What is the purpose of life?

This question is obviously ones that everyone looks for the answer to. This is a question that many people feel are unanswerable within our lifetime. This is a question that people spend their lives looking for the answer to. This is a question that many people waste their lives trying to find the answer to.

It is not the questions themselves that I am going to focus on in this piece of writing though, but rather I am going to look at the answer. For many people the answer to this question does not rest in our lives, but rather in our death. They believe that upon our deaths the quality of our life will be judged. The judge will ultimately decide if our lives warrant the reward of eternal bliss and happiness. The result if we do not earn this reward sways between either just an absence of existence and eternal torture.

Ultimately the believer believes that following in the traditions and teachings of their religion will lead them to an eternal bliss. They invest great amounts of time in their life to rituals such as praying and going to weekly mass. They invest great quantities of money into their religion, and do things to propagate their belief as they are taught to do. They oppose things that they are taught that their deity does not believe in are bad, and in some cases go to extreme lengths to oppose the things that they are taught are bad. People will live their entire lives focused on one thing in mind, or die with this one thing in mind, knowing that at the end of the day they will be awarded with access into a realm of eternal bliss or in some cases out of fear of the alternative.

What a cruel way to waste our lives on earth. Even if there was a deity, I just don’t understand why it would provide all humans a chance at life on earth for a speck of time only to wish that they spend great amounts of their life worshiping them which is something that ultimately they will be doing for eternity anyways. If you believe in a deity or not, life should be seen as a great gift that you only get once. Even if you believe in reincarnation you would be wasting great quantities of this conscious life.

This is a distinctive advantage to being an atheist. It sets you free to spend more of your time exploring the world and the universe with an open mind to possibilities without the distraction of judgment or needing to fill a quota of religious duties just to avoid a negative judging after your death. Of course atheism, though I think is the logical choice, is not the only route to doing this. You could very easily still believe in a deity without believing that it is going to judge you on your praises but perhaps rather judge you on how much you actually live your life and took advantage of the great opportunity that you are given.

From a scientific perspective, the odds on us being here are simply astronomical. We should each individually consider ourselves incredibly fortunate. That is a message that is not often portrayed to the religiously devout of the world. The religiously devout frequently seem to think that atheists and the scientific perspective on the world do not provide a meaning for life. In fact, I believe it is quite the opposite. Science provides us the outlook that we are so fortunate to be here, that we simply must take advantage of it to its fullest. That we must use every moment we have to learn about it, and to foster the world and our society so that we can all enjoy and take pleasure in it.

Religion provides an answer to those questions, but what it does not do is provide truth or knowledge about those answers. It simplifies the answer into a simplistic scope and removes reason from living our lives for the purpose of our lives and instead promotes the idea that this is only a temporary stage and that we need to focus on our death rather than our life. This form of thinking sadly removes the need to investigate and to learn about our world, to learn about nature, and the universe. It removes all of the wonder out of the world and the universe and instead writes it off as the result of a finger snapping by a deity.

Here is a quote that I think many people may recognize that I think describes religion perfectly:

“It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desires of our hearts…this mirror will give us neither knowledge, or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” – Albus Dumbledore

Though J.K. Rowling was using this character to describe the Mirror of Erised the description fits religion perfectly. Religion is a reflection of what we would ultimately like to believe. We of course would like to believe that we are special and important. We would like to believe that death is not the end. We would like to believe that there is a greater reason for us being here. We would like to understand the answer to all the complication in our world and universe is actually rather simplistic. We would like to believe that we are greater than a blip on the radar in terms of our planet, and practically not a blip when it comes out our universe and beyond.

Religion provides us a wonderful existence of pure bliss for the rest of eternity. It provides us with any answer we need, removes the need to worry about asking questions, and removes the need for us to ever admit a fault in our understanding. It is like standing in front of the Mirror of Erised and seeing the universe for what we would like, and then turning around and believing that it is true. The question then becomes, “at what cost?” Is it worth the cost of so much of our lives to invest in this view to sacrifice our ability to learn and progress our knowledge of our world and universe? Do we rot away in front of that mirror hoping that it is true, or do we explore our world and just wait and see? Many people are driven mad in the face of religion and no one defends them, but aren't extremists and people who are mentally unstable just products of looking into the mirror for too long?

As a society we need to let go of these ancient writings that talked about how the world came to be and start looking at the fact that we have much better ideas. People today are immensely more knowledgeablethan they were 2000+ years ago. We have generations of obtained knowledge, proven facts, and a just endlessly complicated view of life, the world, and the universe. There is so much knowledge out there and many truths can be obtained from that knowledge.

The truth that we are a blip on the radar may seem like a demeaning thing on the surface, but I believe that it is far from it. The fact that we are so unimportant yet so capable of understanding it and learning about it only implies that we are so very fortunate to get to live our lives now, at this point.

I am personally so glad to be here at this point in time. To get to witness the great wonders of our world, to watch as we uncover and mysteries that have existed for thousands of years or longer. As we look into our universe and learn how immensely complicated it really is. This is a great time to be alive, it is a great time to learn and I am so glad to be a part of it. I am so glad that I am able to share it with a young mind that is able to see the world from a perspective of great respect that I did not gain until much later in life.

What is the purpose of life?

The answer is simply living your life. That is why we are here, we are here to live. Do not miss out on life due to a belief that this life is a spec on the radar compared to an eternal existence. Even if you are right and you get to go to eternal paradise, this is still your only chance at this life. If a deity created all of this, perhaps finding out exactly what it created and enjoying the gift it gave you is more important than the rituals. Keep in mind that the books were written by people thousands of years ago. Their ability to perceive the world and the universe was a lot more limited than ours today. So go out and learn what our world has to offer and accept it for what it is.

If, at the end of your life, you are standing in front of your judger and it asks you why you did not spend your life praising it, you should be able to put your head high and be content to say that you were enjoying its creation and everything it had to offer. You can thank your deity for the opportunity to live a life and to enjoy it. Surely your deity would respect this kind of devotion to life over the person that closes their eyes and prays ignoring the wonders that are going on around them. What greater insult could you provide your deity than to ignore and potentially deny the wonderful creation that it built?