Normally in discussions between atheists and religious believers, and this is also the case with my discussion with Alex over at his blog, the question “Where does a life without God get meaning?” crops up. I was reminded of this while watching formation of the Earth scene in the ‘Dr Who’ Christmas episode. There’s a bit of dialogue between the Doctor and Donna, as they watch the gas, dust and rock which will eventually become our home floating through space, that goes:
Donna: (In awe) Lance was right, we’re just tiny.
The Doctor: (With gusto) Oh, but that’s what you do, the human race, make sense out of chaos, marking it with weddings, Christmases and calendars. This process is beautiful, but only if it’s being observed.
Donna: So I came out of this?
The Doctor: Isn’t that brilliant?
This pays off later, as Donna decides to move beyond the confines of her old life and start living it more fully, to “walk in the dust.”
This sense of wonder, of awe at the sheer beauty of life, without the need for any higher purpose, is a theme which runs throughout the series – though it seems to have been brought forward a bit more in the current run.
It’s the story of Rose in a nut-shell: an everyday person plucked from her day-to-day existence and shown the overwhelming magnificence of life, pushing her into discovering depths in her that she never knew existed and embrace life to the full simply because she can. It blends the adult sense of individuality, of knowing who you are and what you can do, with a child-like love of the new and out of the ordinary.
You can see this in the Doctor’s message to Rose (at the end of series 1): “if you wanna remember me, you can do one thing. That's all, one thing. Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.” And Elton’s comment (at the end of ‘Love and Monsters’): “When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid and that’s it. No, the truth is the world is so much stranger than that, and so much darker, and so much madder, and so much better.”
For me, this sums up the humanistic view of life. Our lives have an inherent value, whatever the cause, whatever happens, purely because they are our lives. It’s about looking around you and finding value in even the most common place of things.
The humanist loves life simply for being life; they face up to the randomness, the brutality, and the ugliness, because they know that with it comes love, and beauty and wonderment. They look at the sunset and find that knowing that it’s the result of light and atmospheric gas interacting makes it even more wonderful. Or, in keeping with the theme of this post, they look up at the stars, at that vast body of vacuum, rock and gas, realise how tiny they are in comparison with it all, and feel grateful just to be part of it all.
5 Comments:
excellent post Matt. :)
I believe there is a God and that all this matter, these gasses and dusts originated from something. Your post sums up perfectly why there is benefit to people stopping and thinking - not necessarily about the meaning of life but about what is out there to be discovered and learned.
Even just learning about how other people live their lives is fascinating. My honeymoon in Tanzania was more than a holiday. It was like a spiritual journey where I connected with nature in a way I never had previously and stopped and thought about life for people such as the Maasai.
Thanks, anon and Tony.
One of the main reasons I'm drawn to humanism is because I believe it's an outlook that can be both atheistic or religious in nature - it doesn't matter so much why you find life amazing, or why you value human life, but just the fact that you do makes dialogue possible.
Matt found his cake and ate it too! =)
This was a great post Matt. I can't wait to find the time to discuss some of the ideas you toss around here. You know when you get that feeling after reading something... That sort of "wow there's something here that's very interesting" kind of feeling? It makes me want to ditch our literature discussion and dive into this one! But I can't. Need to finish up you know...
I've never really understood the whole, "what's the point?" objection to an atheist stance. From an atheist stance the choice is existence or non-existence, experience (with all its highs and lows) as opposed to nothingness. Life may be awful at times but it's almost always intriguing, always full of possibility. Add to that your point about the sheer magnificence of the world, the universe about us and it seems more than good enough to justify being alive, without any need to invoke an invisible sky pixie.
Have an opinion? Click here.