If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[SenpaiNoticeMeYouBlindShmuck]

OP, if you're happy being a theist then be a theist, fantasy delusion or not. Don't insinuate that non believers (how ever I/they define themselves) lives don't have meaning or are not happy just because you can't find any in yours. Don't expect to have me find it for you.

I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one.  Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.

In theory it might actually be a good thing for some people. Not to be insulting but there are some humans who for lack of education or just genetics are pretty stupid. Religion is actually pretty good at spoonfeeding them a morality and motivation of some form, especially when conducted from a young age. Be good or the big bad men will roast you for all eternity is a bit more effective at getting kids to behave than just be good am'i'right?

The problem is with it however is that it leaves itself open to manipulation. Religion, in the western or abrahamic traditions at least doesn't typically allow for much independent thought, it takes on a very legalistic hierarchical approach where you just do what the man in the funny hat says. Now if the man in the funny hat is an easy going benevolent sort who just tells believers to be nice and snuggle cute animals that's all well and good, but more often than not it tends to attract fairly mercenary sorts (look no further than the apostles of the LDS church) who are less for playing pastor to a flock of dependent innocents and more for using their power of them for temporal ends.

In theory it could be a powerful source of comfort, and in many cases (especially surrounding the issue of death) it is. It's what happens as soon as religious leaders invariably start demanding special rights elsewhere, which they invariably do, we start having problems. You might be happy to throw away your own free will, but what right do you have to support an agency that wants to take that choice from others?

[InquiringMind]

 The universe isn't an agent, so it has no perspective.  It's just a category error to expect meaning to come from the universe.  

This is a profound idea.  Only an agent can declare meaning.  The universe isn't an agent and can't bestow meaning or lack of meaning.  

But it's obvious that you care about things.  So much so that it's eating you up at this time.  

Yeah, I probably care too much sometimes.  I care about stuff that I don't need to care about.  

Surely caring is a sign that these things in your life are significant.  Maybe not capital 'S' Significant, but small 's' significant.  You are a social animal.  Certain things matter to you just because of that base fact.  

OK, now I think we're getting somewhere.  In Stage 5 faith, people stop looking for Truth, and instead look for truth.  I've been looking for Significance.  But perhaps there is no Significance, only significance.  Subjective meaning, not objective meaning.  There is not Meaning, only meaning.    

You want love, and you would experience sexual love as significant.  You want the admiration of your peers.  You want status in the scientific world.  You want all the typical things that make life good.  These are significant for you.  All these things are meaningful to you, but you're experiencing their absence at this time.  I think focusing on their absence is making you an existential gloomy Gus.

I suppose that this experience is not particularly unique.  

You've got the telescope trained on the idea that ordinary things can't be meaningful because there's no big 'S'.  I think you've deluded yourself by believing meaning doesn't exist as much as you'd deluded yourself into believing there was a sky daddy.  I don't think we can escape meaning in this life.  It is the water we swim in, so much so that we are distressed by its absence, or seeming absence.  I think perhaps if you concentrated less on the big S and more on the small s'es, you'd be a lot happier.  Epicurean things like good friends, satisfying work, good food, an occasional novelty to spice things up.  In short, I think you're mistaken in believing that life has no meaning; I think you're surrounded by it.  You've just chosen to focus on this idea that life has no meaning.  And I think that's distorting things for you.  We are built by evolution to experience meaningful things in a vast variety of ways.  That you are experiencing a low in your sensus meaningfullitis is no reason to jump to the conclusion that meaning doesn't exist.  I think you're mistaken.  I think it does.

This may be true, but aren't you struggling with finding meaning - with a small "m" - yourself?

[Gemini]

I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one.  Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.

I don't think religious belief automatically gives individuals a sense of meaning. Kierkegaard struggled with finding meaning in theism, and I did as well. If something is meaningful, then I think it should be meaningful for its own sake, whether some incorporeal agent commanded it or not. And if it's not meaningful, then it doesn't matter whether it's god's will. I very frequently found myself frustrated by what I heard in church. It would tear down my faith, and then I'd have to build it back up over the course of the next week with my own idiosyncratic theology. Until I abandoned it entirely.

And I'm not unique. I know an atheist couple who go to church simply because their kids like it, but they find the sermons depressing and meaningless. So they volunteer to lead the youth group.

[InquiringMind]

For my own personal belief, meaning is real, and we never escape it's grasp.  We are built to experience meaning as something real.  That makes it real to us.

