[troutman]

Originally Posted by Matata

I tried the whole atheist thing, but it was just so uninspiring and depressing. Your Consciousness is driving around a magical meat skeleton in a universe of infinite wonder and mystery, and the conclusion you come to is that everything is arbitrary and nothing matters. How lame is that? My life has certainly been a lot more interesting, joyful and fulfilling with my current outlook.

A Humanist perspective is not without meaning, or wonder at the universe.

https://understandinghumanism.org.uk...s%20meaningful.

The one life

Humanists believe we should have the freedom to shape our own lives, finding happiness in the one life we have and supporting other people to do the same. Despite the absence of any ‘ultimate’ meaning or purpose to the universe, we can make our lives meaningful. There is no one-size-fits-all best way to live and we should be tolerant of diverse approaches. Although they do not believe in an afterlife, humanists believe something of us can, in a sense, survive our deaths: our atoms, genes, shared ideas, and contributions to wider society can outlive us.

The one life: the belief that this is the only life we know we have and that that should focus our attention on the here and now

Personal autonomy: a sense of positive freedom – not just an absence of restriction on our choices, but the opportunity to consciously create and choose our own purposes and actions (being the authors of our own lives)

Responsibility: the acknowledgement that we cannot delegate decisions about how we should live to someone else

Tolerance: acceptance of diverse approaches to life (as long as they do not cause harm)

Flourishing: a wider sense of happiness and wellbeing that does not focus only on the sense of feeling happy in the moment, but describes a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction with our lives as a whole (making the most of life and our potential)

Connections: the links that make our lives feel meaningful: to friends and family, to other people on whom our actions have consequences, to our ancestors and descendants, to human history, to the natural world

Wonder: awe and delight at human achievements, knowledge, creativity, or our connections to something bigger (e.g. the natural world, human history)