My Beliefs: We Make Our Own Purpose in Life

I haven't written one of these in a while, but today I thought I'd write about a belief that's a major component of my worldview. If you've read much of anything I've posted here, you know I don't believe in the existence of a god. I won't go into the reasons why here, but I do not see a grand plan in the universe. However, contrary to what many theists believe about atheism, that does not mean I think that life is pointless. I do not believe we are all doomed to suffer meaningless lives just because there is no paternal figure in the sky watching after us. Instead, I feel we can and should make our own purpose in life.

Obviously, this is an entirely relativist position, which means that different people will come up with wildly different meanings for their lives, for better or worse. While this may not sit well with many people, to make claims against the reality of relativism is to deny the ample evidence of human history. Certainly, the Nazis did terrible things because they made their ideology their purpose in life, and other similarly distasteful individuals have found insidious purposes for their lives. However, that doesn't mean that people can't put forth the same amount of effort towards something positive. Whenever there's a major disaster, people turn out in droves to help, and aid money pours in to finance the recovery. This is not the work of a god showing his mercy. It's the efforts of a group of people working together to do something positive. In much the same way, the Nazis and Japanese were not stopped by an act of god. It took the herculean efforts of several nations over six years to end that nightmare.

Before I get into too much more of a tanget, Id like to make my point. Even though I believe we might be alone in the spiritual sense, there are still over 6 billion other people in this world sharing the human experience. When enough of us come together, we can either do works of great evil or do truly amazing things that greatly improve the richness of all our lives. It's your choice which path you choose. You just have to be willing to deal with how your fellow humans will view your actions. As far as I see it, we don't need to please anyone other than those with whom we share this planet. Technically, we don't need to please anyone. However, my position is that I want to make the world a better place for future generations so they have lives that are even more fulfilling than my own. If you want to suffer trying to appease a being who refuses to reciprocate, that's fine by me. I'm going to enjoy life and do whatever I can to help others do the same. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.

My Beliefs: The Promise of Science

I believe that science is the greatest tool we have for understanding the world around us and is our only hope for making the world the better place we want it to be. However, that doesn’t mean I worship science. It is not meant to provide a person with a basis for morality or to codify how one should live his or her life (I’ll address that in another post). Instead, it’s more like a tool whose purpose is to gain knowledge of the universe around us through observable and testable evidence. By itself, that might not seem like much, but it’s what we do with that knowledge that can make all the difference.

For example, just two centuries ago we never would have suspected the existence of asteroids, much less the threat they pose to our survival. If one had appeared over the Earth at any point in our history except for the last couple of decades, we would have been powerless to stop it. Today, we not only recognize how dangerous they can be, but we are also coming up with better methods to detect them, and we can even theorize ways to divert them to save ourselves from extinction. All thanks to science.

I shouldn’t even have to tell you how science has made our daily lives better. It has given us effective medicine, rapid transportation, empowered people with access to instantaneous communication, etc. What has religion done for us? Not so much. It unifies some people, but makes them bitterly opposed to others, and it resists all change, no matter if it’s good or bad. Since the serious pursuit of science began shortly after the Middle Ages, we have seen more positive progress than 5000+ years of organized religion could ever dream of achieving.

In its purest form, science allows us to understand who we are and what we can do while keeping us free from the ancient dogma that forms the basis of our irrationality. In its ideal form, science starts with a blank slate and asks, “Why?” Then, instead of giving up when the search becomes difficult and deferring these questions to the supernatural, it continues to push forward in search of answers, never content until it finds a satisfactory explanation. Even then, that explanation can change radically as new discoveries are made, thereby always keeping science relevant and moving forward. In the end, it teaches us to never be satisfied with not understanding the world around us, a lesson we should all appreciate, because without understanding, everything is nothing more than wishful thinking.

