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Is Atheism a Purposeless, Meaningless Existence?

“atheism is the religious belief in spontaneous, causeless, sourceless, purposeless, meaningless existence.”   That was the comment that was made to me.  I don’t agree.  Here is my response.

Is Atheism a Religion?​

Atheism can not be considered a religion by any measure of what a religion is. See Is Atheism a Religion?

Is Atheist Existence Meaningless?​

“meaningless existence” – generally this argument is made to disparage the atheist.  Also, I suspect it is based in fear of life losing its meaning something if you stopped believing in religion.

What is meaning? – Not the meaning of a word.  The meaning of something real that exists is it’s importance or value.  Asking what is the meaning of life, is ask why we live.  Why do you live?   Consider what the converse means: this person who says that atheists have no meaning in life, must feel that all their ‘meaning’ comes from their religion. Take the religion away and their life has no meaning.  Fear of loss of religion is grounded in the fear of death.

I would ask that person: does not your family give your life meaning? Don’t you care for your family? Don’t you have people who depend on you, and you on them? If religion went away, wouldn’t you family still be important and valuable?

Don’t your friends give your life meaning? Aren’t there relationships with others that you have developed that you care about? Isn’t there value in those relationships? If religion went away, wouldn’t you still be able to care about your friends?

Doesn’t your community give you meaning? Have you never tried to improve your community, and make it a better place? Have you never tried to help the local school so that children might have a better chance at life? Isn’t there value in the community, both in giving to and receiving from the community? If religion went away, wouldn’t you find the same meaning in all those who live around you?

I can go on, but notice here: life has a lot of meaning that is separate from your worship of God. To think that ALL meaning comes from religion is a kind of strange thing when you think of it.

What meaning does religion bring? Well, the promise of eternal life is one thing (which atheists don’t have) but really? I can see how this is desirable, but how does this give you meaning now? I would never say that my life meaning comes from the chance that I might someday win the lottery. Claiming that eternal life gives you meaning now seems like a very hollow sort of meaning. Once they get to heaven, is the only meaning in that they got there?

I point out this: I have a VERY meaningful life which I appreciate NOW and because of what I can do now. It is my current family, it is my current friends, and my current community. Not all is perfect, but perfection would have no meaning anyway. I focus on the meaning I am getting now, and not any unsubstantiated promise for the future.

Are Atheists Purposeless?​

“purposeless” – Again, here we have a religious person making the claim that the only possible purpose for life is found in a religion. Really? What about helping your neighbor? What about trying to find a cure for cancer so that people can live better? What about inventing anything else that makes lives better. There are so many purposes for your life that have nothing to do with religion.

Atheists have the purpose to love one another.  Love is evident in behavior.  For some reason theists can see love coming from a material world.  They believe that all love must be from God because it doesn’t seem mechanistic.  Therefor they think that atheists can’t love.   Or atheists deny love.  This is simply not true.  There is no denying that love seems miraculous.  I can understand why they attribute it to God.  But this is all based purely on intuition and emotions, and not on reality.  Atheists love each other as much as theists, and from love comes the purpose of life.  Theists are afraid that if they lose religion, they will lose the ability to love.

Here is the sad part: they say atheists believe life has no purpose because (an atheist believes) you die and go away. This means that the ONLY purpose the religious person finds is that of going to heaven. Let that sink in: their only purpose is to escape death, and I must say what a shallow purpose that is. I can think of so many ways that people can work together to create value, meaning, and purpose — and waiting for heaven to come seems like the least valuable of these.

Sure, living forever is attractive. But living your life with the ONLY purpose to survive death is a sad sad existence before death. If taking religion away takes all your purpose away, then I really feel sorry for you.

Atheists find plenty of purpose in life. — IN LIFE — Instead, it is death that has no purpose, and we are not waiting for death to have a purpose.

Is the Universe Sourceless?​

“sourceless” – again this is the point of view of someone who believe that the only possible “source” can be a religion. Take religion away and there is no source. Atheists find sources in the world around them. It is just silly to believe that ALL source comes from religion.

It does depend on what they mean by source. If they are referring to the source of the universe, then right: most atheists say the DON’T KNOW what the source of the universe was. We are looking, but nothing found yet. Christians say that God is the source of the universe. OK, what was the source of God. Oh, that is the same problem. We don’t know what the source of God was, so in fact they are as sourceless on this count.

