An Atheist Meaning of Life

This is a first and incomplete effort at getting down some ideas towards an atheist meaning of life. There’s a lot more to be said and even more thinking to be done, but it’s a start that can be built upon and adapted. It’s a start.

Heaven. Hell. Fairly well known concepts; there’s blissful peace and there’s fiery damnation. Lots of imagery built up over millennia that shape the way we think about them. But what if heaven and hell are applied to the one life we have on earth. Heaven is the reward for a life with God. Now perhaps that reward doesn't come afterwards as an eternal paradise, maybe the belief in a higher power itself, the purpose and meaning to life which that can bring. Maybe that is the reward of God in and of itself, that reassuring belief where your life isn't a meaningless flash in existence, gone in a moment and barely bright enough to see.

And likewise hell would be the opposite. A life without God being a life without a purpose, a life without real consequences as ultimately eternal death is what follows. The cessation of your existence, your identity and memories, and in time the obliteration of any trace of your existence, I could see that being described as hell. Believing your existence to be meaningless can in fact be the ultimate meaning of hell?

Neither heaven or hell are things waiting for us after we die, they are simply labels to apply to life where one has meaning and the other does not. Religion can then be created as a means of pulling people towards the faith in a higher power camp, and in doing so ensure them a place in the ‘heaven’ of living a life which you can believe has a purpose and an eternal value.

As an atheist that first option I can’t really buy into, and being left with a hell of meaningless existence doesn't appeal either. The third option of just never thinking about it isn't going to work for me either, and perhaps option 2, believing your mind to be meaningless but still putting value in it is just a higher version of option 3. Where saying there’s no meaning and then carrying on because life still has value is still avoiding actually thinking though the implications of a meaningless existence.

So if we don’t want to believe in God and thus secure a place in ‘heaven’, nor have a hellish meaningless existence, is their perhaps a fourth option? How about this? Our lives don’t have a meaning... yet. Perhaps the ultimate meaning of life does exist, there is some higher purpose but we’re not yet capable of understanding it. And we probably won’t get there in our lifetimes. But if in the future an ultimate meaning of existence is found then that would also give all past lives ultimate meaning and thus give us a meaning of life today. The search for that future ultimate meaning can become the lesser meaning for our lives today, the justification for it, and the validation that avoids the hellish conclusion of a meaningless life and an eternity of nothingness after we die.

Now suddenly our lives do have a meaning, we've avoided hell but not had to buy into the idea of a God or other higher power. Our meaning is to strive and develop and search for a future meaning that can then validate our current existences. And how do we do that? If we’re not currently capable of understanding or discovering the meaning of life what do we have to do? We have to advance. We have to progress. We have to develop scientifically, culturally, socially, and any other way we can think of. If we don’t know what the meaning is then we can’t pin one line of advancement down as the one to follow, we must develop across all areas. And we must propagate the species too; the extinction of the human race would prevent us from ever finding our ultimate meaning.

This would be an atheistic meaning of life, one which promotes scientific advancement, cultural development, social improvement, and working to ensure the continuation of the human race. I think that's a pretty good meaning to live by. For now anyway.

Living by the Bible

This is written with the focus largely on the Christian religion as that is what I am most familiar with but you can probably replace Bible with any other holy text, make other necessary substitutions, and the point is still valid.

I feel it is safe to assume one of two things; either the Bible is the literal word of God, word for word, or it has cultural influences in it. One or the other must be the case, if there is another alternative then I am yet to see it. And for this I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt and saying it’s not all just fictitious. All I am trying to show with this is the invalidity of using the Bible as a guide for living and perhaps more importantly due to its ability to affect the lives of others, legislation.

So, belief number one, the Bible is the exact word of God. If so then to go against anything in the Bible would be to go against the word of God and that would be a terrible thing for a Christian to do. First looking from an emotive angle, according to the Bible, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Genesis 3:16) There it is, in the Bible for all to see, man shall rule over woman, husband over wife, plain and simple. To want it any other way would be to want to go against God. If you wish to please God and believe the Bible to be the exact word of God then you must accept that women are to be ruled over by men. Personally I’d say to hell with that (though possibly that’s not the best choice of words). A Christian who believes the Bible to be the exact word of God cannot support anything remotely resembling gender equality without a logical inconsistency.

