As An Atheist Can Your Life Have Purpose and Meaning?

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on June 16, 2012 at 3:50pm

Right Tom - enjoy then die.

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Permalink Reply by Michael OL on June 16, 2012 at 10:01pm

“Purpose” is the deep and abiding reason that makes life imperative, irreplaceable and beautiful.  It must convincingly address all three; no two are sufficient.  You can selflessly and effectively serve others; fine, but is your capacity to do so, genuinely unique and irreplaceable?  You may derive keen pleasure and enjoyment from life, and it’s good while it lasts.  But is deriving such pleasure genuinely imperative?  Perhaps it is contingent on something else.  Perhaps it only lasts while a certain amount of self-delusion is countenanced.  Perhaps it only comes down to luck.

 

It is not sufficient to have a smarmy construction of platitudes to keep us going.  It is not sufficient to claim the need or goal of reproduction. Even if I believed in reproduction, why should I reproduce, when there are many others who are no less qualified?  There is no lapidary construct of the simultaneously imperative, irreplaceable and beautiful.  And so, I am coming to the realization that life has no legitimate purpose. 

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on June 17, 2012 at 11:43pm

thank you Michael for your thoughtful replies. You give us a lot to think about.

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Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on June 16, 2012 at 11:16pm

We human beings create meaning, it's what we do. People express meaning through art, music, architecture, writing, invention, dance, protest, organizing, play, crafts, science, gardening, athletic achievement, raising children, building things, philosophy, choosing mates, making friends, making speeches and presenting arguments, and a thousand other ways.

Each individual generates meaning and is, in a sense, the center of the universe. Reality has infinite possibility. Every choice each of us makes selects which alternate universe possibility from that choice point becomes part of our shared reality. Remember observer effect in physics? Just one person having the possibility of seeing which slit a photon went through makes the photon into a particle, with a definite position, instead of a wave which is spread out. Your actions don't just shape your own life, they shape the entire universe-as-we-know-it. And that is the only universe we know. We are always part of the equation, each of us. The idea that the universe exists independent of us is our idea, one we affirm in everyday life because it's useful for our purposes. But there are limits to the usefulness of this idea, not only in physics experiments. By forgetting how important we human knowers are in the universe as we know it, we introduce an error. We imagine the universe is impersonal and devoid of meaning. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our shared language has the words "meaning" and "universe". Take away all of the people, all of the speakers and hearers using language and "Earth", "Sun", and "Galaxy" disappear. There would still be animals, and the feeling/perception meaning they share among themselves. There would still be hunger, pain, fear, and mother love, but no language to express them.

Without us, religious memeplexes such as "god" would also disappear. It makes no sense to me to equate meaning to fictional entities. It's like asking Mickey Mouse to tell you what's important in life. We can be smarter than that.

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Permalink Reply by booklover on June 17, 2012 at 7:46am

You are so right Ruth.  Many of us can be smarter than that.  Sadly, I think the majority can't.

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Permalink Reply by Steph S. on June 17, 2012 at 11:44pm

Thank you Ruth! Human being do create meaning. I agree.

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Permalink Reply by Lillie on June 16, 2012 at 11:30pm

I will not live long enough to learn all I want to learn, do all I want to do, and see all I want to see.  It makes more sense to me to do what is right just because it is the right thing to do not because I might otherwise be going to hell.  Living every moment to the fullest is like living forever. (Not original, of course.)  If I was living in the future (going to heaven,) I would not put as much value on the present. I prefer to have heaven here and now on earth enjoying my friends and family in the only time we will have together.  When my life is all used up, I look forward to having my ashes return to the mother earth.  It is enough.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on June 17, 2012 at 12:01am

Well said, Lillie, and not concealed behind impressive-looking words.

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Permalink Reply by booklover on June 17, 2012 at 7:44am

I love what you said Lillie and I agree.~ melinda

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Permalink Reply by Michael OL on June 17, 2012 at 11:00am

This is fine as an operative rubric for living life from day to day, for continuing the chain.  But how do we answer this charge that this too is self-delusion?

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Permalink Reply by Edward Teach on June 17, 2012 at 12:18pm

I don't see it as self delusional. I think you can create and live by your own mythology that subjectively "clicks" for you AND understand it for what it is. In other words, I can understand that meaning is always subjective and still choose a moral structure to live by as long as I don't mistake my creation for real "truth."

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Permalink Reply by Michael OL on June 17, 2012 at 5:37pm

Again, if your personal subjectivity is useful for deriving joy and for staying out of trouble, fine; this is how we muster the wherewithal to keep going.  I won't gainsay that.  Your approach is certainly better than some random groping, or self-destruction.

Rather, the question is about the overall significance of doing what you propose.  You live your life as you best see fit, according to methods that best suit you.  But to what has all of this amounted?   If your mind's creation is wondrously effective for you, but is after all no more true that mythology, how is that not self-delusion?  And how is that any superior to the religious self-delusion, which assigns to us a purpose and meaning by reference to some diktat that we're supposed to accept without demand for evidence of its truth?  Now of course you are the author of your own mythology; you're not accepting the mythology of some one else.  So you are to be commended for your intellectual independence, and I mean that in all sincerity.  But I am still troubled, gravely troubled, by the disconnect between personal persuasion and external reality.

Here is the problem in all of its awfulness: do we really only have three choices: a dissimulating self-deception such as religion or its personal equivalent, a purely animal life without abstract reflection, or nihilism?  If not, what else?

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