Why Are We Alive?

We go to work, we eat, are entertained or entertain others with movies, music, tv, drama and comedy, we party with friends, couple, have sex, yet behind all our activities lurks the question, why do we exist? What is it all about? Why should there be life rather than not? And why us—why are we the ones who should be alive?

I think it is fair to say that this is the ultimate religious question. All of our major religions have a “story” whose purport is to answer it.

It’s likely that humans are the only species on earth who asks such a question of themselves. That observation itself, that we alone ask the question of existence, is often thought to be a clue to the answer. Perhaps other animals fail to ask why they are alive because they have no “higher purpose”; perhaps we ask because we sense that we do. That we even wonder about such things could itself be evidence that there is something “untold” about our lives, that there is “something more”.

Before continuing, let’s ask ourselves what kind of answer could ever satisfactorily resolve this question of “why?”.

Imagine God asking himself (itself/herself)

Why do I exist? What is my purpose?

For God, what could the answer be to such a query? What is it that makes God’s existence meaningful for God?

If we try to address this question from God’s point of view (rather than our own) we are likely to conclude that no possible answer could do God justice. God doesn’t have a “higher purpose” because God is the higher purpose. God doesn’t yearn for “more” because God is the “more”.

God doesn’t have to ask why his life is meaningful, or what makes it meaningful, because God is the source of meaning itself. If your life is the source of meaning, it makes no sense—indeed there is no need—to ask why or whence.

The Meaning of Meaning

But to understand this, let’s look at what it means to be meaningful. Words, as we know, are (usually) meaningful, but what makes them meaningful? Their meaning derives from the fact that they reference—that is to say, they point to—something in the world. Sometimes, to be sure, words only point to other words which point to other words and so on. But eventually there are real, existing things being pointed at which are the source of meaning (even if only in a pretend way, as in fiction), or else the whole pile of words signifies nothing.

Put simply, something is meaningful if it points at something else which serves as its source of meaning. Thus a theist would say that our human lives are meaningful because they point back to a source of meaning in God. But notice a peculiar consequence of this. Unless there is a greater God who is God’s source—and by definition there isn’t—God’s life isn’t meaningful. God has nothing to point back to for a source of meaning.

In this sense in which we use the word meaningful, if applied to God’s case we have to admit that God is not meaningful. God’s existence doesn’t reference something else. This follows because God is a source of meaning, something which meaningful things reference, and not something whose existence references elsewhere.

To our God asking himself what makes his life meaningful, the correct response would be,

God, you don’t understand—that question doesn’t apply to you because you are not meaningful but a source of meaning.

And what if the question doesn’t apply to us either? What if it makes no sense to ask the why questions about our existence because, like God, we are sources of meaning, because our living does not reference elsewhere.

Unexplainable Us

It’s not even that we must create meaning for ourselves, as Sartre maintained. After all, do we imagine God making up stories about himself, creating “reasons” for his existence? It would be unnecessary. Existence doesn’t need meaning, and the attempt to apply “meaning” can only bring it down a notch. Real beings exist; they don’t exist for a reason.

In fact, reasons are only explanations. They come afterward, when we want to talk about things. When we want ideas to work with. Just as it would demean God to say he exists for the purpose of bringing us into the world and furthering our human careers, so it demeans us to say that God created us to carry out some grand plan of his. Meanings & explanations turn us into mere tools. To say we need a meaning is to say—beforehand—that we are tools for something else. It makes us illegitimate, makes us important for someone else, rather than important within.

All such efforts stem from the mistaken trap of believing that thought can legitimize existence. It never can.

We can smother ourselves in explanations (as we smother everything else)—and they are useful (extremely useful when the scientific method is followed)—but explanations can never justify usefulness itself, or justify us in our lives.

We are not the sort of things that need be or ever can be explained. We simply are.

De-Valuing the Body

What is curious is that theists cannot accept the possibility of bodily life being valuable on its own. From the natural perspective, this is difficult to comprehend. The atheist wonders how one could not see bodily life as inherently valuable. How can value not be embodied?

