I'm going to start a topic that I hope will end up being very interesting. The more responses you give, the more interesting it may be. I will add more after I get a few responses.
Please humor me and respond to the following sentence:

WARNING: Do not read this sentence.

Too late~

Well.... you can read this one if you can.

Ok, let me add a little direction.

What is the purpose of that sentence?

To instill fear? I donno you tell me, you wrote it

You are unable to take in the warning without breaking it.

"If you notice this notice, you'll notice this notice is not worth noticing"

I suppose its a little like zen. Its designed to make you realise that sometimes words are unable to fulfill a function.
Zen poetry/sayings are designed to still your mind and to help you in meditation.

So you think it's not worth noticing?

Alright, reflect on this statement:
Living organisms live to procreate.

I promise I'm actually going somewhere with this...

Not mules or castratos!

Next time you see a missile coming out of a silo on TV don't think about sex.

Living things live because of procreation - live for and live because of

Not bacteria, asexually reproducing organisms or cloned organisms.

Ok, hey hey, you've got me. Not all living things procreate
But...for the sake of argument...

Living things live to procreate.
Do not read this sentence.

Both have an explicit, direct purpose. But, it's a recursive purpose.
The sentence warns you not to read it. Life lives so life can live.

In a way, they both exist to exist/because of existance.

How useful is it? How useful are we? Trojan suggested that the second statement wasn't even worth noticing.

But...things can have multiple meanings and purposes.

What about creation? Why did I create the origional warning?

Any theories or guesses? Use reasoning to tell me why I wrote that sentence.

The truth of this statement cannot be proven.

Exactly my point. Or at least that's where I was going.

Let me post my whole argument. I wanted to do it in pieces to see what kind of response I'd get.

Now, regarding this statement:
WARNING: Do not read this sentence.

It is (almost) a parallel to:
Living things live to procreate.

Both have a direct purpose. This purpose can be determined.

What about the purpose of its creation?
Well, I was honestly hoping a few of you would try to guess.

I could've created it for a whole host of reasons. But in reality, you cannot determine why I created that statement. (Actually, that statement just popped in my head while I was microwaving popcorn chicken.) You could never have been certain that it was created without a purpose.

In the same way, I believe you cannot simply reason your way to determining the origional purpose of life. (Before you argue that science can determine it, please look up Modus Tollens and its relationship to the scientific method.)

This is the primary reason I'm agnostic.

Furthermore, notice how I've given the original statement a purpose. As I said, it originated as purposeless, but I'm now using it as a parallel. It now has a new purpose.

In much the same way, we give life a purpose. It may or may not have started with one, but it certainly has one now.

But here's my question to you, does the purpose enrich our lives? Is it complicating something that should be simple?

For every thing there is a time and a purpose....

There's a time and a purpose for every thing, from many of which we will remove the time and purpose. Like death, that has a purpose but which we will eventually remove, and it will then have no purpose.

That would be the meaning of "For everything there is a time and apurpose"

Warning: Do Not Read This Sentence.

Boring, this is a simple paradox. Its leaving a message for someone to not enter a house because its being fumagated - inside the house. By the time the message is heard it is already to late, basically you attempt to use for knowlege to give notification about an event sometime in the future, however that message is only read until the event has already happened.

This is not some revolutionary thought process but a very basic and obvious statement.

Living things live to procreate; simply life, lives to bring in more life before said life dies in order to continue natures cycle. This looks very pointless, now here we go into the black hole of what is the meaning of life?

Okay fine, Life? meaning? these are both human perceptions, although we can dwelve into animal and plant cells to look at them for sources/meanings of life. One can also look to Stephen Hawkings thoughts that Time and Space have no beginning and end, life therefore should logically have no beginning and end.

Life AS WE KNOW IT could very well have a beginning and an end. But again this is all based on perception.

Overall, if you have a point get to it because there is not much here philosophically.

This purpose you speak of only exists in your mind, nature only knows cause and effect. You can claim whatever cause you wish, but it is the effect that reflects yourself.

Instead of asking yourself why? ask why not?

Why does life exist? - Why not?

Reality is not based on perceptions. Perceptions are merely a way to try and understand reality.

I think you have it backwards Maximus.

Define reality and define perception, please. Especially as it applies to reality. F

Man reasons because he has a brain capable of reasoning, but why should we presume that there are reasons for everything external to brains?
Certainly, we are aware of pre-conditions that need to be met before some external events occur (the Laws of Nature), but do we know that there is purpose to them?

I think you are both right...Some one said that "language is the filter through wich we see the world" this was one of the stupidest thing I had ever heard, but it got me thinking and I came to the conclusion that the senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) are the filter through which we see the world.

The individuals reality is based upon their perception of what reality is. So perception IS reality. We percieve things through out senses, so perception is our way of understanding reality, or rather creating our own reality.

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar

Oh wait, no I can't...I just believe I can...shucks!


Agreed

You don't honestly believe you can~ If you did, you would be flying (just like in Peter Pan). I know my dad has honestly believed he could fly, he ended up jumping off the pier in SF and getting arrested, but in his reality, he DID fly.

Interesting. Well, I hope your dad was ok.

Lol yeah it was really pretty funny But the point being, reality is what you make of it~

.... the leap into the void ....

I've always wondered how they staged that photo.. And to Flex: what do you mean by "he DID fly?"