Purpose? No idea what it is.

[GrandizerII]

Similar to yours.

If defined as "working toward some sort of goal", then we can have purpose without God.

And human societies and persons can dictate/determine our reason(s) for existence. Nothing about either definition you provided necessitates that a God has to exist for purpose to be a thing.

I agree with what you are saying, but would add that life is purposeless with or without a God. As you have stated persons can determine their own reasons for existence, someone might say "My purpose is to live a long and happy life" but that doesn't mean that they have a purpose, that is just their own idea of a purpose.

I think most people realise that in the big picture our lives are insignificant and pretty pointless, that's why theists claim that this is just a dress rehearsal and a real purposeful life is waiting. I've heard this claim many times.. "God has a purpose for us" but never an explanation of what that might be.

I'm probably not explaining my thoughts very well here and I'm pretty sick of typing the word purpose.

To be fair, I think I do know what you're saying because I used to have this thinking as well: that if purpose is not eternal/everlasting and on a cosmic scale, it's not really purpose. The thing with this thinking is that I see no reason why purpose needs to be defined that way, other than because of the influence theistic thinking has had on Western culture/society. Just because theists have convinced us that purpose needs to be universal, cosmic, transcendent, everlasting, doesn't mean this is how we should view it. All that shows is that, even as atheists, theistic thinking still has a hold over us.

Just think of the concept of "love" for a second. We know love need not be eternal/everlasting, transcendent, on a cosmic/universal scale in order to be really love. And yet many theists would like us to think we can't truly love unless this love is grounded in God or something of that sort. Same with the notion of justice, mercy, goodness, etc.

But yes, you make a really good point regardless. Even if God existed, it still wouldn't mean we had purpose to our existence (in the ultimate and truly objective sense), and if we did, it still would need to be established just exactly what that purpose would be. But if we start to adhere to a casual/more familiar sense of the term "purpose" (like with "love"), we don't need a God to exist for that at all, period.