The answer is that theism derives from an incomprehensible but long-standing tradition of splitting body from soul, with all value assigned to the soul side of the equation. The body is devalued “by definition,” which means the theist faces a logically-defined barrier to identifying our bodies as valuable.

As one theist explained to me years ago,

The soul, the personality, is actually the being, not the body. The body is the mere tool or the puppet of the soul to be used for playing the game, and for communication. The truth is that you don’t need a body to experience joy and pleasure. Actually the pleasures that can be had on a ‘body’ level are quite low level when compared to the spiritual ones of serenity and exhilaration.

Life, the soul, the being, can exist with or without the body, but the body without the soul is little more than a hunk of meat with no goals, no hope, no desires, no personality. It is in short ‘dead’ for all practical purposes, except for that it can breath and perform the physical functions of life. —John Kendrix, Seekers BBS, Atlanta, GA, 11/14/1988, Msg# 6476, To: The Atheist, Re: Bodies (spelling corrected)

Kendrix’s devaluation of the body demonstrates the pernicious (if not outright evil) influence of spirituality. It represents a viewpoint endemic to theism, which effectively sets believers up for a life bordering on depression, unmoored from any stable source of value. Within its framework, God is essential of course, and in this sense devaluation of the body serves the religious priesthood well.

Yet God’s role is a disturbing one here, for deity serves as a last-ditch effort to introduce a stable and enduring source of value for our lives, a desperate way to make some kind of sense of life and why we exist as bodies.

But you can’t make sense of why we exist as bodies by denying that we are bodies or denying that bodies are valuable. And you can’t deny the body’s centrality to life and at the same time live and feel with any kind of sanity or moral ground. The problem is that adding God doesn’t make sense of things. A bodiless God, brought in to be the ground of life, is anything but grounded. Inevitably God floats off in the realm of non-existence, weightless, groundless, absurd.

The core problem with God is that he has no body, and therefore no way to move or exist, no way to be valuable, much less to serve as a source of value for us. A disembodied mind—whether God’s or ours—can’t bring value to life.

It takes a body for that.

Getting Rid of the Middleman

The natural world view enhances our inherent value because it removes the “middleman”—God—which has separated us from our worthiness. Many claim that nature without God leads to despair and loss of intrinsic value to life, but in reality we ought to be delighted to be able to dispense with the middleman. Without God, ultimate worth comes back to bodily life itself.

Remove God from your world view and everything that matters gets redirected to life.

If we think of ourselves as natural, and of the natural world view as one that folds God into nature, then we see that atheism can only enhance our worth as human beings. Naturalism eliminates God, but more importantly it eliminates the need for God. It brings value—everything we value—home to our bodies. Home to us.

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182 Responses to Why Are We Alive?

  1. Success1999 says:

    im 12 and i just started to wonder why are we alive what is life. Yes i do belive in god . but is the MORE. Of course.but what i really want to know is what am i?

  2. Success1999 says:

    Im 12 and i just started asking myself “WHY AM I HERE”?What is the purpose of life.what is the purpose of death love happines sadness.Just to Be.I know there is a god out there.What makes him or her wonderful is how misterious but true what most people say about that go.And just a side question are youall atheiset’s(sorry for jacking up the spelling) Plz some one reply: )

  3. Mr. Four says:

    @Success1999 Well you aren’t alone. The first question you need to ask is whether there even is a purpose. And even then you won’t come to an answer. I don’t think it’s important though, to know the purpose (even if there is one). Rejoice in your life, live every moment to the fullest, enjoy happiness, love, try to find the best in life and just don’t let your inability to find the answers you seek stop you from living your life. Just enjoy your life. Be good, love other people and love yourself. Do what you feel is right.

  4. rogue says:

    Are you sure that despite the fact we can imagine our lives having some deeper (non-physical) meaning (possibly found in God) that the meaning is not there? Doesn’t that automatically mean that not everything we imagine exists? How do you know that? How do you know that everything we imagine doesn’t exist somewhere?

