I don't understand what is hard to understand about the Chesterton quote. If someone thinks the answers to life and meaning and purpose lie within himself, he effectively becomes his own god, and therefore effectively worships himself.
Then he dies. What of his meaning and purpose then? If meaning and purpose lie within ourselves, then when we die, meaning and purpose die as well. But that would mean that there is no meaning and no purpose, for how can a being create itself before it has created itself?
Therefore, if we have purpose, if life has meaning, it must come from without, not from within. This is not to say that we don't possess "seeds" of truth and meaning and purpose within us--but they exist only to point us toward the truth, to motivate us to seek answers.
A search for truth that only looks within ourselves is doomed to failure, for we cannot provide answers that we do not have. And if we had the answers, we wouldn't need to search for them. Those who claim that the answers lie within ourselves are deceiving themselves and others with vague platitudes, merely taking a detour on the journey toward the truth--but how tragic a detour if time runs out along the way.
"Why are we here" and "where are we going" are vastly better questions than "what are we meant to do".
Do you see the difference?
"why are we here" can mean "how did we get here, how did we come to be here" ... but if it means "for what purpose are we here" than it turns problematic again, no?
The search for purpose and meaning assumes there is one. It's hard to understand how one can ask that question with presupposing that there is some thing as an "objective meaning and purpose" and it's just really confusing to me. If you don't see how the pasting of that quote is confusing, that's what I meant by confusing.
The search for reasons and hows and what happened and what's next seems a lot more interesting of questions, to me personally.
Well, whether "for what purpose are we here" is useful depends on the answer to "by what means did we get here" or "what caused us to be here". If we are here merely because of chance occurrences, then of course there is no objective meaning or purpose. But if we are here because something or someone put us here, then it's a good question to ask why we were put here and for what purpose.
It means that there isn't a sublime/perfect id/being/spirit at the core of us, just the same flawed person as is on the outside. So a religion or philosophy of trying to worship or obey some inner perfection ultimately just means doing whatever you feel like, which isn't a good idea let alone worth proselytizing.
I feel it's worth proselytzing in the context of counter balancing the movements which imply some other idea is worth worshipping.
It seems like a step up, from worshiping one's priest to worshipping ones self, and maybe after that we (those that see the error in both) can have adult conversations.
> It seems like a step up, from worshiping one's priest to worshipping ones self, and maybe after that we (those that see the error in both) can have adult conversations.
Not that you necessarily intend it, but that is a false dichotomy. If the choices are between worshipping a priest (a human) and worshipping oneself (another human), you're right that the latter is a step up in that it refuses to elevate one human above another.
But it only brings us closer to the truth insofar as worshipping the priest is wrong. It really just brings us back to ground zero. If worshipping the priest is wrong (by "wrong" I mean that the priest is not worthy of worship, because he's just another human), then worshipping any human is wrong, including oneself.
So, either way, you're wrong--that is, you still don't know the truth, and you're still worshipping a human being.
And for the record, finding the god within doesn't have any connotation of worshipping ones self, for me personally, the idea that it might I think is a vestige for those that see a value or need to worship a god without.
Well, by worshipping, I mean recognizing oneself as the arbiter of meaning, purpose, and morality. Essentially it means recognizing oneself as one's god.
Well, if we are just piles of goo that randomly became sentient, then there's no objective "need" for purpose; we can simply keep existing and eating and sleeping until we die and decompose.
However it seems obvious that most people, at some point in their lives, wonder about purpose and meaning--which raises the question of why we wonder. Is there something planted within us that causes us to seek answers to these questions?
> or morality
I suppose the sociological answer would be that morality provides guidelines for behavior which help society operate smoothly, as opposed to everyone doing whatever they want, stealing and killing without consequences, which would prevent any kind of civilization from developing.
Which I guess raises a chicken-and-egg question: where did morality come from? How did the first guy who realized that chaos was holding civilization back (before "civilization" even?) convince everyone else to stop doing what they were doing and follow these rules he came up with? "Hey, man, don't steal my stuff and kill me. If you do, we'll keep having chaos, and we'll never be able to develop a society and make progress." Somehow I doubt that would have been convincing to a wild-eyed savage who was in the habit of raping and pillaging.
> and why ask that of your god?
I think this depends on who your god is--or more specifically, whether you believe a god exists. If there isn't one, and we are our own arbiters of truth and morality and meaning, then I suppose it's personal preference whether you care about these things; many people seem happy to live in ignorant bliss, and then they die, and what does it matter?
But if you believe that a god does exist, who created us, who exists outside of our universe, then said god would necessarily have the power over our life and death, and any afterlife that may come, and so it would seem sensible to inquire as to what that god wanted of us--just as a child tries to please his parents if he wants his parents' approval and support, or a soldier tries to please his superiors, or an employee tries to please his employer.
Of course, many people either don't believe or don't care, and time will tell how it turns out for them. In the end, we'll all find out whether a god exists and whether there's an afterlife.
I don't know what else to say until I know where you're coming from though, I'm honestly asking what do you mean by that quote?