Before I dive in, can I ask a quick favor of you guys?
Texas just got hit with a category four hurricane.
As someone who went to university and lived in Texas, this natural disaster just got personal.
A lot of times it can be frustrating trying to find a charity to give to that’s not
going to spend half your money on Bibles or half their time on proselytizing.
Foundation Beyond Belief is a Humanist charity that promotes secular volunteering and responsible
charitable giving.
They providing humanists an avenue to donate to a qualified and vetted charity as well
as sending qualified volunteers to assist with disaster recovery.
So I’m going to put a link in my description to donate on their site, but even if you don’t
have any spare money, can you like and share this video to help out the cause.
Thank you!
You guys rock as always!
What is the purpose of life?
What is the meaning of life?
The reason no one seems to be able to answer these questions is that they’re asking the
wrong questions.
And the problem with these question is the word “the.”
“The” meaning of life?
As if there’s only one.
As if, in spite of the multitude of differences setting you apart from 7 billion other humans,
you all share just one purpose, and don’t you dare think to draw outside the lines.
And with one fell swoop, you’re fooled into surrendering your autonomy.
What a shame.
After marinating in a thousand sermons for the first two decades of my life, the echoes
of religious platitudes still resonate in my ear canals.
You can’t have purpose without God.
Money, Sex, Drugs, Fame, and Alcohol never satisfy.
Yes, but neither does religion.
Religion leaves you feeling worse off than when you started by telling you that you’re
broken, messed up, sinful, and a slave.
It re-defines even the best of life’s heroes as inherently sinful.
Gifting us with the inescapable bollocks of original sin.
But I refused to be tea-bagged by religious flimflam.
Money, Sex, Fame, Alcohol, if they become the end game in themselves, are life’s narcotics
for those who lack a purpose.
These simple vices are heavily underrated by the religious, but do they bring purpose?
Money by itself isn’t fulfilling, but try living a life in fear of starvation.
Stressing over the source of your next meal will make you appreciate a steady source of
income.
And studies have found that as a person’s salary increases, so does their happiness
up to about $70,000 a year or so in the US, at which point you experience diminishing
happiness returns.
Sex can be extremely rewarding when done in the right way and with the right people.
When there’s jealousy, guilt, shame, and dishonesty, then or course it leaves you empty.
But if two consenting adults are honest about their hopes and objectives and respect each
other’s freedom, autonomy, and wishes, then even a short term sexual encounter can be
one of the most fun & beautiful human interaction anyone can have.
And the depth and closeness of a sexual relationship can be fostered and increased over time, with
or without marriage, as you learn each other’s emotional and physical needs, and develop
a stronger trust and emotional connection.
But it’s always religion that takes this amazing, natural action and makes it shameful.
Teaching you to feel guilty.
Fame in itself, while it shouldn’t be the end game, can be rewarding as a measure of
your success, knowing that all your hard work is now tangible and publicly recognizable.
Alcohol like anything, can be abused, but sitting beside a fireplace with a glass of
wine and loved one in your arms, or enjoying a book and a fine scotch at the end of a long
day is immensely satisfying.
Religion too, can offer temporary satisfaction.
But it offers a false sense of momentary clarity, based on ancient guesses (most of which are
wrong), and then it hands you guilt, manufactures a problem, instills in you the fear of hell,
and traumatizes you with it to no end while demanding subservience, self-hatred, and never-ending
worship.
We’re supposed to believe it because some wise old ancients offered it as life’s antidote,
to explain suffering?
Religion itself is the source of even worse suffering than that which it attempts to alleviate
without even fixing the initial problems, but merely distracting from them.
There’s no reason to believe that the early wanderers on this planet actually figured
out the meaning of life.
They were mere babies on humanities time scale.
We stand the beneficiaries of thousands of years of human learning, growth, and advancement
that they never had.
And yet people still parrot the old trope “without god, what is the purpose of life?”
to quote Dan Barker, this is like asking, “If there is no master, whose slave will
I be?”
Let’s take the most extreme example of religious devotion: Becoming a celibate nun or monk.
This social isolation doesn’t reveal life’s meaning, it robs you of a life for which to
have meaning in.
These people have no lives.
After all, if you have no life, then you don't have to worry about finding meaning or purpose
in one!
Is the prospect of freely deriving our own meaning in life really so terrifying?
Religions con their constituents into a hopeless and intoxicated stupor before leaving them
with the hangover of artificially concocted shame.
A disease for which they claim their snake oil is the only cure.
And when you’ve been convinced that you’re damaged goods, you’ll sell yourself to the
first beguiling swindler who comes along.
Happiness is like a long term investment.
The reason that drugs and alcohol only bring temporary happiness is because the high they
bring is temporary and wares off.
And money can’t buy happiness - only rent it.
Because it’s purchases lose their gleam.
You know what really does bring lasting happiness.
Deep, meaningful friendships that age like a fine wine.
Helping others, building a family, leaving a positive legacy, creating something of value
- whether that’s art (a heart-wrenching song; a brilliant poem; a novel) or whether
it’s a technological breakthrough (curing a disease, building a tool or app to solve
a problem and push humanity forward).
Expand your knowledge of the world, read a book, take a hike and enjoy nature, travel
and stop taking the things you have for granted.
At the end of the day, it’s these things that leave your life enriched and full.
It’s these things you can observe as you age with the heart-warming realization that
you’re responsible for that.
You did that.
You made the world a little bit better.
Not because it was dictated to you as some type of top-down, cookie cutter construct
crapped on you from the aging bowels of a religious codger.
You derive your meaning.
No one else.
Because you are free!
And for that you can and should be proud.
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You guys rock so much!
And together, we’re making a difference.