Because some people think there is no real purpose or destiny to human life! They believe that only the things we make, like cars and watches, have design and purpose in them. We know what the purposes of these objects are because we designed them. (For instance, we know that the purpose of a car is transportation, and the purpose of a watch is to tell time.) But the things in nature, like trees and stars, were not designed by any human beings, so we do not know their purposes as we know the purposes of the things we design. So some people believe that there are no real purposes in the things in nature, but only in humanly designed artificial objects.
But one of the things in nature is human beings. They are not artificial objects! They are not artifacts like cars or watches. We did not design human nature; we only carry it on, by reproduction.
So the people who deny that human life has any real purpose argue this way:
If only artifacts have purposes, while things in nature do not; And if we are things in nature rather than artifacts; Then we have no real purpose.
So the answer to the question “What is the purpose of my existence?” is that there is no real purpose; we can imagine or make up any subjective purposes we want, but there is no objectively real purpose to human life. Life is purposeless, pointless, meaningless, in vain. “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Eccl 1:2).
This is the worst philosophy in the world. For it denies us the things we need most: meaning and purpose; a reason to live, learn, grow, and endure.
Meaninglessness is unendurable. Even pain isn’t as bad as meaninglessness. We can accept pains if they are meaningful: for instance, the pains of childbirth, or the pains of sacrificing for someone you love, or even the pains of martyrdom for a good cause. But we cannot accept meaninglessness. Even pleasures are not worthwhile if they are meaningless. (That’s why a billionaire can choose to commit suicide.) And even pains are worthwhile if they are meaningful. (That’s why a woman wants to give birth to a baby.)
The idea that objective things have no purpose is really atheism. For if God is real and if He created and designed everything, then everything has a purpose.
We can see some of the purpose of the things in nature. For instance, we can see that one of the purposes of stars is to enable us to think. For (a) if we did not breathe and bring oxygen to our brains, we could not think; and (b) if there were no green plants, we could not breathe, since their photosynthesis replaces carbon dioxide with oxygen; and (c) if there were no sun, there could be no green plants, for green plants need sunlight and heat, and (d) if there were no stars, there would be no sun, for the sun is a star. Therefore, if there were no stars, we could not think.
But many of the things in nature have designs and purposes that are not clear to us. They do not seem to be useful for us. (For instance, we wonder why God made so many mosquitoes.) So it takes a little faith, a little trust, to believe that everything has a purpose and that “all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Rom, 8:28), though we do not see this. This is especially true of things that make us suffer. We do not always see how suffering has a good purpose.
But if the Creator is all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful, then the quotation above from Romans 8:28 is true. If He is all-good, He wants what is best. If He is all-powerful, He is able to bring about what is best, in the end. And if He is all-wise, He knows what is best.
And since we are not all-wise, we do not know what is best in the long run. That is why we have to trust Him with all those mosquitoes and even with much worse things, like cancers. He knows how to bring greater goods out of great evils. That is what He did two thousand years ago on the Cross of Calvary when He brought about the greatest good for us, the greatest gift we have ever been given–salvation from sin and the ability to enter Heaven–through the greatest evil that ever happened, the torture and murder of Jesus Christ, the only perfect man who ever lived, the man who was God Himself.
Christians believe this. Many people don’t. Can Christian give them any reason to believe their religion’s answer to the question “Why do I exist”?
The best reason we can give them is ourselves: our love and our joy. You can’t argue with the happiness of a saint.
The greatest love, and the greatest joy, is mutual: it comes from both loving and being loved. The next-greatest joy comes from loving, even without being loved back. Even this second-best joy of loving without being loved back is greater and deeper than the third joy, the joy of being loved without loving. That is why saints are so happy: they are never in the third level of joy but always in the second or the first. (In fact, since they know God always loves them, you could say they are always in the first.) That’s why the prayer attributed to Saint Francis says:
Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, may I always seek not so much to be condemned as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
By Peter Kreeft
![[Video]The story of Nigerian born adult actress, Afrocandy and the two wolves](https://afterjujuman.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/afrocandy.jpg?resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
Authors-choice: Hope & Revival 
Even if the universe was made with a purpose, it does not follow that we should fit in with that purpose. A hand grenade is made with a purpose – to blow things up. But if someone gives you a hand grenade, you should not go and blow something up. Fitting in with someone else’s purpose is for losers
I have my own personal purpose in life. I made them to be my purpose. I made the choice. I am not a puppet
I agree 100% with you……jeremy.
How in the world are morals evidence of god’s existence?
Sorry, I would have longer responses but I’m at work
Anthony Raffini Morals or Rright and Wrong give a clue to the meaning of the Universe. You will agree that even a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong often goes back on his own words moments later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong— in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else? .It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion . But none of us are really keeping the Law of Nature. We know it, but we break it and make excuses for ourselves, try to justify it. but we know it nonetheless. I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money—the one you have almost forgotten—came when you were very hard up etc. why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule or Law pressing on us so— that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. Think again of the differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.
Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing— a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves,. something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behaviour, and yet quite definitely real—a real law which we did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.
Wishful thinking is for the birds man. You are welcome to wish all you want.
Anthony Raffini The universe is a very beautiful place and whom ever or whatever has made it has a very great mind, but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). There is another bit of evidence we have about this Mind, that is that Law or standard of Right and Wrong which you talked about, some people call it the Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information.
You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct —in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness. In that sense we should agree with the account given by Christianity and some other religions, that God is “good.” But do not let us go too fast here. The Moral Law does not give us any grounds for thinking that God is “good” in the sense of being indulgent, or soft, or sympathetic. There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft
I have not condemned the value of those questions in the latter part of your response and I must disagree with your assertion that science is not concerned with explanations of whence things came to be. It’s just a more useful approach to replace the “why” with a practical “how”. Unless (like yourself) you are to give the universe a prerequisite to purpose. You and I don’t have the absolute answer to these questions. I could be wrong and you could be as much but supposing theism is an option behind one of these many doors is baseless and stands up to no test but fabric-able testimonies from a time when man was even more naive and young than the present. So your message is backed into this corner and pleas, “Science is great but religion could have some credibility too, give it some.” I say, “Give me a reason.”
Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution is one of the wittiest expositions of how variations by which life on this planet “evolved” from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the “striving” or “purposiveness” of a Life-Force.
When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then “a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection” is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind “strives” or has “purposes”? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences.
When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
Chinwuba Iyizoba The underlying assumption that everything has a purpose leads you the wrong way. If one makes an assumption about anything and then draws conclusions about the world to fit those assumptions then one must infer that everything has fit into those parameters. The only thing you can be absolutely sure of is that you don’t know the absolute truth on matters such as these because if you enjoy a bit of humility you will realize just how insignificant we are in the scope of this universe.
We can try as we might though and we should! We can use our abilities and feel confident about what works by observing the direct results…. ah, if I use my legs this way, I can walk. If I move my mouth this way, I can talk. If I use my brain this way and attempt to understand the world with reason, I can haz SCIENCE!
thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”
Anthony Raffini When you say that my assumptions are leading me the wrong way, what exactly do you mean by wrong way?
Are you appealing to some kind of standard which you expect me to know about?. I am not going to say “To hell with your standard.” But my question is, Where did you get your standard from? How do you know that I am headed the wrong way and you are in the right way? Unless you are saying that there is an an objective Right way and Wrong Way? if not we might, of course, fight like animals, but we could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.
The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people’s ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something—some Real Morality—for them to be true about.
The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said “New York” each meant merely “The town I am imagining in my own head,” how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply “whatever each nation happens to approve,” there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow better or worse.
+Anthony Raffini Right and Wrong, must be something above and beyond us both. Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view.
People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us. The other view is the religious view.
That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself—I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both views turn up
Chinwuba Iyizoba We can have our own objective criteria about what the wrong way or the right way is. You are “right” about that but to quote Dawkins when he was asked why we should rely on science and not religion, “Because it works, bitches.” It’s really that simple. If in some life threatening situation you think you are better off praying then that is your prerogative but I for one will take the medicine. Science is the result human reason and science gives us the ability to fly, cross oceans and communicate with what seems close to telepathy but we don’t call those things magic because we can understand how it works. It’s pragmatic.
speaking of Dawkins here are his thoughts on purpose which (not to over-quote) I will use only because he says it sp well:
“We humans are obsessed with purpose. The question, “What is it for?” comes naturally to a species surrounded by tools, utensils and machines. For such artifacts it is appropriate, but then we go too far. We apply the “What is it for?” question to rocks, mountains, stars or the universe, where it has no place. How about living things? Unlike rocks and mountains, animals and plants, wings and eyes, webbed feet and leaves, all present a powerful illusion of design. Since Darwin, we have understood that this, too, is an illusion. Nevertheless, it is such a powerful illusion that the language of purpose is almost irresistible. Huge numbers of people are seriously misled by it, and biologists in practice use it as a shorthand.I shall develop two meanings of “purpose”. Archi-purpose is the ancient illusion of purpose, a pseudo-purpose fashioned by natural selection over billions of years. Neo-purpose is true, deliberate, intentional purpose, which is a product of brains. My thesis is that neo-purpose, or the capacity to set up deliberate purposes or goals, is itself a Darwinian adaptation with an archi-purpose.
Neo-purpose really comes into its own in the human brain, but brains capable of neo-purposes have been evolving for a long time. Rudiments of neo-purpose can even be seen in insects. In humans, the capacity to set up neo-purposes has evolved to such an extent that the original archi-purpose can be eclipsed and even reversed. The subversion of purpose can be a curse, but there is some reason to hope that it might become a blessing.”
