Is meaning in life found by hoping for happiness in this world or in the next life?

 

Christians say that once you take up atheism or agnosticism or some false religion, if you turn from its God, you end up with problems around how life and morality can have any value or meaning.  They say this is worse than the problem of evil and suffering happening under a loving and compassionate God.  But even your trash has meaning.  Your way of valuing it is getting rid of it. To value nothing is impossible.  If you say you value nothing you value this nothing so you are still valuing.  This nothing is a thing in your head, to your imagination.  You treat it as a thing.  In short you always make something to value.  Imagine somebody in incomprehensible agony after stepping on a landmine in war.  That matters more than anything else.  Suffering does matter more than meaning.  And God belief adds insult to injury when it forbids euthanasia.  Nobody ever died from believing all is chance and if we give meaning to things that have no real meaning it does not matter.

 

Christians want eternal life as in quantity as if quality is less important or means nothing in comparison. That is just greed.  Okay you want eternal life for yourself?  It is obvious you are greedy.  That gives you zero right to in any way lead a loved one to do the same thing.  Greed is greed.  Plus wanting a person to have an eternal life they might not want is not fair.  You want it for them but it is not for you to decide.  Okay you want to meet your loved ones in the afterlife?  That seems nice.  Think of a mother whose son is emigrating in 1800.  She will never see him again.  She learns to live with that and the feeling that she should see him and how that does not mean she will, becomes her new normal.  It in some way helps her.  She is way more grown up than you. 

 

It is greed to want both eternal quality of life and eternal life equally.  If quality came first you would be happy to have a decade of bliss and then go out of existence if that was all that could be done.  But you are not are you?  Happy?

 

What if God’s plan is for us to be independent of him and to die at death?  The notion that God fulfils you presupposes that he is loving and wants a relationship with you.

 

Are Christians craving God because they think he is interested and able to to fulfil them?  If so, their assumption that God is about them is what is giving them the crave for God and hurting them.  Most believers admit that it is damn hard work to try to feel that God is with you fulfilling you.  It would be easier, one would think, just to resign oneself to whatever happens day by day.

Christianity teaches that there is no love without risk and vulnerability. I read a Catholic book recently that says that even in Heaven though there is no actual suffering the risk of suffering has to be present so that the people there can love.

So it is risk that is not a risk at all! If you are exposed to flu viruses and know you will never get flu that involves zero risk.

 

Christ did not promise a garden of roses but a cross.

 

The New Testament itself denies that everybody who devotes themselves to God will necessarily have peace inside and feel happy. It urges you to keep going and obeying regardless.

 

I hate the modern "Christian" tendency among believers to make out that faith will do this great thing for you and that. That is not about faith but trying to use faith to bait vulnerable people and to implicitly accuse atheists and doubting believers of taking away the crutch.

 

Religion always talks about a future without God when it worries about atheism. It tries to make out we have a yearning for a future with God as if the now was not what mattered! It sells itself by manipulating the selfishness of caring about the future too much.

 

Meaning is what you need NOW. And you have it in some form or another. Even when life is awful it is awful because it means something to you. Why put off meaning to tomorrow? You need to have it this very moment.

 

So God has a plan to give us a great future? So we are told. But somebody will be better off than everybody else. So does it follow that it is all about that person? It must! That takes the shine off the doctrine!

 

Talk about the plan and the meaning it gives to life is often totally or largely future-oriented. This is nothing more than dissatisfaction with the present time and yearning for better times. It will lead to disappointment when in wiser moments you see that happiness cannot be what it is all about.

 

The plan is about making us virtuous for God is seen as virtue and as wanting to forge us in his own image. But virtue is not about being happy or content. It is about doing good whether you get happy or not. It treats the happiness of the person doing the good as something that may or may not happen and as irrelevant. Both atheists and believers have to do good. If you need to do good to value your own life and to find purpose then this value is a side-effect of doing good. Whoever (it's nearly always a Christian) then says, "You need to believe in God and that he has a plan for you if you want to value your life" is saying, "Your goodness is not enough for you to value your life. You must seek value directly. You must upset yourself by working for it instead of just letting it happen. The only hope then is if you accept my understanding of religion." Such a person does not really know what they are talking about and they implicate themselves in the bigotry that is Christianity.

