Over at Kingdom of Priests, David Klinghoffer poses (possibly disingenously) the question: “Anyway, I have a challenge for atheists and secondarily for agnostics. From where do you derive meaning in life?”
As you might suspect, this is one of the topics addressed at length in my book:
Another common objection to the points raised in this book is that religion serves as a source of comfort or meaning or purpose for people. I have no doubt that this is indeed the case; however, serving as a source of comfort does not make a belief true. After all, the “Harry Potter” books serve as a great comfort to me (or at least they did until J.K. Rowling callously outed happily-in-the-closet headmaster Albus Dumbledore), but you will rarely find me arguing that Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft is a real place, that use of the Avada Kedavra killing curse is actually unforgiveable, or that Quidditch merits inclusion as an Olympic sport.
Furthermore, if you’re going to choose something false to give your life meaning or purpose, there are many more exciting choices than whatever religion your parents happened to practice. Why not the belief that the eight-year gap in your life starting in the mid-seventies was caused by aliens who abducted you and took you to the planet Phaelon and studied you and filled your head up with star charts in an attempt to demonstrate that humans only use 10% of their brains? Or the belief that you might have been brainwashed into becoming a killing machine by Chinese Communists in league with your mother, Angela Lansbury, during the Korean War? Or (especially) the belief that the new green variety of processed food-wafers from the Soylent Corporation are not made from high-energy algae at all, but are in fact made out of people?
Personally, I choose to look for meaning in beautiful, mundane events, and (with the revelation that your religion is false) I suggest that you do the same. In case you have trouble finding your purpose, here are some possibilities:
- Prove to Amy Fleming that she was a fool for breaking up with me
- Get the high score on the Galaga machine at the bowling alley
- Read all the books in the Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Twins series
- Use every restroom in every major league baseball stadium
- Finish writing anti-religious polemic
- Try every flavor of Jelly Bellies
- Sing “Don’t Stop Believing” at karaoke
- Learn to say “duty” without giggling
- Get to spin the big wheel on “Price is Right”
- Meet Morrissey without crying
If you have further suggestions, just leave them in the comments.
BRILLIANT blog, dude (Joel, are you getting enough lithium?). Cosmology is my religion, but I haven’t quite figured out where to send my tithes…
Do you need any source of meaning beyond the people and things you love?
If I’m reading this right, Klinghoffer is suggesting that theists ONLY derive meaning from their belief in a god? Nothing else gives their lives meaning?
Well that’s a sorry existence.
A depressingly common mistake of members of any mutually-supportive community with a strongly defined identity is to think that their community (or any similar to it) is the only possible source of such support. People are so happy in their church, their subculture, their Cat Fanciers Forum, that they identify happiness with their membership in that group. Which can be a problem if they sacrifice important things for the sake of that membership, whether at the command of some authority figure, or of their own volition.
Imagine (some of us may not have to) that in your life, you’ve had a long series of relationships, all of which ended badly, with the other person mistreating or taking advantage of you in some way. But then you meet this new person, and they’re so unlike all the others, and they seem to really care, and you think you didn’t know true happiness till now.
You might say that just seems like bad luck, but is it really unimaginable that a person in that situation might think, in their heart of hearts, that their current beloved is unique, or at least will be unique in their lifetime, that this is their only chance and if you lose them you will never be happy again.
Anyway, I suspect that’s what’s happening here. “Meaning” is being defined as “contentment and happiness”, or rather, “the contentment and happiness I associate with this particular community and behaviors, which you do not share, so you can’t possibly have.” In my experience, answers like the above, giving to questions like the above, lead to arguments of definition. “Despite what you say, I know that what you feel when you eat jelly bellies is empty and without meaning, because the things you like aren’t normally named ‘God,’ so they can’t be as true and good as the things that I like, which are.”