Life is a party, and the purpose is to enjoy as much of it as we can before we pass out. 
Because we are not somewhere else.
In terms of Christian doctrines, there is no way of us knowing why we are here, because YHWH is ineffable. To find out why we are here is to try to understand His plans, which is utterly futile.
It’s all a crock to me 
To make the next guy happy!
this is our “reward” for what we did in a past life…
make of it what you will
Alright, then, why is God here?
Seriously, no rational answer can go back before the Big Bang, because there was no “before”. Matter and energy are here because of the Big Bang. Here is here because of the Big Bang.
Attempts to push with “why is X here?” will be met with militant agnosticism (I don’t know, and you don’t either).
—All attempts to address the question of why it exists are philosophical or theological, not scientific.—
Why are they theological or philosophical even? These disciplines have even LESS ability to answer the question as far as I can tell.
The problem with the “Why” is that science DOES answer “whys”: causal whys. To claim that there is a purposeful why is to get ahead of ourselves: it presumes an intentional mind, and there is no reason to presume that a priori. Worse, if there is no “why” behind that intentional mind, then we are just back where we started.
Regardless of whether there IS a intentional mind behind reality, it does not follow from that that the this will is of any direct relevance to an individual’s sense of purpose. One could well find the plans of God quite pointless: and take great meaning in their own particular purposes: as they to are a mind.
we are all here because we are not all there.
I personally believe that one of the purposes of life is to answer that very question.
According to my landlord, the purpose of life is to pay rent.
At the moment and for the foreseeable future there is no way for any person on this planet, physicists and priests included, to know with any certainty why the universe exists. So, why does the vast majority of the planet fill in this huge gap in our understanding with an unverifiable belief, like the existence of a sentient supernatural being?
I agree with jacksen9, it helps individuals and societies deal with and learn to enjoy life in this reality, which is a highly uncertain and dangerous place to live.
As for myself, I represent the growing minority of people who have accepted the reality of our lack of knowledge and set myself upon the task of ridding ourselves of it through, what else, the scientific method. And you don’t have to be a scientist to contribute to the cause, you just need to participate in any venture that furthers human understanding. So that’s my “mission” so to speak, but I haven’t relinquished the opportunity to experience our amazing world to it’s fullest. Nor have I forgotten the importance of the positive messages of religion. I stole these from AbbySthrnAccent’s LDS website: Love, Morality, Humility, Kindness, Devotion, and Faith. Not mentioned much by religion, but equally important to me are the more modern concepts of Humanism, Justice, Equality, Freedom, and Tolerance.
So to sum up, we can’t currently know why we’re here, so I’m using my time to help us find out, but along the way I’m going to enjoy myself and play fair …most of the time. Hey, I never said I was a saint in my un-religion.
I don’t understand how anything can have “meaning” in the absence of a creator. If the universe “just happened”, then everything in it is the simple result of cause and effect. If you don’t believe that the universe was created, it makes no more sense to question our purpose as it does the sun’s.
IMHO, without a creator, we are just a horribly inefficient means of turning matter into energy.
Because a rock took out the dinosaurs.
As I’ve said at length in other threads about atheism, I don’t think there is a Great Why. I think it’s an artifact of our overdeveloped brains. We ask “why?” to various events in order to survive, and once we get a handle on the day-to-day stuff, our restless intellects attempt, improperly, to apply the same “why?” reasoning to our very existence. It makes sense to ask “why?” if you get sick, because you can eventually figure out you shouldn’t have drunk water from that particular stream, and that you should avoid it in the future. Asking “why?” about the universe in general – I think it’s a fool’s game. And I’m perplexed (and not a little disappointed) by the vehemence with which people are willing to defend their absolute unknowables.
to build something… god needs us to build something excessively complex. something unimaginably important. we are well suited to technology. very useless bodys that force us to build. jesus was a carpender. he was to build things.
you might ask “what ever it is, why can’t god just make it himself” and really thats a silly question. if I wanted to build a car, and I made myself some tools, before I did it… a screwdriver or something. would you say the screwdriver built the car!?
God is all powerful. but that doesn’t mean he has every single power anyone can think of. he can create worlds and humans and apples and such directly. humans can go and create some grand project.
god has all the time in the world. so the fact its takeing a hundred billion years is nothing… to him… he went “poof” then stuff happened for a bit… and then whatever we humans will make… fell out.
I sorta suspect… after we become able to control time and space… and understand every single aspect of the universe… a future where star trek is like cave man days. we will find out that there is some sort of final project… one last cool thing we can do… and thats the meaning of life…
er… or something
Who said atheists don’t believe the universe was created? We simply don’t believe it was created by what believers refer to as God. Hell, for all I (or you) know this universe is the plaything of beings of dimension X. Or perhaps there really is a god figure after all, but the simple truth is there is no way to know, at the moment at least. If a messiah shows up or we build a tunnel into dimension X then we can stop guessing, but until then I’ve chosen to keep my options open.
You seem to believe that it is impossible to have a life of meaning if you embrace our unavoidable unawareness in this particular question. I however, disagree. My life has plenty of meaning thank you very much.
Not me. I divided the world into those who believe the universe was created and those who don’t.
Although I don’t try to get all of my information from cartoons, but I do remember one Bloom County where 2 of the kids are looking up at the stars trying to determine the cause of the universe. One decides that it was “created” and the other believes that it “just happened”. To me, this represents a basic tenet of theistic and non-theistic philosophies.
I don’t believe that at all. And I’m glad that your life has meaning, I really am. But do I distinguish having “a life of meaning” and finding “the meaning of life”.
I think that dichotomy is faulty, because as I said I’m an atheist and I don’t fit into either of those categories. I can no more say I know the universe “just happened” than I can say God exists. I acknowledge the fact that I just don’t know the answer, and neither does anyone else. The real distinction between atheists and theists is that the latter group relies on faith to make their worldview whole. I’m fine with a big question mark in mine.
I mentioned my personal meaning of life earlier but I’ll repost it:
For me, questions exist to be answered (with facts not faith) and life exits to be lived.
You sound more like an agnostic than an atheist but I concede your point. I guess that the Bloom County strip should have had a third kid who said, “who knows?”. I still contend that if a person falls into the “just happened” group, then nothing has “meaning”.
I wouldn’t totally discount faith and, by extension, beliefs. I believe that the killing of innocent people is wrong as I’m sure that you do. This is opinion is based totally on beliefs and not on facts. Also, “facts” can be more transitory than we would sometimes like.
I proudly proclaim from the highest hills:
“I don’t know!”
There’s nothing wrong with that.
You’re right, by definition I am agnostic. I don’t pretend to know definitively that God doesn’t exist, but he reason I declare myself an atheist is because I think the possibly of God existing is so infinitesimally small. Study of the evolutionary and functional aspects of religion has led me to believe that the belief in the supernatural was an erroneous but ultimately necessary emergent property of the human species. That however is only my personal theory on the matter.
And I still ague that people who believe the universe just exists have their own “meaning a life,” which might be for themselves to just exist as well, or maybe its too spread peace and love, who knows. And, who is to say that such a worldview is any more right or wrong than any other. In the absence of information we’re all stumbling around blindly, and there’s something to be said for the rare souls who buck the trends and strike off on a path of their own making.
Well if you believe that morality and justice are necessary components of human life as so many do, then murder is factually a violation of that requirement. What’s more, complex societies have installed artificial social contracts to ensure that an anarchistic state of nature where indiscriminate killing is disallowed and punished.
The alternative is dogmatic laws, which cannot be changed. Facts are open to continual reinterpretation. I wouldn’t have it any other way, because otherwise we would still think Galileo was a heretic.