    That was what i felt when my boyfriend died… the very moment i received the news. It’s like he was just gone now… like his soul doesn’t exist anymore… like everything we’ve gone through just don’t matter anymore… then i developed a hate in God… but then that means that there is a God… i just hate Him now… then i remebered how much my boyfriend believed in God… how he prayed… and i now, I pray again… for his soul…

    And yes, we should just enjoy life… it makes life worthwhile… and maybe be good to the people whom we will leave behind… make sure you let them know you love them.

  5. Mr. Four says:

    @rogue I completely agree. None of us can know whether a deeper meaning (or God) exists. We can believe (and I do) but we can’t know.

    My condolences on your boyfriend.

    Please don’t hate anyone. I know it’s not my place to tell you this, and I know it’s hard to let go of, but you can find purpose in everything, and you can channel your hatred into something good. Love – it’s the only good reason to do anything; it’s the only good reason to be. (Which is what I believe.)

    A lot of people that “believe” in God do good deeds for fear they’ll be punished. No one needs God to be a good person (and I don’t believe in God), if you do the things you do out of love. If you act out of love, you can do no wrong.

  6. rogue says:


    Actually, I realized now what that actually means. When I was younger I like to read about poems and prose about love, about how it makes the world go round but I didn’t really understand how deep it means… Now, when I look back, it’s true… what actually moved my boyfriend when he was still alive was love… and what mattered in my 31 years of life was how much i loved (as in verb) the people around me… and most of the time, we act and base our decisions on love, maybe we dont realize it yet but we do…. we just have to realize to love ourselves less and others more…

    thank you… its good to have someone to talk to about these things… most people will not understand why i ask questions… they don’t realize yet how urgent the question is… they think that believing in God because of the faith they were brought into tells them to believe and be saved… i believe in God but death makes you realize so many things… and my boyfriend being Muslim and I, Christian, sort of makes the thought of God and religion even more confusing… i learned how to pray in Islam the past month… and my sister tells me that what if we (Christians) are right and they (Muslims) are wrong, then he (my bf) will not be saved… that is just something i couldnt accept… what about those people who were born in the mountains? who didnt know about Christ or Allah? Its not fair to them.

  7. Mr. Four says:

    @rogue Do you have a gmail, msn, skype or Facebook account?

    My gmail is mrfour44@gmail.com. We can talk there :D

    Christ, Allah, it really doesn’t matter. Think logically, why would one God be preferable to another? Why would one God be more righteous than another? It’s all the same God, even the Nirvana in Hindu religion (though to a lesser extent), the Infinite One found in many New Age texts etc.

    All of us have this intuitive sense of right and wrong (conscience). Most people choose to ignore their conscience. Sometimes you have to learn how to truly love, but you don’t have to learn what’s right and what’s wrong. Just rely on what you feel. Could a physical world, where nothing could exist beyond the body, explain the existence of conscience, consciousness, karma, the mind/body/soul? I don’t think so.

    I don’t know. I’m pretty sure you’ll see your boyfriend some day. At least, that’s what I believe. Take karma, for instance, it’s just happened so many times that you can’t ignore that it’s there. I believe there is something beyond the physical because I’ve been able to bend and ply the circumstances of my life at times when I really focused my thoughts into it. The key is to love, yes, but you don’t have to love yourself less. You can’t really love others without loving yourself or vice versa.

    Hey, this is what I believe and what’s real for me :P I could be wrong.

  8. Mr. Four says:

    @rogue By the way, are you a guy or a girl? Doesn’t matter – just curious :)

  9. Also Ran says:

    What constitutes ‘good’, and does absence of it means ‘bad’?

    And why only body and soul; how did senses, the dimensions, thoughts and feelings, matter of chances and luck, conscience etc. came into being.

    What essentially is meant by ‘being’

    Billions of years before we came in and billions may be once we are gone. So many planets, stars, galaxies, elements, natural phenomenon etc. – What for? Only because a human life can live for 70-80 years happily? 70 years, against billion of years, a body made by 5 elements, against multitudes of elements.. you get the drift.

