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cleanhippie

(19,705 posts)
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:22 PM Jan 2012

‘How do atheists find meaning in life?’

The correspondent was blunt: “Why don’t you atheists just go out and kill yourselves right now?”

True, most Christians phrase it rather more delicately, but atheists are regularly informed by a certain kind of believer that our lives can have no value if we do not believe in their God. What is the point, they ask, of being kind or loving, caring about suffering or doing anything at all, if one day we just die?

It is true that in the absence of a divine plan our lives have no externally determined purpose: an individual is not born for the purpose of becoming a physician or creating a spectacular work of art or digging a well in an arid corner of Africa. But are the sick less cured, the pleasure to the art-lover less intense, or the thirst of parched villagers less slaked, simply because a man sought his own purpose rather than following a diktat from on high? Do we really need a deity to tell us that a life spent curing cancer is more worthwhile than one spent drinking in the gutter?

Why should we not find satisfaction in alleviating suffering or injustice, just because we’re all going to die one day? The very fact that this life is all we have makes it even more important to do everything possible to reduce the suffering caused by poverty, disease, injustice and ignorance. To describe such attempts as meaningless is to say that avoidable suffering does not matter, hardly a moral stance.

Many Christians claim we have no reason to care about others if there is no God. But this is itself a religious claim, arising from the theological concept of Original Sin, which declares humankind fallen and corrupt. We can safely ignore it, for in reality we do not need childish stories of eternal reward or damnation to coerce us into being good: research shows that the least religious societies have the lowest incidence of social ills, including crime and violence. Healthy humans have empathy built in, and the explanations for this lie in psychology and evolutionary biology: no gods required.

Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/how-do-atheist-find-meaning-in-life/2012/01/18/gIQAbiFP8P_blog.html
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‘How do atheists find meaning in life?’ (Original Post) cleanhippie Jan 2012 OP
What could be more meaningful than snot Jan 2012 #1
Check the sofa cushions. It's usually stuck down in there. Scuba Jan 2012 #2
Life is meaningless if you have to have something to tell you what to do. PDJane Jan 2012 #3
Nothing you do in this life matters if you get an infinite "do-over" in the "after-life". JoePhilly Jan 2012 #4
This brings up a good point EvolveOrConvolve Jan 2012 #5
I strongly agree. cleanhippie Jan 2012 #11
If a person can't find meaning for their life outside of religion, you can only pity them. baldguy Jan 2012 #6
The meaning of life is "42" or 43 if you round out the nibbly bits. Loudmxr Jan 2012 #7
By living it. nt rrneck Jan 2012 #8
As an atheist edhopper Jan 2012 #9
i do`t know..maybe ask them? madrchsod Jan 2012 #10
I only bother living so I can reply to this thread. Warren Stupidity Jan 2012 #12
Here's something I like Gregorian Jan 2012 #13
Far better to do what's right, whatever you're told, mr blur Jan 2012 #14
The same way everyone else does: we make it up. ZombieHorde Jan 2012 #15
Answer lector Jan 2012 #16
Wine, bread, cheese, and chocolate. lindysalsagal Jan 2012 #17
There is always this: edhopper Jan 2012 #18
Using Fundamentalist Christianity strawmen to defend an Atheistic stance is easy elias7 Jan 2012 #19
Can you better define "spirtual development" and why a "thirst" for it is a good thing? cleanhippie Jan 2012 #20
We have nothing to defend and thus no need to defend it - mr blur Jan 2012 #22
Here's my favorite take on this: PassingFair Jan 2012 #21
One atheist's experience in the search for meaning GliderGuider Jan 2012 #23

snot

(10,481 posts)
1. What could be more meaningful than
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:24 PM
Jan 2012

creating meaning by choosing to make a better world?

Even if we do so partly because we recognize we've got nothing better to do.

PDJane

(10,103 posts)
3. Life is meaningless if you have to have something to tell you what to do.
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:25 PM
Jan 2012

And someone else to interpret those orders.

JoePhilly

(27,787 posts)
4. Nothing you do in this life matters if you get an infinite "do-over" in the "after-life".
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:32 PM
Jan 2012

You can be a giant ass in this life, and as long as you "ask for forgiveness", you get a "do-over" in the next one.

If you believe that this is all you get, you'll be more likely to do right by others in THIS life, because its the only one you get.

Tell them that.

EvolveOrConvolve

(6,452 posts)
5. This brings up a good point
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:33 PM
Jan 2012

Atheists often find meaning by doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, rather than because of the threat of hell or promise of heaven. There's a sort of purity in that.

 

baldguy

(36,649 posts)
6. If a person can't find meaning for their life outside of religion, you can only pity them.
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:42 PM
Jan 2012

If making a better world isn't enough by itself to bring meaning to life, then my first reaction would be that this person is some sort of sociopath.

edhopper

(33,208 posts)
9. As an atheist
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 01:48 PM
Jan 2012

I have to say that nothing to me is more meaningless that people who spend their whole lives devoted to a religion. I am talking about clergy and other who mostly read and reread fictional tales of supernatual myths and revolve their whole life around it. All that time and resources spent on things that don't exist, what a waste.

 

mr blur

(7,753 posts)
14. Far better to do what's right, whatever you're told,
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 03:32 PM
Jan 2012

than to do what you're told, whatever' s right.

