How do you find purpose as an atheist?

i don't see how these two things are in any way related, or what belief, that believed in, and 'purpose' in one's own life, have even the slightest of anything to do with each other.

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i'm sorry but i honestly believe there is no higher or nobler cause then to avoid causing suffering, whatever else there may or may not also be.

sure there's sometimes there are trade-offs. sometimes you can't do the right thing without hurtings someones feelings. sometimes the path of avoidance of causing suffering conflicts with someone else's emotional attatchments. sometimes with one's own.

and there are certainly plenty of other noble, worthy, even at times neccessary and unavoidable considerations. but no nobler nor more worthy cause.

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there is no purpose and free will doesnt exist.. to thing either of those is true, you have deficient reasoning ability in those areas from comparmentalization

 

I don't think an atheist needs to be concerned with purpose. In fact, an atheist isn't trying to explain things at all-- hence the 'a' in atheistic.

 

i do not find purpose as an atheist. i do not believe a deity a god exists. i find purpose within myself. i try to live an honest life. i try to live a life at peace with my fellow humans, nature and animals. i am not looking for success or achievement at the expense of others.

 

yea I dont need a purpose. I think we have to find our own purpose thats what life is. Just have fun trying to.

btw this is what the song "soft parade" by the doors is about

 

Ever wonder why, over a century after Nietzche pronounced God dead, religion seems to be doing so well globally. And it seems to be the more conservative brands of religion that are thriving--Islamic fundamentalism, Roman Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, Hindu fundamentalism, etc. This doesn't seem to be the case in Western Europe, stronghold of secularism. Why is this? Any ideas? My own hunch is that the resurgence of religion is a reaction to the secularizing force of globalization, which comes across to many people as a force making the world colder,more impersonal, more bureacratized, with too much drugs, sex, and rock'n roll, and less and less control over the forces that affect our lives and livelihood. Why not Western Europe? I would guess that since the Industrial Revolution began there, they've had more time to adjust. And in spite of industrialization and urbanization in the Untied States, it's a much bigger country with (politically) more clout to "Red State" Bible Belt regions where traditional values are entrenched but under challenge. As a Bible Belt Christian, myself, atheist writers like Dawkins turn me off, not necessarily because I find the arguments logically flawed but because the world they advocate seems emotionally empty and devoid of meaning.

You folks say find our own meaning, and sure, we could do that. But I think many people would choose Dawkins' brand of atheism as a last resort. Sure, I know that what is emotionally satisfying may not be true, and that if logic and the weight of evidence prove that "God is Dead" we should suck it up. But for many, the evidence of that is less than overwhelming. Dawkins and other atheists, agnostics and secularists come across to me like the Borg on Startrek: "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile". The Borg were emotionally challenged, with an underdeveloped right hemisphere of the brain, and I sense the same impairment in Dawkins and company. Of course, I'm not advocating the Taliban, al-Qaeda or the Christian religious right. The "cure" may be worse than the disease. Just pointing out why they have a following. Is there a sociologist in the house?

 

Why does living need to have a "point" at all? Do the "lilies of the field" need to have a point to live?

If you must have a "point", then decide on your own meaning of life. Can you think of anything more imporant to decide? We believe that it's much better do determine our own purpose, than to have some church do it for you based on their agenda!

 

The lillies of the field don't have minds. Yes, we can and do choose meanings for our lives, but some are more satisfying and fulfilling than others. And no, we shouldn't just plug in any formula given to us by a church of creed, because they're offten screwed up and willprobably mess up our lives or someone else's.

 

The lillies of the field don't have minds. Jesus' parable wasn't meant to suggest we should spend our lives sitting around vegetating. Living in the moment or "one day at a time" can be meaningful if a person appreciates the meaning in it. Yes, we can and do choose meanings for our lives, but some are more satisfying and fulfilling than others. Psychatrist Viktor Frankl found that people could find meaning even as inmates of Nazi concentration camps. And it the meaning was personal and subjective, not a "one size fits all" meaning. But the ones who survived found it somewhere--memories of family and friends, sunshine, fresh air,whatever. It doesn't have to be God or religion. And no, we shouldn't just blindly plug in any formula given to us by a church, creed, or ideology, because they're often screwed up and will probably mess up our lives or someone else's.

 

I think in the big picture, one of our purposes is to be a way for the universe to know itself. Because without us, or any other conscious intelligence, there would be a universe full of amazing things without anyone to appreciate it. Just think of what a waste that would be.

And if you want to take quantum mechanics to extremes... which says "nothing exists until it is observed". We have observed the initial conditions of the universe, such as the charge of the electron, the force of gravity, the speed of light, etc. And these constants must be just right for life to exist. Maybe our act of scientific observation set these constants to what they are. And they couldn't be anything other than what is required to support life - otherwise there would be no observation. Maybe our existence is required for the universe to exist! Yes it is twisted, but experiments do show that observations after an event somehow affect the event.

