If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Cyberman]

If the truth is that life is meaningless, then any meaning I assign to life is going to be fictional.  So if I do establish my own fictional meaning in life (and it will inevitably be fictional) then why is that more noble and enlightened than someone whose meaning comes from a fictional traditional religion, like Islam or Christianity?

It all depends on how you want to spend your threescore-and-ten. If you want to look back on everything you've done and think "you know what, I've fucking wasted most of it on my knees in front of a stupid idol", knock yourself out. It's said that the saddest phrase in the English language is "if only..."

If that's what you want on your tombstone, then hey - this was your life.

On the other hand, WhatsTheHarm.net lists accounts of real damage done by this stuff. So to quote Stephen Fry: "Religion - shit it".

[brewer]

OP, if you're happy being a theist then be a theist, fantasy delusion or not. Don't insinuate that non believers (how ever I/they define themselves) lives don't have meaning or are not happy just because you can't find any in yours. Don't expect to have me find it for you.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I get the feeling that you think that unless you make some big world acknowledging contribution that you will consider your life meaningless. Guess what, your life will probably be meaningless according to that standard. So would most of ours. I think I can be happy without that delusion of grandeur. I wonder if you can.

BTW, to me, you are beginning to feel a bit POEish.

[Neo-Scholastic]

For my own personal belief, meaning is real, and we never escape it's grasp. We are built to experience meaning as something real. That makes it real to us.

You seem to want it both ways. If intentionality is a convenient fiction then it isn’t real. If it isn’t real then proceeding as if it were means living a lie.

[mlmooney89]

I've never understood what "meaning" religion gives life. Reducing it to some sort of test for a bored sky daddy? To me, that is meaningless.

It had meaning because I was part of something really important with eternal and infinite consequences.  There were billions of souls at stake, and they could end up with an eternity of felicity or an eternity of misery, depending on my actions.  It was thrilling and exciting to have such an important responsibility.  The creator of the whole universe needed something from me.  My life mattered because I had important work to do with infinite consequences.  I actually kind of miss feeling like I had such an important job to do.

But what was wrong with that?  Sure I was delusional in believing that Sky Daddy has important work for me to do, but those delusional beliefs gave me a strong sense of meaning and purpose.  What's wrong with that, especially if life is meaningless anyway?  In a billion years it will make no difference whether I was right about everything or whether I was totally delusional.

So your life had meaning because you were a 'big shot'? Seems more like self worth than anything else. Why not just join some great cause that means a lot to you where you get to see first hand how your contributions move other people's lives? I volunteered at a food bank and got to physically hand people dry goods and food and got to see their thanks and need. It was life changing.

[Angrboda]

For my own personal belief, meaning is real, and we never escape it's grasp.  We are built to experience meaning as something real.  That makes it real to us.

You seem to want it both ways. If intentionality is a convenient fiction then it isn’t real. If it isn’t real then proceeding as if it were means living a lie.

We are bathed in a soup of neurochemicals which makes for good, bad, and neutral. The effect of these neurochemicals upon us is real. If we weren't biological creatures, then your abstract philosophical reasoning might have some bite. But we are biological beings. We have desirable experiences because we are biological creatures. It is our response to this brute fact which frames the question of what is real to us: pleasure and pain are real to us, even if from a naturalistic perspective, these are just meaningless nerve signals. To us, they are more. It is real because our brains make it real. It is the difference between being inside the system, and being outside of it. You, too, are looking for a 'universe' perspective, but you overlook that we have a very real 'human' perspective. Thus it isn't living a lie, which is a claim that our internal sensations have no meaning for us. They have meaning because we are built in such a way that they have meaning for us. If I stub my toe, I am not living a lie by hopping around in pain. I really am in pain! This idea that because our pain and pleasure can be deconstructed into mere material interactions that it is devoid of meaning is just rubbish. We don't live in that deconstructed world. Our 'world' is highly structured by things like feelings, intuitions, thoughts, and so forth. That from an outside perspective they are not universal facts means nothing. Meaning is positional; it comes from the fact that emotionally we can gain or lose. That the inside perspective isn't 'real' because it doesn't correspond to some objective fact existing 'out there' is just nonsense. We live inside the bubble. Showing that the things that exist inside the bubble don't exist outside the bubble is not in any sense defusing how they appear inside the bubble. This puddle of flesh in our skull creates a world, filled with things like feelings and thoughts and a 3D world. That this world has no objective meaning does not defuse the fact that it very much has subjective meaning. You are engaged in a sort of category error. Comparing how things are outside the bubble, in one world, with how things are inside the bubble. They aren't the same world, and you're comparing them as if they were. The world inside the bubble doesn't exist 'out here'. That doesn't make that world any less 'real'.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

So maybe religious people aren't that crazy.  They have meaning.  Even if their sense of meaning is rooted in fictional beliefs, at least they have a sense of meaning.  And if life is meaningless anyway, then why does it matter whether a person's sense of meaning is based on fact or fiction?

Living a lie is satisfactory? You can think of nothing of value to do with your life? I've done many things that will live on after I'm gone, benefiting future generations. Nothing earthshaking or world changing, just things one person could do with some determination and perseverance.

[SenpaiNoticeMeYouBlindShmuck]

What's the difference? If life is meaningless and there is no hereafter you have the freedom to decide how you'd like to spend the here and now and make the most of it.

If you follow a religion you're following not your own will, but that of whatever Bronze Age Sheepherder/Child Molester/Georgian con-man wrote the book in question. If that's how you want to spend your time like Stimbo said go for it, I just don't see how one can get satisfaction from that when you know all the promises are empty and it's not really doing any good.

There's also the not too small a matter of all the horrific and depraved acts the religious are doing across the world, shall we quietly nod meekly alongside the terrorists and child molesters or tell them where to get off?

[InquiringMind]

OP, if you're happy being a theist then be a theist, fantasy delusion or not. Don't insinuate that non believers (how ever I/they define themselves) lives don't have meaning or are not happy just because you can't find any in yours. Don't expect to have me find it for you.

I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one.  Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.

[Minimalist]

They have meaning.

They have delusions.

[Excited Penguin]

I must wholeheartedly disagree with the OP! Life is only meaningless as long as you choose to let it be. That it has no intrinsic meaning is of absolutely no import as long as you are willing to establish meaning for yourself. I have never gotten out of bed wondering what the meaning of life, that day, that hour and minute was. I was too busy providing that meaning.

I just don't get it...


No one would be happy if some authority figure assigned them: their careers, their mates/spouses, their hobbies, their musical and arts tastes, etc, etc. We would all consider that totalitarian, and when North Korea does it, it's rightfully thought of as a horrible affront to humanity.

But when it comes to ones purpose, they are fine with an authority figure assigning that. How is that not totalitarian?

That depends on your self-esteem, I guess. I would be happy with someone assigning me all of those things.