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The short answer to the op is that life has no intrinsic meaning. It's whatever meaning we attach to it at this time, but in the end, it's going to be for naught. Life is a wasted go. It's all going to be erased and long ago forgotten. I suppose we can relish in the knowledge that at one time we were all here for a short while.
I think this illustrates the superficial appeal of theism in a nutshell. Theism basically says it's not all for naught, that even if we can't see a purpose, there is one, held safely in god's hands. Theism also says that even though it appears to be out of control and off the rails, someone is at the controls.
I myself went with these and other comforting lies, as long as I could. But at some point the lies were no longer convincing, largely because of giant evidence-turds that were directly in my path -- other's mileage (and luck) may vary.
When you stop to think about it for a few minutes, though, what more meaning do we actually NEED than our own meaning? What makes meaning higher quality because it comes from some external source? Indeed, there are a lot of ways that externally prefabricated meaning could be of LOWER quality than what you make for yourself. The women in my life have always tried to define what should be meaningful to me and it's often low-to-no-quality meaning and even when it isn't, it's not organic to who and what I am and just adds to the lists of stuff to remember lest I tick people off. My employers and clients have often tried to define meaning in ways that reduces the expense and commitment that I represent while still getting the same effort out of me. Usually, they want slavish loyalty and utter dedication from me while I require none of those things from them. Why would god be any different? No, the reality is, the best meaning is the meaning you make / decide for yourself. By far. That lets you define healthy boundaries for the demands made by others, and gives you the flexibility to change a lot more about your life so that you have at least a fighting chance of having your life resemble something you'd actually choose for yourself if you had complete choice in the matter.
And why should it really matter whether anyone remembers us, specifically, 25 or 100 or 200 or 2000 years from now? We're not going to care; we'll be dead. While I'm alive my life should matter to ME and as a nice bonus, if I can get it, it'd be nice if it mattered to a select few people whose opinion I respect, and if I can make an impact on the wider world that will get me a statue in the town square, all oxidized and covered in pigeon ka-ka, where once in a blue moon some kid might ask, who is that old dude and why is his statue there, that's just a slight extra benefit. Most of us won't get that and none of us really need it.
Yes, while it appears superficially desirable that a Higher being should have a Purpose for us and an immutable moral code that would make life perfect if only we Really followed it, when you think about it and especially read in the Bible (or other Holy Books, for that matter) the indications of what this Purpose is and what the moral code appears to be, It becomes clear that we can do a lot better without it.
Quite simply - freedom. With freedom comes dangers, but also responsibility.
I thought maybe someone would say reproduction, or the pursuit of pleasure, or self preservation.
This was posted a long time ago so I probably won't get a reply from the OP but I am really curious as to what he meant by this statement because it appears to be the one he was looking for. I do not understand what any of these responses have to do with atheism alone. Everyone I know, be it theist or atheist is concerned with these issues. I think these are simply natural human concerns of everyone to one extent or another.
Life is what we make it to be. There is not God or Heaven or afterlife or aliens; just us humans and animals and life on earth.
Religion is man-made to control people's thoughts and behaviors by using fear as a weapon. It's scary how even the most intelligent people need to believe in an afterlife which makes them afraid to reach their full potential in this life.
It took me a long time to get rid of all the religious programming that I was raised with but I think deep down I was born an Atheist. I was just too afraid to live my life that way until a couple years ago.
An Atheist is someone who does not believe in organized religion, and is someone who believes that this life is all there is.
"Originally Posted by mmm...mabeynot View Post
I thought maybe someone would say reproduction, or the pursuit of pleasure, or self preservation."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Minervah
This was posted a long time ago so I probably won't get a reply from the OP but I am really curious as to what he meant by this statement because it appears to be the one he was looking for. I do not understand what any of these responses have to do with atheism alone. Everyone I know, be it theist or atheist is concerned with these issues. I think these are simply natural human concerns of everyone to one extent or another.
The idea behind maybe's post was that since without God -belief there is no concern about any social, moral or what we would call 'spiritual' issues, the non -believer would have just the mechanical pursuit of biological urges, and even interests is just diverting the attention with trivia in the absence of a Real Meaning to life - which seems to be devoting one's whole being to God.
I can understand how that idea seems perfectly reasonable and there is even a sort of instinctive urge to do it - to find some Cause or other to give one a Purpose in life. I can see how those who have been sold the religion package are perfectly convinced by this. They have even had a mental response that has told them that it is true. The talk about 'believe or not', the 'God -shaped bottle' and it is 'obvious' that God is real makes absolute sense to them.
But those who have seen through the bill of goods and came to realize that they have been talking to themselves, not God, have been in touch with their cranial lobes, not God, and have bought into delusion, not reality, can see that this is all false.
This idea of looking at trees, flowers, mountains and seeing only God, looking at Cosmic and biological origins and seeing only God, looking at morality, compassion and society and seeing only God and in fact every damn' thing and seeing only God is being trapped within this Box, and indeed believe it is the only reality.
And so of course they assume that anyone outside the box lacks all that reality and are just without all the things that they see as just being elements of God. That the non -believers say that they have all those things is going to be regarded with disbelief. They may THINK they have a morality, or humanity, but they don't. How many atheist charities are there? How can there be any kind of morality without a God saying so as the basis?