Other than that, I consider myself extremely lucky to be alive. I could just as well be an inanimate rock. And within several decades, I might just as well be a rock, for the rest of eternity - which really sucks. So I'm going to enjoy life while I have it.

 

Interesting. I don't share the belief that our act of observation influenced the existence of the universe, but your point that "without us, or any other conscious intelligence, there would be a universe full of amazing things without anyone to appreciate it" is actually one of the main reasons I think there may be more to this than the operation of "blind" forces. This is an intuitive insight rather than a strictly logical or scientific one. Most evolutionists maintain that there were many forks in the path from early life forms to us, and that an outcome other than aware, intelligent life was possible. So our existence is either a miracle or an extremely lucky accident. Either way, I'm impressed!

 

No doubt, the creation of the universe was impressive. And it may seem like the only way for such order and beauty to exist is to be created. But the problem with that explanation is that now we have a God who's existence is even more impressive than the universe. This is just getting deeper and deeper. How the heck did a supreme being capable of creating this universe spring from nowhere?

As for observations affecting past events, let me give you an example in quantum mechanics. The classic 2 slit experiment. Imagine a photon emitter in front of a screen with 2 slits. A photon can go through either slit A, slit B, or both A&B. If we set up 2 light detectors beyond the screen with slits in line with with a photon going through either slit A or B, then either light detector A or light detector B sees the photon. Never both. If we put up another screen instead of the detectors, then we get an interference pattern on the screen, implying that the photon went through both slits and interfered with itself. How does the use of light detectors or a screen determine how the photon passes through the slits? The light impacts the screen or detectors after it passes through the slits. This experiment can also be set up on a large enough scale so that the choice of using detectors or a screen is made while the phonon is in transit on the way to the detectors or screen. So affecting the past is possible.

 

Before we go down that rabbit hole, let's keep in mind the important insight we seem to agree on--one that I haven't seen given much attention in these discussions:"without us, or any other conscious intelligence, there would be a universe full of amazing things without anyone to appreciate it". Our awareness, our conscious intelligence (or intelligent consciousness), is either a happy accident or something more. Atheistic evloutionists like Dawkins take the postion "So what?" If it wasn't conscious intelligence, it would be something else. If nothing in the universe were aware of the amzing things, then nothing in the univese would be aware of the amazing things--big deal. Intuitively, I think it is a big deal, although I'd never be able to "prove" it to Dawkins.

 

Ok we can do that. Although the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Intelligent life has been on the earth for only a few 10s of thousands of years. Or if you count any intelligence other animals or ancestors had, a few million years. Sure there's probably intelligent alien life out there somewhere, but I'd bet for most of that 13.7 billion years there has been no one to see it. I think about that too sometimes. All that grandeur just sitting there all by itself.

 

As for a God "whose existence is even more impressive than the universe", I admit that we've encountered a paradox that may be beyond resolution by human intellects. The traditional "proofs" of God, especially the cosmological argument and the argument from design founder on the contradiction that if everything must have a cause and every complex, orderly phenomenon must have a designer, how did the Unmoved Mover or Intelligent Designer come to be? I give up. The Buddha taught that certain questions are "improper", since they refer to realities that are beyond language. Islam also teaches that such theological speculations are "zanna", self-indulgent guesswork about things that are ineffable, but that a transcedent reality can be sensed intuitively in the "ayat" (signs) of physical reality. That is possibly as much as we can know, maybe all we need to know. The group that I take fellowship with tends to use the term "Great Mystery" in place of "God", to avoid anthropomorphic connotations and emphasize ineffability.

 

I saw a talk by Stephen Hawking who essentially says almost the same thing as The Buddha. That it is impossible to define the true laws of nature with the mathematical tools we have. The same way that mathematics cannot be completely defined using itself. But he does not say that it is "improper" to ask the questions. There is a line where the tools we have are no longer of any use. But until we cross that line we should continue to explore and understand. It may be that when we get to that line we will develop more tools that has the empirical testability that science has. And then we will be able to move forward again until we get to the next line. But I don't think it is ever improper to ask the questions, and that is what many religious people ask us to do.

We have questions which are entirely within the power of our tools to explore (at least to some point we haven't reached yet) such as evolution or cosmology, and some of the religious people tell us to stop. They say that's God's work and we should question it no further. Well we haven't reached the full potention of our tools yet, so I would like to explore further.

I would not want to rely on intuitive guessing in the "ayat" or signs of physical reality. Our species intuition has told us that the earth is obviously flat. And then, obviously at the center of the universe. Even Einstein's intuition failed him when he assumed the universe is steady state and had no beginning, and then again when he refused to believe the results of quantum mechanics. Our intuition is equipped to help us deal with what our ancestors have had to deal with for thousands of years to survive and deal with complex personal relationships. It is not equipped to answer the big questions of where life and the universe came from. The best tool we have for that is the scientific method. Use our intuition to form an hypothesis, but then test it. Does it stand up to experimental scrutiny? If not we have to accept it and move on.

