Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today we were down in Orange County to drop Lucinda off at Aunt Maggi’s house for a sleep-over. On the way back, we decided to stop for dinner at Walt’s Wharf in Seal Beach. This was the scene of our first date, all the way back in 1986 when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The place hasn’t changed, and we’d like to think that we haven’t, either.

The other day I happened on the web site for The Purpose-Driven Life. I’ve been hearing people talk glowingly about this book, and I was a bit curious. Also, Lucinda has been asking lately about whether I believe in God. So this is a timely issue in our house.

They have the first few chapters available online at the site.

Choice bits from the introduction:

Point to ponder: If there were no God, and everything was the result of random chance, there would be no purpose to your life.

I’ve truly never understood why people have a problem with this. There is no purpose to life, other than to reproduce. Why is this so hard for some people to swallow? I don’t understand this whole thing about ‘people have to have a purpose’. What’s wrong with that? Unless they’re thinking that it’s somehow like how “pigs don’t have a purpose”. Are they afraid that if they don’t have a purpose, the Boss is going to eat them? (“Dont’ get on that ship!… It’s a cookbook!”)

If there were no God, we would all be “accidents”, the result of astronomical random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this right now, because life would have no purpose or significance. There would be no right or wrong, no good or evil, and no hope beyond your brief years on earth.

This is another of those canards that I just don’t get. Sure, life has no purpose, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t right or wrong, good or evil. Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. You don’t need to invoke an imaginary God to establish this. I just don’t get it.

When I was a kid, to me, religion was like watching football. It was just something that other people did on Sunday. Religions just strike me as really quaint little superstitions. Maybe it’s a fun thing to think about, but it’s certainly not a basis for making major decisions. So that’s what I’ve been telling Lucinda when she asks me about God. I tell her it’s just a superstition, and that if she grows up and wants to believe in it, that’s her business. But I tell her not to automatically believe it’s true just because somebody else says it is.