Quote Originally Posted by BathingApes
The point is, let's just forget that we choose to do it this way, step out of yourself a second - and think, why does anything matter if we all die anyway?
for the bee it is the good of the hive. for the wolf it is the hunt and the comforts of a well fed pack. for humanity it is the search for patterns and finding the point to existence. they are all valid reasons to live and they are all false. this is a journey to no particular destination, a pointless extravagance of creation which exists merely because it can. this is the universe expanding to explore every possibility and fill every niche before it too ends.

merely asking the question is point enough. expecting some universal answer is going a step too far. each creature derives meaning from its circumstances. that is the point. no grand design but the patterns we perceive. no meanings but the ones we invent. no journey's end because the path is the only important thing.

....people feel uneasy and annoyed when you mention something like this, because it goes against everything they know.
of course you'll annoy the animals if you keep on poking them like this. here we've gone and invested generations into inventing answers to the question and you come along and ask us to explain ourselves. we trot out the standard answers and find them lacking, so we have to begin all over again. we have to start sifting through the patterns, aligning them where we can and coming to some conclusion that will satisfy for a few moments more.

But if, it turns out there is no afterlife, what stops everything from being meaningless?
an afterlife never was the be all end all of existence, it was merely the point at which we stopped asking. it was a satisfactory conclusion that allowed us to start searching through patterns more relevant to survival.