Meaningful Atheistic Lives

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Here's an opinion from a theist (Christian, I presume) at http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/29/study-atheists-find-meaning-life-inventing-fairy-tales/ about whether atheists can possibly find meaning in life. Tlede under the title is, "Atheists often snidely dismiss religion as a fairy tale. Yet a study finds the meaning atheists and non-religious people attribute to their lives is entirely self-invented."

the 2018 study ... by David Speed, et al, “What Do You Mean, ‘What Does It All Mean?’ Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning,” used surveys to try to figure out if atheists find meaning in life or are nihilistic. This survey defined someone as nihilistic if he or she upheld the position: “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.”

This study found that atheists and non-religious people are not nihilistic, because they claimed that they did have a purpose in life. This is an interesting finding that seems to refute the oft-repeated charge (levied by religious folks) that atheists are nihilistic.

However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.”

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.​

Is this a valid argument? Is a sense of finding meaning and purpose in one's life and the lives of others really the same thing as the mythical stories in the Bible? Meaning in life isn't invented, is it? It is discovered. It's not a story like a myth. It's a sense that life matters - that one's own life matters.

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

 

[Rival]

It's the difference between:

Does your life have meaning?

and

Does life itself have meaning?

Most atheists I know answer no to the second and yes to the first, but the first is not what most people seem to be interested in when asking.

People are seeking an objective answer, not a subjective one, i.e, does life itself, you and everyone included in it, the universe etc. have meaning? If so, what? Because any meaning you give your own life will be subjective and end when you die, which renders the question somewhat pointless as the answer then becomes 'Yes...for now.'

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Here's a link to the Speed et al article, for those interested in reading the study, rather than a commentator's summary of the study:

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244017754238

 

[sayak83]

Here's an opinion from a theist (Christian, I presume) at http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/29/study-atheists-find-meaning-life-inventing-fairy-tales/ about whether atheists can possibly find meaning in life. Tlede under the title is, "Atheists often snidely dismiss religion as a fairy tale. Yet a study finds the meaning atheists and non-religious people attribute to their lives is entirely self-invented."

the 2018 study ... by David Speed, et al, “What Do You Mean, ‘What Does It All Mean?’ Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning,” used surveys to try to figure out if atheists find meaning in life or are nihilistic. This survey defined someone as nihilistic if he or she upheld the position: “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.”

This study found that atheists and non-religious people are not nihilistic, because they claimed that they did have a purpose in life. This is an interesting finding that seems to refute the oft-repeated charge (levied by religious folks) that atheists are nihilistic.

However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.”

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.​

Is this a valid argument? Is a sense of finding meaning and purpose in one's life and the lives of others really the same thing as the mythical stories in the Bible? Meaning in life isn't invented, is it? It is discovered. It's not a story like a myth. It's a sense that life matters - that one's own life matters.

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

The self is the source of all meaning. That is one of the primary distinctions between animate entities and inanimate matter. Beings like us are meaning makers, we make other things meaningful, just as the sun makes the planets illuminated.

The next point is that conscious experiences have inherent meaningfulness to the experiencers, while the type of meaning depends on the experiencers own self nature. So its not true that conscious experiences are meaningless and we impose meaning on them. No, they are inherently meaningful, and we radiate this meaning outwards to the objects of these experiences.

The final point is that the author is confusing purpose with meaning. We, by our free will, can choose a set of purposes through our lives, and this may add an additional layer of meaning to experiences. But they are meaning enhancers, one does not need a purpose for a moment of awareness to have meaning. Purposes are sets of actions one chooses to seek to enhance the meaningfulness ad richness of future awareness moments. Its like investing. Every working hour gives you wages in return, and you may choose to invest a part of it in order to get an additional interest in the future.

Hope that is clear.

 

[LuisDantas]

No, it is not a valid argument, or even a healthy one. Much too fertile a ground for dangerous delusions.

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

I can only assume that he is implying some form of certainty of "cosmic" or "divine" backing for their meanings.

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Based on a quick reading of the paper and its statistical analysis: the study's model seems to account for between about 1 percent and 10 percent of the difference between the groups...while statistically significant (meaning that a probably real effect has been identified through the statistics), the explanatory power (the R^2 statistic) is very small...other factors, not included among the variables in the study, account for between about 90 and 99 percent of the differences between groups.

Given the kind of secondary study that this is, in the social sciences, it is not at all surprising that the explanatory power is so low. It would have been very surprising, even if this had been a carefully designed targeted study, for the model to have explained as much as 50 percent of the differences between the groups.

