Why is meaning/reason so important?

Every time a christian tries to discredit evolution or big bang theory or abiogenesis or any of these scientific theories. there's always a massive emphasis on meaning or reason.
"And then a small bit of nothing exploded for no reason to produce everything for no reason and then some lightning hit a mud puddle and life came about for no reason and then it changed and eventually through random mutations we got humans for no reason.

Why do things need to have reasons, an earthquake has no reason behind it? It has an explanation as to how it happened but there's no reason as to why it happened, no special significance to anything we have directly done, no god divinely punishing people, nothing.
is a world without meaning really such a scary concept?
I believe this to be part of the reason people make gods.

Your opinions please.

"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point."
Richard Dawkins

I think the reason people make gods is so they can have something to believe in. If it gives em hope, who am I to knock it? I think that people like/want explantions about things, I know I do. Everybody is different.

I think you are confusing cause and effect with logical progression. The world exists and will continue to do so long after our passing.

My problem is that I would rather have real hope, real explanations and not something that I made up or someone else drummed into me.
there's also the indoctrination factor and that as a side effect of the method used by religion to explain these things it spreads and in doing so reduces the amount of people who care about the real answers and the real hope.

I think some people are scared by mortality. Personally when I die if all that happens is I become worm food, meh I could't give a s***. What I do think is important is being a good person and doing my best to have a positive effect on people I meet, loving my family and friends and (when I have them) teaching my kids to be the same. When you really think about it, Even without a heaven we're all immortalised by passing our genes onto the next generation.

Same here,but any shred of hope, be it false or "real" as you put it, is hope nonetheless. Personally, I like to know my chances on something, rather than putting my faith into someone and hoping they "listen" or whatever.

Katie, that's a great way of thinking about it. We are also immoralized by memories and thoughts that people have of us. I think everyone is scared of death and their mortality. People should lead good lives for themselves, not because a book tells you to do so.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says of him: "Firmly denying atheism, Einstein expressed a belief in "Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists." This actually motivated his interest in science, as he once remarked to a young physicist: "I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details."

A famous saying of his was "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

There\'s more where that comes from....

I'm not sure if I understand. Do you WANT the reasons? Coz earthquakes and s*** have reasons.

I think I may've under, or over thought this.... Do you mean, the reason of things happening in the 'grand scheme' of things? or the reasoning 'behind' them happening?

Eg, the reasons someone got lung cancer is from smoking, or, like after getting the cancer, there's no reason to have it as there is no use for it? I think I just confused myself further....where's my bourbon....

I mean to say that there are factual reasons behind things, an earthquake is tectonic activity. Yet there need not be any meaning behind it, no "gods divine punishment" for sinners.

people need things to have reasons so that they have something to try to explain... it's not the explainations that we come up with that are important as much as our need to keep trying to explain...

and also... earthquakes and such things have reasons... they're scientfic reasons, but the earthquake still occured because those tectonic plates collided...

Gotchya!

I think i explain this here:




What i mean is people have trouble believing that things happen by themselves, without purpose.

Perhaps it was used as a way maintain order. I mean, if you didn't think the way you currently do, wouldn't you be creeped out that somebody would punish you forever for something you did? Wouldn't that be incentive enough to not want to act up?