Musings...
For the last few years I've considered myself an agnostic, assuming it meant that I just don't care enough to figure out whether or not a higher power exists. However I've never really bothered to find out the real meaning of the term, until now.
I definitely don't believe in the Christian view of God... or, for that matter, any religious view of any deity. I recently read an essay on an atheist blog that neatly summarizes my reasoning for this in one paragraph. "Even more puzzling to me is the notion that God gives us all a purpose, and that purpose is to worship him. How could anyone embrace such a depressing and limiting worldview? It makes us out to be slaves, or puppets, or canned applause, created by a vain and insecure deity just so we could constantly tell him how great he is. Equally bad, in my view, is the concept that the purpose God has decreed for us is to believe in him and follow his rules so that we may be saved. If that is what God wanted for us, why didn't he create us in Heaven in the first place? Why did he create us apart from him and then set up a series of arbitrary hurdles we must jump over to get back to him? This view reduces humanity to a rat running a maze."
But what IS the point of life? I can't accept that I exist just to appease a higher power, but at the same time a life without some higher purpose seems so pointless... I'm simply here to survive and reproduce, just like every other life form. Atheists say that beauty and human kindness give life meaning, but I don't know that I hold to that either. The value of my life is based on my ability to observe and appreciate beauty and kindness? How do we judge the value of a life? Is it egocentric to want my life to be valuable? To be more than a simple continuation of evolution?
I definitely don't believe in the Christian view of God... or, for that matter, any religious view of any deity. I recently read an essay on an atheist blog that neatly summarizes my reasoning for this in one paragraph. "Even more puzzling to me is the notion that God gives us all a purpose, and that purpose is to worship him. How could anyone embrace such a depressing and limiting worldview? It makes us out to be slaves, or puppets, or canned applause, created by a vain and insecure deity just so we could constantly tell him how great he is. Equally bad, in my view, is the concept that the purpose God has decreed for us is to believe in him and follow his rules so that we may be saved. If that is what God wanted for us, why didn't he create us in Heaven in the first place? Why did he create us apart from him and then set up a series of arbitrary hurdles we must jump over to get back to him? This view reduces humanity to a rat running a maze."
But what IS the point of life? I can't accept that I exist just to appease a higher power, but at the same time a life without some higher purpose seems so pointless... I'm simply here to survive and reproduce, just like every other life form. Atheists say that beauty and human kindness give life meaning, but I don't know that I hold to that either. The value of my life is based on my ability to observe and appreciate beauty and kindness? How do we judge the value of a life? Is it egocentric to want my life to be valuable? To be more than a simple continuation of evolution?