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humorist-workshop
Atheistic despair?
This is a question specifically for you because I know you to be an intelligent, level-headed atheist and this isn't a question I want bogged down with religious answers.
This is slightly long; please bear with me. I don't know where else to turn. I'd try LJ, but people on LJ often seem inherently cruel. And I know 0 atheists in 'real life'.
Here goes: I am an atheist, and a very 'strong' atheist. I don't simply have a lack in religious belief; I have an active belief in the absence of god. My dutiful senses of logic and rationality force me into such a position, because I feel with almost complete certainty that there is no god, no purpose in design, no real purpose in life, and such.
The sad part is, at 18 I feel like I have truly gotten it all figured out. A lot of this stems from my obsessive studying, an interest in evolutionary biology, and my recent reading of Dawkins' stuff. What purpose can there be in life if we are truly nothing but the biological machines cleverly operated by selfish genes and all that?
Recently, this viewpoint and the typical absurdity of religion has pushed me into a state of perpetual despair. The thought of each moment being fleeting and then gone, the thought of each emotion and desire and relationship being nothing but pre-programmed genetic adaptations makes me sick at heart.
The worst part is the unnatural fear of death. Me, everything that makes me ME, will simply be gone forever when I die, only existing, uselessly, as rapidly fading memories in others' minds, who will also cease to exist one day. Each breath I take could be my last, and if it's not then it's certainly one breath close to death. My brother died at 19, when I was 15, of cancer - I have the most abhorrent fear of cancer imaginable. It's to the point where I habitually feel my lymph nodes to detect the slightest bit of swelling, and I assume the worst when I get even slight headaches or chest pains.
In short, it's consuming my life. I'm starting to see why some people turn religious: they simply become overwhelmed by the sheer despair of a meaningless life.
Sadly, I'm sure these feelings are normal and have their own evolutionary explanation, probably something along the lines of the unfortunate side-effects of having a sentient mind. Now I console myself by hoping that I don't have it all figured out and that I will, someday, with more wisdom, adopt a different outlook.
Please give me some sort of advice. My only hope is having someone else introduce a new idea, or a new viewpoint to me that makes more sense and carries more hope than my own pathetically nihilistic ones.
Thank you for your time.
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Want to answer more questions in the Health & Fitness category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Mental health?
I hesitated for a long time before trying to answer this. Why? Well, for one thing there could obviously be a lot riding on my answer. It's a very serious question.
I know, because by an odd coincidence you're not the first person I've known with this particular issue. There was someone earlier on Advicenators, but before that there was someone I knew in college. And THAT led to one of the most memorable and difficult experiences in my life. A long story; I don't have the time to go into it now.
Another reason is that I have a *lot* to say on this subject. And I know that after I finish, I will almost certainly find myself thinking of *new* things to say. So you may want to email me (my address is in my profile) to discuss this further.
Of course, Katarina delayed my answer even more.
But let's get down to business.
>I feel with almost complete certainty that there
>is no god, no purpose in design, no real purpose
>in life, and such.
It seems to me that you've made a link that isn't justified. Why is a god necessary to have purpose in life? Why do you assume that purpose is only possible via divine intervention? By making that connection, you've bought into a religious viewpoint - a viewpoint that you had already discarded.
Meaning can be found through the action of a creator, OR in the mind of the observer. For example, you can perceive beauty in a painting, beauty deliberatedly created by the painter. But you can also find beauty in natural scenery, which was (I think you'd agree) not created by intelligent design. That beauty exists entirely within your own mind - you made it. It was not dependent on the intentional act of a creator.
Which brings to mind the old saying, of course, that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." :D
Now, you may point out that beauty is not necessarily the same thing as capital-M Meaning or purpose in life. But the comparison is still pretty apt, I think. You CAN create your own meaning, and, in fact, since you're an atheist, you already assume that everyone DOES - there's no God, after all, so believers who feel that God lends their lives meaning are, in your eyes, actually creating their OWN meaning and deluding themselves as to their source of their beliefs.
