Atheist Purpose Of Life Quotes

It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.

I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. But it is not science alone that guided me. I have also been helped by a renewed study of the classical philosophical arguments.

However modest one may be in one's demand for intellectual cleanliness, one cannot help feeling, when coming into contact with the New Testament, a kind of inexpressible discomfiture: for the unchecked impudence with which the least qualified want to raise their voice on the greatest problems, and even claim to be judges of things, surpasses all measure. The shameless levity with which the most intractable problems (life, world, God, purpose of life) are spoken of, as if they were not problems at all but simply things that these little bigots KNEW!

If you pay attention, when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal. More importantly, however, you will acquire the information that allows your goal itself to transform. A totalitarian never asks, “What if my current ambition is in error?” He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.

Solving a real problem was much more meaningful than saving fictional souls from a fictional hell.

religion that cannot survive looking at itself through the eyes of others does not deserve to survive.

People should be judged by their actions, not their beliefs. Actions speak louder than faith.

It is true that “atheism” is a negative word, but so is “nonfiction.” They are double negatives. Both words tell you that what you are getting is real, not pretend. Those of

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

Many atheists might proudly proclaim that our lives have no ultimate meaning, yet the business of finding significance in one's life is perhaps the most important part of being human. When we drift into a life without meaning, we soon become a pack of symptoms and pathologies; and without any feeling of significance, many choose to end their lives altogether.

Truth changes with the season of our emotions. It is the shadow that moves with the phases of our inner sun. When the nights falls, only our perception can guess where it hides in the dark. Within every solar system of the soul lies a plan of what truth is--- the design God has created, in our own unique story. This is as varying as the constellations, and as turning as the tide. It is not one truth we live to, but many. If we ever hope to determine if there is such a thing as truth, apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we are then aiming to discover something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. Some say that we must look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. However, we don’t need to look farther than what is already in each other. If there was any great plan from a higher power it is a simplistic, repetitious theme found in all religions; the basic core importance to unity comes from shared theological and humanistic virtues. Beyond the synagogue, mosques, temples, churches, missionary work, church positions and religious rituals comes a simple “message of truth” found in all of us, that binds theology---holistic virtues combined with purpose is the foundation of spiritual evolution. The diversity among us all is not divided truth, but the opportunity for unity through these shared values. Truth is the framework and roadmap of positive virtues. It unifies diversity when we choose to see it and use it. It is simple message often lost among the rituals, cultural traditions and socializing that goes on behind the chapel doors of any religion or spiritual theology. As we fight among ourselves about what religion, culture or race is right, we often lose site of the simple message any great orator has whispered through time----a simplistic story explaining the importance of virtues, which magically reemphasizes the importance of loving one another through service.

In many ways, accepting there is no God to provide meaning and purpose to our lives can, I believe, force us to create meaningful purposes ourselves.

Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.

The preachers have got it completely backward. If life is eternal, then life is cheap. Value does not come from surplus; it comes from rarity. Prices rise as supply drops. The reality that our lives are brief is what makes them precious. The fact that they will end makes them more meaningful. “Ultimate purpose” is no purpose at all: it is the surrender of purpose. It is the pretense that faith equals meaning.

The atheists I know, virtually all of whom are happy and mentally healthy, might more properly be called anti-nihilists. We are mainly optimists who love our lives and find them to be full of meaning and purpose.

Being an atheist means you have to realise that when you die, that really is it. You've got to make the most of what you've got here and spread as much influence as you can. I believe that you only live through the influence that you spread, whether that means having a kid or making music. ...I don't believe in heaven or hell, I don't really believe in that version.

But purpose is personal. It can’t be right or wrong. It can’t be true or false. It can’t not be about you. It’s how you decide to live your own life. If someone else tells you how to live, you are not free. If you don’t choose your own purpose, you are a slave.

Mere Morality can be summarized as: using instinct, law, and reason as guides, try to act with the intention of minimizing harm.

Don’t blow your one and only shot at happiness by selling your birthright and squandering your meaning and purpose on someone else’s undeserved glory. Live your own life. If you are reasonable and kind, you will discover that meaning is not handed to you from on high; it emerges naturally from your own life-driven purpose.

According to believers like Craig who are unhappy with blunt reality, life needs to be more than it is, otherwise it is absurd, and since we can’t possibly allow life to be absurd, then life must be more than it is! As an atheist, I think that is absurd.