Now from a more logical angle, passages in the Bible as to the creation of the universe directly contradict scientific observation, that is, direct observation of the universe God created. So for that to add up it would be necessary to accept that in the Bible God was either wrong, he has created the universe in such a way as to be logically inconsistent, or was actively lying. If any of those three options are true then living by the word of the Bible, treating it as the exact word of God, is pretty preposterous. And what’s the most common (and only valid) response to that problem? “Oh, that bit isn't the word of God. That was just a way of explaining it to the people of the time.”

I’ll say that again: That bit. Isn't. The word of God.

So there we have it, parts of the Bible aren't the word of God, an acceptance of cultural influences in the Bible.

So now we have cultural influences in the Bible, the leads to the big problem; how do you know which bits are the will and views of God and which are cultural influences in the Bible? Is a passage condemning anal sex a cultural bias of the time put in there by the writer, or what God himself would have you believe? There is no way to tell, the same with any other guideline for life drawn from the Bible. Kosher for example, does God abhor eating camels or was it something meant for the culture of the time? This all reduces the Bible to nothing more than a list of possible guidelines for someone to pick and mix their own moral viewpoint from, and once you’re doing that you may as well not have the Bible at all.

Suddenly any justification of an argument with it being “in the Bible” or “the will of God” is completely invalid. It is impossible to build a life accurately following the “word of God” if you acknowledge that whatever Laws you follow may just be cultural opinions from several thousand year ago and for all we know could go directly against the will of God. I'm going to say that again because I think it’s important: If you accept cultural influences in the Bible you cannot know if any line you follow is the will of God or actually goes against the will of God. And if you can’t know that, then to base any moral argument on it is just silly. Now when you take into account that this is not just used to validate people’s own moral choices but laws and actions affecting other people’s lives and human rights (looking at you laws against gay marriage as one example, objecting to the use of condoms as another), then it goes from silly to abhorrent. To live your life under the word of a book that you freely admit to not have any validation in its guidelines is not a valid course of action, but it’s ultimately your life. To use an invalid text to influence other peoples’ lives is just plain wrong.

So there we have it, two options: You believe the Bible to be the exact word of God, in which case you are, how to say this politely, provably wrong. Or you believe it has cultural influences in it and thus invalidate any authority in it or any justification of letting its writings influence your life or the lives of others. Either way, it is unjustifiable to live your life by the word of the Bible and worse to make others live their lives by it.

Limited Attention Spans

Question: How many tabs do you have open at the moment? How many have you looked at in the last 5 minutes? How many have you come through to end up here? How many have you flicked to already since you started reading this? My guess is probably quite a lot, well, apart from maybe for the last one. If you can’t even get past a few lines without being distracted than the problem is worse than I thought.

There is an acronym on the internet you are probably fairly familiar with, tl;dr, literally too long; didn't read. I think that pretty much sums up the problem. When it comes to anything that actually requires more than a few minutes attention to absorb it is made easier and easier to just dismiss it. There is a strong consensus that if something is not presented in a manner such that any actual depth or analysis is lost then it is too long to bother concerning oneself with. But, shockingly, it turns out some issues are complex and require some actually contemplation to get any meaning out of. And these are often the issues that are actually important. A couple of sound bites and a cool little graphic may give you the impression that you are expanding your knowledge but often people seem to know no more than, for example: “Oh there is this guy called Assad and he is like, bad, and his people are revolting. They’re in this country called Syria, or Serbia, or Sudan, oh you know, one of those sort of counties.”

We are constantly bombarded by information and because of the shear volume of it we can easily feel like we are absorbing it and learning more. But that just isn't the case. We as a culture seem to be losing the ability for sustained thought and analysis and that can't be good. Take this four and a half thousand word essay on tumblr. It's a pretty interesting read and in the time it took me to read and think about it I got far more than I would have through any amount of casual browsing through various tabs. Yet I expect the vast majority of people will look at it and immediately give up and go find something requiring far less thought to look at. (I don't mean to sound all superior with that line, all to often I find myself doing the exact same thing I'm complaining about.)

Now, I’ll be honest, four and a half thousand words was a longer essay than I would expect to see on tumblr, you can say a lot in that many words and what is said is going to take a lot of thought afterwards, but that was an exception. I am forever seeing tl;dr written in response to blog posts easily less than a thousand words. Take this one, around eight hundred words, it will take only a few minutes to read through . And yet I would put good money on many people who see this (okay, assuming people did actually read these posts) taking a look at the whole five paragraphs and immediately going to look for something that they can look at for a number of seconds before getting bored and looking for something else to momentarily rest there focus on. Very few people seem to be willing to take the time to read longer essays even if they would actually get a lot out of them.

