atheists, what is the meaning of life?

Answer 1

The philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" means different things to different people. The vagueness of the query is inherent in the word "meaning", which opens the question to many interpretations, such as: "What is the origin of life?", "What is the nature of life (and of the universe in which we live)?", "What is the significance of life?", "What is valuable in life?", and "What is the purpose of, or in, (one's) life?". These questions have resulted in a wide range of competing answers and arguments, from scientific theories, to philosophical, theological, and spiritual explanations.

These questions are separate from the scientific issue of the boundary between things with life and inanimate objects.
Popular beliefs
"What is the meaning of life?" is a question many people ask themselves at some point during their lives, most in the context "What is the purpose of life?" Here are some of the many potential answers to this perplexing question. The responses are shown to overlap in many ways but may be grouped into the following categories:

Survival and temporal success
...to live every day like it is your last and to do your best at everything that comes before you
...to be always satisfied
...to live, go to school, work, and die
...to participate in natural human evolution, or to contribute to the gene pool of the human race
...to advance technological evolution, or to actively develop the future of intelligent life
...to compete or co-operate with others
...to destroy others who harm you, or to practice nonviolence and nonresistance
...to gain and exercise power
...to leave a legacy, such as a work of art or a book
...to eat
...to prepare for death
...to spend life in the pursuit of happiness, maybe not to obtain it, but to pursue it relentlessly.
...to produce offspring through sexual reproduction (alike to participating in evolution)
...to protect and preserve one's kin, clan, or tribe (akin to participating in evolution)
...to seek freedom, either physically, mentally or financially
...to observe the ultimate fate of humanity to the furthest possible extent
...to seek happiness and flourish, experience pleasure or celebrate
...to survive, including the pursuit of immortality through scientific means
...to attempt to have many sexual conquests (as in Arthur Schopenhauer's will to procreate)
...to find and take over all free space in this "game" called life
...to seek and find beauty
...to kill or be killed
...No point. Since having a point is a condition of living human consciousness. Animals do not need a point to live or exist. It is more of an affliction of consciousness that there are such things as points, a negative side to evolutionary development for lack of better words.

Wisdom and knowledge
...to master and know everything
...to be without questions, or to keep asking questions
...to expand one's perception of the world
...to explore, to expand beyond our frontiers
...to learn from one's own and others' mistakes
...to seek truth, knowledge, understanding, or wisdom
...to understand and be mindful of creation or the cosmos
...to lead the world towards a desired situation
...to satisfy the natural curiosity felt by humans about life

Ethical
...to express compassion
...to follow the "Golden Rule"
...to give and receive love
...to work for justice and freedom
...to live in peace with yourself and each other, and in harmony with our natural environment
...to protect humanity, or more generally the environment
...to serve others, or do good deeds

Religious and spiritual
...to find perfect love and a complete expression of one's humanness in a relationship with God
...to achieve a supernatural connection within the natural context
...to achieve enlightenment and inner peace
...to become like God, or divine
...to glorify God
...to experience personal justice (i.e. to be rewarded for goodness)
...to experience existence from an infinite number of perspectives in order to expand the consciousness of all there is (i.e. to seek objectivity)
...to be a filter of creation between heaven and hell
...to produce useful structure in the universe over and above consumption (see net creativity)
...to reach Heaven in the afterlife
...to seek and acquire virtue, to live a virtuous life
...to turn fear into joy at a constant rate achieving on literal and metaphorical levels: immortality, enlightenment, and atonement
...to understand and follow the "Word of God"
...to discover who you are
...to resolve all problems that one faces, or to ignore them and attempt to fully continue life without them, or to detach oneself from all problems faced

