The Meaning of Life

This was originally going to be a post about The Meaning of Life(TM). I couldn't organize my thoughts satisfactorily, so that will have to wait.

Instead, I'm going to discuss the Afterlife(TM)(C)(R). I never really took the afterlife seriously, even when I was a Christian. It never settled with me. The odd thing was that it was fear of hell that kept me in the religion longer than was necessary. It's an elegantly simple tactic to maintain membership.

What do I think about the afterlife now that I'm out of Christianity? I can't see it being much different than a dreamless sleep. When a person dies and the electrical signals stop firing in their brain, that's where I think life ends. There's no convincing evidence to the contrary. The only way someone can argue differently is by appealing to the divine. That is extremely suspect in my opinion.

Not believing in an afterlife does not make my life meaningless as many Christians would say. I assign my meaning in the same way that everyone else does, even Christians. I see life as worth living based on that I want to see my life play out and continue what I have started. The Christian says life without God is not worth living. To that I respond: every single person who lived and died before word of the Judeo-Christian God spread to their area.

While life has no inherent meaning, that does not make it not worth living. I enjoy daily activities and look forward to where my life is headed. That's all the meaning I need.

Looks like this ended up being about the meaning of life after all.

I didn't really mean to go off on Christians. Most of the Christians I know are really super people. I don't want to go all Uberatheist; that's not the direction I want my blog to go in. If I see myself doing more and more atheist posts, I'll start a new blog to devote to that. That's a promise I make to you, my four or so readers!