religion, life, meaningPossible Duplicate:
If you don't believe in a God and an ultimate meaning, why get up in the morning?
For religious guys this question is the ultimate response and justification for their religions. What is the purpose of life, universe and everything for an atheist?
What is the purpose of life, universe and everything for an atheist?
There is none. If we subscribe to the view that the universe wasn’t designed then clearly it doesn’t serve a purpose. The same goes for life, although evolution has built a certain survival instinct into animals (which is a very logical adaptation) so one could say that the meaning of life is to live (and procreate). But in reality, that’s just an emergent property of evolution.
Which is less bleak than it sounds. We don’t need a sense in life, we are creating sense with our lives.
Apart from that, there are certainly things worth living for, first and foremost:
But these are just hobbies. They’re not the purpose of existence. There is no purpose.
You choose your own purpose.
score: 3
Failing that, a decent beer at the weekend with my mates will do.
The purpose of life is what gets you up in the morning. For better or for worse. As an atheist, one has to seek that purpose for oneself rather than it be given to them through dogma.
As usual such reasoning from theists is upside-down and inside out.
There is no ultimate answer, or ultimate meaning, value or purpose. Many religions and theisms have to pretend that such ultimate purpose exists to justify their religion and/or deity. However no amount of wishful thinking can make it so.
Further this utilizes the fallacy of an appeal to consequences - what if there is no ultimate answer?
In my view, the lack of an ultimate answer is what allows for the possibility of meaning and purpose, whereas a supposed ultimate answer - such as god did it - both demeans and demoralizes our existence. If it were true it would make our existence meaningless and purposeless, even if the deity were purely benign. With such an ultimate answer it seem that we are or can only be just slaves, serfs, playthings, experiments or worse of a deity.
In other words if one is really concerned with genuine meaning and purposes then it should be reassuring that there is no ultimate purpose. Note this could also be construed as an argument to consequences, however it just happens to be the case - given our reasoning, provisional evidence and knowledge - that there is most likely in fact no ultimate answer.
Disclaimer: Lacking gods to tell us what we should be doing, we’re essentially blank canvases on which we can paint whatever we want to. So the following is just a very general “policy statement:”
The reason you’re alive is because some of your ancestors successfully ran away from sabre-toothed tigers, beat up some Neanderthals, learned how to tame fire, colonized Europe, discovered metallurgy and the magnetic compass… even the guy who worked in the weavery that crafted the sail on Columbus’ boat contributed to the fact that you’re now living in America and posting questions on the Internet. Our existence is the purpose of those who came before us, as our purpose is to be the basis for the existence and achievements of those who come after us.
Presumably our descendants will discover many exciting secrets of the universe and colonize nearby star systems. They may conquer gravity, the speed of light and maybe even death. There are various different achievements that form part of this purpose; some of us will become famous, others will contribute anonymously. That’s a realistic description, at a high level, of our purpose.
For me, personally, the ultimate answer would be a full and correct mental map of the Universe, because my atheism is a side-effect of my trying to be rational. As for a purpose, there is no inherent purpose to natural objects. It sounds pretty much like asking, “What is the purpose of this stone on the road?” or, “Do green ideas sleep furiously?” A purpose requires an intelligent agent, who in this case would be the human atheist.
Everybody has his own purposes in life. My purpose is made up of a wife and three great kids whom I’d like to see happy and successful in life.
Perhaps it depends on the individual. I’m driven to do two things
Above all, I just want to be happy. I’m quite convinced that if life did have some sort of purpose, it would be to be happy while spending it. But that isn’t a purpose.
Still, the one thing we can’t stop doing is trying to figure things out. But, that makes us happy.
The purpose for which we and all other organisms exist is to replicate ourselves with offspring who will do the same. Everything else is just embellishment that, if adaptive, improves our success at self-replication. In some cases, this might simply be to distract ourselves from the fact that our lives are just a momentary eddy of matter and energy. There is no more reason to believe in a greater purpose to life and death than to believe in gods. We are just what the surface of this planet happens to be doing at the moment.
Why does believing in a God give you purpose? If you believe in the End Times all you are doing is waiting till this life is over and moving on. Where is the fun in that?
My purpose in life is to live.
Speaking as an atheist, the only honest answer is “we don’t know (yet)”. Personally, I doubt there’s a purpose for life, the universe, and everything; frankly, I don’t worry about it much.
All content is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.