And in any case, life creates its own meaning. We *are* living things, and as such, we have in each cell a purpose: to live, and ultimately to pass our genes along by reproducing. Moving on to a more philosophical level, a natural corollary is our desire to perpetuate our minds by passing on those *ideas* which we favor; our personal memes.
We can derive our ethics from those basic, observable facts of life: we live, and we want to continue living. If we can't continue the lives of our bodies, we take what we can get: a share in racial immortality via our children, and through our ideas. These may seem paltry compared to the immortality promised by so many religions, but they have the advantage of being based on certainty. We need not have faith to know that our children will carry a portion of our own unique genetic heritage onward, and that by spreading our ideas (which can be done in many ways; by teaching, for example, or even just talking) we perpetuate a portion of our minds in the minds of others.
And by upholding and advocating those principles which are most effective at perpetuating the best elements of our culture and species, we join ourselves to that culture and species, entities which are certainly much more long-lived than ourselves, if not necessarily immortal.
Which is another way of saying that we are social creatures. Our lives, our deaths, everything we do has some impact on others. THAT's meaning.
>What purpose can there be in life if we are
>truly nothing but the biological machines
>cleverly operated by selfish genes and all that?
Ah, we come to the eternal issue: free will versus determinism. That's an issue I wrestled with and debated long and hard over the years.
I have two answers for you. One is that if we are really nothing more than biological machines, if our self-consciousness and feeling of free will is nothing more than a delusion, then the question itself is meaningless! In other words, if we're nothing more than biological machines, then our struggle with that question is pointless, like a computer programmed to play Pong against itself.
If that's the case, we may be foreordained to suffer over the issue. But the suffering is meaningless because we'll reach whatever conclusion we're programmed to settle on. And as beings without free will, we cannot really suffer, any more than a toaster suffers when you drop and break it.
I suspect that inside, you feel otherwise. You *feel* that your suffering is real. Which, I'd argue, means that it IS real.
And if it isn't, if there's no way to determine if we have free will or not...then you are free to chose the answer which you prefer. I'd suggest chosing the one that makes you happier. And I don't know anyone who would want to believe that they were a hapless robot, a creature without real self-consciousness.
Besides, there's always old faithful: cogito ergo sum. That's a pretty powerful argument, I think; we *think*, and each of us KNOWS that we think. To argue that our self-awareness is somehow not real is itself paradoxical. How can you argue that you don't, effectively, exist? Why would you argue to persuade beings who are (according to the deterministic viewpoint) completely incapable of changing their minds?
And if our self-awareness is somehow not real, what is "real" self-awareness?
I have another answer that derives from quantum mechanics, which, I'll admit, I don't really understand. But I am told by scientists who I have reason to trust that at the most basic level of the universe, there is a fundamental uncertainty. It's not like a pool table, where if you know the precise physics of every element you'll know with absolute certainty the final resting place of every ball; instead, there are situations where a subatomic particle could really go in any number of directions in response to the same initial input. At that level, cause and effect break down.
It seems to me that our free will may ultimately be based on that quantum uncertainty. The universe itself is, in the most basic way, unpredictable - to some degree, anyway.
My time is running short; I'll have to post this and go home soon. I was afraid of this.
>The worst part is the unnatural fear of death.
>Me, everything that makes me ME, will simply be
>gone forever when I die, only existing,
>uselessly, as rapidly fading memories in others'
>minds, who will also cease to exist one day.
I have four responses.
One is that the mark you make on others need not fade and be useless as long as our species continues. Your assessment seems to be more an emotional one than one based on facts; that's fine, but remember that you have some control over your emotions, some *choice* about how you feel.
I can certainly tell you this: once you've had a child and held him or her in your hands, you'll never question the purpose of life again. And if that's not possible, or doesn't happen for you, you can still make a mark that will last in other ways. Particularly by helping and teaching others, especially the young.
