Introduction

Theists often assume that life without belief in God is meaningless, without purpose, and therefore empty. I once assumed this too, so I do understand the assertion. Here’s a sincere inquiry, posted by someone I know:

“I don’t understand how people can live without someone like God to live for. Otherwise what’s your purpose in life?”

— tweet from a relative
(account since deleted)

First, because I’m a stickler for defining terms before a discussion proceeds too far, let’s agree on what the words say. I’ve heard the question asked various ways (and I’ve asked it in various ways). The following are all slightly different questions:

• “What’s your purpose in life?”
• “What’s the purpose of your life?”
• “What’s the purpose of life?”

The first one is asking about my intentions — my overriding goal. The latter two are asking for the reason — for my life and for life in general. So, let us separate the questions and answer them individually; it would be confusing to conflate them into one question and answer them as one.

(Sometimes the question uses “meaning” or “reason” rather than “purpose”.)

Reversing The Question

One fair way to respond, I think, is to reverse the questions:

• “What is a believer’s purpose in life?”
• “What is the purpose of a believer’s life?”
• “What is the purpose of life (in general), according to believers?

(For what follows, I focus on Christianity because it’s the belief with which I’m most familiar, and is the religion of most people with whom I’m likely to converse.)

When I believed in God (my background), I thought the purpose of my life was to serve God. There were really only two overall choices in life — to serve him or to rebel against him. (Apathy qualified as rebellion in my book.) “Serving God” included obeying his commandments, praying, trying to be “Christlike”, and (because Jesus commanded it) telling others about it. These activities gave my life meaning; anything else was a distraction from it.

But not all theists see it quite so narrowly. Many are content to live mostly secular lives while the idea of God acts as a safety net or a general guiding principle that underpins life. In fact, if you ask random theists “What is your purpose in life?” you will receive a plethora of answers. But they — an overwhelming majority of them — assume there is a Director on the cosmic stage and that each bit of life plays its assigned part, whether each person realizes it or not.

The second question (which could be rephrased as “Why are you here?”) also results in a multitude of answers, though many of them can be boiled down to: “Because God wanted it.” This is a cop out. Because in that worldview it’s stipulated that nothing happens without God wanting it. The question is really: why did God want it? Why did he do it? Why did he allow you to be conceived and survive until now? “God wanted me to be here” is just a way of saying “I’m special”, and doesn’t really answer the question.

God is perfect (they claim). If so, he doesn’t need companionship, help, or worship — and Acts 17:25 confirms this. So why did he make you, specifically (or allow you to be conceived/born)? Do you know? If you say you know, then how do you know?

As for life in general, the Bible does not say why God created it. It does give a lone reason why he made mankind, and one for why he made women. He made mankind to to “rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” He made womankind because “it is not good for the man to be alone.” So, he made women to be a companion to men, whom he made to rule over the animals, which he made for a reason that’s not provided.

Col. 1:16 says “all things” were created “for him”, but not why. Some cite Rev. 4:11 (KJV) as saying all things were created for his pleasure, but most translations, especially the modern ones, say by or because of “your will”, indicating (to me) that “pleasure” was a loose translation at best.

For many Christians, “part of his grand, mysterious plan” is reason enough, based on passages like Is. 55:9. Search for why did god create humans to see other ideas. Many of the resulting pages admit that the Bible doesn’t actually say what the purpose of life is.

So we find that believers (as a group) often have trouble answering these questions — with any degree of certainty or consensus. To generalize, let’s say the answers are, respectively: (1) to serve/​worship/​obey God, (2) God wanted me here — not sure why, and (3) God wanted life on Earth — again, not sure why.

If there must be a purpose or reason for life itself, and that purpose must have come from God, wouldn’t it have been helpful if God had clearly spelled out what that purpose was? It would have only required one sentence, and could have been stuck anywhere in the Bible, but perhaps Genesis would have been the best place. “God created life because...”

But there’s not an answer. Which makes their question to atheists seem more than a little unfair as well as hypocritical.

As Applied To Atheists

Turning the questions back to their original intent — toward nonbelievers — I can only answer them from my own viewpoint.