    What for?

    What about other forms of life – unicellular to multi. and then their multitude of thoughts and processes.

    What for?

    But we all do feel pain, and wish we dont get reasons for it.
    And we all feel the pleasure, and wish there is more of it.

    And for this and only this, do I am alive.

    The rest, is a journey in progress, as universe figures out itself.

  10. rogue says:

    @also ran: i dont get what you mean.. you didnt answer the question, “what for?”

    sometimes, i just want to kill myself to know… ive already experienced enough happiness, different kinds of love and different kinds of pain that im no longer interested in living but i still dont have the guts

  11. rogue says:

    @mrfour: i do hope ill meet my boyfriend again but for sure, it will not be in this lifetime.. and everything will be different… the story will be different… so you also believe in reincarnation and karma… it seems a rational explanation for everything that has happened to me so far. i plan to do regression once im stable enough to understand what my purpose in this life is so that i can leave early too.

  12. omar says:

    i’m muslim and yes there is a god and i’m ready to talk to you about the existence of god and maybe able to convince you about the quetion of why we are alive ?? and our god in alah and we also believe the christ is prophet with mohamed peace be upon them

  13. rogue says:

    i have not opened this email for awhile now… i still don’t know what to do and what to believe in but i want to pray for my boyfriend so i pray a lot now and i try to fast… but i know im still lost… im just doing evrything that i can…

  14. Lowell Bethel says:

    The ANSWER is that we are OBSERVERS OF THIS UNIVERSE for the Great Mind.
    There must be chaos, death, and suffering, for there to be beauty, love, hope, and
    happiness. There is a balance. Life and Death. It’s all just a dream. Just look at the stars, for even they burn out…..be not disturbed. Just, love…..if you choose.

  15. kavya says:

    we exist for a reason to get bramhagyana and moksha god dint create us simply

  16. Kely says:

    All of your questions asking it self, [why]. There is answer why we are exist you will find it in Quran. It’s all about why, future past this world is repeating it self. For me I know that we live to get things and we die to end things. Everything in this world has a start and an end. Put your faith on god and believe in your self then you will know who are we.

  17. S Ross says:

    Why are we alive? Who cares. Honestly, who does? Sure everyone ponders what we are and where we came from and the possibilities. But what do we do the next day? We get on with our lives. Know why? Because there’s not much of it. There’s no time to ponder about why we’re here. All that matters is that we are right now and we can do whatever we want with our time. I’ve never heard of a person who cared so much about the origin of life that he locked himself in a room and spent all of his life wondering. You know why? Nobody does that. People live lives and have fun. Even if there is a purpose, who cares? Would you really give up your life to follow it, or would you have fun?
    If you have a different belief, that’s fine. Just my two cents. Life’s too short, and I don’t worry about an uncertain scenario after we die. I might as well enjoy my time.

  18. Memo Vinciarelli says:

    My purpose is to be great. To be a star. To have the bright lights and the admiring faces looking my way. I want to change humanity for the better. I want to be remembered as the most positively influencing and the greatest person of all known time. Only time will tell my purpose for this life and my next one.

  19. Ilycatz says:

    I don’t ask myself why I ask myself how.

  20. I am not putting my name in this! says:

    But why are we here!?? Does anything we do even matter!?? I mean sure you can say we need to eat and have a safe place to sleep and that can cover some things but really are humans really that important!? Wouln’t the world still be here if we all died!?? And wouldn’t the world and the animals there fore be better off if we weren’t here messing it all up!!!?? WHy do we as humans have such control over which speices are alive or dead or what is real as in religion or what we believe in is this even serve any purpse in our life. Do we even need to really live?? I mean the world is really over populated the earth is in ruins, animals are getting killed at our pleasure and other humans are getting abused, used, raped, killed, dragged into war, and scammed. I mean as humans are we even doing any good or is our belief in we are better than every other species pretty much is our downfall!?? We think we are the best isn’t that what happened to Satan!!!!!!! And religion is that even real, is god real?? Is life just a mistake and we as humans had to create something to believe in and something to keep us going?? Religion pretty much gives you a somewhat reason to live but is it right and real!?? Does anything we do matter. like work, jobs, kids, school?? Do we matter in the long run!!!!!! Do we!!?? We are just animals that think we got too smart and think we run the world. And is death so bad. Is cancer bad!?? I mean we are all going to die. Death, diesase, accidents are a way to thin out the overpopulation so does anything really matter!!!!! Do we!!??!

