philosophyA common theist argument, “If life is meaningless then why bother living?” or some variation. What is the proper response?
I found much more meaning to my life since I gave up believing in a god and an ultimate meaning declared by said god.
I now know I am responsible for creating what purpose my life is to have. I now see that I, as an individual, have the power to create real change in the world by my actions. That I as a part of the collective actually have the power to create the momentum to make the world better.
I no longer feel powerless to an invisible entity that claims to direct and control everything. I no longer believe I am simply a visitor, stopping by to earn my way to the ultimate purpose of eternal life. I realize I am no longer a victim of the whims of a petty tyrant.
I am an actual participant in creating my life, my community, my country and my world. Now I know I have the power to change the world and that is why I get up in the morning, because I can.
Who said life is meaningless? I live because I enjoy it, and I find my own meaning every day.
Meaning is what you make it - if you have to have one, choose your own.
For me, it’s because this life is all we have. This life gives us the opportunity to experience love and sadness and to have adventures and to enjoy yourself. Why does there need to be more than this? To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we’re made up of starstuff, and that is pretty awesome.
This is a straw man argument. It sets up the premise that 1) there is a God to start with and that 2) this God brings the only meaning.
Considering we are born and for the very early years of our life have no religious understanding or leaning then it makes the argument empty. A child who was never expose to religion would have meaning in simply living, learning and loving
My answer, right or wrong, is generally “well, maybe YOUR life is meaningless without a magic man making your sole purpose to serve him, but I’m having a great time!” I then follow it up with stuff like “I make my own meaning” and “we’re biologically determined for survival, and that encompasses not just waking up in the morning, but also the pursuit of happiness and empathy for our fellow man, etc.” and “working to make a better world for future generations and all life on the planet”, et. al.
I like to turn questions like that around and ask why they assume life is meaningless, or how that question tells me much more about them than my answer says about me.
Also just found this post I made addressing this question. In it are links to other posts by better writers, also addressing the question: http://joreth.livejournal.com/86533.html
Because I need to pee. Funny answer to funny question.
Only someone who had no concept of a life free of the clutches of superstition would ask such a thing. I get up every day because I genuinely care about the well being of my fellow men and women. I don’t need the fear of the mythical repercussions of an entity that has never been seen to scare me in to caring about others or life itself. I get up every morning because I have a life, I have a purpose, and I don’t need superstition to scare me into thinking that if I act a certain way that I will be punished for it in the afterlife. The consequences of a bad life will be paid in this life.
The question is an example of equivocation because it confuses two very different meanings of the word “meaning” (or “purpose” or whichever word they choose):
(Let’s call this the A-meaning) It could refer to a universal, objective property of the concept of life as a whole; in other words, the answer to the question “Why does life exist?”. The answer to that question is, of course, the same as the famous “colour of a yawn”: life just exists, it doesn’t need to justify itself. The theist is welcome to think up some fabulous mythology to “explain” it, but I am under no obligation to take that seriously.
(Let’s call this the B-meaning) It could refer to one’s personal, subjective impression of one’s own life; in other words, the answer to the question “What do you strive for?”/“What are your goals in life?”. The answer to this is obviously going to be different from person to person, and it would be arrogant and patronising for a theist to assert that my life cannot have such a B-meaning without a superstitious belief.
Thus, if the question is “If your life has no A-meaning, why get up in the morning?” then the obvious answer is “Because it has B-meaning.” If the question is “If your life has no B-meaning, why get up in the morning?” the obvious answer is “actually, it does.”
Simply because I have real people and real tasks that matter to me, and the existence or lack thereof of a god won’t change any of that. Like realizing Santa is not real, the only thing I lost when I gave up religion was the paranoia that some obsessed being was tabulating my mistakes.
“The same things that get everyone through the night. Love of human fellowship. Love of nature. Love of art. Love of the world. Love of life. Love of science. Love of children. Love of music. All the things that everybody else has.” - Richard Dawkins in a book interview, when asked “What gets you through the night?”
Through whatever means, I feel quite fortunate each time I wake up. Every time that happens, I do my best to enjoy the time.
I don’t need an ‘end game’ in order to feel useful, I tend to keep myself focused on the present.