Remember, atheism is not a religion. Atheism is simply a “no” answer to a single question: “Do you believe in God(s)?” Unlike religions, atheism is not structured, nor bound by rules or organizations. There is no holy book, no “atheist pope”. Any organizations that exist are social or political groups, not representative of the beliefs of individuals. So another atheist might respond entirely differently.

The first step is to remove the double-assumption that there must be a purpose/reason, and that the reason must be provided by a god. Since there is almost certainly not a god, the second assumption makes no sense. From there, the first assumption fades in importance as well — why must there be a reason? No matter how badly I desire there to be a reason or meaning for everything, it doesn’t make that reason exist.

At least one well-versed atheist has answered this way (source):

“Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’ If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest.”

— Dan Barker, The Good Atheist, page 29

Without The Assumptions

What if life just is? Based on geological evidence, it looks like the Earth was uninhabitable at some point, and then began to support tiny bits of life, and then later larger life forms — most of which are now extinct — until we come to today, when the Earth is teeming with life of all kinds, from bacteria and tardigrades to redwoods and blue whales.

Does the world suddenly look less interesting if you don’t assume God put all the life there? It did not become so for me, once I concluded God did not exist. If anything, it became more fascinating without an easy, pat answer (“God did it”) for every mystery.

Is the universe scarier, thinking that there might not be a reason for it all? It is at first; at least it was for me. I felt a bit empty — like I’d just had the breath kicked out of my chest. No Reason? No Purpose? Then what is the point of being here at all? A comet could strike us tomorrow and all of life would end without any point whatsoever and no one to remember it.

About the same time I realized I no longer believed in God, I came to several other realizations. One was that I had never, during all my years of believing, actually known the purpose of my life or the meaning of life in general. I had wandered aimlessly. Even when I believed my purpose was to “serve God”, I had never known any specifics; I had merely guessed — maybe I should be a missionary, or a pastor. Perhaps a lyricist for an evangelical music group. At different points in my life, I “felt God calling me” toward each of these.

“For about 2 years now, I have felt the call of God on my life, to minister full-time, in some way. Since then, I’ve wavered in my opinion of how that ministry will be structured. At first, I wanted a full-time music ministry... Since then, while keeping the musical vision in my mind, I’ve mentally wandered into pastoral ministry, youth ministry, evangelist, missionary, street worker, etc. Somewhere along the line, several months ago, I figured that to be a full Christian, I would have to be all of these.”

— my journal, 1990.08.07

The second realization was that any of those paths, had I followed them, would have been self-​assigned — something I chose for myself — and that the same would be true for any future purpose to my life. Because God had not said, written, or done anything to tell me what the purpose should be. In other words, my life purpose is what I choose for myself, even if I still believed in God.

A third realization, which seems obvious but was actually very profound to me, was as follows. God didn’t magically cease to exist when I ceased to believe. Either God was never there, or God is still there. Assuming the former (no God), this means my life had been without a purpose or reason all along — and the same is true for everyone. If you assume the latter (that God exists), then my life’s purpose didn’t magically end when I ceased to believe. If you believe in God’s master plan, then you must believe that my life is serving part of that plan regardless of what I believe or fail to believe.

So, even when I did believe there was a purpose to my life set by God (though I was rarely sure what the purpose was), there actually hadn’t been a purpose — and all of us were fine.

The Big Picture — Cosmological Time Scale

Scientists have good evidence that the Earth is a little more than 4.5 billion years old, while the Universe itself is closer to 13 billion years old. The future of both is less certain, but we can be sure that additional billions are involved. On time scales like these, an individual human life is less than a blink. All of human history is a breath. It is difficult for me to imagine that, say, a billion years from now, any of my actions today will matter at all. The most famous people you’ve ever heard of will be entirely forgotten. And it’s not even a flight of fancy to say that all of humanity could easily be forgotten by then.

Theists — at least those in the biggest religions — of course see it differently. They have been promised eternal consciousness via the “soul”. In that paradigm, it is incomprehensible that what you do today is without consequence. For example, when I was a believer, it was asserted that our actions in this world partially determine our afterlife destination. To imagine otherwise is unacceptable.