You seem to want it both ways. If intentionality is a convenient fiction then it isn’t real. If it isn’t real then proceeding as if it were means living a lie.

 
Is intentionality a convenient fiction the same way that consciousness is a convenient fiction?

---

So your life had meaning because you were a 'big shot'? Seems more like self worth than anything else. Why not just join some great cause that means a lot to you where you get to see first hand how your contributions move other people's lives? I volunteered at a food bank and got to physically hand people dry goods and food and got to see their thanks and need. It was life changing.

Possibly.  I always had aspirations to "greatness."  In The Denial of Death, Becker asserts that self-esteem arises from an individual's compliance with the values of the worldview of the culture in which they live.  So in America, we value people who are "successful," or in other words, people who are big shots.  Such people are granted symbolic immortality, as I've talked about in another thread.  So yeah, like many other people, my aspirations to greatness were part of my immortality project.

[Angrboda]

You've got the telescope trained on the idea that ordinary things can't be meaningful because there's no big 'S'.  I think you've deluded yourself by believing meaning doesn't exist as much as you'd deluded yourself into believing there was a sky daddy.  I don't think we can escape meaning in this life.  It is the water we swim in, so much so that we are distressed by its absence, or seeming absence.  I think perhaps if you concentrated less on the big S and more on the small s'es, you'd be a lot happier.  Epicurean things like good friends, satisfying work, good food, an occasional novelty to spice things up.  In short, I think you're mistaken in believing that life has no meaning; I think you're surrounded by it.  You've just chosen to focus on this idea that life has no meaning.  And I think that's distorting things for you.  We are built by evolution to experience meaningful things in a vast variety of ways.  That you are experiencing a low in your sensus meaningfullitis is no reason to jump to the conclusion that meaning doesn't exist.  I think you're mistaken.  I think it does.

This may be true, but aren't you struggling with finding meaning - with a small "m" - yourself?

I don't really struggle with the 'm' meaning aspect in terms of wondering if my life has meaning. I struggle with the emptiness in my life, and my seeming to be unable to fill it with anything. If I'd get up and get out more, like I did this past week, it wouldn't seem so empty. But the majority of days I lack the motivation to get myself ready and find something to go out to do. I used to be involved in meetup.com groups a lot, going to an event or two each week. But the color of such events has changed. They're more purely social than they used to be, and I'm rather shy. I used to go to book clubs, but I haven't had the interest in reading this past year. If I could get myself to just do things, I wouldn't stress over whether what I was doing is meaningful or not. I stress about the fact that I'm doing so little these days.

[Cyberman]

OP, if you're happy being a theist then be a theist, fantasy delusion or not. Don't insinuate that non believers (how ever I/they define themselves) lives don't have meaning or are not happy just because you can't find any in yours. Don't expect to have me find it for you.

I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one.  Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.

It's a sense of meaning in the same way that going round in circles is a sense of direction.

[LadyForCamus]

This may be true, but aren't you struggling with finding meaning - with a small "m" - yourself?

I don't really struggle with the 'm' meaning aspect in terms of wondering if my life has meaning. I struggle with the emptiness in my life, and my seeming to be unable to fill it with anything. If I'd get up and get out more, like I did this past week, it wouldn't seem so empty. But the majority of days I lack the motivation to get myself ready and find something to go out to do. I used to be involved in meetup.com groups a lot, going to an event or two each week. But the color of such events has changed. They're more purely social than they used to be, and I'm rather shy. I used to go to book clubs, but I haven't had the interest in reading this past year. If I could get myself to just do things, I wouldn't stress over whether what I was doing is meaningful or not. I stress about the fact that I'm doing so little these days.

Jor, do you mind me asking, are you in school? (for some reason I thought you were.). Do you work? Are you close with family members at all? You sound awfully lonely. [emoji45]

[chimp3]

My life is meaningful. To myself and I hope to others. Others lives are meaningful to me. The nihilists can bite me!

[Angrboda]

Jor, do you mind me asking, are you in school?  (for some reason I thought you were.). Do you work?   Are you close with family members at all?  You sound awfully lonely.  [emoji45]

No, I'm not in school, I don't work, and I'm not close to family. I don't really identify with a feeling of loneliness, but maybe I am.

[Minimalist]

As almost always happens, H.L. Mencken gave the best description ever for theists.

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos: He will set them above their betters.