Question for Atheists

[Simon Moon]

Some atheists display cognitive dissonance about meaning and purpose. On the one hand they insist that the natural world has no teleological properties. Then they turn around and claim their lives can still have significance, thereby inserting teleology back into reality.

Not a bit of cognitive dissonance here.

My purpose (or 'significance', why the change in terms, Chad?) is only locally meaningful. In other words, meaningful to me and my social group.

There is no teleological significance to it at all.

I can't believe you didn't get this. I guess I overestimated your intelligence.

[Mister Agenda]

Some atheists display cognitive dissonance about meaning and purpose. On the one hand they insist that the natural world has no teleological properties. Then they turn around and claim their lives can still have significance, thereby inserting teleology back into reality.

It's almost like those atheistst think things can only hold meaning for beings capable of ascribing meaning to things.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Some atheists display cognitive dissonance about meaning and purpose. On the one hand they insist that the natural world has no teleological properties. Then they turn around and claim their lives can still have significance, thereby inserting teleology back into reality.

It's almost like those atheistst think things can only hold meaning for beings capable of ascribing meaning to things.

You're close, Chad thinks that things can only hold meaning by things that have had the ability to describe meaning prescribed to them by a cosmic meaning prescriber. I don't know of any example of this, and think a fart would probably hold all physical stinky properties regardless of my description of it smelling like shit upon its entry to my senses. Absent my nose to describe this "shittiness" it's still a fart, it just hasn't offended anyone. I suspect that Chad will insist that without some platonic ultimate Shit, the fart that participates in the form of Shitty would not be perceivable, thus, there must be a divine prescriber of shit, i.e.-God. If this doesn't give your life meaning, I don't know what will.

[Rayaan]

Rayaan,

So according to what you've just written the whole point of life is to praise and glorify the creator - who doesn't need it.

How pointless is THAT life!!!

Could you just run by me again why we need it? I seem to have missed that.

We need Him to be guided to the Straight Path (Sirat al-Mustaqeem). Otherwise we are like people who are riding on a rudderless boat with no sense of direction ...


but some people take their own desires as their god - and thereby they have strayed away from the path: "Have you seen the one who takes his own desire as his god? Then would you be responsible for him? Or do you think that most of them hear or understand? They are but as the cattle; nay, they are farther astray from the path." [Surah 25:43–44]

[Neo-Scholastic]

Guess what DeNihilists! Physical things have no meaning; they just are. Physical processes have no purpose; they just happen. And since your worldview is that everything is physical, then you have nothing with which to make real intentional or teleological properties! Truly deterministic processes do not have goals, purposes, or intentions. Nor do deterministic processes have meaning or significance. They move along their inevitable and unalterable course. Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

[Faith No More]

Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

It is not an illusion. The meaning we have is not something we perceive. It is something we create based on the pleasure we receive from different aspects of life. We then judge those aspects and ascribe value to what we truly find fulfilling. Just because there isn't a god at the end propping it up doesn't mean that that meaning does not exist. It exists in our minds as something we have created, not some sort of trickery of the senses.

[truthBtold]

Guess what DeNihilists! Physical things have no meaning; they just are. Physical processes have no purpose; they just happen. And since your worldview is that everything is physical, then you have nothing with which to make real intentional or teleological properties! Truly deterministic processes do not have goals, purposes, or intentions. Nor do deterministic processes have meaning or significance. They move along their inevitable and unalterable course. Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

U already fooled urself..

[Ryantology]

Guess what DeNihilists! Physical things have no meaning; they just are. Physical processes have no purpose; they just happen. And since your worldview is that everything is physical, then you have nothing with which to make real intentional or teleological properties! Truly deterministic processes do not have goals, purposes, or intentions. Nor do deterministic processes have meaning or significance. They move along their inevitable and unalterable course. Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

Why does God exist?

[The Reality Salesman01]

Guess what DeNihilists! Physical things have no meaning; they just are. Physical processes have no purpose; they just happen. And since your worldview is that everything is physical, then you have nothing with which to make real intentional or teleological properties! Truly deterministic processes do not have goals, purposes, or intentions. Nor do deterministic processes have meaning or significance. They move along their inevitable and unalterable course. Since humans, according to you, are walking talking electro-chemical reactions any meaning you think your life has is an illusion. Any purpose in which you believe is a rationalization of events over which you have no real control. You’re fooling yourselves.

Chad, deterministic processes do not imply fatalistic outcomes. Everything that is physical is subject to change, even the neurophysiological processes that contemplate them. If there were an additional substance, then change is not something that need concern you. Change effects physical things. Deterministic events produce change. At what point does adding non-physical substances to our experience produce an interpretation that makes more sense?

[Angrboda]

Some atheists display cognitive dissonance about meaning and purpose. On the one hand they insist that the natural world has no teleological properties. Then they turn around and claim their lives can still have significance, thereby inserting teleology back into reality.

I realize you don't normally think this way, so I'm just posing a hypothetical. If minds are a property of matter, is it still not possible for those minds, made of matter, to create purpose for things, solely as a function of their material mind's ability to conceive of something as "being for" something else? Or, are you insisting that the only way a mind can create extra-mundane purpose is if it is immaterial? Is it necessary for the matter which makes up mind be soul-stuff to make purpose or meaning "ex nihilo" ?