I hope @Sir Doom, the thread starter, will not mind if I add something I wrote some while back, because it fits precisely with the subject matter that he raises.
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Meaning and Purpose for the Secular Humanist
“Life’s a b!tch, then you die.”
I have long gathered, from believers I've known, that the only true meaning in life, and the purpose for our existence, has been provided for us by a “higher power.” As an atheist, I ought to concur with the nihilist view expressed in the opening quotation, yet I do not. But I've also never understood the religious view either. In this essay I hope to show that neither is true.
Created for a Purpose
Imagine that the universe and all it contains was created by an “intelligent designer.” Such a designer would surely have had reasons for such an effort, a purpose for the creation. Mankind, no more than a miniscule part of that creation, is unlikely to be able to grasp the fullness of the purpose for it. The best we should hope for is that we can muddle through and get it basically right – that we will fulfill our assigned bit of the overall purpose. But while we live, we can not know whether we have or have not done so.
Believers will tell us we have guides. The Torah, Bible, Qur’an, Vedas – whichever scriptures are believed – contain the plan and purpose for us to read and understand. For the secular, however, if these scriptures are meant to provide guidance, each of them constitutes among the worst instruction manuals ever conceived. Each of them is understood differently by every single reader. The best evidence of this is the proliferation of sects within every faith, based on alternate readings.
Yet even if we were able to discern completely our assigned purpose, that purpose would not be our own, but the designer’s. Consider for a moment the Belgian Blue cattle, bred by us to be double-muscled to provide more meat per animal. It is unlikely such an animal would be better off knowing for what purpose it was created. Those extra muscles have value for us, their designer, but none for the creature in its own right.
The same must hold true for me. As a creature with a purpose valuable only to another (the designer), I am stripped of value in my own right.
Now, most notions of a purpose given by the major religions are woefully inadequate. That my purpose might be simply to "believe," or to live a blameless life, so that I might be rewarded later for doing so (or punished otherwise), is a pretty weak basis for so great an act of creation. The idea that any god needs human praise, worship or service (God needs domestics?) is just plain silly. That these are what creation is about is simply ludicrous.
Then Why Am I Here?
There are endless answers to that question, all of them external to me, and most of them merely causal. “Because my parents had sex.” “Because Canada paid a ‘baby bonus’.” “Because DNA insists on its own replication.” These are all answers to the question, but don't satisfy. Nothing in those answers provides me with any meaning. There is nothing there to give my existence significance. Even less elevating is the notion that I am nothing more than the end of a long, completely natural and completely arbitrary process. Whoopee for me!
But perhaps, just perhaps, that is all that it is. The EvangelicalHumanist has never dogmatically denied the existence of an original creator, creative force or cosmic accident. EH doesn’t know how to understand the “first cause,” or even if there was one. But from that first cause on, there does seem to be sufficient evidence to explain a natural evolution from there-and-then to here-and-now.
So is that it then? Is the nihilism of the opening quote justified? Is there really no purpose or meaning to my existence? What “meaning” can arise from a cosmic accident, or from a long chain of natural, random events? These, too, answer the “why am I here question” in a merely causal sense, but not in a purposive way and thus never satisfy.
A Purpose of My Own
I said earlier that I believe I am the end of a natural but random series of events. This is not quite true. Since the appearance of conscious thought, people have been making choices, and every choice has an impact on what follows. I am who I am, in the world that I know, because early people followed herds; because the barons stood up to King John in 1215; because great thinkers thought; because of untold important and unimportant acts – of kindness or cruelty, hedonism or self-denial, selfishness or altruism. Because of all these and more, my world is what it is. Almost – but not quite – random.
But must that not mean that what follows me, how the world evolves from this very moment on, is to some extent – great or small – affected by me?
Now, at last, I have come to, and can choose, a purpose, a way to achieve a meaningful life that is my own, in my own right. I know that there will be a world post-me, just as I inhabit a world post-Hammurabi, post-Caesar, post-Genghis Khan and Hitler and Churchill. As they have contributed to the world I know, I will contribute to the world others will know, though certainly not to such extents as they did.
What will I do with that? What ultimate mark will my life leave on a world I shall never see, but will help to create?
