Atheism and Purpose

[Rev. Rye]

It dawned on me about a year ago why atheism is so attractive. I was having a hard time with existential issues. You know, what am I supposed to do with my life? What meaning do I have? Is there any reason for my birth? How can I find my purpose for being? That sort of thing.

Then I realized a startling fact: if there is no God who created me, then I have no purpose. No inherent purpose, no mission in life. If everything is chaos and natural selection, then I'm just a determined entity. I don’t have to worry about “purpose.” There is no purpose. I am free from my existential dilemma. Free at last.

All I have to do is stop believing in God.

I was wondering if any of the atheists in here would like to comment. Have any of you had the same experience?

I've thought about the question of purpose is, but the fact is that when I realised that it made sense to not believe in God, I didn't just use that as an opt-out of that problem. As Elionwy noted, removal of a higher power of the equation does not so much answer or nullify the question of "what is my purpose?" as create a new question of "what should my purpose be?" It's easy to just follow someone else's proscriptions, but this effectively forces one to create one's own, which is harder, but, I think, much more rewarding.

But hey, at least you didn't claim that atheists don't believe in God because they want to sin. That would be both wrong and incredibly stupid. Especially since atheists don't bother with any concept of sin, and despite that, (if the statistics of America's prisons are any indication) they're probably better behaved than Christians anyway.