Do You Have a Purpose?
How do you define your own purpose for existance? Do you even need a purpose?
I certainly need something to get me up from day to day, but I think it’s called habit rather than purpose. I’m hoping that most people are the same. I mean, I have plenty of great things going on in my life, but they aren’t what I think about bounding of bed. Most days, I get up because that’s what you do when you’ve woken up, and then at some point later on (since I’m not an early morning person) I might think about what I’m about in the week, but I rarely think about the bigger picture.
I like there to be a bigger picture with some goal to aim for even if I never get there. Although I’d like to think that I work steadily towards a larger goal, that would, in fact, be complete rubbish. What I actually do is flit from one thing to another. In fact I’ve started writing this post at least three times already, trying to think about what I’m going to say.
In a general sense, my chosen purpose is to make things better than they were before, where better is pretty ill-defined (before, is before I was born). It’s not so much that I have chosen this purpose, as that it chose me. I will have been successfull if the world is better when I die, than it was when I was born. Given that that’s the case, it makes sense for me to work towards making things better.
Trouble is, that’s far too big a picture, and I don’t have any concrete details that I want to see happen. I kind of want society to be better, and for me not to have to make too much of a special effort in the process. I just want to live, have fun, and die (with the world a better place) and then fade into the background, firstly of my generation, and later my civilisation, much like we don’t really remember anything about stone age peoples. It’s not a particularly enthralling aim, but I guess that it’s mine.
What about you? Do you have a self-defined purpose, or do you manage perfectly well without?
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Should Atheists Explore Common Ground with Theists?
It’s difficult for me to describe atheists as “we”. I’ve always struggled with feeling that I don’t quite fit in somehow, and the atheosphere is no exception. But sometimes, it’s best to confront your demons and go headlong in.
Should we atheists really be putting ourselves against the religious?
Lacking a belief in God isn’t my defining characteristic, and whilst I have met some delightful atheists on line, in the offline world, I don’t know more than one. I do, however, know plenty of thoughtful and committed theists, who aren’t fundie inclined, who want to make the world a better place.
I guess the argument against is that religion is dangerous or bad, or maybe it’s that we want people to stop thinking that atheism is a type of religion, or maybe some of us feel that any belief in the irrational makes a person “tainted”.
In general, I think that liberal religious groups would have a lot to gain from looking at the common ground between themselves and atheists or secular humanists. Likewise, I think that we have a lot to gain by doing the same.
At the end of the day, it’s more important to me that people think and are compassionate, have values that they live by and seek to live in reason, freedom and truth, than it is that they agree with me about the non-existance of god or gods.
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Humanist Fasting?
It’s Lent at the moment. In fact, I think it’s been Lent for nearly a week. Traditionally, Lent is a time when you give something up originally it was meat and dairy products, but nowadays I think most people stick to something easier, like chocolate.
Religious customs that involve some sort of sacrifice of food are quite common. Besides Lent, there’s also:
- Ramadan - Muslims fast between sunrise and sunset for a lunar month
- the Bahai fast - a nineteen day fast running from 2nd March to 20th March
- Yom Kippur - a long (25 hour) day, when Jews fast, do not wash, or wear leather
- many different forms of Jain fasting
Generally, when a spiritual or religious practice is widespread across differing religions, I think that there might be something useful in it - at least to some people at some time.
I guess that fasting, or giving up food, can remind us that for example, not everyone has enough to eat. And it is important to remember that, although it’s probably more useful to help out in some way.
I think deliberately making a temporary sacrifice, in the modern Lenten style, can also be a good discipline - if you give something up, you can see how much you really value it. This doesn’t happen so much with fasting. I think I pretty much already know how valuable food is to my life.
The biggest non-religious sacrifice type thing that I’ve heard of, is The Compact, where a group of individuals have given up buying new non-food items for a year, to draw attention to the amount of waste produced in modern society and to stop contributing to it. It initially started in 2006, but is still going strong with people joining in for a year, or other pre-defined periods of time. I’d definitely struggle with this one.
I think that, on balance, temporary sacrifices can be a good practice, but I’m going to stick with trying to make permanent changes where I think I need to improve myself or my actions.
Image by Hydroxi
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