 

I agree. The process of inquiry is quintessentially human. But some questions are presently unaswerable, and some may always be. As long as we are aware of our limitations and don't take our speculations too seriously, inquiry is healthy and could even be viewed as an act of worship. In the meantime, us non-scientists who are faced with the problem of getting through the day, orienting ourselves to reality, and deciding how to conduct ourselves and to treat other people have decisions and choices to make. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the scientist suspends judgment, and the Okie takes a chance.

Intuition is admittedly a blunt instrument, but in the absence of other evidence, it's sometimes necessary. Santayana talks about "animal faith" that we necessarily rely on to "know" that there is a world out there full of other people, that two plus two does equal four, that science can be relied upon, and that Mr Stiffy isn't just my hallucination. And I could be wrong about all those things. Of course, there is at least a consensus on "facts" like those. Sometimes, reason and new discoveries convince us that something we believed before, like the world being flat, was wrong. We accept that, because we intuitively accept the process that led to the correction. There are times when some of us don't. For example, faced with evidence that the Earth is older than we originally thought, some fundamentalists question the validity of carbon dating. My intuition tells me they're off base, but I can't prove it. Confronted with evidence of a universe that could be a happy accident, or not, I have to figure out whether that's likely. Science isn't much help, because scientists are trained to look for naturalistic explanations, to suspend judgment in the absence of hard evidence, and to avoid speculating about matters that can't be empirically verified, or at least refuted. So I fall back on faith. Faith=Intuition+risk taking.

 

Oh yes. They love to show all the flaws of using carbon dating to date the Earth. That is because they have an agenda. They "know" that the Earth is 6000 years old and that's the end of the story. So as soon as they see a flaw with scientific ways to measure the age of the Earth they all hold it up for all to see. If they had any interest in the search for the truth they would investigate further to find out that you don't use carbon dating to measure the age of the Earth. Its half-life is only 5700 years. So it's good for age measurements up to about 60,000 years. After that it looses accuracy. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old so you need to use another radioactive isotope such as Uranium-235 (half-life = 704 million years), or Uranium-238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years). Oh uh, yeah. That works better... geez...

We all try and figure out what's likely. I look at the track record of religion and I am not impressed. Making up stories like Genisis to explain what they don't understand. Sweeping scientific answers under the carpet when it points to something they don't like, like the right way to do radio-isotope dating or Gallileo's evidence that the Earth is not the center of the universe. A propensity for using well known physical or biological processes, such as beautiful sunsets, birth, the abundance of species - as examples of god's work. I haven't seen any instance where religion left egg on the face of science. I wouldn't want to be guilty of sweeping relgion's accomplishments under the carpet, so tell me if there are any instances where religion has an answer for something that is verified to be correct and where science is clueless.

On the other hand, I look at science's track record and I see nothing but steady progress. Scientists may be trained to look for naturalistic processes, but that's because that's where the answers overwhelmingly can be found. And remember - a naturalistic explaination may be suggested by scientists, but then it is also tested, and verified to be true. Mystical hypothesis have also been suggested, but scientists are scratching their head wondering "ok how do we know that is true and not some wild ass guess?" So my intuition tells me that even though science may not be able to provide an explaination about where the universe really came from, that because naturalistic explainations work from 10^-43 seconds after the big bang, all the way to now 13.7 billion years later, that whatever came before also followed the laws of physics.

 

I think science is great for what it is intended to do--making predictions and generating reliable knowledge. My understanding is that science doesn't even claim that its constructs are necessarily describing ultimate reality. And science doesn't mess with the really important questions that are not susceptible to empirical testing: Is there a soul that survives the body after death? Does life have ultimate meaning? What is Justice, Truth, Beauty, etc.? How should we live our lives? That's not to disparage science. Einstein is no less a genius for not being able to compose like Bach or paint like Picasso. Does religion answer these questions? Not definitively, any more than philosophy, literature, or art does, but they may all give us insights.

 

I see no reason to believe there is a soul. What is it? As a scientist, but not a neurologist, I have followed with interest the research being done on consciousness and other processes of the brain. As well as research done with MRI scans. It seems to me that all the mechanisms that make all that work are the physical matter of the brain, since we have identified many parts of the brain and their function, and watched them work with MRI scans. I see no reason to believe that there's anything more than our brains.

Does our life have ultimate meaning? I think we agreed on at least part of what meaning humanity or any other intelligent life has.

What is justice? Justice is in the eye of the beholder, and depends on one's personal philosophy. Beauty is also in the eye of the beholder as the saying goes, and is even more subjective.

How we should live our lives is again according to our philosophy. Rather than finding one and striving to conform to it, I have been on a quest last year to find out what my personal philosophy is. Before investigating other philosophies I wrote down my core set of values and beliefs. Then investigated other philosophies to see what matched closest. I found 1 or 2 that were close, but they still had stark differences in some areas from what I believed, so I am still searching.