 

[Vouthon]

I certainly don't believe that atheists are incapable of leading meaningful lives or finding purpose in their experiences but I think we do have to accept, nonetheless, that the natural world (viewed as separate from the world as experienced by conscious beings) is not itself guided by any purpose.

If you start from the premise that there is nothing but atoms and molecules, then it’s inevitable (if you’re honest) to conclude that there is no ultimate meaning or purpose in the purely physical order of things. If you are a total reductionist, then it essentially stops there: no purpose. If not, then you accept that purpose is emergent from complexity but no less real for all that. Purpose and meaning arise from the abstract, from the thoughts and intuitions of conscious beings interacting with the world, but that doesn't make them any less real. We are the universe aware of itself and so purpose exists in the universe through us and our meaningful lives.

Consider natural selection, as described by the eminent biologist Professor Richard Dawkins in his 1987 book The Blind Watchmaker:

"Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view...

All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye.

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If if can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker"
​

From a strictly physical perspective, this is all perfectly true and I myself agree entirely with Dawkins.

You can look at purpose or meaning in one of two ways: as (1) something arising/imposed from without in the sense of an objective, fundamental order rooted in nature (as most of the ancient Greek philosophers, like the Stoics, believed) or in a metaphysical sense as emanating from something beyond physics, in a higher power or (2) you can consider purpose to be an emergent property of conscious beings, either something we discover or something we have essentially created for ourselves.

My own perspective? I view the possibility for purpose as emanating from beyond physics, from the realm of the abstract, but recognize that it is an emergent quality in the physical world and that the laws of nature in themselves are not purposeful.

Let's get something straight about meaning and purpose: is purpose written into the structure of atoms and electrons? No, it most definitely isn't, the Stoics were wrong about that, the laws of nature themselves are not purpose-driven - or to to use the more technical term, nature isn't teleological. Complex, conscious beings have purpose and therefore the universe has purpose but it is an emergent quality of the universe rather than something written into nature itself.

Teleology is a philosophical doctrine which Aristotle espoused. Indeed, it is the foundation of his syllogistic reasoning and through him this idea reigned supreme in Western science until the rise of mechanistic philosophy. He thought nature was essentially goal-oriented or organized functionally. Nowadays, we know this simply isn’t true: in terms of physical laws and natural processes, this does not hold.

If the world is made up of “things”, why do they act the way they do?

Rather than explaining “things” in terms of their alleged purpose or goal as per our buddy Aristotle, scientists came to realize that “things” should instead be explained by means of mechanistic processes and formal properties. Dysteleology, not teleology. The world consists of things, which obey rules.

The physical world is mechanistic (in terms of classical Newtonian physics/general relativity) and probabilistic/indeterministic at the subatomic, ‘quantum’ level. It is not teleological.

However, this doesn't mean that there is no purpose in the universe: quite the contrary, all of human history is characterized by purpose - our love, hate, war, progress, regress, culture - which has come into being in the universe through our species.

I would argue, being a theist, that the reason that purpose comes into existence is because it is possible for purpose to come into existence and the reason why there is this possibility of purpose coming into existence is that the laws of nature which we have are not brute facts (i.e. eternal, immutable, universal, precise, pre-existing mathematical axioms that we just have to accept as a pre-existent given) but emanate from a real space of 'abstract' existence, distinct from physical existence, which I view as hailing from a supreme intelligence.

As the great theoretical physicist Professor George Ellis stated in an interview a few years ago:

George Ellis

"From my view point, existence isn’t just physical existence: there’s these abstract existences. That space of abstract stuff (i.e. truths of mathematics, world of ideas) was sitting waiting to be discovered and eventually minds reached a sufficient complexity that they could discover it."​

But that's just my POV. I fully respect the atheist alternatives and recognize that a sense of meaning and purpose can take different forms.

 

[`mud]

I think that we haven't any fear of monsters in the sky,
except those pigeons up there, but `gods`, no !
And the tornadoes, and hurricanes, and floods,
but the `gods` in the sky, no !
I'm too busy listening to the seashells on the beach,
and the screeching of a blue jay to it's mate, and me.
Also following a squirrel to it's nest, lil ones in there,
it's April again, with or without `gods`, life goes on.
Until it doesn't, see you in Cosmos, wherever that is !

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.

I feel that the "no objective existence" bit applied here is a very slippery slope for theists. They are basically saying that thoughts and musings, leading to conclusions are all things that have no objective existence. If we apply that line of thinking to, say "belief in God", then, being entirely thought-based, that doesn't have objective existence either. And the conclusion we can draw based on their own argument here is that "belief in God" is on par with fairy tales.