But I no longer believe in a soul — or any continuation of consciousness after death. (Here, I’m not considering the future possibility of copying one’s mind into a computer; that would be a copy; my current consciousness would still end.) It was mind-blowing to switch paradigms like this after a lifetime of assuming at least some kind of eternal life. It left me the choice of either ignoring this idea or coming to grips with it. I’m not the kind of person who can ignore such a question.

If my entire being, including my consciousness, will turn to dust in a few more decades, and indeed my entire planet and solar system will be destroyed by our expanding sun in 7 billion (or so) years, then can any present action matter?

My answer is an emphatic yes: it matters to me.

Whether your actions or mine matter at all in a billion years is a question for someone living a billion years from now — if anything living then even remembers our species. But I won’t be around then; I’m here now. It matters to me now that humans behave morally toward each other, and toward our future generations. It matters to me that I have enough to eat and drink, and that I have shelter — because the alternatives are painful and surely would shorten the only life I have. It matters that I find some enjoyment in life, though not at the expense of others. And if I can’t find enjoyment, or don’t have sustenance or shelter, then it matters that I at least have hope (some measure of confidence) of acquiring such things in the near future. Or of somehow bettering the future for my children.

If there is a possibility that our species will continue without extinction, then it matters to me that its future is better — better than other possible futures. So I favor scientific inquiry and exploration, basic human rights, conservation of resources, and careful stewardship of the ecosphere. It matters to me because someone in the past worked so that the present is better for me than it could have been; it just seems fair to pay it forward.

No, there is almost certainly no cosmological reason or purpose for everything, or anything. We have what we have, and we should make the most of it.

The Purpose Of My Life

From the paradigm of religion, it can be difficult to imagine a life without the framework — that you’re on the stage without a Director. This difficulty is part of why it required 25 years for me to let go of my belief in the supernatural. I didn’t even realize I had always assumed my life must have a purpose — and that it must be a divinely-ordered purpose. The all-​knowing God had planned my life, I thought, or at least wanted me to participate in his plan.

These two assumptions did not stand up to tough scrutiny, something I discussed on My Journey page. The fact that I wanted my life to have a higher purpose did not make it so. But it also didn’t somehow mean I am barred from having a purpose. Nothing is forcing my life to be meaningless. I realized I could make my own purpose, define my own meaning in life.

And so, ever since this realization, I have been doing exactly that: deciding what the purpose of my life will be, and working toward that. I only wish I had made it to this stage much earlier in life.

Conclusion

The fact that current actions and events matter to me — and, I assume, to everyone else now living — does not mean there is a magic overarching purpose or a reason. I have come to grips with the probability that there is not a reason, and the notion that there doesn’t have to be.

This does not make my life empty or unenjoyable. I find personal meaning in all that I do, and I try to have a reason for most of what I do. I accept the likelihood that none of this will matter a billion years from now, that humanity could very well be extinct.

So I make my own purposes — to be a decent spouse and parent to my wife and children, to enjoy and create art and beauty, to honestly evaluate myself and consider the daunting questions of existence. I have determined to be reasonably healthy and careful, to prolong my existence here; to reduce as much as possible my negative effects on the environment, which my children will inhabit years after I’m gone; and to make every effort to improve civilization in every way I can, for the benefit of humans both current and future.

These are admirable purposes to pursue, and I don’t need to believe in made-up celestial monsters in order to pursue them.

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Edits:

• Edit, 2016.05.31: Added “meta” tags (invisible to the average reader) in the header of this page. Added link to the original version of this page. Added link to this Edits section in the ••• menu. In the Atheists section, I added “the beliefs of”, and a link to Why There Is Almost Certainly No God.

• Edit, 2016.06.27: Added second pullout into Reversing section. Added fourth paragraph and new quotation to Atheists section. Added in-page links to ••• menu.

• Edit, 2018.09.18: Updated html header and switched to a newer css file. Moved this “edits” section below the lower navigation module. Added “breadcrumbs” navigation. Edited title of page. Tweaked content for clarity and readability.

• Edit, 2018.11.18: Minor tweaks to background code. Added citation to one blockquote.

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