The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
Alan Watts.
move with it, and join the dance
One big issue in the debate between Theists and Atheists is meaning and where individuals find it. Without God, there is no Hope, Meaning and Purpose is the argument use to defend Gods existence.
An attitude from theists towards atheists is that they have no meaning in their lives. Atheists see such an attitude as both condescending and a failure to understand.
Ikigai
As a non-believer, a Buddhist, I don’t feel the need for such an explanations. I can be happy, successful, compassionate, loving without a deity based cosmology. I wager other non-believers like the Japanese would agree.
Whilst I can point out the illogical of claims for theism, one of the most important reasons is that I don’t; find it necessary in my life; all that I want and need I can find outside of theism.
The idea atheists have no meaning is projecting their insecurities onto others. They assume other people are like them, with the same fears and hopes.
Such insecurity and an attachment distorts their thinking and poisons their interactions with non-believers.
Consider Ikigai (生き甲斐, ‘a reason for being’, the Japanese concept referring to meaning or purpose.
It’s that feeling of accomplishment and fulfilment as people follow their interests and passion in life. The Japanese don’t believe in the creator deity hypothesis.
Wabi Sabi
Seeking meaning in transience is part of the Philosophy of the Japanese, called Wabi-Sabi. It appreciates beauty and its impermanence. It’s the study of aesthetics and meaning: Involving transience, imperfection, refinement, and a rough raw unfinished quality of objects and places like pots, jars, rocks, gardens, architecture, and more.
The most obvious time of this is the famous Cherry Blossom Festival. The cherry blossom is new life, but it’s also fleeting, only lasting about four weeks.
Absurd?
‘I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.’
Umberto Eco.
We often ask ourselves. “Why are we here? Why is the cosmos the way it is and not another? What matters to me?
Putting aside for the moment, the answer. What makes us think such a question is even necessary to ask?
Just because we can frame a question doesn’t mean the answer will make sense, or there is an answer, or the question is valid.
The question itself implies there has to be an answer to be discovered. The cosmos has no obligation to meet our expectations. That includes making sense. This makes both the question and the answer seemingly absurd.
God is not even an answer because you don’t answer one mystery by citing another. We are trying to find certainty in a cosmos that doesn’t provide it.
Putting that aside, I see a significant influence of values.
Autotelic
Consider dancing; the aim or intention of dance is not where you end up on the dancefloor. Its purpose is to enjoy the dance or to use the proper term, Autotelic. Taoism and Zen are also like this; living with the aim of not having an ultimate purpose but enjoying the play of life.
Enjoy life as you enjoy art, for the experience . In art is called Formalism in art, or ‘Art for art sake’ of Abbot McNeill Whistler.
Like music, we can enjoy it without thinking there is a message or meaning. We can enjoy the melody, the rhythm.
It’s doesn’t follow that something is transient that it can’t be wondrous, beautiful. The change of the material world doesn’t undermine its meaning to us.
Values in play
We see here is not truth or facts but the role of values and how they guide our search.
One value that plays a role is the desire for authority. Some individuals want to be told what to do and think. Yet values vary, and many value autonomy and authenticity and live their lives as they see fit without being told how to piece it together.
Another is permanence. Theists can only seem to accept meaning, truth, happiness if it is eternal. Yet a sunset is no less incredible for it ‘s impermanence.. Is family no less important despite their mortality?
Meaning doesn’t have to be eternal or with a purpose to still count as meaningful.
Security
Another value is the need for security. What I see is the theist’s need for security by believers. Believers hold onto this seemingly fixed purchase with a death grip. Because to let go is too scary.
Such neediness means trading in truth for security and safety. Many non-believers care too much about the truth to sign up for a comforting belief.
Our need for control for safety lies at the centre of the god answer—the inability to face uncertainty with a deity to hold your hand.
Instead of changing ideas for better ones, they double down with their insecurity and cling to the narrative even more.
There has to be a god because they can’t accept the possibility of not being one.
Spiritual minimalism
For some there’s no need for a God, non-believers don’t carry that baggage.
What I like about Buddhism; is it focuses on what matters, this reality. The fact is we suffer and one day leave this life behind. The critical question to ask is not is there an afterlife, but how does one live the best life one has.
Non-believers like the Japanese have their system of beliefs, and they gain purpose and meaning from it. Theists can’t understand how someone can live their lives and not believe or care about theology.
The absence of an answer to ultimate meaning or purpose is not an indicator of a failed, erroneous, or incomplete worldview.
Buddhism is sort of like Spiritual Minimalism. There’s no need to answer the big questions. Indeed such metaphysical speculation is irrelevant, even a distraction.
This Buddhist outlook strikes a balance between Externalism and Nihilism, as pointed out by Nagarjuna. It doesn’t lead to nihilism and lack of meaning, but nor to the naivete idea we can grasp this cosmos, and squeeze it to find a fixed, truth, a bedrock to stand upon.
There is a Philosophy of the Void
‘Not everyone who stares into the abyss, the seeming purposelessness of existence, is horrified by it. Some smile.’
What the Existentialists are telling us is the same as the Buddhist; we create meaning in the embedded existence of life.
It’s Life-affirming, Amor Fati, ‘Love your fate’. The willingness to accept uncertainty and ambiguity are part of existence.
Such freedom demands responsibility, which is why this path can be difficult. But the rewards are that you get to make a life that’s is far more your own. Rather than think your life is what this authority tells you.
Some people need to be told what to do and think about what to believe. But some of us want to figure that out for ourselves.
Believers shouldn’t begrudge people who don’t need explanations or answers, and non-believers shouldn’t begrudge people who do.
God as the only way is the selfish idea spirituality is only within the purview of Theists, Theistic imperialism.
“If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there’s nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?” ― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
If this life is the only one we have, it matters more. You take pleasure in simple things—a nice cup of tea, the wind in your face, great at, pleasant company. The moments are treasured more because we know they won’t last, and we can be only sure of this life.
Life is full of little meanings that add up to a lot. Where does this leave us? A purposeless cosmos is not a problem.
Do not aim for the world beyond, do better in this one, feel the life, the hustle, the bustle: love and dance and play in the world.
Life is like a dance; get lost in it.
‘A new pride my ego taught me, and this I teach men: no longer to bury one’s head in the sand of heavenly things, but to bear it freely, an earthly head, which creates a meaning for the earth.’
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Part One, “On the Afterworldly”
Conclusion
The answer to life is not in the desperate pursuit of a transcendent answer or answer giver. But in living this life, you have.
It’s a more pragmatic view of existence without the time-wasting practice of asking questions that don’t have answers – There is no secret ingredient.
The real questions are not the absolute or ultimate truth, but ‘What should I do with my life? What’s an excellent way to live. That’s what spirituality is for, not this metaphysical posturing.
Theists don’t get to define what being religious or spiritual is. They don’t get to determine the right questions to ask, the answers or the values that matter -especially not what meaning means for the rest of us.