Of course they mistake organized Church missionary work for social conscience. They fail to see that God as a basis for morality is not only not necessary, but is a positive disadvantage.
On that and pretty much all the other issues, they are wrong and demonstrably so on logical and evidential grounds. Thus the logic and the evidence has to be fiddled and twisted to fit within the mental Faith box they are stuck in and this can be shown when all manner of trickery, red - herring -trailing, resorting to fallacy and misdirection is employed to prop up the God -faith position and in the end, preferring faith to reason.
I think we understand these people pretty well, whereas they generally don't understand us at all.
Now, there are many former atheists who have Found God. There are those, like LI who do seem to understand us and the validity of our position. He has said that the reasons why he became a Muslim would not convince anyone else and essentially, he accepts that his is a faith position rather than a logic - position.
That's why he is on my Friends' list and we CAN agree to differ. There are also quite a few theist posters here who seem at least to show some understanding that atheism does not imply a life without meaning other than eat, survive, reproduce and divert the attention with time -wasting trivia. But there are far more out there who see us as maybe does - since God is everything, and we don't have God, we don't have anything.
For people like maybe, God is their hope, reason for existence and meaning ..yeahhh can't you feel the Ol' pump swelling 'yes! That's what it's all about!' so it follows that without God there is no hope, reason for existence or meaning in life.
It's true that there aren't the obvious answers given by 'God', and you have to think a bit more about it, but when you do, you realize that the easy answers are a bit too easy.
Sorry for the ramble. But I think this needs to be realized.
And why should it really matter whether anyone remembers us, specifically, 25 or 100 or 200 or 2000 years from now? We're not going to care; we'll be dead. While I'm alive my life should matter to ME and as a nice bonus, if I can get it, it'd be nice if it mattered to a select few people whose opinion I respect, and if I can make an impact on the wider world that will get me a statue in the town square, all oxidized and covered in pigeon ka-ka, where once in a blue moon some kid might ask, who is that old dude and why is his statue there, that's just a slight extra benefit. Most of us won't get that and none of us really need it.
Mordant, I'm talking about all of life, and not just on earth, but throughout the universe; deep into the past, present, and deep into the future. Importantly, think of the information lost. I'm talking about the biggest picture imaginable; that is, when all life is erased (not just on earth) and the universe is no longer hospitable for life. Everything every emerging civilization had excruciatingly worked at to forge it's path into the mysterious darkness of space and it's origins will be erased. How many times will inflationary universe, particle physics, and evolution have to be independently discovered only to be erased? How many great civilizations, with technologies we only dream of, are lost in time?
I'm happy to have lived here and now, don't get me wrong. I, unfortunately, do care about the future of our species and wonder what is going to become of life, even though we are dust mites of the smallest magnitude.
You can argue all day that life is meaningful. Individually, and collectively it is, but only momentarily.
However, you can't argue life is the purpose of the universe (Mordant, I know you wouldn't). It will do quite well without life.
I don't have a problem with any of this, except that the knowledge can not be passed on, presumably...
I thought maybe someone would say reproduction, or the pursuit of pleasure, or self preservation.
1) Reproduction:
This is not a purpose of life but the most common mechanism for living beings to perpetuate their genes. They do this because the drive to do this is selected for by natural selection for the obvious reason that those strong drives to do so tend to successfully leave more progeny. It is simply a consequence of existing in a biologically-competitive environment.
2) Pursuit of pleasure:
This not a purpose of life but a direct evolutionary mechanism (sometimes - ex., the pleasure of having an orgasm) and sometimes a side-effect (other times - ex., using cocaine for the dopamine release).
3) Self-preservation:
This is a side-effect of 1 (it's hard to reproduce, not to mention care for your immature progeny, when you're dead) and 2 (not practicing self-preservation tends to entail subjecting oneself to a variety of unpleasurable consequences).
For sentient beings, life is ours to make of it as we individually will. We all do this, including almost all religious people, who carefully (if not consciously) select those religious dictates they will emphasize as part of their lives and those they will disregard (this invariably involves creative excuses as to why the can/should be disregarded).
I don't have a problem with any of this, except that the knowledge can not be passed on, presumably...
There is an old saying, "God has no grandchildren". While abstractions like math and physics can be passed on, there is an awful lot that is wastefully rediscovered by each new person that's born. As a youth I did not listen to what people were trying to tell me about life; I didn't believe it. Had to find it out for myself. I still only half believe it.
So it's not as much of a waste as you'd think that everything humanity has struggled to get a grip on has to be rediscovered over and over again by other civilizations.
Heck, if believers in reincarnation are to be believed, this is how things are supposed to work. It's Ground Hog Day without the memory of the previous iterations.
I was wondering, does an atheist believe life has a purpose, or is it just...
Difficult question. Perhaps we are simply part of nature and that is why life seems so cruel...however as an atheist--I try to do no harm and do what good I can to make life not so hard on others. I think compassion is what I believe in--we are to attempt to leave the world a better place than what we were born into. Does that make sense?
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can't you feel the Ol' pump swelling 'yes! That's what it's all about!' so it follows that without God there is no hope, reason for existence or meaning in life. 
