As I was working on my weekly post last night, a friend pinged me and asked me for a favor. A friend of his is taking an Apologetics class, and needed to interview an atheist as an assignment.
This intrigued me, as I enjoy conversations with folks who are religious. One of the reasons I do this is that all too often people are told lies about atheists. They’re told that we’re immoral. They’re told that we have no beliefs. In fact, they’re told that it’s impossible to have what they call “objective” beliefs without god. For this reason, Apologetics classes often seem to focus on this idea of objective beliefs and how somehow they’re better than what they call subjective beliefs.
They are taught that answers need to come from god. I tend to think that even if we say these answers come from “god,” they actually come from us. One way to talk about this is to show how.
Anyway, I hope you’ll forgive me as I share my answers this week instead of the column I had intended to write. I’m also sharing because it’s interesting to think about and talk about “Why we’re here” and “What’s our purpose.” Too often, I think we shy away from these questions because we’re not taught how to talk about our beliefs and values and where they come from. So please share any of your own answers in the comments.
Without further ado, here’s the list of questions I was asked, and my responses.
I am working in a class that is having the students ask worldview questions. I will frame this that I am here to ask about your perspective and dialogue about the big questions. Here are the questions.
A question about origin: Where did I come from? Where did the origin of life come from?
A question for purpose: Why am I here? (Do I have a purpose? Is there ultimate meaning to life? What is the purpose of life?)
A question concerning morality: How can I know right from wrong? (Is morality objective or subjective? Can there be be objective standards?)
Questioning destiny: Where am I going? What happens when I die? What happens after death? The question for truth: How do I know any of this is true? What is truth? Is there such thing as known truth?
These are really good questions. I often suggest to people that science and religion are less like two heavyweights battling each other and more like two different studies that focus on different questions. The questions science usually asks are questions about “How?” How do I build a bridge strong enough to carry X number of tons over 500 feet of water? How does the world around us work? What is the sun and how does it work? The questions religion likes to ask are questions about “Why?” Why are we here? What are we doing on this planet? How should we treat each other?
I see this in your questions. This said, here are some thoughts from my experience.
Where did I come from? Where did the origin of life come from?
I came from my parents. The funny part of the story is that years later, after I went to college, my mom told me that the bed I’d been sleeping in all these years—my bed growing up—was the bed I was conceived in. Too much information, mom. I really didn’t need to know that.
To the best of my knowledge, life started in the sea. It started with very small amoeba-like creatures that contained tiny strands of DNA. DNA is like a recipe for each creature, a code. One of the interesting features of DNA is that radiation can alter it in tiny ways. This can produce variations that allow life to adapt.
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine because it takes generations to see different species. In my experience, we have a hard time thinking about very long periods of time. To us, a day or a month can seem long, but what’s 10,000 years in the grand scheme of things?
Why am I here? (Do I have a purpose? Is there ultimate meaning to life? What is the purpose of life?)
It’s hard to speak for anyone but me because I believe each person has to find their own purpose—what matters to them, what’s meaningful.
What I’ve found matters to me is helping other people learn. It’s why I became an engineer and an educator. First, I realized I liked to learn and then I realized I liked helping other people learn. I’ve found that this is my passion and this is what drives me. It’s what I enjoy. It’s also how I feel I can help and give back.
As far as an ultimate meaning, I don’t think I’m big enough to speak to that. To talk about an ultimate meaning to me would be to say that somehow I have the only answer.
I enjoy the search. I like talking to people and finding out what we have in common and how we differ. And when there’s something I can help people with, I share.
How can I know right from wrong? (Is morality objective or subjective? Can there be be objective standards?)
The best explanation I’ve ever seen for where our beliefs comes from looks like the following:
Experiences can be our parents, our family, our culture, books, any type of experience we have. From these, we tend to develop beliefs and ideas about how we think things work. We turn these into values and principles that then tend to influence our actions and results. If we’re smart, we then add these results to our experiences and reflect on how things work to get better beliefs.
This process is what interests me. I guess, because I see it as a process, I see it as subjective. It comes from us and is something we create. One of the things that’s interesting though about this is that there are certain things that tend to be seen as immoral across cultures, like murder, for example. An interesting question could be: What are these certain commonalities? And why do different cultures come to the same conclusions?
Where am I going? What happens when I die? What happens after death?
I plan on being cremated. When one of our cats passed away recently, we took her ashes to the top of a mountain because we thought she might enjoy the view. I’ll probably ask for something similar.
That, and I’d like people to throw a big party instead of a funeral. Everyone hates funerals and I’d rather people had fun at mine.
How do I know any of this is true? What is truth? Is there such thing as known truth?
Scientific truth is that which can be verified through repeatable experience. I know that a car moving at 60 miles an hour will go 30 miles in half an hour because I can verify the distance on my speedometer. We’ve also developed equations that fit with our experience that we’ve verified and trust again and again over time.
As far as some of the other beliefs, I’d refer back to the pyramid. Let’s take a specific belief: Treat other people as you would like to be treated. If I hold this belief and try it out and I experience being treated well in return, then I’m likely to keep this belief. Especially if it’s one held by others in my culture.
When I myself am asked a question, I try to respond truthfully. Does this mean I’m always right? Nah. It means I do my best based on what I know. I try to answer honestly and keep an open mind in case I find something of interest I’d like to learn more about. If I think someone is struggling with something I’ve learned, I try to help them out (this is the educator in me).
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (print or ebook).