“Longer essays? Pah! I could read the headlines on a news site, watch a short clip on youtube, check facebook, check twitter, maybe update my status and make a tweet myself. Why on earth would I want to read five hundred words on the Syrian revolution when I could do all that? In fact, one of the tweets I saw was talking about revolutions in Syria so see I already know about that! Something about there being too many chemicals in the country or something, maybe it's polluted. What? You mean it actually takes more than that to actually learn about a topic? What do you expect me to do, actually take five minutes to read the article, and then what, you expect me to actually pause and think about what I have just read? But someone could have updated their facebook status by then!”

Yeah, to hell with that. I know I'm guilty of it at times too but if you have actually bothered to read this far then please, next time you see an interesting headline take the time to actually read the article, not the first paragraph but all of it, and then actually think about what you have just read. I promise you you’ll get far more from it than you ever would from spending that time refreshing facebook.

Melting Ice and Spreading Sands

The ice caps are melting, see, hear or read anything about global warming and you are probably going to hear about it. Maybe there will be a picture of a polar bear stuck on a little lump of ice surrounded by vast expanses of water. Maybe it’ll show glaciers retreating up valleys. Now, here’s the thing. I am not a climate change denier; it is in fact an issue I care greatly about. However, when it comes to the loss of the ice caps in and of themselves, well, frankly I don’t give a damn.

Possibly I should explain this before all credibility is lost. The subsequent rise in sea levels resulting in widespread flooding, food shortages as fertile coastal land is lost, and mass migration of millions of displaced people is an incredibly important issue. As is the release of methane trapped under permafrost which has the capacity to massively exacerbate and accelerate global warming. As is the loss of some of the world’s largest freshwater reserves. As is the loss of Gulf Stream and its subsequent effect on the UK climate (ok I admit that one is more of a local than global issue for me but still, it is an issue). Those are all serious issues that will occur as a direct result of the ice caps receding.

The thing is that, to me, the ice caps are largely dead. Yes they are a landscape “unspoilt by man” but that is largely because they are so useless and difficult for life to exist in. I would far prefer a world where all that land was alive, either with the influence of man or not. It could make an abundance of farm land or provide habitats for countless more species of animals than it does now, or provide space to help alleviate humanity’s overcrowding problems. Any of those options is to me preferable to a large expanse of rock and ice where no plants grow and animals are sparse.

Another frequent problem of the ice caps melting is people hear “warmer winters” and think, ooh lovely. Hell, I’d actually agree with them, but then I have the circulation of a lump of basalt meaning that when the weather gets cold I basically lose the ability to use my hands for anything even remotely dexterous or to touch another human being without them recoiling from my icy touch.  

Now, it would seem harsh to deflate this poster child of the environmental movement without offering up a counter, so here it is. What does concern me is not the reduction of the inhospitable ice caps but the spread of the inhospitable deserts. The Sahara is already expanding south at a rate of 30 miles per year and that is only going to increase as the planet heats up. Currently over 2 billion people live in the world’s dry lands, the areas at risk of desertification, and already 10-20% of those have undergone some form of degradation. Yes just like at the ice caps some organisms can survive in the desert as well, but that doesn't stop it from being an environment counter productive to the continuing survival of life.

With food shortages already happening can we really risk a further 40% of the earth’s land area turning into desert? This works on the personal level as well, those lovely warmer winters don’t sound so nice when the price for them is a summer of people dying in the tens of thousands across Europe from heat waves and water becoming a scarce commodity throughout the summer.

So next time you go to highlight the problems of climate change don’t necessarily lean on the old crutch of polar ice melting; because the creation of new hospitable land and warmer winters for all doesn't necessarily carry the same impact as the slowly spreading heat death of the planet.

Fluctuating Opinions

I wrote this post over a year ago, however I still feel the points raised apply today even if the contextualisation is partially outdated. So without further ado here it is.

