Atheistic Existentialism
I don’t know why, but Existentialism is a topic that has always intrigued me, and for some reason, I can’t quite seem to wrap my head around it, and thoroughly understand it as well as I’d like. The best that I can grasp of it is that the idea is summed up by Sartre’s famous quote: “existence precedes essence” which basically means nothing came before man, and therefore, man is alone in the universe, because he is the only thing that is without a conceivable origin. He was there in the first to envision everything, and there was nothing there to envision human nature, so he is the only inconceivable thing in the universe. Atheistic Existentialism is also about Moral Relativism. It is the belief that morals are subjective to environment and personal experiences. There is no standard as to what morals are accepted by every person. Which, in a sense, all things in the world are ran like that. The reason why we have the laws and principles we have is because we have all agreed that they are for the greater good through trial and error. We are forever going through this trial and error to find out what is moral as new technologies and situations present themselves. Do we think that abortion is wrong? Do we think that Homosexuality is wrong? It is not the aim of this paper to discuss those things, but we as a society are fighting amongst ourselves for the answers to these questions. I think that the main idea that I seem to have side stepped around, is that the whole idea of Atheistic Existentialism is delightfully absurd. It’s the thought that your life is meaningful, but, in the end you will eventually die and be buried in a hole in the ground. I see the concept of absurdity in it, but at the same time I have to think: No, it makes more sense this way. If we were going to live forever in a magical kingdom in perfect bodies, then we can piss away the time we have here, but the thought that there is absolutely nothing after this life makes me want to enjoy it even more. Life moves fast, and we must make the most of it. Sure, everything that you ever do will eventually be overshadowed, someone will do it better, someone will do it faster, bigger, etc. Nothing you can do will ever stop you from dying. It’s a simple, sad truth of life. But, do you ever not get into a car because you might not enjoy the ride? It makes less sense to me to give up on life because of the futility of it all. Just because in the end, no matter what we do, we will inevitably die, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, I refuse to practice learned helplessness. In short, I believe that many of us, of different religious faiths and backgrounds can come to relate with this idea. Everyone has that moment in their life where they want to just throw all of their shit to the winds, take their pack off and do something wreckless. Everyone likes to be that one person that makes people go: WTF? What’s that silly bastard doin? It makes ya feel good. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_existentialism http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/moral-relativism.htm http://www.angelfire.com/az/experiment/existentialism.html
