Why am I here? Because my parents had a bit of fun one night.

Do I have any responsibilities while I'm here? Only to fill the time with as little pain & as much pleasure as I can, & not hurt others along the way if possible.

Like the pleasure of learning so many things this world offers to learn about.

Like the pleasure of picking the fruit or vegetables you planted a few months or years ago.This made even better when you are showing your grand kids where such things come from.

Like flying a kite with 5 year old grand daughter for the first time

Like the joy of your dogs welcome home, when you've been away for even a short while.

Like the satisfaction of getting the checkered flag at Bathurst in a touring car or an F1.

Like looking down a new fence you've spent a week building after a flood took the old one.

Like knowing your horse will jump that log because he trusts you not to ask for anything he can't handle.

Like the satisfaction of always getting the third wire on the carrier.

Like the pleasure of balancing a yacht surfing down a wave

I have my parents to thank for all the experiences I've had. When I was 12 I wanted a pony. They couldn't afford to buy one, but told me I could have one if I could buy it myself. They would find a way of keeping it. I guess they didn't know how much I had saved from my paper run to buy a new bike.

Just 3 months later I arrived home one afternoon riding my pony, bought for 11 pounds, about a week of the basic wage at the time. I never could afford a saddle, but the American indians didn't bother with them & they rode OK.

They had taught me I could have anything I wanted, if I was prepared to work for it. Luckily I have never wanted to be prime minister.

Ipso Fatso – you seem to think that truth matters. If though, as you say, there is no reason for anything, then why should truth matter? So what if people go off in different directions?

You say “matter has intelligence”. Can you prove that? Atoms seem unintelligent to me. Just because you have billions of “dumb” atoms joined together in the human brain does not establish that it is the dumb matter that has somehow “become” intelligent. Maybe there is something more than just matter that enables intelligence?

david f – you say, “I don’t think there is any way objectively to determine what is right and wrong”. If it is not possible to determine what is objectively right and wrong, then effectively, there is no objective right and wrong. That is why I say that Hitler and Alexander were no better or worse people than you (or me). No one, on those terms, can be said to be meaningfully good or bad.

We can say that we don’t like what they did, but that is not the same as saying they committed objective wrong.

You say that you are a “better” person that Hitler, Alexander and Jesus. Yes, you may have you own criteria for making that judgment, but that is all it is, merely your own personal beliefs or feelings about it. There is no reason why anyone else should agree with you.

Even if others should happen to agree with you, as many would likely say they do, that does not establish anything. It merely shows that many others happen to have the same feelings or preferences about it. Of course, it could be claimed that is all that makes something morally “right” – the fact that the majority of the population happens to prefer one thing over another.

It seems to me that the only possible way for there to be any objectivity to morality is if there is a standard that is greater than, and independent of, mere human preferences. That seems to mean that God is necessary for there to be objective morality.

Why am I here? That answer is simple, because I am not there. If I was there, then I wouldn't be here. That's neither here nor there.

From the title, I expected this topic to be another one of those "religious conundrums" with that never ending argument about God, creation, man, heaven, hell, good, bad, evil etc etc and of course etc.

Hi JP,

"for the atheist there is absolutely no reason for why we are here" That may well be the reality, and if it was so, what would you do about it.

Dear JP,

Humans are ingenious and have invented many things - material objects and concepts. I believe that God is merely another human concept - another fantasy which has no existence outside of the human imagination. I certainly don't think that arbitrary being in the Bible has any reality. I cannot see a reason to prefer the Christian Bible, the Jewish Bible (no New Testament), the Vedas (sacred to the Hindus), the Koran (sacred to the Muslims) or the Tripitaka (sacred to the Buddhists). What you believe generally depends on what culture you were born into and whether you accept the beliefs associated with that culture. Seneca, a wise Roman, said, “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”

Dear JP,

The fact there is no objective right and wrong does not mean there is no right and wrong. I want to live in peace with my neighbors. Therefore I generally accept what my society has determined is the law and what my neighbors regard as good behavior. I think slavery is immoral and wrong. In the Confederate States of America Christians fought to preserve slavery as the Bible nowhere condemned it, and they believed in the morality of the Bible.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_slavery:

“Early Christians reputedly regarded slaves who converted to Christianity as spiritually free men, brothers in Christ, receiving the same portion of Christ's kingdom inheritance. However, this regard apparently had no legal power. These slaves were also told to obey their masters "with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ." (Ephesians 6:5 KJV) Paul the Apostle applied the same guidelines to masters in Ephesians 6:9: "And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality."

Nevertheless, verses like Ephesians 6:5 were still used by defenders of slavery prior to the American Civil War. Slaves were encouraged by Paul in the first Corinthian Epistle to seek or purchase their freedom whenever possible. (I Corinthians 7:21 KJV).

Avery Robert Dulles said that "Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution", and believes that the writers of the New Testament did not oppose slavery either. In a paper published in Evangelical Quarterly, Kevin Giles notes that, while he often encountered the claim, "not one word of criticism did the Lord utter against slavery"; moreover a number of his stories are set in a slave/master situation, and involve slaves as key characters. Giles notes that these circumstances were used by pro-slavery apologists in the 19th century to suggest that Jesus approved of slavery.”

Biblical morality is often not up to the standards of the world we live in.

david f – let us take it that you are correct that God is just a figment of human imagination. If so, for the reasons that I gave in my last post, we should logically abandon any belief in objective morality.

That is a huge aspect of our understanding and experience of life to have to abandon. It is relatively easy to say that we don’t believe in objective morality but it is very difficult, if not impossible to consistently live with that as being true.

For example, what do we make of a baby being tortured for pleasure, or one’s daughter being brutally bashed and raped –is that something that is just a matter of personal preference? – the perpetrator happens to like doing that while others just prefer it is not done? The notion of “evil” would be meaningless.

That is very tough to accept but if there is no God and thus no objective morality, the reality is that personal preferences are all we are left with. Of course, we can codify our preferences into law and punish people who have different preferences to our own but that still doesn’t mean they have acted immorally.

Paull405 – you ask me what I would do if atheism is true and thus there is no reason for why we are here. That is an interesting thought experiment. If everyone in the world did conclude that atheism is true and fully appreciated the implications of that, then I think it would be a much, much more difficult world to live in.

At the moment I think most people still live, in many respects, as if God is real. As I have said above though, no God, no objective morality. We live as if there is some purpose to our existence, as if the possibility of progress is real, as if things we do actually matter, as if we have some responsibility to one another and the planet. But in an atheistic universe, none of that would be true – just every man and woman for themself. Scary.