Atheism; and why I'm not one

I flirted with the idea of becoming an atheist in my freshman year of college. That idea, however, evaporated within months.

I try to put myself in an atheist's shoes, wondering, "What is the meaning of life?" I arrived at two conclusions:

(1) Life is meaningless.
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Okay, is that it? "Yeah, I guess it is," says the atheist. So what? "I don't know," he replies.

Honestly, I don't think that a real conversation with an atheist can go like that. What I am getting at, though, is that I wager everyone has some idea that there is a great big point in why someone should live; otherwise, what is the point of living? This theoretical meaninglessness of life poses two possible problems. First, if you admit the its meaninglessness of life and continued living as if your life mattered, that would make you either a liar or an idiot (or both?) This is the less problematic situation. The more problematic situation comes if you admit the meaninglessness of life and take the logical approach that everything you do is meaningless.

Your life is the biggest thing that you own. (Whether someone else can own you I leave up to the Enlightenment thinkers). This life of yours consists of every thought, word, action, deed and possession--everything. These are parts of your life. If the whole is meaningless, the parts shall also be meaningless. Here we approach a grim equality between doing a good deed to a stranger and hurting, maiming or otherwise inconveniencing the said stranger. Paradoxically, both acts are meaningful because both acts are meaningless.

Well meaning, thoughtful atheists will be quick to point out the problems of such a worldview. So their solution is not to say that life is meaningless, but--

(2) We must create meaning in life.
(a rephrasing: Purpose must come from within, etc.)

This is a cuddlier, gentler, eco-friendly atheism characteristic of 20-21st century Europe (or what we've seen of the later part; the earlier part, er, is not so pretty). Life-purposes usually made up by "fuzzy atheists," as I call them, usually consist of "Be nice to everyone else," "Share," "Don't pollute," "Respect," etc. (Seriously, there are sometimes I wish atheists were as bloodthirsty as their revolutionary heroes).

There are some problems with this. Many nice and fuzzy "life purposes" are merely rehashings of ancient beliefs with every reference to God(dess), Brahman, [diety], etc. removed. As Vox Day often says, atheist meaning/morality is simply rehashing previous, ancient sensibilities.

Are atheists just lazy? Or is there a systematic difficulty? The problem of humans "creating their own meaning and purpose" is twofold. First is that if humans needed to create meaning, that would imply that meaning did not exist to begin with. (One is reminded of a popular Voltaire quote, "If God did not exist, man would have to create Him). If life were meaningless, well, go back to earlier in this post and see my take on that.

Second is what I call a "democratic" problem. It is good enough if one person had one unsubstantiated purpose that he or she lived by. However, man is not an island. We must live and work along other men; this both a historical and prehistorical fact of life. For the harmonious interaction of two men, there must be uniformity (or at least overlap) in their purposes. If there is no room for accomodation between two life-meanings, war (or the potential for war) shall exist. ("War" in this case is a generalized term for conflict, including but not limited to the infliction of physical damage).
War can be seen either as a correction of a conflicting life meaning or its elimination. Because humans can act both individually and corporately, the chances are that in a give area, most people will "elect" a life-meaning, but there will be some that do conflict with that life meaning. To achieve some sort of peace, all must have meanings that do not conflict with one another. For this unity, either those who accept contrary meanings must be forced one way or another to abandon them, or they must die--for a person with no life can have no meaning to life, and therefore, no potentially destructive meaning.
Here is the heart of the problem: the consequence is that the meaning of life is fluid. Meaning can evolve with time. Either it gradually shifts toward one end of the spectrum or another, or a contrary, marginalized meaning can gradually gain power and overthrow the previous meaning. This means that any given meaning that is the zeitgeist today can be dead wrong and heretical tomorrow.
Thus meaning is amorphous and subject to various manipulations. Thus the purpose of life is built upon a deck of cards rebuilt time and again. Thus conflict emerges time and again, because what we decide is right and meanigful today is contested by others or is potentially something that is horridly erroneous. When one approaches the chimaeric monstrosity that is "consensus-based truth" (as Dr. Hampton likes to call it) one can hardly see the point (or meaning, to stay consistent) and once again we return to problem (1).

I realize that any keen atheist can take my last few paragraphs and replace "meaning" with "religion." I agree. However, "meaning" is a broader concept than "religion," so various atheistic viewpoints fit nicely under that umbrella. Atheists should keep that in mind whenever they try to bring up the canard that all wars are religiously motivated.




To put a Christian perspective to this crock of shit I just wrote, here goes: My decision to believe upon the word of God is my way of building a house upon rock. My faith is not simply a way to escape the exacting harsh calculation of reason, but a firm foundation for when reason breaks down, as it does when one examines the meaning of life.