My Beliefs

Vjack at Athiest Revolution just came up with a great idea, and I'm extremely jealous I did not think of it earlier. On his post "What Do You Believe?" Vjack correctly points out that, unlike religion, atheism has no distinct set of beliefs apart from our views on the nonexistence of gods:

As we consider this question, one critical disclaimer must be offered at the outset. Because atheism has no doctrine, set of core values, or even shared vision of the world, no honest atheist will have much to say about how his/her fellow atheists think. Since atheism implies nothing besides a lack of theistic belief, one must expect tremendous diversity among atheists. I have met atheists who believe in ghosts and others who do not. All they necessarily share is that they do not believe in gods. This may be difficult for some Christians to grasp because they do have at least some shared doctrine.

Those of us who think it is important to provide believers with an alternative worldview are going to need to offer something beyond atheism.

To do my part, I am going to use this post as a springboard to periodically address what I do believe in and the values which inform my worldview.

I think this is a great idea. Like Vjack, I will also start posting my beliefs on life, the universe, and everything from time to time. Eventually, I hope it will provide a reasonably comprehensive belief system of at least one atheist. Of course, my beliefs could certainly change over time. That's the great part of being an atheist. Without religious dogma, we're free to reevaluate the world and our place in it as we encounter new ideas. You'll be able to access all my posts on the topic from the link on the right sidebar.

Don't Fear the Reaper

Today, I'm going to address one of the more pathetic arguments against atheism. I've heard a number of people start with the question: "Aren't you afraid of what happens when you die?" Then they follow it up with an argument to try and show how atheists have a fatalistic worldview, thereby making the theistic view on death superior.

My answer is always no. Why? Let's start with two undeniable truths. 1) Everyone who ever lives dies. 2) Nobody really knows what happens to our consciousness after we die. How does this alleviate fear of death? Well, it's really not meant to alleviate fear but rather to encourage people not to fixate on death.

The objection I usually get at this point is that a religious belief in an afterlife gives people comfort, especially when loved ones die. However, I question how a fairy tale about a life after death really brings comfort. Sure, it might help a person not worry so much, but it can also cause two major problems.

Deep down, many theists aren't sure if their view on the afterlife is correct or if there even is life after death. This fosters a feeling of unknown and helplessness that can spawn an even greater fear of being wrong. People like this become so worried about their death that they fail to live life to its fullest.

On the other side of the coin, we see theists who are certain of their righteous place in the afterlife. They become so concerned with making it to the next life that they don't care about the harm they cause in this life. For example, look at the belief in the Rapture amongst fundamentalist Christians. They're happy to go to war in the Middle East and bring on global warming because they believe it will hasten the return of Jesus. They don't care about the damage they cause in this life. These are the people who need the seed of doubt. What happens when their savior doesn't come. What kind of world will they have doomed their children to live in?

Now, I'm not saying we need to ignore death and pretend like it doesn't happen. What I'm saying is enjoy life and do what you can to leave the world a better place than you found it. No one knows what happens to our minds after death, and worrying about it or making up fairy tales about it won't change reality.

I like to think of the quote from Braveheart: "Every man dies. Not every man really lives."

So when the end comes, be able to say that you've really lived, and don't worry about what happens next because it will come whether you've make up fantasies about it or not.

Now, if I'm completely wrong and there is a god, why should me believing in him make a difference? If trying to make the world a better place is not enough to get in a god's good graces, then he is not a god worth believing in.

Religion Does Not Make Someone a Better Person

The claim I always have to shake my head at is the idea that religion will make someone a better human being since it provides something a person would not otherwise have. However, is there any real validity to this claim? Let’s look at a little evidence and use a little logic, shall we?

Without a doubt, nearly all religious people are good, moral people. It’s silly to claim otherwise. However, I’d argue that most people are naturally good to start with. Can we really attribute religion to that person being good? All people have a natural sense of empathy. It’s what makes us feel bad when a person is harmed or what makes us feel guilty when we do something that harms another. It seems more like religion is the way humans try to codify that sense of empathy. Plus, the existence of empathy is easy to see even before the development of the Ten Commandments. In the older Code of Hammurabi, one can find the same general rules that basically direct people not to harm one another. At least as long as there’s been civilization, humans have felt empathy towards one another. The next question becomes: could we have developed empathy without a higher power?

