Shouldn't atheists refuse meaning in life and accept its inherently bad ?

[u/efilist_sentientist]

Atheism arises from rationality i.e logic. If God doesn't exist (obviously doesn't) then you can't say there is a grand plan ! Existence is just pointless. In a pointless existence we have wars, crimes, predation, natural disasters, torture, exploitation and slavery, accidents, diseases and many more inevitable sufferings going on. Nobody can stop these these are inevitable.

Can you deny these facts ? If not then the only rational solution for existence is extinctionism. Extinction of all conscious sentient living beings. As rationalists you must agree to that ?

[u/efilist_sentientist]

No I'm an atheist. Who is extinctionist. I'm just debating you.

[u/Xeno_Prime → u/efilist_sentientist]

I see. My immediate question then becomes "why haven't you killed yourself"? Any reason you could possibly have to not do so would fly in the face of what you claim to believe. You clearly have a reason to prefer life over death, even with all the pain and suffering that comes with living, meaning the pros outweigh the cons. This is true for the vast majority of people. Ergo you cannot justify killing everyone, ending both pros and cons alike, when so many people (including yourself) obviously feel the pros are worth the cons.

But as to what I promised.

Theists think gods provide meaning or purpose to our existence. You evidently believe that as well, or else you wouldn't state that it's atheists specifically who should refuse meaning in life, which implies you think theists DO have meaning in life, and the only distinction between theists and atheists is whether they're superstitious.

However, no theist has ever been able to answer the challenge I gave you. If you say you're an atheist, then fine, but go ahead and try to think of an answer anyway. What meaning or purpose could gods provide, if they existed?

Here's the problem there - if we were created by gods then we have only whatever meaning or purpose they intended. Our purpose and meaning are theirs, not our own, and they inescapably make us fall into one of four categories:

1. We were created to be pets: We are intended to be shaped into something pleasing to our creators, and will be either rewarded or punished accordingly.
2. We were created to be playthings: We are intended to amuse/entertain our creators. We're basically just toys.
3. We were created to be sycophants: We are intended to praise and worship our creators, and validate their egos.
4. We were created to be slaves: We are intended to accomplish some task that our creators have for whatever reason chose not to accomplish themselves, not unlike the way we invented roombas to vacuum our homes for us. This makes our meaning/purpose about as profound and important as that of a hammer or screwdriver, but if our creator is also all-powerful then that makes us less than nothing, because such a creator could accomplish literally any task with little more than a thought, and so we are completely redundant and unnecessary.

Can you come up with any purpose or meaning that any creator could have for us that does not fall into one of those four categories? Again, I'm not asking because I think you're theist, you stated you're not. But you still appear to think there's some kind of relevance here between theism and atheism, as evidenced by the fact you came to an atheist subreddit and claimed that atheists in particular should "refuse meaning in life" implying that theists should not do the same, so I think it's worth revealing to you that theists have no more meaning or purpose than we do, not even if their gods really exist.

But now let me explain why they actually have less meaning and purpose than we do.

If things such as gods exist, then they and they alone have true meaning and purpose. But if they do not exist, all of the meaning and purpose that would have been theirs falls to us. We become the most important thing that exists. By "we" I mean sapient intelligent lifeforms possessing agency - meaning humans, but also meaning any intelligent aliens that may exist, and even any true artificial intelligence that we may create. Any entity capable of agency, thinking for itself and making its own choices driven by more than mere instinct alone.

If there are no gods, then all value comes from us. Nothing that exists can have any value, be it utility or aesthetic beauty or anything else, except that value it has with respect to sapient agents like us. The responsibility therefore falls to us to be the very stewards of reality itself, and to do everything in our power to make it as good as we possibly can - curing diseases, preserving life, preventing disasters, etc - simply because we're the only beings capable of rising to the task. You can point to all our imperfections and shortcomings until you're blue in the face, it won't change the fact that if there are no gods then we are the best reality has. You would also be ignoring the fact that we are the only possible source of goodness, and without us, that too would cease to exist.

So you see, theists aren't actually gaining any meaning or purpose from their beliefs, not even if their beliefs are true and their gods really exist. What they're actually doing is shirking their responsibility, attempting to pass it on to something else that we have every indication doesn't even exist at all. They're effectively leaving cruel and uncaring nature to take its course, which can only result in decay and death. Meanwhile, the secular know that it's either us, or nothing. If we don't rise to the task, nothing else will. That is our meaning and our purpose. You, ironically, are effectively talking about what amounts to "we should kill ourselves because bringing goodness to reality is too hard and we can probably never achieve absolute perfection."

[u/SmallKangaroo → u/efilist_sentientist]

You should maybe work on making a more effective argument - the fact that people aren’t sure of your stance goes to show that your argument was ineffective and unclear