Hmm. I suppose that explains what I'm doing here on Advicenators - obtaining a little more immortality for myself, by proxy, by passing on some of the things I've learned - the things that make me, me.
Another answer, a rather mystical one, is that Time is a matter of our perception. We are carried along a line between the past and the future, constantly occupying a place we call the present. But although we can't perceive it directly, in some ways all of Time exists at once. This is really philosophy rather than science, but there's no rule that says that atheists can't philosophize.
Of course we use memory as a feeble tool to time-bind the past, too.
I'm sorry, but I don't have the scientific knowledge to explain what I'm trying to say. Basically, as I see it, every thing that *has* ever existed DOES still exist in some way. That doesn't amount to an afterlife, nor does it mean that the dead are in any way still conscious or alive. But somehow it gives me comfort to know that those I care about who have died are still there; their entire lives are still there, back through a veil of Time that I can never pierce, but only peer through via memory.
Sorry to get so mystical on you. :D
Here's my third answer for death: Do you fear sleeping at night without dreams? During that time you are no longer aware of your own existence, after all; it's hard to imagine anything more like death. Likewise, the time before we were born is not something we regard with dread. The truth is, when we are dead we will be *dead*, and (you and I believe) beyond any fear or pain. We will no longer exist as beings which can suffer, but only in our children, in the things we've created, and in the impressions we've made on the lives of other human beings.
So we can only fear death...when we're not dead! Which makes the issue practically moot.
Of course, we can still quite logically fear death for others. We can also fear pain for ourselves. But the fear doesn't serve us; it merely adds more pain in advance of whatever we might later experience. The fear is useless.
Knowing that doesn't make it any easier to NOT fear, but for those who fear excessively, there are techniques that we can use to reduce the fear to manageable dimensions. Relaxation techniques can help. In some cases, therapy is a useful tool. Medication is available, too, for desperate circumstances.
I used to fear death terribly. I still worry about it a little sometimes, but for the most part, I've found that it's not as terrifying as it used to be. Fear itself is far more terrible than death, and I've lived with fear and survived for many years. To me, fear is the real enemy. It's done far more harm to me than death has, or will - because death is just the end of my "self", while fear HURTS me and stunts my life. Without fear, death has no real power over me. So I aim my efforts and energy towards defeating fear, rather than worrying about death.
I feel as if I'm rushing pell-mell to finish this, and that's something I really didn't want to do. But I only have ten minutes, and then I have to catch a train.
My last answer for death: We can hope to delay or even forestall it. I've read that for every year we live, we add one month to our projected lifespan. Medical science has made huge strides in a remarkably short time. There have been recent studies in which the life spans of mice have been extended by one-third through a hormone. There's no knowing what will happen, but there's at least a chance of extended personal life for us.
And if it comes to that, although cryogenics seems like a very long shot, it's yet another tool; a long-shot gamble in being revived in a future which has conquered physical death. It's certainly a better gamble than the alternative, decomposition or cremation. :D
I have so little time!
In the end, I think that the important thing to remember is something I realized only recently: in a very important way, YOU control how much life you have. If you settle into a dull routine, spend long periods not thinking, not feeling, not making each moment COUNT, then life will pass with AMAZING speed. Death will rush up to you in practically no time at all.
The same goes if your life is filled with fear and apprehension.
But if you pack each moment with experiences, feelings, and thought, you'll live an effective lifetime that's DECADES longer than most people. Make as many moments as possible *meaningful* ones, meaningful according to the standards that YOU select, and you'll find that there isn't time to worry about mortality. And when/if the day comes that you find yourself faced with death at last, you'll feel less fear, perhaps no fear at all, knowing that you used your time as best you could, and passed the best of yourself along to others.
In other words, as an atheist you (and I) believe that this life is all that we get. So it's just common sense to make the most of it.
And now I've got to catch my train. Write to me whenever you feel like it. Good luck!
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