Atheists... Your life is pointless

He suffers from double-itis.

"meaning born out of fear, is meaningless to the fearless".

It is as if the Christians see absurdity as dictating the way we should live our lives. They have this objection to the way that atheists live their lives, inasmuch as they are not living their lives to the logical conclusion of a Godless universe.

The only attitude that we can logically adopt according to the Christian, is one of despair, as if absurdity itself is dictating to us, like a God, what we should and should not do. The difference is that there are no ultimate consequences to not adhering to a life of despair; we are all of us, heading towards the same place whether we are happy or sad, so why adopt despair, why live life in the most pointless way you can possibly imagine.

Yes effemm-- but only you and your ilk think your life is pointless. The Christian doesn't think your life is pointless.

You endlessly repeat flounced up versions of "I am an atheist". Obviously you will think your life is pointless from that position. But not everybody does. Not by a long shot.

All it seems to accomplish is it builds guilt into their life without any benefits.

Extremists go way beyond the reasonable; rationalism and common sense seems to disappear.

You don't want any guilt do you not ci? The Marquis de Sade was of that opinion so you are in high class company. The only trouble is that you haven't the guts he had.

A heavy hand, EP. Thank goodness I don't stutter when I SPEAK.

You say that creating the meaning of your life is meaningless, and that only some "significant other" can give your life meaning. In this case, God, rather than yourself, who would be meaningless, has bestowed meaning on your life.

However, what gives God a meaning?

God cannot give himself a meaning, since that would be meaningless, thats just the dreaming up of an imaginary meaning; there must be some even greater being, which gives God meaning, and another being, which gives that being a meaning, and so on forever. God ultimately “created” the world, and “created” the meaning it has; God given meaning is only relative to you. What if God created two worlds, each with their own meaning and purpose; the meaning of one world would be meaningless to the other, and vice verse.

Now, you're very sure about that!

That seems to be true for human beings. Those who are forced to live in a vacuum or in seclusion without sensory input or human contact soon find it impossible to exist in a functional manner or achieve any sort of meaningful existence.
It may not be a 'God' or 'significant other' in the customary sense - it could be art, or music, or work, or children or materialism or consumerism or conspicuous consumption...it could be anything that is outside of oneself and held in such high esteem that it bestows meaning upon that particular person's existence.


the individual.


Yes, each individual.

That's essentially what we have - although multiplied exponentially by the number of people who walk the earth. Because that's what individuals do. They find it difficult to assign meaning to what is not known or meaningful to them.
Your world is more important to you than my world - because you don't know my world- you have no understanding of it.
Atheists find it difficult to understand or assign meaning to the beliefs that believers hold, while believers are instructed to be cognizant and mindful of all people and their worlds, and hold them in equal value and esteem (or at least that's what I was taught to do).
I recognize that that's not what all believers in fact DO - but ideally that's what they are instructed to do- while, unless I've missed something- atheism (as a practice or belief system) does not put that onus on its adherents.
That's not to say that individual atheists don't in fact pledge to think and behave in such a manner themselves, but as a belief system, it is much more focused on each individual's perception of reality and mechanisms of survival than other belief systems which mandate appropriate behavior for functioning interrelatedly with others who have been deemed just as important yourself.

I can't think of one believer I've ever met who in fact believes that.

I think the key words here are "if life is pointless for anyone."

There are examples of this, I believe, in almost all religions.

Aidan, think about it.

We've always been capable to give our own lives meaning. Whether a god exists to give us one is irrelevant.

Why wait to apply meaning to your life? There is no meaning in life that a god could give you that you could not give yourself.

T
K
O

Diest wrote:

Something so obvious that most people seem to ignore or not care.

I can't think of any BELIEVER I know who does NOT believe that--at least implicitly.

By the way: we use the phrase "a godless universe" to reference a horrible place. But as I see it, the phrase refers to a universe that is positive inprecisely because it does NOT need a god.

Pardon me, I'm a bit drunk: I meant to say "precisely", not "imprecisely."

God is necessary when groceries are needed or when you want to get laid, but, other than that... who needs him? (or her)

I love it when JL and I are drunk at the same time. It means everything is right in the universe.

Funny - I just bought some cider and I was gonna tell JL to wait for me to drink two or three glasses and then we could have a really insightful discussion about what precisely or imprecisely believers do or do not believe.

*It'll probably take me about 45 minutes to get a little buzzed.