Francis Bacon (Head, VI)

"Also, man now realizes that he is an accident, that he is a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason. I think that even when Velasquez was painting, even when Rembrandt was painting, they were still, whatever their attitude to life, slightly conditioned by certain types of religious possibilities, which man now, you could say, has had canceled out for him. Man now can only attempt to beguile himself for a time, by prolonging his life--by buying a kind of immortality through the doctors."

Does one really need the hope of an afterlife or a sense of ultimate purpose and meaning (a la Rick Warren) to live a good and enjoyable life? I think not. I enjoy my favorite brews without in any way ascribing to the experience a sense of self-evident or objective meaning. It seems to me that metaphysics, particuarly of the religious variety, gets in the way of life. It is only when we create our own limited meanings and purposes that we are freed to live in the way I think Jesus meant us to live.