Serious Question for Atheists. Can you explain our existence?

Question

I am just curious what Atheists believe is the reason for our existence.. As well as how our existence came about.

If you do not believe in a 'creator' of life, etc.. Explain how we are even here. Explain why we are here...

I truly am asking this seriously. I am interested in knowing what your thought process is on this.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I knew you'd get a lot of snarky comments on that one, but I'll try to explain what I think...basically, the idea of "beginning, middle and end" is a human idea, not a divine one. We're wired to think in those terms because it's how life cycles work on Earth.

But science increasingly suspects that the universe is something that has always existed--it had no "beginning." This throws our sense of time on its head, but again, only because of how we see life. With how vast the universe is, we're a miniscule fragment and the way time functions here is not how it works on the big (big) scale.

I don't worship a God, but I'm in awe of the creative force of the universe. And here on Earth, life begets life begets life (I love the expression that a dead person is "pushing up daisies" and hope people use it after I die), which is fascinating to me. I know I co-exist with something infinite, but I don't believe it has consciousness, or at least, not consciousness that I can understand in any way. I certainly don't think it pays attention to me personally as another human would.

I don't presume to know why we're here, but I am in awe of the mystery in a way that to me, feels holy.

Answer 2

The reason for existence, or purpose thereof? There isn't one. We're purposeless and everything we do is ultimately for naught because the fate of the universe is sealed -- eventually the universe will no longer be able to support life.

As for how we got here... start with the Big Bang. There's still some deep questions on how or where that happened -- we still need to figure out quantum gravity before we can reach the Big Bang mathematically.

Cosmology determined astronomy, astronomy determined geology.

On Earth, life began through abiogenesis -- though we're still unclear on some of the details.

Once life had started, evolution took over, and 3.5 billion years later, the ecosystem is what we observe, including our own existence.

All of these processes are stochaistic in nature -- that is, they aren't totally random, but they have some random components that are shaped or directed by other forces.

Answer 3

The problem with the design hypothesis is that it cannot explain the origin of complexity. Presupposing a prior greater complexity only makes a bigger problem or leads to infinite regression.

I suspect that the local universe we observe is just an infinitesimal portion of reality as a whole. The reason for apparent order ( what we mathematicians call Kolmogorov complexity ) is likely the selection effect of our existence. Regions without such order would not permit our evolution. Complexity derives from selection operating on variance.

Personally I do not think matter/energy/space/time are fundamental. The material we observe is mathematically isomorphic to (indistinguishable from ) the mathematical laws describing their behavior. Perhaps what exists fundamentally is mot matter but mathematical laws. The reason we observe the mathematical laws we do then is that only such laws permit our evolution and existence. Why does mathematics exist then? Maybe existence is simply logical necessity. Existence consists of those truths ( mathematics ) which are logically necessary.

Answer 4

Advance apology for the wall of text. 1) I take it that your question is: "How does an atheist confront people acting irrationally when atheism seems to purport that everything can be explained rationally?" I see no problem here. The fact that people are irrational can be rationally explained by evolution. 2) "If we were all completely rational beings the societies that hosted those religions would have operated in ways that would have ensured the vitality of our entire society and our species as a whole." Nobody's claiming people are completely rational. That used to be the stance, about a 100 years ago. In fact, scientists today have found the opposite to be the case: That humans have been left only partly rational by evolution. 3) "That obviously didn't happen, and not acting in benefit to ones own community is obviously not rational." I disagree. For some people, not acting in benefit to one's own community is perfectly rational, if deplorable and punishable behaviour. Think of thieves, for example. They are making a perfectly rational decision to steal. They know it won't benefit the community, quite the opposite. Yet they choose to do it anyway. 4) "The process of natural selection does not seem to be an adequate argument because very irrational, and religious, people seem to be having the most children on the verge of a population crisis." Non-sequitur. Can you be a bit more specific? Why is not evolution enough to explain human irrationality? 5) "Atheism cannot describe to the atheist everything about themselves because they are, probably admittedly, not completely rational even if they believe they are matter in motion and nothing else." You really should know what exactly you are arguing against before attempting to do so. Atheism is a stance of not believing in gods. Materialism is an another stance. Usually however, like in my case, atheists are materialists. They are still two different terms and can't be substituted for one another like you frequently try to do. Atheism doesn't even try to explain anything. It's the de-facto logical position in the absence of evidence of the supernatural. Materialism, on the other hand, does explain things. In fact, every explanation modern science has is a materialistic one. But let's ignore that for a bit and focus on the essential. Again, this is pure non-sequitur. Sure, we can't yet explain all the intricacies of the Human body. Sure, we're not completely rational beings. Your conclusion still doesn't follow. That doesn't mean the Human body and how it behaves can't be explained from a materialist basis. 6) "Personally, I think that when rationality is considered along with the elements of passion, emotion and intellect, it works for a better understanding of how a human, with a spirit, operates." There's a lot of "in my personal opinion", "personally", "Personally, I believe" and "in my opinion" in your text. Well here's my personal opinion. I don't think adding illl-defined, superfluous and ad-hoc adaptable concepts like "spirits" to the Human body helps us better understand it in any way. In fact, in the view of modern methodology of science, adding such concepts is the very opposite of understanding.

Answer 5

My thought process is that I came from my parents, they came from their parents, and so on. It doesn't really matter to me if there was a beginning, nor does it matter what happened during this supposed beginning. What is more important to me is to use the information I do have about the past to help correct the problems of the present and create a better future. I think we do ourselves a great injustice by making up answers to questions we cannot answer on our own. Instead of deciding to believe fairy tales, we should look for real evidence if we want to find real answers. Otherwise we are only pushing ourselves further away from finding real answers in a desperate attempt to quickly come up with something.

Answer 6

I am confused. Why does proposing a creator explain our existence? It simply poses the question "why does the creator exist?" You cannot just say "he/it always existed", because that just poses the question "why has he always existed". And who/what created him? And why did they do it? And what is he for?

Sounds a bit tangled to me. A creator answers none of my questions.

However, I do understand the physics of th big bang (to the first few fractions of a second) and how life evolved. And I know what the evidence is. And I know how to carry out at least some of the experiments to prove it.

Answer 7

There doesn't have to be a reason for existence. Life itself is joy enough without having to place meaning upon it. As to how we came to be here, I think the process of evolution explains that adequately.

Answer 8

The greatest secret of the Universe is that there is no why!!!

Life is the natural consequence of carbon based organic chemistry.

We are the one in a trillion chance of being on a planet the right distance from its star, with the right amount of water, with the right mix of elements, and enough time to evolve into a thinking upright hairless ape.

That's it. That's all. No reason. No purpose. We just are. Period.

Answer 9

Life evolved into what it is today, for no particular reason. It will keep on evolving.

The only thing we can do is bring reason to our existence, with leaving the planet behind a little better as we found it. For future generations. To me that sounds already a lot more uselful than worshipping a higher power, and calling that "reason".

Answer 10

I don't believe a "sky being" gave us meaning. This is something we have to find for ourselves. It's not prescribed by a super power.

To me, you're making a huge assumption: That we HAVE a prescribed meaning given to us in the first place.

Meaning is something we have to find. Why I am here? I have found meaning in being a parent, learning something new every day, volunteering for 3 places that I believe in, and making the planet a better place because I was here.