11-19-2003, 10:32 AM
I'm an atheist, and I'm extremely happy to be. There is a marvelous essay about "the meaning of life" from an atheist point of view at <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/nihilism.html">http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/nihilism.html</a><!-- m -->
excerpt:
"Where do our purpose and meaning come from? They come from nowhere but ourselves. It is the right of every person to decide what makes their life meaningful and what their purpose will be. An atheist could devote their life to fighting the abuses of organized religion or trying to win people over to the cause of freethought, but not all atheists choose to be activists. Some might prefer to write, paint, sculpt, program, or otherwise create. Some could devote their lives to charity work, or to family, friends and community, or to any cause they identify with. Some might want to advance the frontier of human knowledge through science. Others might focus on self-improvement and making themselves the best, most well-rounded individuals they can be. Some might simply prefer to enjoy the beauty of the natural world, the wonder of the universe, and the pleasures of the senses, and make the most of their lives while they have them. Atheism leaves all these options open, but forces us into none of them; its essence is freedom, autonomy and self-direction.
The unanswered question is why theists feel we need a god or gods to tell us what to do, or worse, that our very purpose is to worship such beings. Too many of them seem to simply take these things as given, but as an atheist, I question these assumptions. Why do we need a higher power, or anyone else at all, to tell us what to do? Isn't it our choice and our right to set our own path? What's so difficult about choosing for yourself?
Even more puzzling to me is the notion that God gives us all a purpose, and that purpose is to worship God. How could anyone embrace such a depressing and limiting idea? It makes us out to be slaves, or puppets, or canned applause, created by a vain God just so we could constantly sing his praises and tell him how great he is. Equally bad, in my view, is the concept that the purpose God has decreed for us is to follow his rules, have faith in him and be saved. If this is what God wanted for us, why didn't he create us all in Heaven in the first place? Why did he create us apart from him and then set these arbitrary hurdles for us to jump over to get back? This view reduces humanity to a rat running a maze.
In sharp contrast to all these things is the freedom afforded to us by atheism. One who has never known anything but the chains of religion can only dream of the exhilaration of true self-direction. Humanity is diminished, not uplifted, by senselessly following the preordained path decided for us by a cosmic tyrant long before we were born. It is the choice to do with our lives as we wish that gives our existence true meaning and purpose.
Another reason theists commonly see atheism as equivalent to nihilism comes from the mistaken perception that, without God, human goals are ultimately futile and we have nothing to strive for. If we die and that's it, the argument goes, why does anything we accomplish matter?
But again, this argument is not only a non sequitur, it can be reversed and turned back on the theist. If we all can look forward to an eternal afterlife of bliss, why does anything we achieve now matter in the long run? Any work of art or invention you wanted to create, any book you wanted to read or course of study you wanted to undertake - you'll have all the time you could ever need to do those things when you reach Heaven. No point in packing them all into this fleeting mortal life. Likewise, why bother to improve this world for our descendants or ease the burden of human suffering? All mortal pain is inconsequential in the face of an infinity of happiness.
The atheist, by contrast, has sound reasons for desiring to set and achieve goals. If this life is all we have, then whatever we want to do to improve ourselves, we have to do now or miss the opportunity forever. Likewise, if there is no afterlife where all earthly wrongs will be righted, we have a real reason to work now to decrease suffering and ensure justice.
So, in the end, what makes life worth living for this atheist? The answer lies in a threefold combination: the love and friendship of human relations, the wonder and beauty of nature, and the illuminating truths and tantalizing mysteries of science. Whether it be spending time with friends, kissing someone special to me, enjoying a good meal, watching a sunrise at dawn, walking through a forest in autumn and marveling at the vibrancy of color and the play of sunlight on leaves, walking through the same forest in summer, observing photosynthesis and the interlocking and vibrant web of life produced by millions of years of evolution, returning to that forest in winter to see the fractal patterns of branches and frost on a winter morning and feel my breath steaming in the air; whether it be watching clouds at day and considering how atmospheric scatter of sunlight makes the sky appear blue, or watching stars at night and letting my imagination drift through the incomparable vastness and grandeur of the cosmos, wondering whether there is any other intelligent life out there that might at that moment be wondering the same thing; or contemplating deep truths of our own existence, picturing my own thoughts as electrochemical flashes in a network of synapses, my own body as proteins built up by self-replicating entwined double helixes, mutating and propagating themselves throughout the eons, my own structure as composed of glittering bits of subatomic matter, the whirl of electrons around the atomic nuclei, the quantum froth of quarks, tiny immutable particles as old as the universe itself, or as ephemeral as nothingness, all self-assembling over multiple levels of complexity into a thinking, conscious mind that can look back and conceive of and study its own existence - all these things make my life worth living. There is a lot to enjoy in this world, and none of it is made any less valid or desirable by not believing in God. On the contrary, it only increases my wonder that we've managed to come this far by ourselves. We are here now, and we exist. There is much for us to love, much for us to admire, and very much still for us to learn. This is not nihilism, and there is no reason for it to be. On the contrary, atheism is nothing less than a celebration of life."
