On Purpose

A common objection to atheism centers on the topic of purpose. The major religions -- more particularly the monotheistic religions, and most specifically Christianity as it is voiced by American evangelicals -- these all defend their importance by arguing they give people purpose. They all declare (again, Christianity most loudly) they know life's purpose, and atheism and all the philosophies founded on physical existence do not.

This contention reaches a peak in the on-going dispute about evolution and creationism, including that sheep-in-wolf's-clothes, Intelligent Design. Many of the religiously devout assert that evolution's reliance upon random change basically implies that man has no purpose. They declare that if man has appeared by accident, then he has come into existence without purpose. Therefore his existence today has no purpose. Religionists of most every persuasion then argue that life without purpose is not tolerable, let alone moral.

They may have a point. However, we have no evidence, except for people's imaginings, that we have appeared for some reason other than by an accident of nature. The most rigorous formulation of this viewpoint claims that life is an accident certain to happen, given enough time and the nature of matter, and that this is our reality.

Believers contend that a being without purpose has no way to determine right from wrong. They convincingly declare: How can humankind without God have a purpose? If there is no God, then, they claim, man has no purpose. This, they assert, is just one of the problems with atheism.

Often following closely behind this line of thinking is a reminder of humanity's painful experience with atheistic communism. Linking atheism to communist institutions confuses politics with philosophy, spirituality and world view, and serves to condemn non-superstitious ideas as evil. Such a strategy may earn believers a few debating points but it does nothing to advance a dialog that seeks to explore our situation.

Religionists commonly contend they have no need to explore or seek since they already have the answer. They mistakenly perceive their external authority (such as the Bible) as granting their truth greater authenticity than any other viewpoint that lacks such an anchor. They can only make this mistake because they fail to notice that those even among their own congregations who have experienced first hand a synthesis no longer rely upon such externalities like traditional authority for their certainty. Instead, the traditions become useful tools and vehicles by which the convictions of these individuals can be conveyed.

Anyone whose understanding no longer relies on conventional religious concepts regards the artifacts of tradition as at best historical and usually of little contemporary significance. This is not to suggest the wisdom within every tradition is discarded or ignored. Among non-believers -- those who truly don't accept any of the traditional belief systems -- understanding is self-realized and in no way reliant upon any of the icons of traditional spirituality. For these people, their understanding is different.

For instance, they have no trouble seeing humanity as purposeless. They are quite sure people exist now, and have existed in all of the past, without any purpose beyond what they themselves created. Their understanding says it is people themselves who have realized the idea of purpose and thereby created it, and, further, it is people who have created for themselves some specific purpose. They are quite convinced that purpose is a quality borne by one's community, transmitted through upbringing and insight, and as such, it undergoes change and even evolves.

Rather than lamenting our existence in a harsh and barren universe, these minds find that existence without purpose is utterly liberating. They see that we do live in an indifferent universe, that Life is rough, and that we have found ways to sweeten life. We even have found features of existence that nourish us and encourage us.

Among these is man's curiosity and each person's affinity for the full scope of virtues humanity has managed to label, and almost certainly for some for which we have as yet only vague words. For such minds, our affinity for the virtues are "in-built" -- a "gift" of evolution -- even if those faculties are also fragile and need careful nurturing. Human creativity has given us insight into this aspect of our situation, and seems certain to provide us with more understanding. Creativity itself is both a product and a vehicle for people to find purpose. People's acceptance and trust of their (and others') creativity sustains and enlarges human purpose.

All of the great domains of human development have given us purpose. These include science, art, labor, and spirituality in all its forms. Viewing human culture and human destiny in this way places us not on some external agency's conveyor belt to some defined destination, but indicates a more responsive reality -- that we are today participating in creating the world we live in.

This world is not the result of people having forgotten their purpose. It is the result of people striving to manifest the purpose they glimpse. Of course this viewpoint does not claim the world as it is is the best we can do. Far from it! But this viewpoint does accept the reality of the world as it is, and acknowledges the contribution and responsibility of past human decisions for the human world as it is now.

This framing of the human condition shapes any consideration of morality also. From this viewpoint morality is just one facet of human creativity. It has developed as far as it has. Our current mode of living -- with moral ideals existing alongside often well-rationalized yet hypocritical practices -- serves only to demonstrate consciousness and morality is a work in progress, not something manifesting in life fully-developed. There is no medicine one can take just one time to achieve moral perfection.

Thus to those who have left behind superstition, other people are making a fundamental mistake by attributing to some higher authority their moral position or goal. They will argue that any reliance upon external authority can best be viewed as a stage of development. This brings into focus the viewpoint of the non-believer: that matter itself, and all its manifestations and permutations, is developing, evolving, advancing. We who are "particles" in that river have arisen within and because of that process by which development continues. Our understanding reflects that flow, as does the nature and quality of our consciousness.

Consciousness itself is one creation and manifestation of this impulse or flow. Our religions, and ideas like Intelligent Design, are attempts to both explain and provide people with a relationship to the "process of existence". We are but groping, ignorant and awakening beings trying to make sense of ourselves and our predicament, as well as to function as expressions of that which we wish to understand. The recursions in this situation cannot be over-stated.

People today have arisen and developed from a more primitive era. Their ideas and beliefs have similarly developed. Today, many concepts about man's place in the world, who we are, and what existence is, bear vestiges from our more confused past. Our ideas and models, our ways of talking, our depictions of the relationship between us and the all -- these carry and maintain now-obsolete ideas from our past.

At one time those ideas were transformational. At one time, people were "set afire" when they encountered these now-old ideas. But as with all things, these ideas have aged. Their time of ascendance has passed. They have done their work. Now they restrain and repress as much as they provide a foundation for more precise and advanced ideas.

We stand upon the shoulders of those who have preceded us. Our contribution will provide a platform upon which new minds and beings will develop and contribute. In this way is humanity flowering.

All efforts to express our situation must of necessity suffer from the limitations of our understanding. We cannot state truth rightly perhaps because we are part of it.

Now we have today a clamor from religious tradition to recognize humanity's waywardness, to adopt or re-adopt beliefs once regarded as living truth that today have been put on the back burner by the majority of people. This effort denies human advancement. It is no surprise its focus is on subservience, devotion, obedience, and piety. Those ideas have their place, but like all concepts that appear in the river of development, they must themselves evolve or be left behind.

Some ideas cannot evolve. They are more like life-preservers -- useful while we float in the water, but pointless once we reach the shore. These we need to abandon.

Now some might consider these statements pretentious or worse. Some might think this author sees himself outside these forces and trends. Nothing could be further from the truth. We all, including I, are in this together. We are all we have. Really.

It is true that existence has been our mother. Apparently. This makes our current practice of removing all traces of the natural world careless. That world certainly contains clues about ourselves, about where we came from, about how that womb works. Without access to the natural world, the only way we can discover what it might tell us is by trial and error. And error will certainly add to human suffering.

This viewpoint welcomes our purposelessness. This viewpoint recognizes we have a task -- to understand our purpose by creating it. This viewpoint realizes morality is a hard-won jewel, not some mandate from supreme authority (even though that concept does have its place as a stage of moral development). This viewpoint acknowledges there is more to purpose and morality than definition -- that effective transgenerational transmission has at least as much importance as what is transmitted.

This state of affairs is not a catastrophe. This is not a moral or philosophical quagmire. Rather, it is a glory and a blessing, and a possibility we could only dream of and yearn for. It is our situation.