdom is knowing what is good and true, then solipsism is the opposite of philosophy. It is a kind of misosophy: "hatred of wisdom."
Pulling ourselves out of the sinkhole formed by modern solipsism, we can look anew at the purpose of life. If atheistic, Darwinian thinking is correct, then we are simply biological entities in competition to survive and reproduce. We should not even consider larger questions beyond survival. Humans should be programmed as survival machines, working only on a physical level.
But humans do think of issues beyond the physical plane. If we consider for a moment that a metaphysical plane for thinking and being is possible, the question of life's purpose becomes meaningful again.
The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard spoke of this questioning as the "leap of faith," or the "movement of faith." Kierkegaard understood that by its nature, faith had to be something above pure reason. But as we saw before, knowing anything beyond one's own existence is a leap. So is the movement of faith unreasonable?
All over the world throughout the millennia, people have tried to answer metaphysical questions. These attempts can be called mythology, philosophy, or religion.
All religions have to deal with morality, suffering, and afterlife. None of these issues should even be considered in a strictly Darwinian, materialistic world.
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