Atheism and Purpose

[Edward the Theist]

In response to Edward, i'll paste in a post I made yesterday on facebook.

The goal is humanism. Religion and atheism are a temporary conflict. Quite frankly I do not understand why this remains an issue, why we haven't outgrown these juvenile notions. Right now, all we see are white interests, democratic interests, american interests, fundamentalist interests, or atheist interests. All of these need to become human interests. The survival and prosperity of our species should be what we... put all of our efforts into. Once we enter space permanently, it should be a mad dash to colonize every hospitable moon and planet. Our survival should outweigh whatever inconsequential differences remaining between us. As Sagan said, this universe was not made for us. We are not special, we are entitled to nothing. We have survived thus far by pure mathematical chance, it will not last forever. We are an insignificant growth upon a planet and within a universe that will probably remain long after we are gone. We must survive them both. It is not our destiny, it is a human imparative. We must treat it as such.

Our "purpose" should be the purpose of every other species, the perpetuation of our species. It isn't all that divine, it isn't a purpose given to us by a supreme creator, it is the purpose of any sentient species. There have been several events that most certainly could have driven us to extinction, certainly during our early history, when our numbers dwindled down to mere thousands, and then beyond that, with the bubonic plague, world wars, imperialism, the nuclear age. We have survived most of these by pure chance, and it did not frighten us away. The thought of nuclear holocaust should have scared the shit out of every human being on this planet, but it did not. Those weapons still exist, people willing to use those weapons still exist. We have nuclear responses in place for every%

In other words, "live to survive." I can't help it, I want more than that. But I like your opening sentence: The goal is humanism. I agree.