Does atheism imply nihilism? If not through religion how do you define meaning?

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I have spent many, many, many years looking to answer this question. After all of that, I got some answers. The basic gist is that things have intrinsic meaning, you don’t need to get that meaning from some external thing. Atheists do not find any kind of dearth of meaning in their lives.

People find meaning in things that they want to be a part of that are bigger than they are that they can make a difference in. Religion was, for a long time, a lot of people’s only way to get at that “making a difference” part.

This was long before the days where gainful employment in some larger organization was a thing. Even when it became a thing, for a long time it was purely self interest-driven. It was in the employer’s interest to minimize the amount paid, your interest to get paid more, and the employer held all the cards.

So it was hard to find meaning in going to work. Still is for most people in the world. You have to find your meaning somewhere other than where you make your living. Hobbies were things only the middle class and up could enjoy, and the middle class has only been a thing for around 80 years or so.

So religion. Religion is when other people ask you to care really hard about some imaginary thing. Spirituality is when you actually care about imaginary things. Lucky is the person whose spirituality matches up with their religion, in the days of the Internet, anyone can find any kind of information they want about any way of life. Used to be all you had were books, and books are few and had to fit into publisher’s ideas about what should be published.

All of this is to say that history has, through a confluence of things that are no longer so today, forced a way of life on our forebears that we have the unimaginable luxury of being able to totally ignore. The ability to redefine meaning to be something we find in things, rather than being forced on us, to find our calling, rather than have our calling find us, is something every person should take full advantage of.

Jesus loves atheists too.