Meaning Without God
To my Christian (and other theist) friends, there’s a topic I’d like to talk about. It’s that idea of heaven and the idea of meaning here on earth.
You might wanna sit down for a moment.
Christian blindly insist that atheists live cold, meaningless lives. Materialists find joy and meaning by being present, and by taking actions in the world. Nothing could be more meaningful than the way we interact with our families, friends, and community.
Christian Blindspot
Christian often claim that without god there would be no meaning to the universe, and that atheists live cold, meaningless lives. This is often delivered in a voice that says: I have meaning in my life but you poor atheists have nothing.
If this is true, we would expect to see atheist depressed all the time complaining that they have no meaning in their lives. We would expect to see a big difference in attitude between Christians and atheists. But we don't see this. In defense of the Christians there are some atheists -- usually French philosophers -- who opine about how their life is meaningless. On the other side the Christians can write depressing theses as well, consider for example Kierkegaard. If we consider the population of normal people, depression is not any more prevalent in either population to any significant degree.
There is no accident that Christians believe atheist lives are empty and without meaning, and that is because there is a steady stream of Christian propaganda that states exactly that. Christian apologists get paid to regularly tell their flock that the only meaning they have comes from God and their Christian beliefs. It helps keep people within the church.
This page is dedicated to trying to help Christians get around this blind spot, and hopefully to understand the source of meaning that comes from this world.
Our Relation to the Universe
Materialist center on the idea that every one of us is actually part of the universe. We both agree that matter exists and that our bodies are matter. We also agree that we have a will that drives bodies to do things; that we are moral agents able to make decisions and to do things.
Where we disagree on is how that matter is driven by us. The Christian has a very low opinion of matter. They believe matter is quite limited and unable to do complex things. They believe therefor there must be something separate from the matter that drives the body from another realm. They believe that our essence is a soul that is separate from the body and is somehow driving the body.
The materialist believes instead that material itself has the ability to support consciousness, to have thoughts and desires, and to make moral decision. Material can just do a lot of things the Christian think it can't do. The process that forms will power might still be called a soul, it’s just that that this soul consists entirely of material processes. Christians have no evidence that material things are unable to support the complexity of processes that would be required; they just reject the idea based on intuition. They compare atoms to billiard ball thinking they only thing they can do is bounce off each other. It just doesn't feel like needs and desires are physical things, and that choices are material processes.
Christians like to think of themselves as a soul that is separate from the world. The body will die, but their essence (the soul) will go onto some other existence. They believe that is what Jesus was talking about with regards to living forever.
Beginnings and Endings
Let's say that god is whatever it is that created the universe. We may disagree on exactly how God works, but we agree that the universe was created by God. It is equally clear that god created the universe in exactly the way that god would create it. You see in the universe around us "God's way." The universe is a precise reflection of the nature of god.
If we look around us we see all sorts of examples of God's way. It’s the way that nature works. What you’ll see is that on almost every level of nature there is a constant cycle of birth and death. Things start they run for a while and then they stop. Trees will start as a little sapling and grow to a large tree, but eventually it dies animals follow the same path. If you look inside your body, there are cells that are being born and dying all the time even other things in the universe like stars are being born and eventually, they explode, mountains rise up, and then are worn down by weather, and rivers will carve a valley until it’s a plane. Storms start, and then they end. Nothing is permanent; Nothing runs forever. Literally nothing.
The Christian, however, feels that humans are an exception to this. Everything in nature is born and dies, but humans souls are special. We have a special soul that is permanent and lasts forever, because God loves us the most.
That’s another way that we differ. The materialist believes that once you reach the end of your life your soul simply stops existing. Everything that the Christian calls a soul is actually a complicated intertwining set of material processes. Those process simply stop. When the body dies, all agency disappears.
The Christian view sounds too much like special pleading and wish fulfillment. There is no evidence a soul continues after death, nothing in nature is permanent. Instead permanence is just something that we all really really wish for.
Ego Centrism
What’s really happening: you have an ego. The ego functions to help the animal to survive by thinking of itself as a discrete unit. Animals with egos formed millions of years ago. What it does is that when things start getting rough, the ego focuses the efforts of the body on survival.