Also: "Why don't you Christians just go out and kill yourselves, and get to Heaven faster&quot

ZombieHorde

(29,047 posts)
15. The same way everyone else does: we make it up.
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 04:18 PM
Jan 2012

Not everyone chooses to attach meaning to their lives, but a lot of people seem to.

An interesting thread may be: "Does your life have meaning, and if so, what is it?"

lindysalsagal

(20,440 posts)
17. Wine, bread, cheese, and chocolate.
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 08:31 PM
Jan 2012

Permanent hair color and music pretty much round it all out. Kayaking works, too.

Now, give me a hard one.

edhopper

(33,208 posts)
18. There is always this:
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 09:51 PM
Jan 2012

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women."
(Conan the Barbarian)

elias7

(3,976 posts)
19. Using Fundamentalist Christianity strawmen to defend an Atheistic stance is easy
Mon Jan 30, 2012, 10:49 AM
Jan 2012

The argument with self can be limiting. Why choose those with the most concrete, dogmatic and literal mindset to define yourself with or rather, against? That "certain kind of believer" is useless to give credence to, and if one's antipathy towards parochial thinking is what defines a decision to become atheist, perhaps your thirst for spiritual development is not so great.

 

mr blur

(7,753 posts)
22. We have nothing to defend and thus no need to defend it -
Mon Jan 30, 2012, 12:17 PM
Jan 2012

Which would exlain the light-hearted comments in this thread.

We simply don't accept the existence of gods.

If you believe in a supernatural power then you have something to defend and, of course, the burden of proof.

Are you equating a "thirst for spiritual development" with believing in the supernatural?

PassingFair

(22,434 posts)
21. Here's my favorite take on this:
Mon Jan 30, 2012, 11:41 AM
Jan 2012


I love this little cartoon.


On edit: I believe that our lives have as much meaning as WE infuse them with.

 

GliderGuider

(21,088 posts)
23. One atheist's experience in the search for meaning
Mon Jan 30, 2012, 12:22 PM
Jan 2012

I was raised from the beginning as a strong atheist as well as a a committed materialist and positivist. For well over 50 years I felt life had no particular meaning, it just was. Life is the product of blind impersonal forces, and any sense of meaning or purpose was reification at best, and at worst, self-delusion.

When I was in my mid 50s I discovered the accelerating interlocking clusterfuck of modern industrial civilization - ecological problems, climate change, looming energy shortages (aka Peak Oil), increasing social injustice, global economic problems - in the words of Zorba the Greek, "the full catastrophe". The more I investigated it, the more I realized that we clever (but not so wise) humans had left ourselves no way out except for the collapse of the whole enterprise. That collapse seemed more inevitable with every stone I turned over. Our determination to destroy our planet seemed to hint that, to go back to the Greeks again, we were a tragically flawed species whose self-destruction is bred in the bone.

Of course, down that rabbit-hole lives nothing but despair. For quite a while I took enormous self-righteous pleasure in what I viewed as my own courage - my ability to look the death of billions of people square in the face and say, "Well hey, that's just life ya know. Deal with it!"

But the thing about despair is that it inevitably robs life of all pleasure - even momentary pleasures like reading a good book or sharing a good meal with friends was revealed as being pointless and delusional. After all, if it's all going to come to an end in imminent, universal misery anyway, why bother with anything? And all those people around me who still found purpose in their humdrum little, doomed little lives? Delusional, blinded, self-absorbed pusillanamous little idiots, the lot of them!

Eventually of course that much psychic pain becomes insupportable. There were only two ways out that I could see - either take myself out feet first or find some way to give my life meaning despite what I knew (and still know) to be the unfortunate facts of the situation. I decided to give myself one last chance. So I started looking.

I soon found clues all over the map: in the novels "Ishmael" and "The Story of B" by Daniel Quinn, in the book "Blessed Unrest" by the environmentalist Paul Hawken, and in the philosophy of Deep Ecology. From Quinn I learned that our species is probably not broken, just mistaken - we have been telling ourselves a deeply damaging cultural narrative about domination and human exceptionalism. Hawken showed me a massive, growing grass-roots movement that is already changing our cultural narrative world-wide, one person at a time. But it was in the third clue - Deep Ecology - that I found the doorway I'd been looking for.

Deep Ecology is a radical contemporary ecological movement based on the idea that all life - human and non-human alike - has intrinsic value, independent of its usefulness to human beings. A corollary of this idea is that human life is embedded within nature, a part of it rather than apart from it, just like every other form of life on this or any other planet. The realization of our interdependence drove home the idea that we exist only by virtue of our interconnections with other life and the planet itself. And that sense of being embedded in, dependent on and responsible to something much greater than myself was the opening I was looking for.

Others here may disagree with the next step I took, but in retrospect it seemed inevitable. The context I had discovered made me understand the word "sacred" for the first time in my life. I began to see life itself as sacred. Even more than that, the whole of existence with its infinite interconnectedness was sacred. My meaning flowed from the simple fact of my own existence, alongside and within all other existence - from people, animals and plants, to the rock we live on, the star we orbit and the universe of which we form such an infinitesimal part..

Once I had understood the word "sacred" in that sense, the next question I asked myself was why I saw things this way. What gave rise to the searching and the answers? That question dropped me instantly on the doorstep of consciousness itself. I have become convinced that there is something fundamentally sacred about the nature of consciousness, something so intrinsically important to the fabric of the universe that it must be honoured in every respect.

That's how this atheist came to experience the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

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