The "Meaning" of "Life" to an "Atheist" (featuring Percy Shelley & Richard Dawkins)
How different does life look on the other side of belief?
Hey. I hope everyone is doing well.
Here’s a post about collecting some thoughts from different people about atheism and where one might find “purpose” and “meaning” after “losing God.”
All videos mentioned are linked and timestamped.
Let me know what you think — and thank you!
tylermart.substack.com
I became an agnostic in my sixth-grade English class. We had a teacher who welcomed our attempts at steering the group discussions in unrelated directions, sometimes talking about white water rafting, dog breeds, and at some point, life after death. Immediately after she described what being an “agnostic” was, I became a conscript in the war against extremes: believing in God seemed like too much knowledge for one person to have, but also, believing with complete conviction that there wasn’t a God felt like it required the same claim on an inaccessible base of knowledge (not that I articulated it like that as an 11-year-old.) I imagined them on a number line, with theism as a positive three and atheism as a negative three. To ascend the bickering, I put myself righteously and neutrally between them at zero.
Before then, I’d always been peripherally interested in religion. Growing up, my parents were in the “progressive” camp of the early 2000s, suggesting that “God” may not be what any “organized religious” group claims he is, but instead, an amorphous “force,” acting as a cartilage between humanity and their deepest existential problems. I don’t know if they actually believed that or were caught between having an unfavorable opinion of the Catholic church, and needing some explanation as to why there is, versus why there is not.
As a pre-teen, deciding on agnosticism wasn’t really an attempt to understand the finitude of life — it was, instead, a fun topic to argue with people who, at 11 or 12, maybe hadn’t thought about it as much. In truth, I think it was more about creating a commotion than applying anything meaningful to my life. I’m now an atheist, but at 23, its utility has changed — it’s now a useful, investigatory device to examine my existence, values, and where the two meet. Having (hopefully) lived somewhere between a third and a quarter of my life, what matters is employing “atheism” to unearth meaning and fulfillment where, normally, religion would be. Luckily, there are “atheists” who’ve already considered this problem.
I put “atheism” in quotation marks, because, pedantically, I’m really an agnostic-atheist. That term never comes out unless I’m talking with someone deeply (and maybe defensively) about religion. Richard Dawkins described it best when asked about agnosticism:
John Harris, interviewer with the Guardian: “Here’s the thing. I’m an agnostic. I’ve thought about the tenants certainly of Christian belief … And as far as believing in God is concerned, I sort of found them wanting, or myself unable to be convinced. But I still think: I can’t possibly know whether God exists or not … I mean, am I being sort of, what’s the word … weak-willed, guilty of not having the courage of my convictions?”
Dawkins: “No, I’m an agnostic too in that sense. In The God Delusion, I made a seven-point scale: one, with total conviction that there is a god, and seven is total conviction that there isn’t. I put myself as a six. So that’s kind of agnostic, but veering toward atheist — and I would be a six with respect to fairies, and pixies, and werewolves and things like that. But there are people that will say, because they are agnostic, that puts them absolutely right in the middle; [that] the probability of there being a God and not being a God is exactly 50/50, and that I think, is the wrong sort of agnostic to be, because I think you can sort of put a probability figure on it. You can say, well I think a God is very unlikely, but I can’t actually disprove it, so I’m not a seven — I’m a six-point-five, or something like that, and that’s where I’d put myself.”
This is an incredibly important distinction to make. Common parlance understands atheism to be a complete rejection of God’s existence, however, people concerned with reality (as I hope we all are) should acknowledge the furthest extent to which we can ever claim something is empirically true, especially with regard to the metaphysical. As Dawkins says, however, this is not an opportunity to give God any more credibility in existing than legendary creatures. Given our current skills of scientific investigation, material evidence of God does not exist. The distinction between an atheist and agnostic-atheist is the concession that science would incorporate God if sufficient evidence was provided — but the possibility of that is extremely low, as low as “fairies, pixies, and werewolves.”
Finding meaning and fulfillment as an atheist probably involves reading Percy Shelley. In his essay “On Life” (1819), he raises a point that makes him a serious contender in the Disturbing Level of Foresight awards:
“Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.”
Here, he finds the words to describe his awe at being alive and its grandeur beside the history of the universe and of civilizations. Our existence, to Shelley, stands as the most inspiring and astonishing fact for us to understand; the fact of our lives, conceptually, outshines all of the systems monumentally larger than our individual selves. However, to Shelley, our “familiarity” and acclimation of this fact is the rift between our everyday lives and our astonishment of it.
It might be surprising to find out that, even in Shelley’s time, there was a lack of awe at our existence — without the social-media apps that are designed to capture and imprison our attention spans, without the availability of music at any location with an accessible Wi-Fi connection, without the ability to talk to someone instantaneously from across the globe. It's hard to imagine people had hours in the day dedicated to things other than admiring the stars.