The Christian and Muslim religions are formed out of a very strong feeling for the ego. For a Christian religion is about you and your future after death. Christianity does some good by getting the ego to accept some humility, and to see yourself as less than god.
Death is very scary. The ego itself can not contemplate it own non-existence, because that is the exact opposite from what an ego does in the first place. The purpose of the ego is to avoid death, something which Christianity and Islam offer to followers. I admit I don’t want to die. I’d very much like to live forever. But I simply can not believe we’re special and different from the entire rest of creation. If it was in god's nature to make permanent things, there would most likely be other permanent things around us, but there are none.
Materialists are much more humble than Christians. We don't see a soul or the ego being things that are special and completely different from the rest of creation. Instead, we see ourselves as part of creation, and created in exactly the same way that god creates everything. The ego creates the illusion that we are separate and different, but there is no objective evidence for this.
How Does this Relate to Meaning?
So far we agree upon which topics we disagree on, but the point of this page is a very odd wrong-headed conclusion that Christians make from all this. They say, if you’re not special and separate from the universe, then there’s no meaning to life.
This is some kind of Christian Blindspot. I’m not really sure why, but Christians think that the life of an atheist has no meaning. They believe that meaning must be given to them by some magical external being. They will say that all the meaning in their life is something god gave to them. They claim that this meaning only comes to Christians, and so it is not that god has made humans with a special soul, but instead that God just decided to give them meaning when they accepted Jesus and began to worship god. It is the worshiping of god that provides meaning to their life.
This is completely wrong for the reasons cited in the first section above.
The Source Of Meaning
The materialist sees people as making meaning. Even though your soul is a process that starts at one point in time and ends at another point in time, that process has an effect on the world. As you live your life, you do things and you live on in the things that you do.
Of course I’m not suggesting that any kind of consciousness is embedded in those things you did that survive you. But I am suggesting that the idea that your value lives on after you is something that gives meaning to life.
You’re not just sitting on earth waiting for heaven to come as some kind of a reward after winning the lottery. It’s what you do now that makes the meaning.
Pretty much everybody makes meaning at some level. You have the people that you interact with. Your friends, your family, your community. This is where the meaning of life comes from.
We have benefited so much from the people that have come before us. Hobbes described life as being "nasty brutish and short" in ancient time. Humans have a special ability to connect to collect knowledge our forefathers and mothers have passed on to us the value of 1000 generations. We now live longer, healthier, and in all ways a much nicer existence.
It is our duty then to do the same for our descendants. We improve the world, we build things, we make things of value, and we pass them on to our kids. This is our source of meaning.
Meaning is Value Created for Others
The materialist sees that not only are we part of the universe, we are actually part of each other. In a strong physical sense, the atoms in your body used to be in other people's bodies. In fact, in every breath you breathe in thousands if not millions of molecules which have been in some human being in history. Matters constantly flowing between us and the world around us.
The ego wants to deny our connection with the universe. The ego wants us to think about ourselves as being a separate distinct individual, something that either lives or dies in its entirety, and cannot be split in half or anything like that. The ego keeps us alive when doing good rough but the ego does not show you how the world is.
The only thing we truly know is that we are here now. We live in this instant. And it’s what we do now that matters. Are you living your life as if you appreciate those who came before us, and you care about those who come after us?
Conclusions
My goal here is just to let you realize how the materialist views, the world, and how it is not cold and empty as your Christian apologists have told you. The material world is full of love, and that love is real. That love is expressed in what we do here and now for others, and not just for ourselves.
It would be a shame to miss out on the here and now. How pointless would it be to save all your actions for a promise or something which is not very clear. Christians get this. Most Christians I know focus on making the world a better place for everyone. And I can respect that.
So we disagree about the nature of God, we disagree about soul, and we disagree about our relationship between ourselves in the universe. But we both agree that life can have meaning, and that life is one of the greatest gifts imaginable. Life is precious. The materialist feels that life coming to an end makes life infinitely more precious.