This is a concept I think I should get out the way fairly early on, so here goes. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are reflective of my views and opinions at the time of writing. Just because I have written them here does not make them set in stone and does not mean my opinions cannot differ in the future. All it means is that at the point in time where I hit the “Publish” button, I am behind these opinions. I still retain the right at any point in the future to alter my opinions. And this should be more than a right, this should be a duty, this should be what is expected of me, and of anyone else. That shouldn't have needed to even have been said. I shouldn't have to clarify that my opinions will change over time. it should be taken as given that when new facts or opinions are brought up they may alter my own opinions on an issue, and yet I feel I have to actually have go so far as to make a post explaining this. We live in a culture where to change your opinion, to alter your viewpoint based on new events and evidence, is a sign of weakness, an admission of defeat and with it the victory and correctness of anyone you had previously disagreed with on the issue. It is even built in to our very language; you either win or lose an argument, a debate, you are either for an issue or against an issue. And that is just wrong, and has caused all sorts of problems even recently.

 — Abortion trigger warning for Case 1 only —

Case 1: Something that has been making the rounds recently, the news that a 13 year old girl self aborted using a pencil. Now this is a pretty horrific story and a good example of the importance of legally accessible abortions for all. (Two things of note: I will not be dealing with the actual abortion argument right now. Secondly, I do support the assertion that abortions should be legally accessible to all, and at the ultimate decision of the person having the abortion; however I do also think the parents should be informed that the child is having the abortion. This is all linked in to the nature of being a legal guardian/dependant and again, I will be dealing with and backing this up in a later post, I just wanted to make that clear now.) But anyway, what I actually wanted to get at with this is the assertion by “pro-life” (I hate those terms and will be dealing with them in the future as well) campaigners that this was a victory for pro-life because if abortions were legal the girl would not have been hospitalised forcing an explanation and the rapist would not have been identified and the girl would still be involved with him.

For starters, the above mentioned insistence that the parents are informed and that the abortion went through official channels would have allowed that anyway without the need to make abortions illegal so declaring it a victory was itself illogical. Anyway what I actually wanting to get at with this is that the pro-life campaigners felt the need to spin this out as a victory or risk losing their standing on the issue. And it is wrong that they have to do that. What should have happened is that pro-life campaigners looked at this issue, stopped to think “wow, our proposal isn't perfect after all, we should reassess where we are coming from and take this in to account when forming our opinions in the future.” Now please note that in no way means they have to stop being pro-life just that they have to take reality in to account. But they can’t do that, because it would mean altering their opinions, and that would be seized by pro-choice supporters and used against them (see, both sides are at fault here). It is so ingrained in our culture that changing an opinion, even by a small amount, is a matter of losing, and that it invalidates your previous arguments, to the extent that people are forced to stick to their overall argument even when it takes them to the ludicrous extent of describing a hospitalising home abortion as a victory. People should be freely able to change their opinions as new evidence and opposing opinions are bought to their attention, in fact, not ‘able to’, but applauded for doing so. Dogmatically sticking to either one side or the other helps no one and brings us no closer to a resolution. 

Case 2: Climate Change: If any uncertainty or altering of position is shown by scientists looking at climate change then it is immediately seized by climate change deniers as a validation of their opinion. Unfortunately for the scientists who are just trying to get at the truth of the matter regardless of the political ramifications, this means that they feel pressured not to admit to conflicting peer reviews, to hide evidence that goes against current models even if it in no way invalidates climate change, they find themselves unable to question and review their own hypotheses, to draw conclusions from experimental data, in short, they are unable to follow any semblance of the scientific method for fear that any discrepancies with the current model will be used against them to convince the public that climate change deniers are right, even if the scientist know themselves that these discrepancies in no way show that to be the case. (The scientific method being immensely awesome and a brilliant system for assessing pretty much anything which I will again be covering in more detail in the future.) So again, the cultural view that a change of opinion is a failure of the opinion holder is causing real problems because we refuse to accept that changing opinions is a natural and useful thing that should be expected of any reasonable and sensible thinker.

Case 3: Creationism vs. Evolution, a topic I could talk a lot more about and at some point intend to do so. All I want to say here is similar to that in Case 2, any instance of uncertainty of a change of opinion on the part of evolutionary scientists when new evidence is discovered is instantly seized by creationists as proof that they are right. Once again, the change of opinion never actually validates the creationist’s point and is just the scientific method in action, but it is still used to wrongly convince people of their unsupported arguments. And why are they successful in doing this? Because as I keep saying we are still living in a world where a change of opinion is equated with the opinion holder being wrong and the other party being correct.  

And this is why I will be happy to change my opinions as necessary upon the analysis of any new views, evidence or arguments presented to me. And why I will in no way feel obliged to limit myself to agreeing with or standing by previous views I have expressed on here or anywhere else.