Anthony Raffini pleas note that you cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave.
Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, “I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,” or, “I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.” Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science— and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes—something of a different kind—this is not a scientific question. If there is “Something Behind,” then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way.
The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, “Why is there a universe?” “Why does it go on as it does?” “Has it any meaning?” would remain just as they were?
Anthony Raffini There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men.
Men find themselves under a law of Right and Wrong or a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey. Notice the following point. Anyone studying Man from the outside as we study electricity or cabbages, not knowing our language and consequently not able to get any inside knowledge from us, but merely observing what we did, would never get the slightest evidence that we had this moral law. How could he? for his observations would only show what we did, and the moral law is about what we ought to do. In the same way, if there were anything above or behind the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside, could never hope to discover it.
The position of the question, then, is like this. We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more than mere matter in the universe, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe— no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?
In the only case where you can expect to get an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes; and in the other cases, where you do not get an answer, you see why you do not. Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, “Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter.” And if he then objected, “But you’ve never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting,” I should say, “Of course not, and I shouldn’t expect to, because they’re not addressed to me.
I’m explaining the packets I’m not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open.” It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way. I do not, of course, think that if I could get inside a stone or a tree I should find exactly the same thing, just as I do not think all the other people in the street get the same letters as I do.
I should expect, for instance, to find that the stone had to obey the law of gravity—that whereas the sender of the letters merely tells me to obey the law of my human nature, He compels the stone to obey the laws of its stony nature. But I should expect to find that there was, so to speak, a sender of letters in both cases, a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide.
Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.
I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know—because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.
Anthony Raffini How did we come to know that the universe is meaningless? Where do we get our idea of meaning, what are we comparing our idea to when we say that the universe is without purpose or meaning? Meaning should be meaningless to meaningless men. A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet.
Consequently it turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
I can use a rock (made by nature) to scratch my back. So the purpose of rocks is to scratch backs.
Be fair to the Author +Anthony Raffini! He said that since you did not create a stone, you may never know what its purpose is. True you can scratch your back with it, lets hope you don’t get your back ripped to shreds, but you need to ask the stone maker what he originally created the stone for if you want to know what it was created for. Difficulty to know why we have mosquitoes,
No, but it does mean that if we saw someone trying to pick his teeth with a car we will know he is insane why because we ( human) made cars. If some XXX from outer space saw you scratch your back with a stone, perhaps they will really think you lost it.
The assumption that because one thing has a purpose, everything else must, is an extraordinary claim. Before the author can claim victory here, that must be resolved. Achieving it would be monumental, since in all of science and philosophy this argument has yet to claim a reproducibly verifiable shred of logic or evidence.
+Incredible Mouse the simple logic is this. If there is no purpose or meaning in life we should never have known it. If I argue that there is no God because the universe is unjust, but what am I comparing the world to when I say that the world is unjust; I should never have know that the world is unjust if there is no objective Justice. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too— for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice or sense—was full of sense
This is a ridiculous assertion. The causality of if a then b and if b then c does not mean if a then c. Just because cars have a purpose (transportation) for humans as we designed them as such does not mean the purpose of nature is to make cars. These arguments could not be more useless and assumptive.
Objective? This always puzzles me. It is philosophically unjustified. It is a slur used against a strawman, not what people actually think. Consider that it would be better to talk with people instead of passing judgement on them to promote your private dogmas.
Contact me at the link below if you want to talk, though if you want a compassionate and earnest discussion please note that that goes both ways. I will be glad to revise my ideas and opinions. Are you?
Thanks for your comments Hermes, this is an open forum for honest discussion. I am a lover of wisdom and honesty. I thank you for your frankness, a quality I appreciate in people because it is so hard to find. I am a progressive but I believe progress often means turning right round and walking back especially if you are on the wrong road. There is nothing more retrogressing than continuing pigheadedly on a course when you know you have taken the wrong turning. I believe that.
The argument can be valid ecen if the premise if false.
My purpose in life is to leave this planet better than I found it, simple as that. To think that humans are part of some grand divine plan is rather ethnocentric. We are but a spec on an average planet and humans existence in history is so tiny compared to the life of the universe.
Thanks Keith for your comment. But belief in grand divine plan does help your direction of leaving the universe better. I know Christians believe that the divine plan is not only for them to leave the Universe better than they met it but they also believe that they would have to give an account of how they did that to the designer or master planner whom they refer to as God. How do you disagree with that? One more thing. There is another belief that Christians have which you may find shocking. They believe that human life is eternal, that man has a soul that never dies. When a man dies he soul goes on living, in heaven if he is good, in hell if he is bad. And for this reason a man’s life is infinite compared to the Universe because man lives forever? Shocking and absurd as it is but that is what Christians believe.