Draft Mission Statement

Post Reply New Topic

In a recent post 91 identified the purpose of religion [for which read Christianity, this does not I think apply to for instance the religion of the early Germanic peoples] as salvation.

To this Awesomely Glorious responded that in that case Christianity is useless, since he sees no need for salvation.

This brief dialogue highlights an important insight. We see around us a tangle of confusing and often conflicting mission statements, statements of purpose, platforms and agendas and meanings of life. The Westminster Catechism: What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Pastor Jerry: the sole purpose of Christians is to make more Christians.

I hate "Mission Statements".

I used to be asked, "what is the use of studying Linguistics?" I could reasonably have said "It gets you three credits closer to graduation." If I had been one of the Earnest I could have talked about deeper understanding of the human mind, or contributing to peace through knowing the Other. What I usually said was "Linguistics is the world's greatest crossword puzzle and it keeps me off welfare." And I was not joking.

Awesomely Glorious reminds us that Purpose fits in with Tastes and Colors as a thing to avoid in philosophic discussion. It is too individual. What is the point of working to elect a candidate for office? There is no point - it does not significantly affect the outcome, and we would be better off without the office. So say I - but my colleague who got thwacked in a student / police confrontation would see a different purpose.

For Awesomely Glorious, Christianity is useless. For Wee H, Linguistics is useless. For me [sorry, Dick] Econ is useless. For me - well, I see a lot of things as useless.

So - there is no use [forgive me] discussing the meaning of life, the purpose of the universe, the mission of religion, or the value of the two party system. There is no purpose, and there is a plethora of purposes.

UNLESS, of course, there is an Intelligence in charge. In which case there is a definite meaning to life, a chief end of man, a purpose for religion, and even a reason for doing Linguistics

Draft Mission Statement

According to Judaism (which invented God), the mission statement is:

I am the Lord Thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me.

- Commandment 1 as received by Prophet Moses

---

The above mission statement was amended to read:

Desire Now A Better Country - That Is - A Heavenly One (aka Celestial City).

Source: Pilgrim's Progress book by John Bunyan (Christian Puritan)

- Hebrews (KJV)

---

Jesus Christ said:

Love the God of Judaism/the God of Moses first; love your neighbor (in Israel/the middle east) as yourself second (simplified).

---

Currently the mission statement of many non-profit churches is to keep the churches alive so the ministers can have jobs for life. The mission statement has nothing to do with God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, or the Bible but the immortality of brick and mortar churches and collection plates full of gold, silver, and bronze.

Also, some churches have adopted the following guideline to do church business as usual: No questions allowed - convert or die (so to speak).

X-reference: Heretic burnings, Spanish Inquisition, Excommunications, Crusades.

---

It seems like the purpose of human life (generalization) is to continue human life aka perpetuate human life/the human race: Born, breed, die (the life cycle).

---

They Made America | PBS
Four-part series, based on the book by Harold Evans, profiles a dozen innovators from the steam engine to the search engine.
...pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/ - Cached - Similar (Google)

I like the statement by Robert Lawrence Kuhn: 'God is not a game; if God does not exist, then belief in God is humanity's monumental folly. If God does exist, nothing can be more important'.

Never heard of Kuhn. Just looked him up. Like, wow.

I cannot recommend 'Closer to Truth' enough

Even for an agnostic to veer closer to a theistic viewpoint another reason may present itself - not about where they go when they die or fear of anything of that sort (or belief that its a sure answer even) but rather it can easily be more about how they wish to live, wanting to be a part of a set of governing principles that they have positive feelings toward, and especially if they've ever teetered on the edge of becoming black holes of people based on hard life experiences they'd rather have the opportunity to go a different route and perhaps have an excuse for exercising good principles rather than being told they're simply weak-hearted or don't have the courage to exploit others and exploit the world around them to where its a sign of genetic failure on their own part.

Wow, that was actually all one sentence. I need to work on that.

42.

Yes, God is indeed a monumental folly.


Don't call me a dick!

Joking, but I have a degree in economics and another in finance.

That being said, philologos, I think I generally agree with the thrust of your post. I mean, I will admit that I think that mankind in general carries enough in common between all of us that we end up having common ends that can be worth discussing given certain circumstances. However, it is pretty true that most details of our everyday lives are meaningless and that the only value they have are the ones we give them.

I suppose a theist somewhere will now bemoan our existential condition, saying "Oh, without God, life is meaningless! We have no purpose in existing..." The issue though is that there is really no reason to care much. I mean, I am not sure I find the idea that God wanted pets to be very personally fulfilling, and as such I'd see it as rather meaningless.(note: don't take "God wanted pets" entirely literally. I don't want to be attacked for a throwaway attack against the notion of God giving meaning) It *feels* meaningful from the inside, but so do a lot of other silly notions of meaning. As it stands, I would really bet that "meaning" is more of an emotional question than a logical one.

That being said, I think we all deserve to be left with a bit of xkcd.

"Don't call me a dick! "

Never occurred to me - not part of my productive vocabulary. Good thing you're in Econ - means a thick skin.

Dick is the name of my Economist friend I suspect you of being in the pallpark of which.

Holds the world record for unfinished majors. An intriguing mind.

If you rule out God [as I used to] or intentional Nature and reject some version of evolved innate ideas [which I do], then there ain't a-gonna be no species wide purose, though family or culture wide purposes can likely be found.

But if I were part of such a group it would be hard to buy into my tribal manifest destiny.

]
Culture-wide is probably sufficient enough.