One can easily see why evolution would favor humans who help others within their own social groups. Besides our cognitive abilities, humans excel at few things. We can’t run fast. We don’t have any natural defenses. We dehydrate quickly. Our brain requires a vast amount of energy to operate. Our young are helpless for more than a year after birth. There seems to be no reason for us to have survived until one adds empathy to the equation. Since empathy makes people feel good about alleviating suffering in others, it makes people want to work together because it lessens suffering throughout the society. Working together, humans can acquire more resources than loners, and empathetic individuals care for the sick and wounded, making it more likely empathetic humans will live long enough to reproduce. Loners would not have these benefits. We can see it today. People who lack a sense of empathy, rapists, murderers, etc., are quickly shunned from society, preventing them from gaining the benefits of society. Therefore, it’s not a huge stretch of the imagination to see why surviving humans would naturally develop a sense of empathy. Plus, we can see the same behavior in chimpanzees, so it’s not a trait unique to humans.

Now, if religion is just how people codify empathy, then what’s the problem? The problem is that religion can also remove the sense of empathy one feels towards a different group of human beings. Every religion proclaims its believers are the only people that matter and nonbelievers are to be despised. This removes the sense of empathy a group of religious people would otherwise feel towards nonbelievers. This dehumanization then allows the believers to maim, torture, kill, and otherwise harm other humans with no sense of remorse. Plus, it makes the believers feel good because they believe they have helped others within their social group. Just look at the historical example of the Inquisition. Inquisitors happily killed heretics because they felt they were helping society by removing the destructive influence of sin. This willingness to kill in the name of religion is just an unfortunate side effect of our ability to be selective with our empathy.

Of course, religion isn’t the only societal construct to do this. Racism and the efforts of Social Darwinism do the same things. However, most modern people can agree that adherence to racism and Social Darwinism is harmful to those who suffer from it. Why should religion be any different? It needlessly categorizes people along lines that would otherwise not exist.

In the end, most people will be good because we’ve evolved that way. It’s what allows us to survive in a dangerous world. Unfortunately, our sense of empathy only extends to humans within our perceived societal group. Religion inadvertently exploits this shortcoming, making it easer for religious people to discriminate those of a different faith. In the end, it’s an extra rift that simply doesn’t need to be there and doesn’t add anything substantial to our sense of morality. We don't need fear of a giant, invisible man in the sky to be good people.

About Me

Well, since you've found your way here, I guess I'll tell you a little about myself so you know what you'll find here. I'm generally laid back and try to stay moderate and open-minded on things, but recent years have kind of challenged my neutrality as far as politics and religion is concerned. I've grown opposed to the current conservative majority that seems to grow everyday in this country. I've realized more and more that I do not believe in the opinions and issues that the Religious Right seems determined to force on this country through their well-funded lobbying of the Republican Party. More than anything, I'm concerned with how the Religious Right wants to destroy many of our essential civil rights to recreate a historical era of Christian values that never actually existed. As you might have gathered, I am not a Christian. I used to be, but the more I learned about world history and other cultures, the more I began to doubt. Then I actually read the Bible. What I found there horrified me. Any despicable, intolerant act can be justified with that ancient text. Besides, it contradicts itself throughout and conveys no consistant message. That ended my faith in Christianity and caused me to put the "Greatest Story Ever Told" in the same classification as the Iliad: good for understanding ancient cultures, but not much else. Since I don't think that any other form of religion has it right either, I found Atheism to be the most "right " for me. The intellectual freedom it gives me is priceless. It has allowed me to see the world in a new light, and better understand how the world actually works. I'll probably get into it more on a future post, but that's enough for now.

In short, here you'll find liberal arguments to preserve the US Constitution as the secular document the Founding Fathers intended it to be. I may even groan a bit over the intolerances of fundamental religion. Anyway, you may disagree with everything I have to say, but I hope you at least learn something....