Every religion has a "Meaning of Life" that creates a sense of meaning and purpose for existence. We in the Church of Reality are no different and our meaning of life is actually better than other religion's meaning of life because our meaning of life is based in reality itself.
As a reality base religion the Burden of Proof when it comes to grand statements like defining the meaning of life in an atheistic context. So what is our meaning of life? What is our grand purpose? And how to we justify it in the context of reality?
Some might argue that "meaning" itself has no meaning and that the concept of a "meaning of life" itself is an artificial construct. Who are we to artificially give value to what happens in the universe and determine that one outcome is better than another? What is the basis to even say that our existence is better than our extinction?
Another way of looking at the word "meaning" however is to equate it to purpose. Does it cause something to occur? In this case life caused intelligence to occur (humans), and that intelligence was capable of contemplating reality itself. Without life the universe becomes dumb. Life is necessary for the universe to be aware that it exists (universal self awareness). Therefore life has the purpose of creating universal self awareness. One might argue the purpose isn't important, but important or not - it is a purpose.
We are a creation of the universe. We are part of the universe and we represent what the universe evolved into; at least this small piece of the universe represented by our planet. The universe on this planet after 13.7 billion years has evolved life and we are that life. We have evolved to the point where we are aware of reality itself. Thus it can be said that reality itself become self aware through us.
We are the mind of reality contemplating its own existence.
If there is other intelligent life in the universe then they too are reality contemplating itself. So whether we are alone in the universe or we are just one of billions of planets containing intelligent life, we represent the method that the universe becomes self aware.
So if there is such a thing as value and meaning and that some outcome can be considered to be better than another outcome then we in the Church of Reality declare that reality becoming aware of its own existence and evolving to expand its understanding of itself through life constitutes a higher purpose.
Perhaps it is a property of the universe to start out dumb, evolve life, and that the life evolves into intelligent life. At some point the life becomes aware of the universe and reality and life itself becomes the path for the universe to attain self awareness. Thus the self awareness of the universe becomes the meaning of life.
The meaning of life is for the universe itself to attain self awareness through evolution.
Some might say that it is a conceit for humanity, who is just at the very beginning stages of contemplating reality to claim to be the mind of the universe. Such a criticism would be correct. But every species has to start somewhere and our path is just beginning. We might be like early animals on this planet where they just put together enough nerve cells to be called a brain.
Humanity is at that same early stage. We are just beginning to contemplate the idea of reality. We just developed the technology to be aware of what our universe is. We have some idea of its size and age. We have the beginnings of understanding what matter and energy is. That the universe contains start and galaxies. We can peer back into time to within a billion years of creation.
Humanity is like a new born baby when it comes to understanding reality but we have crossed the line of being born. We are aware reality exists and that we are real. We are now just awakening to the idea that we are reality contemplating itself. And we are grappling with the decision that perhaps we should choose to continue to exist and that we should choose to commit our existence to the expansion of the understanding of reality. We are at the moment of The Awakening, where humanity becomes aware of reality.
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