Also, by the number and myriad forms that religious faith is proven to take, I would say it is already proven that the theist "has complete freedom to invent whatever [theism] one wants."

 

[Mock Turtle]

Human: A being in search of meaning - Plato. Says it all for me - some see it in some divine source - the rest of us have to make our own or ponder what exactly is meaningful. At least we have freedom.

 

[David T]

Here's an opinion from a theist (Christian, I presume) at http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/29/study-atheists-find-meaning-life-inventing-fairy-tales/ about whether atheists can possibly find meaning in life. Tlede under the title is, "Atheists often snidely dismiss religion as a fairy tale. Yet a study finds the meaning atheists and non-religious people attribute to their lives is entirely self-invented."

the 2018 study ... by David Speed, et al, “What Do You Mean, ‘What Does It All Mean?’ Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning,” used surveys to try to figure out if atheists find meaning in life or are nihilistic. This survey defined someone as nihilistic if he or she upheld the position: “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.”

This study found that atheists and non-religious people are not nihilistic, because they claimed that they did have a purpose in life. This is an interesting finding that seems to refute the oft-repeated charge (levied by religious folks) that atheists are nihilistic.

However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.”

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.​

Is this a valid argument? Is a sense of finding meaning and purpose in one's life and the lives of others really the same thing as the mythical stories in the Bible? Meaning in life isn't invented, is it? It is discovered. It's not a story like a myth. It's a sense that life matters - that one's own life matters.

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

I see atheism as a resolution to the cognitive dissonance religion can and does tend to create. To doppelganger that statement I see religion as a resolution to the the cognitive dissonance atheism can and does tend to create.

So while the above is true speaking with clarity and relevancy into that whole thing is nearly impossible because how does one address cognitive dissonance without it being felt as cognitive dissonance? I only know of artistic approaches.

 

[bobhikes]

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.
​

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

I take it as he is making fun at atheists. All atheists in the religious mind (especially this writers) use facts and only facts to justify everything yet when it comes to the meaning of life it has to be a product of their imagination. For him its a hypocrisy, as atheist tend to use the quote "invent whatever meaning one wants" to quotes from the holy books.

 

[Vouthon]

I take it as he is making fun at atheists. All atheists in the religious mind (especially this writers) use facts and only facts to justify everything yet when it comes to the meaning of life it has to be a product of their imagination. For him its a hypocrisy, as atheist tend to use the quote "invent whatever meaning one wants" to quotes from the holy books.

But where does meaning come from other than the subjective consciousness (i.e. the mind and imagination), if there is no "objective" source either in the universe or beyond it from which meaning could possibly come?

We know courtesy of modern testable science that the universe - comprised of atoms, molecules - is mechanistic and without intrinsic goal or purpose. So nobody can claim purpose from the physical order, from nature's laws as many classical thinkers wrongly concluded.

If you believe that "ideas" have no existence in some abstract realm but are epiphenomenal i.e. not substantial like atoms but stemming from deterministic neuronal processing in the brain, then don't we have to accept that meaning/purpose is a product of the human mind? Abstract things like love and beauty, and meaning, are not scientifically measurable or quantifiable in the same way as the firing of neurons and biochemical reactions, so a total reductionist would not regard the abstract as objectively real in the same way as neurons or chemical processes.

The atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg (Professor of Philosophy at Duke University), for instance, answered as follows to this set of questions:

“Is there a God?
Of course not.
What is the meaning of the universe?
It doesn’t have any.
What is the purpose of life?
Ditto.
Is there a difference between right and wrong, good and bad?
There’s not a moral difference between them.
What is the nature of the relationship between the mind and the brain?
They’re identical. The mind is the brain.
Is there free will?
Not a chance.”
​

From a physicalist perspective, one's own life can have meaning but this is surely a subjective, emergent quality and not "objective". We do, in a sense, create it for ourselves or at least our brain leads us to that perception (i.e. of things being personally meaningful when viewed purely objectively they aren't really, of one takes a reductionist perspective).

 

[`mud]

To be aware of entities that conflict with one's own beliefs ?
Is that the question or the answer, or a flipped coin on it's edge ?
Cognition is gained through knowledge acquisitions, and study.
Associations with conflicting viewpoints doesn't read the flip,
Noooo.....I don't understand your point, if there is one.

 

[tayla]

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing.