Some foolish men declare that creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill advised and should be rejected. If God created the world, where was he before the creation? If you say he was transcendent then and needed no support, where is he now? How could God have made this world without any raw material? If you say that he made this first, and then the world, you are faced with an endless regression. If you declare that this raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, For the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have arisen quite naturally. If God created the world by an act of his own will, without any raw material, then it is just his will and nothing else — and who will believe this silly nonsense? If he is ever perfect and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is form-less, action-less and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all morality, would have no desire to create anything. If he is perfect, he does not strive for the three aims of man, so what advantage would he gain by creating the universe? If you say that he created to no purpose because it was his nature to do so, then God is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created because of the karma of embodied beings [acquired in a previous creation] He is not the Almighty Lord, but subordinate to something else. If out of love for living beings and need of them he made the world, why did he not take creation wholly blissful free from misfortune? If he were transcendent he would not create, for he would be free: Nor if involved in transmigration, for then he would not be almighty. Thus the doctrine that the world was created by God makes no sense at all, And God commits great sin in slaying the children whom he himself created. If you say that he slays only to destroy evil beings, why did he create such beings in the first place? Good men should combat the believer in divine creation, maddened by an evil doctrine. Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning or end, and is based on the principles, life and rest. Uncreated and indestructible, it endures under the compulsion of its own nature. [By 9th century Jain (the religion of Jainism) Acharya, Jinasena, in his work, Mahapurana, a major Jain text. The Jains have never believed in any gods as creators of the universe, unlike most other religions, and have focused on acting morally on Earth rather than wasting time supplicating the supernatural.]

One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate. I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.

Whatever country you live in, any law based on “glory” instead of real harm is dangerous. The glory of the nation, or the glory of the monarchy, or the glory of the superior race, or the glory of the church have been the cause of horrible wars and legally sanctioned discrimination. Any laws based solely on these glories should be morally denounced. They cause unnecessary harm.

On the other hand, if there is no God, then your life ultimately means nothing. Since there is no enduring purpose to life, there’s no right or wrong way to live it. And it doesn’t matter how you live or what you believe—your destiny is dust.

But if God and immortality be repudiated, what is left? That is the question usually thrown at the atheist's head. The orthodox believer likes to think that nothing is left. That, however, is because he has only been accustomed to think in terms of his orthodoxy. In point of fact, a great deal is left. That is immediately obvious from the fact that many men and women have led active, or self-sacrificing, or noble, or devoted lives without any belief in God or immortality. Buddhism in its uncorrupted form has no such belief; nor did the great nineteenth-century agnostics; nor do the orthodox Russian Communists; nor did the Stoics. Of course, the unbelievers have often been guilty of selfish or wicked actions; but so have the believers. And in any case that is not the fundamental point. The point: is that without these beliefs men and women may yet possess the mainspring of full and purposive living, and just as strong a sense that existence can be worth while as is possible to the most devout believers.

Our history, especially that of the great religions, Christianity in particular, has given us a "hidden prejudice" in favor of the "beyond" at the expense of the "here and now" and this must be changed. (quoted from The Age of Atheists" by Peter Watson, p 25)

We atheists do want justice. Why would you imagine we don’t? As with purpose, justice doesn’t have to be ultimate to be meaningful. We want justice in our world, not in a pretend supernatural realm. Since there is no ultimate cosmic justice, we have all the more reason not to put it off to an uncertain future. We had better do it now. We

Even though it may look like the wicked is gaining ground, God is still in control. We need to pray for our nations, pray for others, pray for forgiveness and mercy over people. We need to love no matter who we are talking to, whether they are Atheist, Moslems, Lesbians, Homosexuals or Pagans. We need to love them and share the love of God with them and not judge and see if we can rebuild our broken nations.

When man comes to the realization that he is not the "favorite" of God; that he was not specially created, that the universe was not made for his benefit, and that he is subject to the same laws of nature as all other forms of life, then, and not until then, will he understand that he must rely upon himself, and himself alone, for whatever benefits he is to enjoy; and devote his time and energies to helping himself and his fellow men to meet the exigencies of life and to set about to solve the difficult and intricate problems of living. The recognition of a problem is the first step to its solution— We are not "fallen" angels, nor were we "created" perfect. On the contrary, we are the product of millions of years of an unpurposed evolution. We are the descendants and inheritors of all the defects of our primitive ancestry—the evolution of the myriad forms of life from the infinitesimal to the mammoth—from the worm to the dinosaur.

