(091) 13. Atheist Republic Newsletter: Is there any meaning to a life without God?

 

On our Facebook page and website, we often have theists ask how we can possibly find meaning in life without God. We also frequently see questions like, "What is the point of living without an afterlife?". The implicit message is that people don't have the strength required to endure difficulty and grief; we require a god, the hope of eternal life in paradise and the belief that we will be reconciled with those we care about. How can an atheist possibly bear the weight of grief when a loved one dies if they don't believe they will see that loved one again in the afterlife? Theists also have the conviction that the only things of consequence, are those things that have eternal value – a person or action can't really have "true meaning" if it has an absolute end.

Atheists know we must invest everything into this life because it is all we have. We can teach others, care for others, impact the lives of those around us and create a better world for generations to come. We alone have the responsibility and the creative power to live our own life with meaning and to imbue it with significance. This can be both invigorating and terrifying.

So what does a religious person actually mean when they say life is meaningless without God?

In a bit of a twist, it's probably the human evolutionary process that leads people to religion. Our own brains compel us to find patterns in our world, enabling us to predict what might happen so we can make better choices and survive. We also long to explain those patterns, for without an explanation, we experience ongoing cognitive dissonance and unrest. It is this desire for explanation that has led to ascribing the patterns to a god or gods.

We want someone to care for us so we do not have to feel the weight of caring for ourselves and others. We want someone to forgive us so we don't have to bear the heavy weight of conviction and reconciliation when we have wronged someone. We make stupid mistakes and do not want to bear the consequences. The reality of living a full life without god is often too much to bear. Creating our own meaning is often too daunting.

In addition, we are frequently perplexed by our own behavior. Why do we hurt those we love? Why do we so often feel out of control? Why is there so much pain and heartache? We can't explain why people commit heinous acts. After all, we are just now beginning to gain a tiny amount of knowledge about how brain physiology and chemistry affects human behavior; so all throughout human history, we had no way to understand these things. In a way, it's probably easier to explain this often overwhelming sense of dis-ease by giving responsibility for it to a demon or devil or some inner spiritual defect. Christians call this the "sin nature" that all got started when Eve chose to disobey God and Adam chose to go along with it.

This sin nature puts us all on a track to hell no matter how good we are in life. If our "badness" is on a fundamental spiritual level, our salvation must then in turn be divine. There must be an all-powerful being to guide us and give our sinful existence some sort of meaning and then guide our eternal soul to paradise; for without god, we are eternally doomed. And because this god is so amazing and saves us, we must give this god thanks, and praise it, and give it offerings of prayers and worship.

This then is the basic tenet of "meaning" found in religion: to recognize that the only true good comes from God and the only true hope can be found in eternal life. Christianity teaches we all have a "sin nature" and so ultimate meaning for our lives must come from God who will save us if we submit to him. The "good" we do must be in the name of God and for his glory and ultimately, this life is fleeting and our only hope and joy comes from knowing that we will one day be with God in heaven for eternity. Jesus is our savior and we must accept this and worship God. Islam teaches that nothing happens without God willing it to do to and because of this, we owe God everything and must constantly be thankful to him and worship him. The meaning of life is to worship God through Islam and without total submission and surrender to God, we are damned.

But there is something very childish about the impulse to pass responsibility off to a divine being. Taking responsibility for our own behavior and making our own lives full and meaningful comes with maturity. When we believe all meaning is to be found in how we live our lives instead of where we go when we die, we are faced with the knowledge that we have quite a lot of work to do while we are alive, which can be scary. But it also frees us to fully embrace the wonder of the universe head-on without the marring cloud of spiritual fantasy. We have ways to judge our decisions and how we treat other living beings that share this planet with us. We have the freedom to figure out for ourselves what a full life looks like. We have the freedom to be creative, to explore, to question and also answer.

"The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal." - Carl Sagan

Many great minds have explored the issue of life meaning. Richard Dawkins has a series called "Why Are We Here?" and in "Grand Design", Stephen Hawking addresses ancient and profound questions about the meaning of life.

Read Original Post Here