Philosophical
...to give life meaning
...to participate in the chain of events which has led from the creation of the universe until its possible end (either freely chosen or determined, this is a subject widely debated amongst philosophers)
...to know the meaning of life
...to achieve self-actualisation
...all possible meanings have some validity
...life in itself has no meaning, for its purpose is an opportunity to create that meaning, therefore:
...to die
...to simply live until one dies (there is no universal or celestial purpose)
...nature taking its course (the wheel of time keeps on turning)
...whatever you see you see, as in "projection makes perception"
...there is no purpose or meaning whatsoever
...life may actually not exist, or may be illusory )
...to contemplate "the meaning of the end of life"

Other
...to contribute to collective meaning ("we" or "us") without having individual meaning ("I" or "me")
...to find a purpose, a "reason" for living that hopefully raises the quality of one's experience of life, or even life in general
...to participate in the inevitable increase in entropy of the universe
...to make conformists' lives miserable
...to make life as difficult as possible for others (i.e. to compete)
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Answer 2

I don't really see that there is a purpose to life. That's why we should make the most of the time we have here. On the flip side, how are you so sure, that we weren't born out of pure chance, evolved, and had to cope with so many unanswered questions that we invented a purpose- because why else would we be here? It's too hard to folks to cope with no life after death and that there is no purpose. Read "The God Part of the Brain," it talks about the development of religion as a means of coping. Edit: Maybe I should have said let's enjoy the time we have here? And sure, humans will always find meaning in things/places/people/events... just about everything. If there is meaning to be found in life, each meaning will be unique to the individual. I agree, that whether or not we agree to something, there is an ultimate truth. But when you say that everything you've done so far/read has pointed in one direction, how do you know it is the truth? The same could be said for me... I am an atheist, and everything I've read/ done/ experienced has pointed in the direction of no god. Sure order might exist, but it can also be a result of chaos and chance. Aren't they just two sides of the same coin? I'm not sure if we'll ever know. You are using a watchmaker analogy of the universe right? If you see order, something must have 'ordered' it right? It speaks to your need to see a meaning/purpose right?

Answer 3

Everyone has a different meaning, whether it's to be a good person, or to be a good business man!! It is what YOU want it to be!! And if you search for it, you will never find it. It doesn't have to be anything special!! It may be as simple as "Graduate three kids from college"!! It could be as simple as "Travel the world"!! It's like a butterfly, if you try and catch it, it will fly further away, but if you wait and act normal, and keep being YOU, it may fly and land upon you. You have to be patient. You have to live life, making the choices you think will be best, and if you do what you think is right, your life will end up as good as it'll ever be. Just wait, and maybe one day you will look back to when you asked this, and laugh, realizing that you have found your meaning.

"You will never be happy if you search for what happiness consists of. You will never find the meaning of life if you keep searching for it." -Sorry, forgot who said that... =(

Answer 4

In the beginning, the great Gia created the Earth. She wanted the Earth to have everything in it's ecosystem. However, she wasn't able to figure out how to make plastic. That's where we came in.
Gia created Man upon the Earth so that when we went extinct, the plastic we made would remain.
So why are we here? Plastic.

Answer 5

Life just is. It has no intrinsic, or built in meaning of it's own.

All the meaning that life will ever have is the meaning that you give to it.

Looks like its up to you.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 6

There isn't one. Go out and make your own reason. Become a doctor or an artist or a scientist. Contribute something to society.

Answer 7

Life HAS no meaning, and does not need one any more than "a cup of coffee" has or needs 'meaning'... Life does have a purpose, however, which is simply to perpetuate itself.

Answer 8

We don't make up easy answers to questions like that. We search for them. And as yet, the "meaning of life" has not been sufficiently explained.

If you want an easy answer, though, (albeit an incorrect one) pick a religion.

Answer 9

42.



Seriously, you're assuming life is some mystery to be solved or some question to be answered. Life just is. You enjoy what you get.

Answer 10

That's a matter of opinion, so are you asking the Atheist majority as a whole?

Answer 11

I can't tell you the "why." Only the "how." It reads like a shampoo bottle, only with a twist:

Breath in, exhale. Repeat as long as possible.

The rest you've got to find for yourself.