What is the point of living, when there is no God?

Question

Why live, when there is no such thing as an afterlife?

What is the point of life then?

What are we really living for?

So what really happens after we die?

Answer 1

Live for today. Not having a god makes every day more important because today is all you have. Live it responsibly.

Answer 2

This is something I grappled with long ago when I was in college and really challenging the beliefs I had grown up with: I had always assumed there was a God and an afterlife, and for the first time I allowed myself to seriously consider whether perhaps what we experience now is all there is.

I came to the conclusion that I wanted to live a life I could be proud of. It did not matter whether there was a God or an afterlife: am I proud of the life I am living? Am I doing good? My life is meaningful as a result of the sum of my actions while alive. I want my corner of the world to have been positively affected by my short presence here.

That was my decision at the time and I still abide by that. You'll have to come to your own conclusion about the meaning of your life, and it looks like you're asking worthwhile questions that will assist you in your journey :-)

Answer 3

How do you know there is no such thing as an afterlife? How do you know there is no God? Even if there wasn't either of these things, the point of living is just to exist and make the best of your situation. We are living just to live, there is really no purpose, just for us to exist. Why do plants or animals exist? We all coexist because without eachother we would not survive. Well humans wouldn't at least.

Answer 4

Hmm-m-m.

Great questions.

I assume that you are the first person to
have ever given these issues much thought.

Is that correct.

Or, somehow do you seek to
reinvent the wheel by dragging this up all
over again? If that is the case, don't waste
your time.

However, if this is some dire and immediate
personal thing with you, let me ofer the
following tips to you in hope that they will
calm your troubled mind.

If you do not want to live, there is little I can
do about it. Just don't make a big, nasty mess
when you check out of here. Somebody is
going to have to clean all that crap up.

There is no point to life. Life is what YOU make
it. You can sit around on your tail and ponder
the infinite reaches of the universe and starve
to death. Or, you can get a good education, find
enjoyable work to suit your capabilities, and
contribute something worthwhile to society while
you are here on this Earth.

What are we living for? If you will look down from
that high pedestal you are sitting upon and observe
the masses of people around you...
We are living to earn our next paycheck so we can
feed ourselves and our families, pay our bills, and
help out the government tax man. Along the way we
might just happen to pick up a few toys to amuse
ourselves at idle moments, or go on a short trip for
amusement.

Now that the basic questions have been answered,
let me ask you one... What are you going to do about
other people in this world who are starving to death.
Are you going to sit there and nod your head, saying
yeah i heard about that stuff? Or, are you going to
take an active role in ending starvation in impoverished
countries? What are you going to do personaly to
end the starvation of thousands of people each day?
Make a difference now..... Do something positive.

Answer 5

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

Answer 6

Because if there is no afterlife this is all we have. We live to exist and leave a mark on life, no matter how small.

The point of life is to help one another through it. Life is really hard, for some more then others. And everyone needs to help out one another. Each person sometimes needs a friendly hand or someone there to help them once in awhile. The point of life is to help one another.

We are living because we are alive. We haven’t chosen to exist. We choose if we continue with life or not. But to exist in the first place we do not choose. So now that we do exist we are here to keep going and cheer up others.

Answer 7

What do you mean there is no God? There is a God, one who loves us all. The fact that we are here can contribute to helping others, its not only about ourselves. We should take advantage of life by helping others and making a difference in the world in any way possible. If there was no meaning for life then we would not have been alive. Probably do some further study to find out exactly why we were created and what we are really living for. Thats all i can help you with.

Answer 8

I equate the belief in God to the belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The only difference that I can see is that through the thousands of years, millions of people were never slaughtered in the name of either Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. As far as an afterlife is concerned, if you do this one right, who needs another one?

Answer 9

What is the purpose of living if there is a god? Who likes the idea of doing what some abusive (see Job) control freak tells us we have to on pain of eternal suffering. The idea of that type of god is anathema and totally illogical.

Besides, who says there is no afterlife. One belief is that our souls are all part of a larger Life-force and we live multiple lives to learn lessons and become good enough to return to be part of that force. If I have to believe in something I like that idea much better than conventional fear based religion. It allows me to believe I have a say and there is a purpose.

Read up onEdgar Cayce

Answer 10

You will have lived a bit of life before you have the maturity to ask this question and, you may or may not have passed your DNA on into the future. But, even if your life ended now, you will have fulfilled your purpose in life by merely being. I don't mean a divine purpose but the reason you are here in response to a chain of events that even now move on into the future. The chain brought you into being at this time and used you as you had to be used to propelled the chain forward in time.

Answer 11

There is a God,but you have to come to your own conclusion on that one. The point of life is to learn how to become a better person and learn from our mistakes. There is an afterlife. These are my beliefs.I'm not about to preach to you,you have to find your own way