excerpt:
"Where do our purpose and meaning come from? They come from nowhere but ourselves. It is the right of every person to decide what makes their life meaningful and what their purpose will be. An atheist could devote their life to fighting the abuses of organized religion or trying to win people over to the cause of freethought, but not all atheists choose to be activists. Some might prefer to write, paint, sculpt, program, or otherwise create. Some could devote their lives to charity work, or to family, friends and community, or to any cause they identify with. Some might want to advance the frontier of human knowledge through science. Others might focus on self-improvement and making themselves the best, most well-rounded individuals they can be. Some might simply prefer to enjoy the beauty of the natural world, the wonder of the universe, and the pleasures of the senses, and make the most of their lives while they have them. Atheism leaves all these options open, but forces us into none of them; its essence is freedom, autonomy and self-direction.
The unanswered question is why theists feel we need a god or gods to tell us what to do, or worse, that our very purpose is to worship such beings. Too many of them seem to simply take these things as given, but as an atheist, I question these assumptions. Why do we need a higher power, or anyone else at all, to tell us what to do? Isn't it our choice and our right to set our own path? What's so difficult about choosing for yourself?
Even more puzzling to me is the notion that God gives us all a purpose, and that purpose is to worship God. How could anyone embrace such a depressing and limiting idea? It makes us out to be slaves, or puppets, or canned applause, created by a vain God just so we could constantly sing his praises and tell him how great he is. Equally bad, in my view, is the concept that the purpose God has decreed for us is to follow his rules, have faith in him and be saved. If this is what God wanted for us, why didn't he create us all in Heaven in the first place? Why did he create us apart from him and then set these arbitrary hurdles for us to jump over to get back? This view reduces humanity to a rat running a maze.
In sharp contrast to all these things is the freedom afforded to us by atheism. One who has never known anything but the chains of religion can only dream of the exhilaration of true self-direction. Humanity is diminished, not uplifted, by senselessly following the preordained path decided for us by a cosmic tyrant long before we were born. It is the choice to do with our lives as we wish that gives our existence true meaning and purpose.
Another reason theists commonly see atheism as equivalent to nihilism comes from the mistaken perception that, without God, human goals are ultimately futile and we have nothing to strive for. If we die and that's it, the argument goes, why does anything we accomplish matter?
But again, this argument is not only a non sequitur, it can be reversed and turned back on the theist. If we all can look forward to an eternal afterlife of bliss, why does anything we achieve now matter in the long run? Any work of art or invention you wanted to create, any book you wanted to read or course of study you wanted to undertake - you'll have all the time you could ever need to do those things when you reach Heaven. No point in packing them all into this fleeting mortal life. Likewise, why bother to improve this world for our descendants or ease the burden of human suffering? All mortal pain is inconsequential in the face of an infinity of happiness.
The atheist, by contrast, has sound reasons for desiring to set and achieve goals. If this life is all we have, then whatever we want to do to improve ourselves, we have to do now or miss the opportunity forever. Likewise, if there is no afterlife where all earthly wrongs will be righted, we have a real reason to work now to decrease suffering and ensure justice.
So, in the end, what makes life worth living for this atheist? The answer lies in a threefold combination: the love and friendship of human relations, the wonder and beauty of nature, and the illuminating truths and tantalizing mysteries of science. Whether it be spending time with friends, kissing someone special to me, enjoying a good meal, watching a sunrise at dawn, walking through a forest in autumn and marveling at the vibrancy of color and the play of sunlight on leaves, walking through the same forest in summer, observing photosynthesis and the interlocking and vibrant web of life produced by millions of years of evolution, returning to that forest in winter to see the fractal patterns of branches and frost on a winter morning and feel my breath steaming in the air; whether it be watching clouds at day and considering how atmospheric scatter of sunlight makes the sky appear blue, or watching stars at night and letting my imagination drift through the incomparable vastness and grandeur of the cosmos, wondering whether there is any other intelligent life out there that might at that moment be wondering the same thing; or contemplating deep truths of our own existence, picturing my own thoughts as electrochemical flashes in a network of synapses, my own body as proteins built up by self-replicating entwined double helixes, mutating and propagating themselves throughout the eons, my own structure as composed of glittering bits of subatomic matter, the whirl of electrons around the atomic nuclei, the quantum froth of quarks, tiny immutable particles as old as the universe itself, or as ephemeral as nothingness, all self-assembling over multiple levels of complexity into a thinking, conscious mind that can look back and conceive of and study its own existence - all these things make my life worth living. There is a lot to enjoy in this world, and none of it is made any less valid or desirable by not believing in God. On the contrary, it only increases my wonder that we've managed to come this far by ourselves. We are here now, and we exist. There is much for us to love, much for us to admire, and very much still for us to learn. This is not nihilism, and there is no reason for it to be. On the contrary, atheism is nothing less than a celebration of life."