The Frosty Atheist
By Ross Meisner
Today I offer the most profound insight I’ve ever had. Like most people, I have pondered the meaning of life.
Like many atheists, I have probably spent way too much time dissecting this question from many angles. It’s fascinating to think about why we humans exist. But the urgent and essential question is frighteningly specific: “Why am I here?”
For a long time I was comfortable with a general conclusion based on biology. We exist as astronomically improbable life forms with an evolved higher intelligence; as lifeforms our primary purpose is simply to exist, procreate, and continue the species. Our intelligence makes this easier (we’re the apex predator and we change our environment to better suit our species) but it also introduces a distracting ability to ask, “Why?”
Asking why seeks to reveal some inherent meaning in what atheists recognize is a random outcome of the universe — our existence. Over time, humanity used its higher intelligence to invent convoluted glorious explanations for that inherent meaning. We’re God’s angels! We’re made with a purpose! We will reincarnate until we “get it right!” Whatever.
I’m here today to suggest that — despite existing in an utterly indifferent universe — there IS real meaning to each of our lives, and funnily enough, it has a connection to those glorious religious fictions of old. Religious stories were created by us to give our lives meaning, and that creative act is empowering, even though the old religious stories that derived from it were nonsense.
So there it is. The reason why we are here is informed by, and created by, our own minds. There is no pre-existing meaning being handed down. We get to decide and define it, individually.
In a nutshell: “There is NO meaning to life — other than the meaning YOU give it.”
Whether one chooses to redeem a social wrong, grow a vegetable patch, or simply make one person’s life easier, we each get to give our own life meaning. To me, that is a delightful, liberating, and truly profound realization.
