Atheism

We humans are a fascinating lot.  Over the course of several million years, we’ve managed to evolve brains that are capable of some amazing feats of cognition.  We are able to envision something beyond ourselves, an ability which seems to be quite unique to our species.

This ability has made all of our greatest accomplishments possible.  After all, one cannot invent something without first envisioning it, or envisioning the need for it in the first place.  This small leap in cognitive ability has made it possible for us to create a society that other creatures could not even begin to comprehend.

This amazing trait can also lead to great missteps when manifested unskillfully.  The ability to envision something beyond ourselves can’t simply be turned off at will.  We are driven by a nearly insatiable desire to understand all that which we cannot see or readily explain.  Because of this desire, we constantly attempt to see beyond the veil of our understanding.  This is a good thing when tempered with logic and filtered through reason, but it can too often tempt us to create or accept answers for no rational reason.

There are questions I often hear that simply make me cringe… “What is my purpose in life?”… “Why am I here?”… “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

Richard Dawkins once wrote that not every English sentence that begins with the word “why” is a valid question, citing the example “Why are unicorns hollow?”.  This is a rather comical and extreme example, but the point it makes it sound.

There is no “why” for our existence.

So what is the reality of our human condition?  What is the truth about our place in the universe?  Sadly, most people become quite distressed upon contemplating the truth behind these questions.

The reality of our condition is quite clear.  We are essentially a group of somewhat clever but ultimately arrogant organisms clinging to a small rock which is orbiting a rather unremarkable star.  This star is out in the boondocks of its own galaxy, and the galaxy itself is rather unremarkable among its billions of cousins.  If we were to envision the universe as something sentient, then it would no more notice us than we would notice a microorganism clinging to our small toe.

In fact, when considering the vast timescales of the cosmic clock, we haven’t even been around long enough to even make a small ripple.  It’s doubtful that our race will exist long enough to do so, either.  And if we consider the rather absurd brevity of an individual life, we can truly start to see exactly how self-important and arrogant we truly are.

That’s right… as distressing as you might find this… In the grand scheme of the universe, you simply don’t matter.

I have often been branded a nihilist for expressing such views, and I suppose it’s true to an extent.  Our lives are inherently meaningless insofar as they do not come with any intrinsic purpose, but that does not mean that our lives need be meaningless.

Here is our reality.  There are a few billion of us on our comfy little rock at any given time.  Each of us will be here for a period of one second to possibly a hundred years or so.  The question we should be asking is not why we are here, but rather what we are going to do with the time we have been given.

For the foreseeable future, we have nowhere else to go.  It’s quite possible that someday we will move outward from our cradle and colonize other worlds, but one cannot even begin to realistically speculate when this will be a viable option.  We must accept the fact that we are all stranded on our tiny little island for generations to come.

So what have we chosen to do with the time we have?  Too often, we spend our brief existence imagining something that comes next.  While such fantasies may be satisfying or comforting on some level, we must take care not to base our lives on such dreams.

There is only one thing of which we can be certain… We have the here and now.  We have the lives which we have been born into during the time into which we were born.  We entered the world with no divine purpose.  We do not come with a preordained agenda.  We enter the world as blank slates, each striving to find our own meaning and purpose.

How much time have we wasted attempting to find some elusive truth behind our lives?  How much blood have we shed over our conflicting views of these imagined truths?  How much longer can we afford to cling to these delusions rather than accept the reality of our condition and move forward accordingly?

You are here.  That is all.  That is the only inherent truth behind your existence.  Where many find this reality to be depressing, I choose to see it as quite the opposite.

We each have the ability to guide our own destiny.  We have the power to choose what our purpose in life will be, as well as the option to assign whatever meaning we can find.

You might choose a path of greatness.  You might choose to merely exist.  Of course, most of us will choose a path which lies somewhere in between.

It’s vitally important for us to remember that we’re all in this together.  We have to share our tiny little rock, so we must understand that each and every one of our paths are intertwined.  The words and actions you choose to live by in some way touch the lives of all.

You are here.  I am here.  He is here, and she is here.  Circumstance has led us all to share this minuscule window in space and time.  It is all we have, so we need to make the best of it.

Is there a next world?  If we are honest with ourselves, none of us can say for sure.  Perhaps you will choose to spend your here and now devoted to a tenuous belief in an ultimately unprovable and intangible afterlife.  If this is your choice, then I bear you no ill will.  But please, do not destroy our here and now in some sort of blind devotion to it.

This is our world, folks.  This is the life we have.  Let’s make the most of it, and try to make things a little more bearable for one another.

If this makes me a nihilist, so be it.