But, they say, God is magical, and can exist without a source. OK, the atheist say the universe is magical and can exist without a source. A Christian saying that an atheist is sourceless is just the kettle calling the pot black. They should look in a mirror sometime.

Is Existence Spontaneous and Causeless?​

“spontaneous, causeless” – these words mean the same thing. Causality is in fact a philosophically difficult subject. Literally everything causes everything at one way of looking at it. Generally the “cause” of something is a previously occurring event which if eliminated would have eliminated the caused thing.

For example: “moving my elbow caused the glass to spill on the floor.” However, is it not true that gravity caused it to fall to the ground? It is not true that whoever placed the glass there was a cause? Also the person who filled it with water? Is it not also the fact that my arm is solid a cause? how about the fact that the table was holding the glass up before I bumped it? If the table had not been there, then the glass would not have been spilt? Maybe I hit it because I needed to reach for the salt? Can’t we say that the lack of salt in the food caused the spill? Also, if the glass had been glued to the table, that would have prevented the spill, so the lack of glue is also a cause.

There are millions of causes, but we point to the “movement of the elbow” because that is a potentially “controllable event.” I can’t stop gravity, so I don’t see that as THE cause of the spill. Notice that a cause is considered a cause only if someone could do something about it.

This is a long winded way to say that the concept of causality is questionable, and is actually a figment of the mind in the way that we understand the world.  Causality does not exist “out there” but instead is an explanation that we tell ourselves.

Spontaneity is things that happen without (an external) cause.  A person can be spontaneous by deciding to do something that was not prompted by an external event, but in this case the cause is the person.  The argument about atheist spontaneity is referring to things in the universe (or maybe the entire universe itself) happening for no reason.  Well, quantum mechanics predicts precisely this spontaneity.  For example, “spontaneous emission of radiation” is precisely what it says: it is radiation that is not caused by anything else.  Nuclear decay is another event that is known to be spontaneous.  There are no causes to these events.

Otherwise, this argument has all the same problems as the “source” argument. If you want to say that God caused the universe, then I have to ask: what caused God. Was God spontaneous? If you say that God is special and can exist without a cause, the atheist can say that the universe is special, and can exist without a cause. It is really no difference when it comes down to it.

The only difference is that the myth is less colorful.

Summary​

The entire statement “atheism is the religious belief in spontaneous, causeless, sourceless, purposeless, meaningless existence.” allows these conclusions can be made about the kind of person who would say this:

  • They fear loss of religion because they think that religion is the only thing in their life.  Atheism is the symbol of that fear of loss.
  • They believe that there is no meaning in life outside of religion.
  • They believe that there is no value to friends, family, and community.
  • They see no value in anything happening around them, and instead believe that all value comes after you are dead.
  • They believe that there can be no purpose in living life for doing better now.
  • Their only purpose in life is to go to heaven.
  • They can’t see that the origin of the universe and the origin of God are essentially the same question. Assumptions made about one could be made about the other.
  • They don’t — like most atheists as well — understand the nature of causality.
  • They don’t understand the nature of life, and storms, and consciousness, and many other self-organizing phenomenon.
  • They reject spontaneity as predicted and observed by quantum mechanics and other recent advances in physics.
  • They believe many phenomenon can’t be caused by material, must be caused by a God, and therefor think that atheists deny those phenomenon.
  • They think that love can’t be from material, and therefor atheists have no love.
  • They fear losing love if they lose religion.
  • They are not living their lives, they are just waiting for heaven.

There is one more thing though.  They believe they are right, and you are wrong.  That is arrogance.  To be fair, many atheists are arrogant in return.  Any one that goes around telling this kind of statement is being arrogant in the act of saying it.  If you want to know how someone’s life is: ask them.  But if you tell them that their life is such and such, you are simply being arrogant.

Many atheists live joyful, purposeful, meaningful lives where they focus on what they value around them: the people they love.  The big difference is that the atheist knows that a life is all you get.  You can waste it, but why would you want to waste your only life?  You had better live your life well, to the best of your abilities, because you don’t get another one.