..........I don't see a coherant line of logic in your reasoning stewart

In response to Stu. K.

@Stu. K. --- "So what I think I am saying is AT THE END OF THE DAY there's no such thing as many things. All these things are true regarding personal purpose and whatnot, but really though, that still doesn't mean anything most of the time. That doesn't get rid of the fact that we were simply made, do whatever, and then die. It's alllll nothing or close to it. Oh, and I'm also this whole time trying to be "technical" here. If somebody kills 20 people, would that technicallyyyyyyyy not mean anything?"

Ultimately, there's a fundamental lack of a predefined, universally imposed, existential purpose for all human beings, but that does not mean that we can't create our own. What you're basically saying here is that because there's no strict predefined purpose or meaning to all life, that life cannot have any true meaning. I simply don't agree with that.

Humans are self-observational creatures; we can look up at the sky and ask massive questions, and the more massive the question is, the more massive the answer we require, but perhaps, when we do feel the urge to think in such grand ways, we should ask ”are we asking the right questions to begin with?” For instance, when we look up at the sky to the stars and realize how small we are, how minuscule and fragile when compared to the vast space beyond, we might feel the rain on our skin and ask ”what is the grander purpose in all of this?”. But when we really think about it, asking ”what is the existential purpose of raindrops?” is sort of like asking ”what emotion is a cloud?” Can raindrops really have purpose — or clouds emotion? Is there any reason beyond simply the antecedent factors that led to the raindrops existence? Is their any other purpose in clouds than what those raindrops contribute to our Earth? No doubt exists that raindrops do lots of wonderful, purposeful things — they bring water on dry land, give lifeblood to the plants and soak us when we least expect it, but is it a valid question to ask ”Who meant for them to do so?”

I think you're still stuck in design mode, as though some god or being must have created the universe. And it sounds like, without that creator-god, you think we can't have any "reason" for being here. It seems to me like viewpoints such as these take our desire to ascribe meaning just one step too far -- into where reason becomes speculation and logic becomes irrationality. We know that the raindrops nourish, we know that they provide water, we know that they wet the landscape and we know that they sometimes bring rainbows that amuse us, but are the raindrops really designed for our amusement? Is our amusement not just a product of our perception of the rainbow? Are the antecedent physical factors that led to the raindrops falling not reason enough for their existence? Is that they water the plants and feed the rivers not purpose enough to satisfy us? Must they have been designed, fashioned and given to us specifically? I don't personally think they must.

If I'm honest, I think such a notion is a tad arrogant, because it is a notion that exalts us humans up to the self appointed throne, to the pinnacle of existence, as the reason for which all things were made. Are we really the lords of Earth by some cosmic purpose; or is simply being a part of Earth enough?

There is definitely a case to be made for the questions themselves being faulty, as well as there is a case for your definition of meaning hinging only on whether there is or isn't a creator-creation relationship.

As I wrote on another thread:

"Since the advent of consciousness, humans have looked up at the stars and wondered about our place in the universe. "How did we get here?" "What does it mean?" This desire to derive meaning and purpose from our world is innate. For many of us such a thirst for knowledge is the very reason we are atheists. This thirst for understanding is also ironically where religions -- some of the most intellectually and scientifically regressive teachings of our time -- come from; they are primitive ways of deciphering the world, a hangover from times prior to scientific understanding.

Many of the "scientific" claims of religions, such as the six-day creation or the legend of the Great Flood, have been disproven by science and as such it would seem rational to trust thenceforth, from the moment of clear disproof, in scientific explanations rather than in religious ones. However, since most religions have evolved beyond just explaining the world -- they are also about worship of a deity of supreme power -- religious people are unlikely to give up on mythical, transcendental explanations for scientific phenomena due to equally unscientific beliefs about the existence of an afterlife and the various penalties that await if religion is not adhered to.

For the religious person, everyone's position on God defines everything about them, but a person's worldview is in reality only partly composed of their particular opinion on the existence or non-existence of God. Each of us care about lots of different things, not just our philosophical positions, and all of us, religious people and atheists alike, ascribe the most value to the things we care about the most; just because a person does not care about God the most (or at all), does not mean that they see no value or worth in anything else.

The religious, falsely, try to make atheists out to be nihilists and materialists by default, and while some are, it is not the default position of the atheist. The religious carry out this false representation by maintaining that worship of their deity or deities is what gives human life purpose, for without a deity life has no ultimate consequences; without a deity there is no ultimate justice, there is no true meaning; any universe without a deity is devoid of any present significance, and all is ultimately nihilistic and pointless. These are two extremes, they try to make us choose between — we either believe in god and give our lives true purpose or we do not believe in god and so we are all just materialists, we're all just chemicals and particle collisions and it’s all pointless and we might as well go around killing each other. It is a black and white position, and it is a false dichotomy, for it is entirely possible to be a moral, decent human being who finds tremendous purpose in life, yet to be also an atheist.

The difference between the religious and the athiestic concept of purpose, of course, is that the atheistic position leaves the specifics of individual purpose up to us as individual people to decide for ourselves; atheism does not contain a consensus on purpose; in atheism, there is no universal, totalitarianistic, existential reason for all human existence. In that, there is freedom. Tyranny is the territory of religions in that regard. (I will grant the religious this though: they are right in saying that in the atheistic worldview everything at its most basic level is a chemical, a piece of matter, an exchange of energy, however to say that humans are "just" chemicals (read: worthless) is patently false, for we are much more than that).

Just because we atheists recognize that there are fundamental building blocks of matter which make up all things, does not mean that we are cold, immoral, heartless, emotionless, robotic creatures -- for emotions still exist regardless of our philosophical position on them -- and just because we do not believe that we were designed painstakingly by a man in the sky, does not mean that there is no beauty in our existence. Think: every piece of energy that makes up our bodies has existed since the beginning of time itself. We are part of the universe, yet we are also a witness to it. Every time we look into a mirror the universe is seeing its own reflection. The culmination of energy that composes us begets its own consciousness, and the particles in our left brains come from different stars than the particles in our right. Of all the matter that does not emerge into realizing its own being, we, on this little planet, are the exception. Such an existence contains profound beauty in my eyes.

Yes, of course, there is the question of impermanence. What is the point if we all die? Why shouldn't we just go around murdering each other in the interim between birth and death? But this is a vulgar, hideous question that more often than not, is one only the religious ask. Atheists seem to have a bit more common sense; going around killing each other is the last thing any of us really want. Would you like to be murdered or raped or harmed against your will? If not, then why would you think it justified to do it to anybody else? And yes, of course, one day it will all be over regardless, but rather than deny this reality as the religious do by pretending to immortality — or worse, ignore these questions entirely — is it not better to bravely accept that that we are a temporary occurrence and like the stars that preceded us we will eventually fade out of the night sky? Does it not make this short life more valuable if we accept that we will all wither and die after a rare existence full of both pain and joy and rain and sunshine?

All of us, the religious and the atheist included, are faced with the reality of our insignificance in the vastness of space, and we all at times, because of this might feel disconnected from any significant purpose. We all ask questions like "what does it mean?" "where did we come from?" And at some point we all realize that we are utterly impotent in the face of the sheer scale of the cosmos,. Whereas the religious person, in the wake of this realization, turns to God to save him from his impotence, the atheist sees that none of this makes us impotent in the lives of our lovers, in the lives of our families, and in the lives of our fellow human beings.Meaning and purpose are afforded to us not by gods or religions whose teachings belittle our mortality, but by realizing that there is no god, and that this makes our lives invaluable. For on this little planet in the middle of empty space on the edge of a godless universe, each of us mortals are everything that one another have within it."