Asking about the meaning of life is like asking about the colour of a yawn; the question itself is meaningless. Life has no ‘meaning’. I suspect it’s a question that’s intended to sound deep, but really isn’t (what Dan Dennett calls a ‘deepity’), and is simply designed to steer any dialogue to what the questioner believes should be the meaning of life, i.e. the worship of, and abject obedience to, their deity.
However, people find individual meaning in their lives by performing activities that fulfill them or from which they can derive attention or accolades. These activities can be anything from researching Nobel prize winning solutions to the world’s problems to simply raising one’s children in a loving home. No deity is needed.
Then ask, why so sad that your friend, mother, brother died? You should be happy, sing, laugh…. or when you hear a christian has cancer and chemo ask yourself why they are slowing the illness God has given them so they can meet their maker sooner.
I get up in the morning for my wife and child, the sun , the bills, the laughter and the tears. I love life.
I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this question in real life. I’d like to think I’d be on the ball and say something like ‘My life has meaning for me that doesn’t derive from the approval of a supernatural skydady’. But I’d probably be uncomfortable being confronted by a person who was so obviously looking for a fight that I’d avoid the question.
I think something is meaningful for an object if the object (person) interested in it inside the system or outside of it. You, being a person and a parent, interested that your children are well educated and not hungry, outside of the system (people) there’s none interested in your prosperity. So with the absence of the object who would feel good or bad about the things which happen within the system the latter becomes meaningless. Life with no subject beyond it has no mean, but as long as you or our descendants (humankind) are alive life is meaningful.
It’s not possible to believe in a god and in ultimate meaning at the same time:
Meaning is a human concept - that which is intelligible, expressive, imbued with sense or significance. But it is all those things specifically in relation to human understanding and the human capacity to comprehend it and extract the messages embedded in it.
The god of monotheistic religion, on the other hand, is commonly characterised as transcendental and ineffable; unknowable by definition, mysterious in working his ways, and so on.
Why would a deity like that provide meaning at the human level, messages or purposes comprehensible by his infinitely inferior creation? Why, when we can’t, and can’t be expected to, understand things like the Boxing Day tsunami or the Haiti earthquake, should we be so presumptuous as to suppose that we’re able to understand the much more exalted and remote “ultimate” meaning?
By definition, the world of a monotheistic believer - especially one inclined towards predestination - is a meaningless world, not designed to be graspable by the human intellect.
Which leads me to answer your question thus: I get out of bed in the morning and find meaning waiting for me because there is no god. And thank God for that!
This silly question can be answered easily:
“To live.”
Because you haven’t paid your taxes yet.
People appear driven to get out of bed in the morning due to interacting processes that are both unconscious and conscious. Having a conscious idea of life’s meaningfulness isn’t usually necessary, but people do seem to have some implicit sense of purpose even if they can’t articulate what that may be.
Serious proponents of the afterlife will make every day count as proof that they are moral and prosperous enough to be spared any more suffering after they die but are yet supposedly still conscious forever and ever.
I think that for most people, there’s a general sense that things will either continue to be acceptable if they already are or that there is some hope that things will improve, regardless of current circumstances. A benevolent and just deity is but one of many things that people claim to enrich their lives. Some people may get out of bed out of fear that it’ll get worse if they don’t!
I like what Woody Allen’s character, Isaac Davis, says in the movie, Manhattan:
Why is life worth living? Groucho Marx, to name one thing... Willie Mays... the 2nd movement of the Jupiter Symphony... Louis Armstrong, recording of Potato Head Blues... Swedish movies, naturally... Sentimental Education by Flaubert... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... those incredible Apples and Pears by Cezanne... the crabs at Sam Wo's... Tracy's face..."
I think this question is usually a straw man from theists. By and large, most religious people don’t make their decisions based on religious teaching. And their belief in god is not the only thing holding them back from suicide, right?
But I once asked my religious roommate in college: if he really believes in this stuff, why is he spending his time working on a business degree, chasing girls, etc? Why hasn’t he dedicated his life to god and studying the bible or working as a missionary? He stammered out some half-baked rationalization for it at the time…
Unfortunately he ended up calling my bluff. I looked him up recently and the bastard has gone on to become a professor of theology at a seminary school.
I hope I don’t get any demerits for that when I go to atheist heaven.
Why not?
What does belief in god and feeling that there is “an ultimate meaning” have over plain old survival or enjoyment as motivators?
Because I love Mother Earth and I love to see the sun shine.
Because laying in your own waste is unpleasant.
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