Could I ask for a greater purpose?
====================================================
Meaning and Purpose for the Secular Humanist
“Life’s a b!tch, then you die.”
I have long gathered, from believers I've known, that the only true meaning in life, and the purpose for our existence, has been provided for us by a “higher power.” As an atheist, I ought to concur with the nihilist view expressed in the opening quotation, yet I do not. But I've also never understood the religious view either. In this essay I hope to show that neither is true.
Created for a Purpose
Imagine that the universe and all it contains was created by an “intelligent designer.” Such a designer would surely have had reasons for such an effort, a purpose for the creation. Mankind, no more than a miniscule part of that creation, is unlikely to be able to grasp the fullness of the purpose for it. The best we should hope for is that we can muddle through and get it basically right – that we will fulfill our assigned bit of the overall purpose. But while we live, we can not know whether we have or have not done so.
Believers will tell us we have guides. The Torah, Bible, Qur’an, Vedas – whichever scriptures are believed – contain the plan and purpose for us to read and understand. For the secular, however, if these scriptures are meant to provide guidance, each of them constitutes among the worst instruction manuals ever conceived. Each of them is understood differently by every single reader. The best evidence of this is the proliferation of sects within every faith, based on alternate readings.
Yet even if we were able to discern completely our assigned purpose, that purpose would not be our own, but the designer’s. Consider for a moment the Belgian Blue cattle, bred by us to be double-muscled to provide more meat per animal. It is unlikely such an animal would be better off knowing for what purpose it was created. Those extra muscles have value for us, their designer, but none for the creature in its own right.
The same must hold true for me. As a creature with a purpose valuable only to another (the designer), I am stripped of value in my own right.
Now, most notions of a purpose given by the major religions are woefully inadequate. That my purpose might be simply to "believe," or to live a blameless life, so that I might be rewarded later for doing so (or punished otherwise), is a pretty weak basis for so great an act of creation. The idea that any god needs human praise, worship or service (God needs domestics?) is just plain silly. That these are what creation is about is simply ludicrous.
Then Why Am I Here?
There are endless answers to that question, all of them external to me, and most of them merely causal. “Because my parents had sex.” “Because Canada paid a ‘baby bonus’.” “Because DNA insists on its own replication.” These are all answers to the question, but don't satisfy. Nothing in those answers provides me with any meaning. There is nothing there to give my existence significance. Even less elevating is the notion that I am nothing more than the end of a long, completely natural and completely arbitrary process. Whoopee for me!
But perhaps, just perhaps, that is all that it is. The EvangelicalHumanist has never dogmatically denied the existence of an original creator, creative force or cosmic accident. EH doesn’t know how to understand the “first cause,” or even if there was one. But from that first cause on, there does seem to be sufficient evidence to explain a natural evolution from there-and-then to here-and-now.
So is that it then? Is the nihilism of the opening quote justified? Is there really no purpose or meaning to my existence? What “meaning” can arise from a cosmic accident, or from a long chain of natural, random events? These, too, answer the “why am I here question” in a merely causal sense, but not in a purposive way and thus never satisfy.
A Purpose of My Own
I said earlier that I believe I am the end of a natural but random series of events. This is not quite true. Since the appearance of conscious thought, people have been making choices, and every choice has an impact on what follows. I am who I am, in the world that I know, because early people followed herds; because the barons stood up to King John in 1215; because great thinkers thought; because of untold important and unimportant acts – of kindness or cruelty, hedonism or self-denial, selfishness or altruism. Because of all these and more, my world is what it is. Almost – but not quite – random.
But must that not mean that what follows me, how the world evolves from this very moment on, is to some extent – great or small – affected by me?
Now, at last, I have come to, and can choose, a purpose, a way to achieve a meaningful life that is my own, in my own right. I know that there will be a world post-me, just as I inhabit a world post-Hammurabi, post-Caesar, post-Genghis Khan and Hitler and Churchill. As they have contributed to the world I know, I will contribute to the world others will know, though certainly not to such extents as they did.
What will I do with that? What ultimate mark will my life leave on a world I shall never see, but will help to create?
Could I ask for a greater purpose?