  21. Taleasoldastime says:

    @Success1999 Don’t ask those questions so young darling. You will only get answers and regret. Never lose your sense of wonder. Get a fantasy and run with it to bring meaning to your life. Aim higher than you would imagine for yourself. Just like the creator , we create our fulfillment. The creator is meaningful by the creation. Without it’s reflection, it knows itself not. Hence the destruction of man. Live out your fantasy , E=MC2.

  22. kamroc says:

    i think u lost the plot near the end. Jesus claimed to be god and backed it up mostly, came back from death.he has a body.his fathers body is his manifestation of the universe and all in it. I think god is a mystery to man not a problem solveable as mysteries are mysteries

  23. Lexi foxon says:

    I believe in god a lot and I have a question why are we alive?

  24. Lexi foxon says:

    I believe in god and I have a question why did god want to create us anyway

  25. Lexi foxon says:

    I believe in god a lot and I have two questions why are we alive? And why did god want to create us?

  26. Lexi foxon says:

    I Believe in god but I don’t see why we have to be alive but I think we were meant to be alive for company and family and friends I don’t know exactly why we are all alive this is weird if we are alive we just die so we just come alive from our parents then when we are old we just die it is just along life then you die

  27. Lexi foxon says:

    But why do pets die first it’s not fair on the pets

  28. Lexi foxon says:

    I don’t really care if we die it is just a life and why do we DIE!

  29. Peter Youssef says:

    It is really ridiculous that you have not even replied to the main question of the article.. Why Are We Alive?!

    I think the answer is that you don’t know, I don’t know, nobody has ever known, and nobody will ever know..

    the question here is how can you accept life without having a meaning for it?! I think you are just trying to accept the fact that you cannot figure out the meaning of life by claiming that you don’t need a meaning to live.. and you don’t need to suicide..

  30. Joseph says:

    So I wanted to join in on this conversation. What happens after we die has been on my mind nonstop for the past 2 months. It started with a panic attack, and now I think about my existence a lot.

    I’m Christian, but of course, I’m only 20 years old so I can still have my doubts… (I do beeline in god though, I’ve noticed that these past few months)

    Anyway, I am a. Biology major. So when I think about or origin, I look at it from a biological prospective. With my “deep” understanding of biology, life is impossible to have started on it’s own.
    Example: theory is that RNA based life was the start. BUT, RNA needs to copy itself. And to copy itself it needs a PROTIEN. BUT to Have that protein, you need DNA. And DNA Also needs a proteins to replicate itself.
    If that was hard to understand, it’s like a chicken/egg senario. But, it is definitely a valid senario as to why we are alive and where life came from…
    To me, science proves god exists in many ways

  31. tracey ( my birth name) says:

    Yes why are we alive? I donot believe in God I believe heaven and hell and something in between is here on earth now, i believe people believe in gods for their own human comfort ,I mean you are called mad if you see people noone else can see or if you hear voices and speak to someone noone elsewhere can hear,so why are people that pray to a God and speak to a God not mad?

  32. George says:

    Before coming up with your own world view( or criticizing any Christians), I would encourage you to read the Bible, study from an unbiased point of view. If you’re confused about something, talk to a local chaplain( I would encourage a military chaplain as most of them are in touch with the actual scripture and are not affiliated with any particular denomination), or even better, research it yourself. Any person who is pushing their views that is not knowledgeable is selfish because they are confusing others.

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