Today, with the evolution of our sciences since the 1800s (and On The Origin of Species published in 1859), we now have a better understanding of just how miraculous and improbable our existence really is. Still though, maybe now more than ever, there is a feeling that “life” is going unappreciated, that our cellphones are fixed in front of our eyes and no amount of physical strength can pull it away. Some would argue atheism is a step in this dystopian direction — not believing in God, to some, is a colorless view of the world, and robs us of our wonder.
Years before On Life, Shelley wrote “The Necessity of Atheism” in 1811. At the time, it was considered too shocking for the faculty at Oxford, and he was “rusticated” — or, “suspended or expelled temporarily.” As the title suggests, Shelley is an advocate for atheism. He uses formal logic, provides a sharp criticism of “God,” and interrogates humanity’s attachment to ignorance:
“The first theology of man made him first fear and adore the elements themselves, the gross and material objects of nature; he next paid homage to the agents controlling the elements, lower genies, heroes or men gifted with great qualities. By force of reflection he sought to simplify things by submitting all nature to a single agent, spirit, or universal soul, which, gave movement to nature and all its branches. [...] Every time we say that God is the author of some phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that we know in nature. [...]
If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction. [...]
Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the visible objects which interested him, he had employed, to perfect his real sciences, his laws, his morals, his education, one-half the efforts he has put into his researches on the Divinity. [...] But it is the essence of ignorance to attach importance to that which it does not understand.”
In Shelley’s view, it’s easy to see who is partially to blame for our inattention to the glory of our lives and the universe. It’s not God — whom he claims, militantly, does not exist — but our own outdated appetites for superstitious explanations. He says: if only we devoted ourselves to meaningful, real causes, maybe our societies would arrive at an age where God isn’t necessary; a time when we can explore our internal and external selves without deferring to a supernatural explanation and submitting to ignorance.
But in the 21st century Western world, religion’s primary role is becoming less about an explanation of weather events, and more about spiritual consolation — philosophical questions that science may not be equipped to answer. One of which is: well, where’s the magic and where do I fit? If it’s true that, as Shelley says, “knowledge of nature” is the destruction of religion, is it necessarily a birth of meaning? Is there meaning attached in knowing where things come from? — in knowing that our everyday interactions with nature are part of indifferent nature cycles, in knowing that we are products of millions of years of evolution, in knowing that “heaven” shares the same degree of non-evidence that “God” does, in knowing that our bodies will just be nutrients for the Earth after the mechanisms in our brain responsible for consciousness permanently shut off? These can be grim things for anyone to consider. John Keats touches the sentiment in part two of Lamia, his long narrative poem from 1819:
“Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.”
Maybe even more grim is the thought that, where normally we’ve installed a divine cushion to remind us that there’s something larger than ourselves (something compelling us towards compassion, longevity, earnestness and honesty) instead in its place are a ton of questions whose answers are deep within ourselves. And sometimes, we aren’t given a flashlight bright enough to uncover how deep the answers really are.
Richard Dawkins, in several talks and interviews, has his answer at restoring the feeling of the sublime that many consider lost with atheism. In conversation, theoretical physicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss says:
“... And often, in the lecture on cosmology, I point out the two things modern cosmology has taught us is that: first, you are much more insignificant than you ever thought, and two, that the future is miserable. [Audience laughter] But that should make you feel good! Not bad — because it further enhances exactly what you were talking about: we are so lucky to be alive today and endowed with a consciousness, where we — for whatever fortuitous reasons, on a random star in a random galaxy, in the middle of nowhere — were able to evolve a consciousness, live on a relatively quiescent planet … And so, I actually think science can provide a real consolation by saying: look, once you accept reality, it’s liberating, just like a child is liberated when they become an adult.”
Agreeing, Dawkins says:
“My primary motivation [with his foundation, The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science] is that a reasoning approach to science is enthralling. Its such a privilege to be alive in the 21st Century, and to look out at the stars and reflect on exactly the things you’d just been saying, Lawrence — to look down a microscope, to look down an electron microscope, to look into a single cell and see the prodigious, stupefying complexity of a single cell, then realize there are trillions of those cells in your body, all conspiring together to produce a working machine which can walk, and run, and eat, and have sex, and think, reflect, understand, understand why we exist, understand where we came from, where the universe came from, understand the magnificent fact that it could have all come from … nothing, and built up from nothing, into galaxies, into stars, into chemistry, into primordial life, into genes, into primitive bacteria, protozoa, and then right up the evolutionary progression to become, in Julian Huxley’s words, ‘conscious of itself.’ What a privilege it is for each one of us to have in our heads, an organ that is capable of comprehending that — of constructing a model of the universe inside our heads. It is sad that that model will die when our brain dies, but my goodness, what a privilege it is before we do die to have been able to construct that model in our heads and to understand why we were ever born in the first place.”
I have this response by Dawkins saved to my phone because of his eloquence. He makes an incredibly compelling point about how astonishing it is to be alive, and to be a living product of millions of years of evolution, fortunate enough to have a brain capable of retrospectively examining those millions of years in all their complexity. Does there remain a wonder and mystery in the origin story of humanity? I would say yes. The mechanics of the universe and the improbability of humanity is a breathtaking revelation to anyone who has a proper explanation of it. (One thing religion might have over science in its dissemination is how easily it can be communicated, whereas I think to achieve marvel at the universe maybe requires an academic course or two — and not the baking-soda-volcano kind.)
