"Everything is meaningless - like chasing the wind."

So, what is it that gives your life meaning?

I mean, especially if you insist that you're an athiest and there's nothing "supernatural," or "metaphysical," or especially nothing "trancendant" or "divine."

It almost seems like a mental illness to me the way that some people try to justify to themselves why they put any given effort into any given part of their lives.

Like sometime back on this forum, someone posed the question of what kind of society there should be in the absence of trancendant moral absoultes governing our behavior (or something like that) and the response was something like, the kind that benefits our society...the kind observed in populations of monkeys.

An interesting response, since the obvious real answer is, "that's a completely meaningless question since we're all just figments of our imaginations, just clusters of matter undergoing complex chemical reactions with no real will or feeling."

There seems to be two camps of athiests - The first: "there is no 'God' or whatever, and everything is meaningless. Yeah, you're right. I know. It's meaningless." Some of these people become suicidal (makes sense to me), and some, bizarrely, choose to live anyway as though that is not the case and they just keep that little gem of info tucked away, off to the side, and they live trying to extract enjoyment out of their admittedly meaningless lives, ironically sorta' roughly equating "enjoyment" with "good." Or wallowing in dispair about how it sucks to exist. *shrug*

The second: "there is no 'God' or whatever, but there's meaning and importance in our lives or the universe anyway...somehow." Then usually followss some mind bending hash about some kind of intrinsic responsibility or uniqueness or trancendance we posess because we're "conscious" or for some other reason or what not.

Well, "meaning" is an intrinsically metaphysical idea, as it cannot be shown to be "real" using physics. Any assertion of meaning in existence, therefore, is trancendant of the "physical world" and might as well be equated to divinity.

For instance, if your world view is something like, "perception is your personal reality, and since perception is relative, reality then is also relative." This in no small way elevates each of us into gods, since we have the ability to create reality by existing.

Or another example: the idea that there's some way our society should be, that we somehow have the ability to recognize a "best" way of doing something, or that the concept of "benefiting" a person or society as a whole is in some way "good" or at least meaningfully desirable. This also elevates us to gods - giving us the ability to assign ethical imparatives.

So if you're an athiest who belives we're nothing but clumps of matter on a bigger clump going around a bigger clump etc., that we're just fluctuations in quantum probability, what drives you? To ANYTHING? Is it just your body seeking a chemical homeostasis? The universe ticking on by itself? And if it is, why do any of you give a second thought to matters of fairness, or suffering, or tollerance, or achievement?

And why are so many of you so unnecessarily antagonistic of those who have religious beliefs? It's all meaningless anyway.

 

Meaning and value cannot be objective. It's not simply the case that God doesn't exist, so unfortunately things aren't objective and all we have is subjective values. Rather, whether God exists or not, value statements are inherently subjective in that a value statement makes no sense without reference to a subject doing the valuing.

You can't speak of something being valuable if nobody values it. You can't speak of something being meaningful if nobody finds it so. These are subjective functions between a subject and an object.

Objective statements are statements that make/need no reference to a subject in order to be true/false or to make sense. Such as, light travels at 300,000 km/sec. The speed of electromagnetic energy in a vacuum has no relationship to a subject or subjects. The weight of a rock, the number of stars in a galaxy, the sum of 2 and 2, all of these things have truth values that needn't a subject for reference.

Subjective statements necessarily require a subject. Pizza is good, Bach sounds beautiful, sour kraut is gross, the Mona Lisa is inspiring, killing is bad, broken legs suck, etc. All of these statements must necessarily refer to a subject or subjects, either explicitly or tacitly, to have any meaning or truth value. They cannot be true or false, much less sensical, without reference to a subject.

Obviously, this isn't a topic specific to atheists. The subjective nature of value and meaning applies to all subjects, it doesn't matter what you believe about metaphysical beings.

Our lives are all valuable and meaningful for the same reason - because we, as subjects, subjectively place value and meaning on them. It makes no sense to say "X is valuable" unless there is a referenced subject who values X.