Certainty is an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. We need to have pastors who are schooled in apologetics and engaged intellectually with our culture so as to shepherd their flock amidst the wolves. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, and of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true. God could not possibly have intended that reason should be the faculty to lead us to faith, for faith cannot hang indefinitely in suspense while reason cautiously weighs and reweighs arguments. The Scriptures teach, on the contrary, that the way to God is by means of the heart, not by means of the intellect. When a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. unbelief is at root a spiritual, not an intellectual, problem. Sometimes an unbeliever will throw up an intellectual smoke screen so that he can avoid personal, existential involvement with the gospel. In such a case, further argumentation may be futile and counterproductive, and we need to be sensitive to moments when apologetics is and is not appropriate. A person who knows that Christianity is true on the basis of the witness of the Spirit may also have a sound apologetic which reinforces or confirms for him the Spirit’s witness, but it does not serve as the basis of his belief. As long as reason is a minister of the Christian faith, Christians should employ it. It should not surprise us if most people find our apologetic unconvincing. But that does not mean that our apologetic is ineffective; it may only mean that many people are closed-minded. Without a divine lawgiver, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong. No atheist or agnostic really lives consistently with his worldview. In some way he affirms meaning, value, or purpose without an adequate basis. It is our job to discover those areas and lovingly show him where those beliefs are groundless. We are witnesses to a mighty struggle for the mind and soul of America in our day, and Christians cannot be indifferent to it. If moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then our gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our gradual, fallible apprehension of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm. God has given evidence sufficiently clear for those with an open heart, but sufficiently vague so as not to compel those whose hearts are closed. Because of the need for instruction and personal devotion, these writings must have been copied many times, which increases the chances of preserving the original text. In fact, no other ancient work is available in so many copies and languages, and yet all these various versions agree in content. The text has also remained unmarred by heretical additions. The abundance of manuscripts over a wide geographical distribution demonstrates that the text has been transmitted with only trifling discrepancies.

The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues, which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not, that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted. And any practice, recommended to him, which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances, which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him, in proportion to the zeal and devotion, which he discovers. In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection, and safety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

One thing that hasn’t aroused dispute is the exemplary nature of Washington’s religious tolerance. He shuddered at the notion of exploiting religion for partisan purposes or showing favoritism for certain denominations. As president, when writing to Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, and other congregations—he officially saluted twenty-two major religious groups—he issued eloquent statements on religious tolerance. He was so devoid of spiritual bias that his tolerance even embraced atheism. When he needed to hire a carpenter and a bricklayer at Mount Vernon, he stated that “if they are good workmen,” they could be “Mahometans, Jews, or Christian of any sect, or they may be atheists.

Society is a conspiracy to keep itself from the truth. We pass our lives submerged in propaganda: advertising messages; political rhetoric; the journalistic affirmation of the status quo; the platitudes of popular culture; the axioms of party, sect, and class; the bromides we exchange every day on Facebook; the comforting lies our parents tell us and the sociable ones our friends do; the steady stream of falsehoods that we each tell ourselves all the time, to stave off the threat of self-knowledge. Plato called this doxa, opinion, and it is as powerful a force among progressives as among conservatives, in Massachusetts as in Mississippi, for atheists as for fundamentalists. The first purpose of a real education (a "liberal arts" education) is to liberate us from doxa by teaching us to recognize it, to question it, and to think our way around it.

Any atheist who believes good and evil really exist, or life has a purpose beyond one he or she has made up, or that free will exists, or, for that matter, that science alone will explain how the universe came about, or how life arose from non-life, or how intelligence arose from non-intelligence, has suspended reason in favor of faith.

A totalitarian never asks, “What if my current ambition is in error?” He treats it, instead, as the Absolute. It becomes his God, for all intents and purposes. It constitutes his highest value. It regulates his emotions and motivational states, and determines his thoughts. All people serve their ambition. In that matter, there are no atheists. There are only people who know, and don’t know, what God they serve.

I never liked religion, but I also never knew exactly what it was. As I studied various definitions of religion, I found that its main objective was to provide people with beliefs and practices that help them find meaning, purpose, and beauty in life, as well as to help them process and deal with death. Religion gives people a narrative, an answer to the question of where they came from and where they are going. Our narrative helps us understand how and why we ought to live a certain way. Religion provides the why to our existence. Even atheists have a philosophy or belief system that explains where they came from, where they are going, and why they exist.

The perfect world is contradictio in adjecto. A perfect world is not a world anymore. A perfect world is a dead world. The perfect world contradicts existence. A perfect world, as a multitude, is impossible. A plurality implies meaning and cannot and should not be perfect. Perfect can only be One, but the perfect One is equal to its opposite, which is nothingness. The world, in its plurality, equals life. “Imperfection” secures meaning and purpose in life. In a perfect world, there would be no purpose and meaning. Perfection is only the goal and not the way or mode of the Universe. By becoming perfect, the world becomes nothing since only nothing is perfect. If the Universe were perfect, it would not be the world as we see it but “God” itself. Evolution (as atheists see it) would not be possible in the perfect world because such a world would already be perfect, which would imply that the highest point of “evolution” had already been achieved. Absolute perfection negates any evolution, except if we imagine retrolution (to coin a word), moving backward.