In the three-part television documentary by Dawkins, “The Genius of Charles Darwin,” he gives a lecture to a high-school class in London. After a brief introduction to the concept of evolution, he takes questions from the class, most of whom have deeply-held, sometimes generational, religious beliefs. He’s asked, what is the meaning of life from an evolutionary worldview? to which he responds:
“One thing to say is that: the universe doesn’t owe us any meaning. It could be that there is no meaning of life, and if so, that would be just tough. I don’t think that, because I think we can all make whatever meaning we choose to make, and each of you will have plenty of meanings in your own life. You’ll be enthusiastic about some things — maybe some sport you play, maybe some books you read, maybe your love life, maybe your family life, maybe some of you love nature, some of you love music, these are all individual meanings you can give to your life. That doesn’t mean life itself has one special meaning. It doesn’t mean we are here for any particular purpose, any more than mountains are here for a purpose, or rocks are here for a purpose. Rocks are just here. Rocks just happen, they are here. Mountains just happen — they are here. There is a sense in which life is just here. Life came about by an evolutionary process. [...] We, with our big brains, can think of our own purposes, we can aim at things in life, we can have a grand design for the whole of our life, which is the privilege we enjoy because our brains are so big, and the reason our brains are so big is that evolution gave us big brains over a very, very long period of time. The brains of our ancestors got gradually bigger and bigger and bigger, until they eventually got so big that they are now capable of enjoying music, and poetry, and mathematics, and love, and all the things that give our lives meaning and give our lives our own individual purpose.”
Again, I think Dawkins sells the concept beautifully. I’d never really had a strong sense of faith before deciding on agnosticism at eleven, so the transition into a feeling of individual purpose and meaning might’ve been an easier one. I can imagine, however, how a high-schooler — who has enough of their identity to worry about, as it is — comes to handle a newfound understanding of their life’s purpose: from one endowed by an omniscient creator, to maybe several, decided by them, and their passions. To Krauss’ point, that is a terrifying amount of agency and self-determination. Which one is more comfortable, however, might remain a matter of opinion. There might be some days when neither extreme is particularly comforting.
On the issue of death, in an interview with Lex Freidman on YouTube, Friedman asks Dawkins: “What do you make of this unfortunate fact that we are mortal? Do you ponder your own mortality, does it make you sad?” to which he responds:
“I ponder it. It makes me sad that I shall have to leave, and not see what is going to happen next. If there’s something frightening about mortality, apart from missing out, something more deeply, darkly frightening, it's the idea of eternity. But eternity is only frightening if you’re there. Eternity before we were born — billions of years before we were born. We were effectively dead before we were born … I think it was Mark Twain that said, ‘I was dead for billions of years before I was born and never suffered the smallest inconvenience.’ That’s how it's going to be after we leave, so I think of it as, eternity is a frightening prospect, so the best way to spend it is under a general anesthetic, which is what it will be.”
I will admit that a terrifying component of atheism for me is the perpetuity of death: a complete state of non-existence without faculty to perceive it. For an eternity. When I first moved into my college dorm in the Fall 2021, after enduring the pandemic from my room at home for a year and half, moving to New York City excited a feeling of anxiety about death and not using my time wisely enough to justify an eternity of non-existence. (*Edit to include a quote attributed to Franz Kafka: “He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”)
Well, of course it’s still a terrifying idea at 23, and I suspect Dawkins has considered it more than I have on those grounds. Even those who believe in a destination after death should find the prospect of eternity anywhere a frightening thought, but maybe not one worth ignoring. There's a balancing act we ought to play when considering our own mortality: carefully using it as a motivation to pursue purpose wherever it may gleam and to chase meaningful experiences, but not have it intrude on our agreement with ourselves and the world. And maybe, there ought to be days we spend inside or alone, trading exhilaration or goal achieving for the ritual of self-care and exclusivity. Admittedly, it’s hard to do in New York City.
At the end of the documentary Beautiful Minds: Richard Dawkins, he says:
“Different people have different ways of responding to the thought that they’re lucky to be alive. For me, it seems to suggest a great responsibility to make the most of it. I mean, you’re extremely lucky to be here. The odds of your being here are far greater than the odds against your winning the lottery, so be thankful and spend your time — your brief time — under the sun, looking around and rejoicing and wondering and being fascinated and trying to understand everything about the universe in which you are so fortunate to be born.”
Religion is an important pillar in contextualizing our lives and the finite time we have to live. Whether devout and religious, or militantly anti-theist (as Christopher Hitchens identified), our explorations for meaning should share a similar silhouette — one of community and sharing, one of equity and purpose, one of investment and honesty. There will be days of confusion, but we should strive for an independence from superstition (as much as possible), vie for deeper understandings of ourselves, and track our passions while we are still privileged with life.
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