I disagree. It's just a way for religious people to feel superior to others, to exploit them.

Meaning in life is the same for everyone. The source of the meaning varies. The content of the meaning varies.

 

[Jumi]

I've come to the conclusion that meaning in life is only real if you make the meaning yourself. You could build it upon religion or some part of life, maybe even just the little things.

 

[Nakosis]

Here's an opinion from a theist (Christian, I presume) at http://thefederalist.com/2018/03/29/study-atheists-find-meaning-life-inventing-fairy-tales/ about whether atheists can possibly find meaning in life. Tlede under the title is, "Atheists often snidely dismiss religion as a fairy tale. Yet a study finds the meaning atheists and non-religious people attribute to their lives is entirely self-invented."

the 2018 study ... by David Speed, et al, “What Do You Mean, ‘What Does It All Mean?’ Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning,” used surveys to try to figure out if atheists find meaning in life or are nihilistic. This survey defined someone as nihilistic if he or she upheld the position: “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.”

This study found that atheists and non-religious people are not nihilistic, because they claimed that they did have a purpose in life. This is an interesting finding that seems to refute the oft-repeated charge (levied by religious folks) that atheists are nihilistic.

However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.”

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.​

Is this a valid argument? Is a sense of finding meaning and purpose in one's life and the lives of others really the same thing as the mythical stories in the Bible? Meaning in life isn't invented, is it? It is discovered. It's not a story like a myth. It's a sense that life matters - that one's own life matters.

What do you suppose the author meant by meaning in life is he thinks that atheists and theists were talking about different things when they referred to having meaningful lives (4th paragraph)?

but then they should be honest and admit that their meaning and morality has no advantage over the meaning or morality religious people put forward —or for that matter, it has no advantage over the meaning and purpose evil people invent. Their self-created meanings are every bit as much “fairy stories” as the religious ones they like to lampoon.

The advantage is, I get to decide, I get to choose what is meaningful to me versus some folks I never met who happened to believe in some deity in the past. I don't have to rely on other people's ideas of what's right and wrong. I decide and I take responsibility for my decisions. I don't blame my choices on some deity folks believed in, in the past.

 

[bobhikes]

But where does meaning come from other than the subjective consciousness (i.e. the mind and imagination), if there is no "objective" source either in the universe or beyond it from which meaning could possibly come?

​

From a physicalist perspective, one's own life can have meaning but this is surely a subjective, emergent quality and not "objective". We do, in a sense, create it for ourselves or at least our brain leads us to that perception (i.e. of things being personally meaningful when viewed purely objectively they aren't really, of one takes a reductionist perspective).

I don't know what the meaning of life is and I'm fine with it being subjective(my belief) or God. I was just giving my interpretation of what the writer was saying. I could very well be wrong with the interpretation.

 

[PureX]

Existence does not exist apart from, or without us, because it is a singular whole. Thus, "objective reality" is a kind of immaterial conceptual tautology; not that dissimilar from "God". So I agree with the basic claim being made in the OP; that atheists are standing on the exact same conceptual ground as theists when they proclaim the significance and meaning of this phenomena of being. And it's an amazing and wonderful place to be.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I take it as he is making fun at atheists. All atheists in the religious mind (especially this writers) use facts and only facts to justify everything yet when it comes to the meaning of life it has to be a product of their imagination. For him its a hypocrisy, as atheist tend to use the quote "invent whatever meaning one wants" to quotes from the holy books.

Yeah, I read it as a snipe at atheists as well - to vaunt his religion by demeaning a competing ideology..

He's saying that if we're going to call Bible tales myths because they don't correspond to the historical reality, then he'll call creating meaning myth-making as well.

He's also saying that what an atheist calls meaning is not really meaning compared to what theists mean when they use the word. We're talking about something else, and you can be certain that he considers it inferior. It's part of the general message that the religious have the truth, that their moral values are superior because they have objective existence, that their version of love is somehow sublime because iit involves blood sacrifice, etc,,

But let's examine what he might be calling the more superior meaning of purpose in this context.

I wonder what purpose believing that one will eternally serve a god needing continual praise confers on one's life. Doesn't that actually diminish the meaning of life?

Is that our purpose - to sacrifice our own interests to that? What's in it for us?

My present life is far more meaningful to me than that. Why would I rather be back in the praise room than going out with the wife for breakfast, taking the dogs to the dog park, playing bridge and having dinner with friends, some Internet time, and some Netflix.

That's purpose enough - to enjoy life, to love, to enjoy friends, and leave the world a little better than you found it.