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comment by kurmit
kurmit  ·  4341 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Blessings of Atheism

    The author doesn't touch on what I find to be the largest blessing of atheism, which is that life has no inherent meaning. I see this as a blessing, because the only meaning we are left with in life is that which we ascribe to it ourselves. That is, for an atheist, life is what you make of it.

This is a very good take. Many people seem to fall short of it & miss the point when they kick and scream about how atheists don't have anything to live for, or how life without God is meaningless, etc... The simple assumption is that without a larger-than-life deity, we're somehow left empty and unfulfilled. But it really is the opposite, in my opinion - the deity is in fact not truly fulfilling; it is a poor substitute for the meaning you can find by actually doing some introspection and figuring out what change you want to affect on the world. And as an added bonus, there is no ambiguity in the reasoning for why you're doing good things - it's fulfilling, and, well, they're good.





b_b  ·  4341 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yes, that's exactly the point. If someone asks me what the meaning of life is, I'll reply that its an awesome movie by Monty Python. Other than that, I don't really give a shit. I can have whatever meaning I want, and I'm never wrong. Its completely liberating.