Athiests...if we are just 'meat in motion' and our minds are just chemical reactions...?

People who don’t believe in God or gods, or supernatural beings generally, make choices and have the same basic morality as everyone else, as part of the complex behaviour patterns that evolved in our species, and others. When several behaviour patterns conflict in a given situation, our upbringing, experience, need to live as part of a community, and the satisfying chemical changes that evolved to happen in our brains when we do someone a favour, determine which to suppress; this is often done subconsciously, but can sometimes be conscious (which might be what we experience as conscience). And when this goes wrong, we have remedies as a species codified in laws, penalties and punishments.

Having experience of life, I base my choices on mutual respect and compassion for others.

I just don't attribute the origin of moral behaviour to mythical beings, or claim that the way we resolve conflicting behaviour patterns consciously is through something supernatural or that the conscience is supernatural or comes from a supernatural being.

Purpose is subjective, and each person decides their own. Emotions, like love, are chemical reactions but that doesn't mean they should be ignored. The CAUSE of the emotion is not relevant. How you FEEL is relevant to you. Good and evil? Subjective terms, based on your culture and society and upbringing. Social justice? The same. None of which implies that anyone should be reduced to nihilism or operate as an organic robot. Just because there isn't some kind of supernatural super-being to tell you what the point of your life is, doesn't mean you can't find that point on your own.

Purpose? What is purpose exactly?

Love = chemical reactions dear

Emotion = Other animals have this too

Meaning = Pretty sure that's the same as purpose

Good/evil = A grey area really.It's subjective.

Social justice? What?

Touche, but all you believers are so quick to judge others, I would say you are the robots

Love is a biophenomenon within chemical reactions in the brain.

Meaning is purely subjective and everyone has their own interpretations whether it coincides with someone else's or not.

Good and evil are partitions of how you see the world as such white and black thinking. It is not very efficacious in the real world as there are gray markings.

Purpose is tantamount to meaning, it can be derived by local or long term extensions from which you have placed in your schedule to endeavor some time (eg. baseball game or well-meaning career that finds cure).

Social justice is very concentrated on human affairs. I don't see how else to put it other than how Wikipedia likes to express it.

For your better information, atheism is the lack of belief in god(s) and nihilism is in some form or another the belief in nothing meaningful, I could be wrong. If we were to operate as organic robots, I would be severely ignoring or avoiding my chemical reactions and tendencies, which is not natural as a given human.

I agree with the definitions for the terms you have presented as found in most standard dictionaries. I suggest you look them up (linked below).

I am not a nihilist because I do not believe that life is meaningless. The purpose or meaning in one's life isn't defined by some higher power. It is defined by the individual. It is the individual's responsibility to determine how their life is going to make a difference for the better. This is the basis of morality. Doing something because you are told to do it makes you obedient, not moral. Morality is the willingness to do what is right even if that means being disobedient in the process. True morality and purpose are an internal compulsion, not an external one. The external compulsions may guide your morality and purpose, but ultimately you are the one responsible for it.

Well I don't think we are for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say ''Gee your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose.'' But I'm anticipating having a good supper.

I suggest you read Super Cooperators by Nowak,or any work on altruism within our evolutionary development.

You theists are so obsessed with false dichotomies -- perhaps you should realize that when your pastors make these kinds of fallacious statements to you, they're wrong.

If no claimed "god" exists (and with no evidence for one, there's no reason to believe there's any such thing), that simply means no claimed "god" exists. It doesn't mean we're "meat in motion," it doesn't mean "life is meaningless," it doesn't mean any of the false dichotomies you've been told. Get it?

It also doesn't mean "you must be a nihilist." It just means claimed gods don't exist. That no imagined god *imposes* purpose or meaning or good/evil. That's all.

The rest we can work out for ourselves.

Time to grow up, don't you think?

Peace.

Weird. My class was talking about this in History today. It's a society thing. Everyone is brainwashed to function in society. It's not a bad thing, I mean we're all brainwashed on how to pick up a fork. If we weren't, we'd grab it all with our hands and shove it down our throat.

"How do you define purpose" I have a purpose, I don't need a god to have a purpose

love = Proven chemical reaction.

emotion = See previous answer

meaning = what meaning do you want?

good/evil = subjective

social justice = learned response to society

"Instead, shouldn't you just be reduced to nihilism and operate as organic robots, don't you think?"

In short NO I don't think nihilism is the answer.

Atheists believe in all sorts of things, just not your god. Please at least have the decency to look up words like "nihilism" in the dictionary before using it.

And you can bleat about it all you like, our minds are physical in nature. We know that our memories, personality, habits, opinions, beliefs, emotions and so on - everything that defines who we are - are stored in and a function of the physical brain. This has been proven beyond doubt by neuroscience and by study of people who have suffered brain injuries, strokes or various types of dementia.

The fact that you don't like it doesn't make it any less true.