The Argument from Design Based on Russell's treatment of this argument, we assume that Russel expected that the world's creation, by design, had to be perfect. But, as with all other arguments, we must establish what design and perfection mean. If we do not clearly define what design is and what perfection is, we are applying our judgments to something either undefined or loosely defined. Evolutionary theory, be it Darwin’s theory, cannot be proof of a bad design of the world. Anomalies or shortages in the world are not proof of a bad design. Imperfections are needed in the world and serve a higher purpose. Let’s say that God if he existed, wanted to create the perfect world. This perfect world would be sterile. In the perfect world, there would be no cosmic hierarchies, lows, and highs, enough friction to sustain life as something whose purpose is not to be made perfect from the beginning but to seek perfection, to make “progress” in myriad ways toward the main purpose which is life itself. Life, by definition, is not perfect. Perfect life is not a real life. The purpose of design is not to predict a Ku Klux Klan or the fascists and eliminate them from the design before any creation but to put the “engine” of the vast Universe in motion, to enable the world to seek its paths freely, without a God playing dice. That is where determinism and free will come together to create a sensible world. Design does not mean playing dice, nor necessarily creating something new, but the creator offers himself an exit to exist in an ever-new world, a new form with meaning. We also may say that in the Universe or Omniverse, beyond our knowledge, there can be not only thirty-six (to make a comparison with dice) but a googolplex of universes (dice), and the possibility for combinations is infinite. “Impossibility to prove God” is not proof that God does not exist. Russel would argue that the burden of proof is on the person making a claim, but the world itself is proof of God’s existence. The solution to this enigma is to recognize that the world is God. The problem is not belief or disbelief, first cause, natural law or good or bad design, or any other argument for the existence or against the existence of God; the problem is in our understanding and consensus about the idea of what God is. Argumentation or proof can never be shifted to only one side. Something so obvious as the world does not need proof but understanding that the world is also, in its deepest nature, God itself. We can fight as long as we want, but if we fight from different positions for the sake of different positions, we are not going anywhere. God is not the same for the theist or the deist. Christian God is so far from Spinoza’s idea about God. The majority of people who are atheists today are atheists more in revolt against nominal, official religions and not necessarily in revolt against God if this God was better defined or approached from an angle unaffected by religions.

Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless. BERTRAND RUSSELL, ATHEIST

Pleasure without boundaries produces a life without purpose. That is real pain. No death, no tragedy, no atrocity—nothing really matters. Life is sheer hollowness, with no purpose. In

How can you derive meaning, purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can’t. Evolution is simply a theory about the process and patterns of life’s diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the meaning of life. It can’t tell us what to do, or how we should behave.

Human relationships, with love and support; Feeling appreciated in a community, with a sense of belonging; Sufficient resources to meet basic needs; Life goals and experiences, now and to look forward to; Good health and feeling fit; Having a comfortable house to live in; Having a pet that you love; Having a purpose in life.

In conclusion: Knowledge of the material world and the natural order of things have brought humanity unimaginable wealth and prosperity. Yet what we desire the most is truth: understanding our special place in the world; purpose: a meaningful personal destiny; and wisdom: the guidance to lead a good life. Material knowledge is entirely the province of science; truth, purpose, and wisdom are largely the province of religion.

If God exists, then there’s ultimate meaning and purpose to your life. If there’s a real purpose to your life, then there’s a real right and wrong way to live it. Choices you make now not only affect you here but will affect you in eternity. On the other hand, if there is no God, then your life ultimately means nothing. Since there is no enduring purpose to life, there’s no right or wrong way to live it. And it doesn’t matter how you live or what you believe—your destiny is dust.

Death–it confirms that at the end of the day, this life has only one purpose, an inevitable end. All those curiosities of infanthood, obsessions of adolescence, and ambitions of adulthood just spiral back into a womb of nothingness - Death.