Aikikai, your analysis is flawed, you misunderstand the meaning and nature of subjectivity vs objectivity, and thus you draw inappropriate, nonsensical conclusions. When one better understands the ideas and terms at hand, the problem quite conveniently goes away on its own

 

i am an atheist, and i think life is completely meaningless. i think everything is completely meaningless, as a matter of fact. i don't think our lives can be given any meaning since anything we do is pointless in the end. just to clarify, i don't consider this to be a negative point of view.

as i see it, i have two options: live or die. for me, dying implies no longer existing, which is difficult for me to imagine and not very appealing. so that's the short answer right there, living beats dying
with that out of the way:

because it comes naturally. i am human, after all. i'm not going to deny my own nature just because i think life is meaningless. because it is meaningless, there's no reason for me to live other than to enjoy myself, and trying to give up things i care about for no reason would be counter-productive to that goal.

i know that'll be misunderstood, so i'll clear it up a little. when i say "enjoy myself", i don't mean "go out and party every day and do drugs and call myself a hippie". that's too short-term. i do a lot of things i don't feel like doing or don't like doing so that when i'm on my deathbed i can look back on my life and feel like it was worthwhile.

i could write a whole lot more about this, but it's almost 4:30 in the morning, so i'm gonna give it a rest for now...

 

Skrom, I fear you also misunderstand the nature of subjectivity and how it relates to value and meaning. Obviously you value your life and to you personally its meaningful. Yet, you say that life is meaningless. This seems to be a contradiction, and I think it can only stem from your mistakenly treating meaning and value as though there were possibly objective functions.

If you value your life, your life is valuable. If you think your life is meaningful, it has meaning. There is no other manner in which this could be so, and thus, your life is as valuable and as meaningful as it could possibly be, in that it couldn't possibly achieve objective meaning, and it is so because you, as a subject, subjectively value it.

 

and yet physicists continue to rely upon their personal understanding of what things mean in order to proceed with their work.

'tis indeed a most perplexing mystery...

 

What do we even mean when we say life has 'meaning'?

I think we usually feel life has a 'meaning' if we feel we're doing something useful.
So religious people have conviction in their beliefs and that gives their actions meaning.
Sometimes I'm into an interest/hobby and life is meaningful.
Other times I'm on auto pilot and life is meaningless. (this isn't a bad thing. Sometimes the meaningless life can feel 'comfortable' although sometimes it can leave you itching for something 'meaningful')

 

i value my own life, but at the same time i recognize that i only value it because i'm human and that's what comes naturally to me (i guess you could call it doublethink ). like you said, it's subjective, and subjective doesn't matter once you're dead.

so what gives your life meaning when you're dead? nothing, because you're not there to give it meaning anymore. people who knew you will remember you and value your life, but only for so long. i fail to see why anyone's life matters at all if everything they've done is negated when they die.

 

Right. Many times atheists are accused of being antagonistic, when they are not actually being so.

Both Socrastein and I have been accused of being rude for asking theists to prove their claims, or saying a claim is not rational or logical.

 

:cry: I feel your pain :cry: ​

 

Naw...
Rude for calling people irrational...

Even if we get it wrong, we try to reason... :cry:



Having said that, maybe we just misunderstood what you meant by the word.
We assumed you meant irrational in the everyday use, which implies a complete lack of reasoning.
It's kind of different to the philosophical use, which just means imperfect reasoning. (nit picky difference, but it makes all the difference to someone's pride! :Angel

 

Is this a bad thing?

 

Life has meaning and value because we give it meaning and value.

Maybe people should read Socrastein's post again. He explains exactly why this is.

 

Does this apply to life in general, or are we talking individuals???

 

1st i'd ask you to define "meaning" meaning, as in do i have an assigned "purpose" or role to play? no, so then yes i'd say if thats your definition then yes life is menaingless. no one has a set role in life. you can have a goal. thats different.

what makes me put forth effort? the fact that i have goals, and ideas and plans for the future. the fact that there are people in my life which i will have life long relationships with, knowing theres alot i haven't experianced yet too. so in short, cause i've got alot i want to do. and humor, nothing is so bad you can't laugh at it. i delight in other peoples suffering, not in a sadistic, physical way, but watching fat people try to fit into a booth a work, that makes me grin, listening to the local slut tell us what a good christian she is, not that puts a smile on my face, knowing that they have it worse than me as i point and laugh, now thats fun. i LOVE my job!
the better question would be how can theists be content going through life basing all their cute ideals and "superior morality" on the slim chance that their particular god exists, and on top of that actually give a damn? that would make me feel awful depressed.

and Socrastein's right, those people and plans have value because i assigned them as so.

 

Surely living is a goal, wouldn't that in of itself give it meaning, and down to the individual for the other. We all have things that make it meaningful on a individual level. I just don't see why it would, or how it even could be both. I mean, if this is not merely a test, don't you think that would give life a greater value, why can't life itself be the answer?

Importance falls under meaning, aswell as purpose, maybe there is no ultimate purpose, but, on atleast some levels, life has meaning. The fact that people find life important, should be enough to say that it has meaning.


I just don't understand this is all, if it were true and life really didn't have meaning, then why don't we treat it that way? ( Maybe someone should define meaning)