Atheism and purpose in life.

[Rhizomorph13]

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There is a belief common among atheists and other brands of secularists that we have the ability to self-consciously direct and determine our life's meaning. As far as I have seen, while it's often asserted, I know of no real evidence that this is the case. I think otherwise. I suspect that, like Heideggerian throwness, we find ourselves always in the midst of a meaning, the determination of which is, in Heidegger's theory of time, "past". There never is a present in which we create our meaning, only react to our sense of what it is. I suspect this is like morality in that we don't sit down and make a list of things we're going to experience moral outrage over, the content of our morality is already present inside us, and while we can respond to it with reflection or introspection, we never find ourselves creating a moral fact. Meaning, I believe, is the same; we are born into meaning, and it is a palpable fact of our existence, but we are less authors than higgledy-piggledy channelers of feelings we don't fully fathom.

(FWIW, I have some notions on the cause of this state of affairs, but the thinking is so far in left field that I'm simply going to ignore it.)

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Tiberius posted up an article about a test they devised that pretty much proved that our reactions are deterministic and free-will is a myth. They did admit that they had no way to test higher decisions like choosing a house or some other larger decisions but, for me, it is easy to see all big decisions as just brain states arrived at by myriad smaller states that culminate into the large decision. How do I use this knowlede? Well, I am just much less hard on myself when I fail to make a good decision.