All " knowing" of Nature, even the exactest, is based on a religious faith. The pure mechanics that the physicist has set before himself as the end-form to which it is his task (and the purpose of all this imaginationmachinery) to reduce Nature, presupposes a dogma — namely, the religious world-picture of the Gothic centuries. For it is from this world-picture that the physics peculiar to the Western intellect is derived. There is no science that is without unconscious presuppositions of this kind, over which the researcher has no control and which can be traced back to the earliest days of the awakening Culture. There is no Natural science without a precedent Religion. In this point there is no distinction between the Catholic and the Materialistic views of the world — both say the same thing in different words. Even atheistic science has religion; modern mechanics exactly reproduces the contemplativeness of Faith. When the Ionic reaches its height in Thales or the Baroque in Bacon, and man has come to the urban stage of his career, his self-assurance begins to look upon critical science, in contrast to the more primitive religion of the countryside, as the superior attitude towards things, and, holding as he thinks the only key to real knowledge, to explain religion itself empirically and psychologically — in other words, to "conquer" it with the rest. Now, the history of the higher Cultures shows that "science" is a transitory spectacle, belonging only to the autumn and winter of their life-course.

My claim is that if there is no God, then meaning, value, and purpose are ultimately human illusions. They’re just in our heads. If atheism is true, then life is really objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless, despite our subjective beliefs to the contrary. This point is worth underscoring, since it’s so frequently misunderstood. I’m not saying that atheists experience life as dull and meaningless, that they have no personal values or lead immoral lives, that they have no goals or purpose for living. On the contrary, life would be unbearable and unlivable without such beliefs. But my point is that, given atheism, these beliefs are all subjective illusions: the mere appearance of meaning, value, and purpose, even though, objectively speaking, there really isn’t any. If God does not exist, our lives are ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary.

Another question that always strikes a person in every age is the purpose and meaning of life. This is also a question which is outside the domain of science. When some scientists not believing in God relate their atheistic philosophical viewpoint with evolutionary biology, they are making a philosophical conjecture. It is not the domain of science or any scientific theory to discuss ‘will’ and ‘purpose’ behind material cause and effect relation. Science is concerned with the recipe (how), not the purpose (why).

The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten—that the sum of life is ultimately nothing; that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights, and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts, nothing matters. It means everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a wild, random baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and saved, and if you can see your life reflected in pervious lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are part of a larger story that has shape and purpose—a tangible, familiar past, and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of shear defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory. In Senegal, the polite expression to say someone died is to say that his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived. It is something that no one else can entirely share, one that burns down and disappears when we die. But if you can take something from that internal collection and share it— with one person, or the larger world, on the page or in a story recited—it takes on a life of its own.

there is some meaning, out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered and acknowledged. There is a point to all this; things happen for a reason. This conviction has served as the ground beneath our feet, as the foundation on which we’ve constructed all the principles by which we live our lives. Gradually, our confidence in this view has begun to erode. As we understand the world better, the idea that it has a transcendent purpose seems increasingly untenable. The old picture has been replaced by a wondrous new one—one that is breathtaking and exhilarating in many ways, challenging and vexing in others. It is a view in which the world stubbornly refuses to give us any direct answers about the bigger questions of purpose and meaning. The problem is that we haven’t quite admitted to ourselves that this transition has taken place, nor fully accepted its far-reaching implications. The issues are well-known. Over the course of the last two centuries, Darwin has upended our view of life, Nietzsche’s madman bemoaned the death of God, existentialists have searched for authenticity in the face of absurdity, and modern atheists have been granted a seat at society’s table.

I love the church. I like the waxed candles that remind me people think of people. I love the bouquet of flowers on the altar that a group of grandmas grow in their gardens and pridefully donate every week. I admire the wooden statues of craftsmanship, of a mother staring at you with the kind of pure, loving look I forgot to ask from mine. I like the skinny man nailed to the cross reminding me that people are capable of sacrificial love. I like to stare at the art on the stained-glass windows, of angels, of lambs, and of fruit. I love running my hands over mosaics and tracing the lips of saints. I love the hymns and joy of the choir, who sing regardless if you’re too scared. I love watching the collective sway of bodies subconsciously comforted by their environment after finally saying “Peace be with you.” And most of all, I love being surrounded by people trying. They wear Christ around their neck and squeeze a rosary for dear life, admitting their weaknesses and sins. Tell me, where do you find that? There is an honesty in the church, spilling from kneeling persons, that gives me the hope humans can take care of each other and our planet can be a good one. Where else can I be exposed to the practice of morality on such an emotional level? I love everything about the church—the shiny pews, the smoky incense, the Bible and its purpose – because when all is considered, it makes sense. It is a template of discipline and thoughtfulness. Why call religious people idiots when they’re the few paying attention to their own lives? And there are other ways to be moral of course, but not many ways to practice. I’ve learned that to believe in God doesn’t subtract any life from you. It is additional. It is the world and God. If someone wears a jacket over their shirt, they aren’t naked. They’re double-layered.