 

The Christian is trying to manipulate a person by promising them a happier life. Even Jesus didn't promise that.

 

Is it selfishness to seek eternal happiness? Religion says that God wants us to have this happiness so we owe it to God to seek it and take it so it is not selfish. That is an evasion. If human nature is selfish - which it is - it will not care about owing happiness to God. It will just grab it.

 

Religion continues that we must work for God's glory and our happiness will result. It warns that we must not work for our own happiness - not even while hoping that God's glory will result. That would be putting ourselves first and treating God's rights as unimportant compared to ours. So you are to believe, "Okay I am happy. I don't want to be if it gets in God's way. I begrudge myself and others this happiness." That is an "I embrace happiness but-" kind of thing. So it is unselfish and holy to take the happiness reluctantly. If you can't take it for its own sake but for somebody else's sake that is reluctance. The Christian is not reluctant about taking happiness as long as it is bestowed on God. But how could you be deeply happy on earth if you don't want to be happy? To not want to be happy for your own sake is to choose fake happiness or misery disguised as finery. Belief in this God who is to be loved above all leads to gradual psychological and emotional damage. And that damage will influence others and lead to trying to sneakily poison their wells of happy water.

 

Having an immortal soul is supposed to make your life precious and sacred. It must be because the soul can live forever. But that is really saying it is the potential to live forever that makes life sacred thus life is worthless and not sacred if you live for 70 years and pass out of existence! Is your life really the more sacred the longer it lasts? Bizarre and insulting logic! In fact, bodily life is not much a huge deal if you really do live on after death.
 
The atheist and the Christian (you can substitute any religion of your choice here) have to face one question in life and that is the only question that matters. It is, "There is nothing I can do to guarantee that I will not suffer or die. In that sense, I have to succumb to despair. I am not saying, I have no hope. I am saying I hope for the best in all things except the one thing. So how do I be as happy as possible in the face of the suffering and death that can happen to me?" The answer is that I can be happy BECAUSE those things are future. I can enjoy my life now BECAUSE the end will be bad. None of that requires God. God is irrelevant in it all.
 
All religions from Christianity to Buddhism are evil because they tell you if you do what they say, you will (future tense) have this amazing happiness and peace on earth and after. The Christians tell you that you desire perfect happiness and only God can satisfy that desire. They cruelly condition you to think this is true making you pine for your own death so that you can get to Heaven for this happiness. It will have pining for the death of others too. You can be content with moderate happiness therefore God is not that important. If you can be happy enough without belief in God then there is nothing wrong with that despite the religion's insinuation that there is and that you are evil. We are all imperfectly happy and what makes one happy makes another miserable so they have no right to insinuate. You do not need them for imperfect happiness. They are trying to create a need where there is none by their conditioning. To promise too much happiness is dangerous and the root cause of psychological mental disorders for people become sure there is something wrong with them because they don’t feel perfectly content and they get angry and insecure and may do cruel things instead of just accepting and making the best of whatever imperfect happiness is available.
 
Some people feel their existence isn't worthwhile. They try to reason their way out of the feeling and use religion to get rid of it. They search for meaning. They feel unimportant when they consider how big the universe is and how much time has elapsed since the beginning of the universe. Their time here hardly registers. That makes them open to looking for meaning in the future.
 
Perfect and permanent happiness will never happen. We can get by on imperfect happiness.  
 
The imperfections of life are part of its perfection

Do not look for salvation in a perfect Heaven where every tear is wiped away and there is no pain. The imperfections of life are paradoxically part of its perfection. The perfect moment between lovers is perfect though they know death can part them any time. Life's imperfections are to be accepted. It seems helpful to think about a Heaven at the end of life but all it does is acerbate the pain we have now. It makes us wish we were there instead of being in pain now.

Those who would have you thirsting for heaven are robbing you.
 
The believer thinks that it is God’s job to help them through their suffering so that they will find happiness in this world and the next. That is nonsense.
 
You will be happier if you let this desire for ultimate happiness go. Let God go.
 
You cannot know that you want whatever God wants.
 
The doctrine usually says it is God’s ultimate purpose to make us happy but that could be a billion years away. How could that be comforting?
 
Do we need God to feel our lives have value?
 
The answer to the question is no. If you think that you will have a happy future in this life or the next, you are getting comforted by arrogance and irrationality.