It’s a strange myth that atheists have nothing to live for. It’s the opposite. We have nothing to die for. We have everything to live for.
Interpretation
Atheists find meaning in life itself rather than in the fear of death, emphasizing the value of living fully.
Ricky Gervais conveys that the common misconception about atheists believing life lacks purpose is misguided. Instead, he argues that atheists actually emphasize the importance of living life to its fullest without being constrained by the fear of death or the need for an afterlife. This perspective suggests that life is inherently valuable and that individuals have a profound reason to embrace existence, creating meaning through their experiences and relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about the purpose of life at a philosophy club.
You should make something. You should bring something into the world that wasn't in the world before. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's a table or a film or gardening-everyone should create. You should do something, then sit back and say, 'I did that.'
It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing and criticise others. Go create, have fun!!
Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition.
I used to believe in God. The Christian one, that is (There are a few thousand to choose from. But I was born in a country where the dominant religion was Christianity so I believed in that one. Isn't it weird how that always happens?). Luckily I was also interested in science and nature. And reason and logic. And honesty and truth. And equality and fairness. By the age of eight I was an atheist.
People now live their lives like an open wound to be famous - they do bad things because they're rewarded for it.
A Christian telling an atheist they're going to hell is as scary as a child telling an adult they're not getting any presents from Santa.
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
Free institutions certainly exist, but a tradition of passivity and conformism restricts their use - a cynic might say that this is why they continue to exist.
As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.
I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.
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