Question for Atheists

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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]

So according to your world view the choice is between Allah and desire as a god. False dichotomy.

How about conscience? How about empathy? Why would neither of these things, or both, in conjunction with a sense of right and wrong be a good God to have?

Any evidence of the "straight path"? Any evidence it is a better path than the meandering path?

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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.

Agree with all of the above.

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.

This is the problematic bit. We do not know what caused/causes conscientiousness. It appears, taking a physical view of the universe, that under certain circumstances with sufficient complexity and enough time a thinking mind can be caused entirely from the physical.

This is not limited to us as human beings - although we appear to be its most extreme case to date. We see varying levels of self-conscience throughout the animal kingdom, some higher (Chimps, Orcas etc.) and some so low its borderline to define them as being alive (Viruses).

"any meaning you think your life has is an illusion."

In a sense (looking at the universe as a whole) certainly. At a local level, however, we can still strive towards the highest ideals our minds can create in any given area. Illusions surround us - religions are a perfect example as they represent the desire to be important to a higher being (imaginary being as it happens).

You could easily argue that almost everything we value is of no real import. Money has no inherent value - land ownership, conceptually, is just silly and so on and so forth.

I tend to think of life as we experience it as a game - akin to chess. There are basic rules in playing the game which everyone is expected to observe but within the game there is strategy, planing, forethought, organisation, adjustment, bluff and a whole slew of other facets. The game is just a game but the tactics and techniques, the thoughts, the planning and the enactment of the plan, quite real.

How you choose to play the game, how good you are at it, how dedicated to improving your abilities within it - those are all real issues totally invested within the game.

Ultimately whether I win or lose a game of chess with someone (or with a computer come to that) has ZERO impact on you if you are not my opponent. How I live my life has zero impact on the Andromeda Galaxy. Neither of these facts devalue the game.