UnNews:Researchers fail to uncover reason to live

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16 November 2006

"To be or not to be?" No answer found.

MENLO PARK - Researchers announced today that after a long and expensive multi-disciplinary study, they've found no reasonable or compelling reason to live.

The research team, under the direction of the University of California Berkeley, investigated a wide spectrum of scientific and philosophic leads that suggested life might have some ultimate purpose or reason. Every avenue they explored, however, failed to yield any positive results.

The outcome of the investigation came as a surprise to some, who thought that perhaps loving another person, giving glory to God, or at least propagating the species were adequate reasons to live.

Researchers also determined suicide was useless.

But research committee chairman, Dr. Michael Renson, explained, "No matter how hard we tried, we still couldn't determine what the point of it all was. For instance, we could strive to reproduce and continue the species, but because of the eventual dissolution of the universe, it all becomes pointless."

As for such things as "God" or "love," researchers discovered a fundamental difficulty even defining the terms, much less determining how they related to the reason for being. "It turns out when people talk about God, they have no idea what the hell they even mean," said Renson. "Concepts ranged from a big grandpa in the sky to essentially the universe itself, neither of which are useful for substantive research."

Based on the findings, the UCB research team recommended that even though there's no particular reason to live, anyone still alive may as well continue to do so, and not bother with killing themselves. "There's no real reason to off yourself, either," Renson said. "It'll all be over soon enough."