Theists/atheists what do you make of this question by Jean-Paul Sartre?

We are what we are. How we survive makes us who we are. I agree with him, and really it's just as simple as observing the behavior of individuals, reflecting on your own personality and the changes you make throughout life. In this physical realm of chaos, mistakes and conflict occur only to be learned from or repeated until consciously stopped. Regardless of your philosphical view of creation or source logic shows that people are different from eachother, this is an example, and this is the only way anyone who makes sense can fathom how and why. However i'm not atheist and while many could agree on it they can still all have conflicting views in the grandeur scheme.

"What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards...there is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it....man is nothing else but what he makes of himself."

What is the essence of a man?

If by essence you mean; The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, esp. something abstract, that determines its character.

Then man's essence is that he is the unique rational agent capable of considering such a question, but he can't consider it if he doesn't exist. existence and essence are intricately intertwined not separate.

This next statement is even more rhetorical;

.there is no human nature because there is no God to have a conception of it....man is nothing else but what he makes of himself."

(human) nature is also synonymous with essence and co-dependent on existence man is what man is... not what he makes of himself, because he doesn't really make himself...he exists... As Descartes would put it... "I think therefore I am" but people that can't think (comatose) still are... so perhaps defining man by his thinking nature alone is too narrow.

In short what do I think of it (the quote)

Like many philosophical musings... it fails to consider all the angles.

It is a bit simplistic as is. Man may "surge into the world" but the world definitely "surges" back. A person may help to define themselves, but the world and their environment definitely leaves a mark.

Sartre is looking at the world from his privileged, wealthy and educated position. The world does not allow the same opportunities to someone born to a destitute family with a serious genetic defect.

Not that it is impossible for this person to define their own fate in the universe and become one of Sartre's peers. But it is going to be a lot harder than for someone born to the class and circles Sartre was born to.

To Sartre, man's existence is the be-all and end-all of his philosophy. He makes no attempt to explain what he means by existence (a common atheist error) or how man came into existence. Existentialism is a useful philosophical exercise, but it leaves too many questions unanswered.

This particular quote is nonsense. IMHO Sartre may have had some interesting things to say, but there is plenty of "human nature", there doesn't need to be a god to make it, or any other nature.

I disagree. Why does human nature have to exist in relation to a deity? For that matter, which God is he referring to? Man is what he makes of himself but we have human nature. A primitive reaction to our surroundings. For example.....sex. We have animalistic urges that we don't make for ourselves, they are our nature.

If one is an "existentialist," one's very own progressed information of the human circumstance could or won't incline one in direction of one or yet another variety of duty. The question is, then, how does an present one advance information and duty. For Sartre, screwing youthful philosophy groupies pimped with the aid of Simone Beauvoir exchange right into a reliable element. somebody else could locate killing Ukrainians a reliable element (J. Stalin), or killing intellectuals (Chairman Mao). those too are "existentialists," as they got here across no God, no Transcendent fact, and actually suggested there exchange into none (only a sprint a logical errors, btw). A. Hitler likewise got here across Jews to be obnoxious, subhuman, and acted for this reason. for this reason, "information" and "duty" are, for the existentialist, paradoxical, as even relative values are conditioned. Derrida, postmodernism, and Rorty are examples of thinkers who opined so. for this reason, jointly as Sartrean existentialism consists of interior it the seeds of its very own paradoxical deconstruction, it fairly is undeveloped with the aid of Sartre, who only opted for a particular socialist humanism, brushing off the greater profound implications of his notions, which in turn have been explicated with the aid of Derrida, Rorty, et al.

Fails to reconcile with reality.

And shouldn't the test of truth be that it is ultimately reconcilable with reality?

I remember when I was 4 and I used to "discover" myself in public places.

My mum had to pull my hands out of my pants.

No, you asked a rational question now let's respond with the Atheist status quo: "shut up you white middle-class, republican christian fundamentalist!"