Wow that first one's a doozy, evolutionary speaking would be to further pass your genetic code. I like more of passing the idea of you on to the next generation. But ultimately I would say to try and be happy.

I previously thought morals were based off of the Bible but after reading philosophers such as Kant and Locke, I learned morality is more of a standard of your own rationale.

I myself am a consciousness inside my own brain and when my body dies and so does my brain, I cease to exist. It would be nice to believe in some ghost world after I die but in the end it would just be a fairytale.

I believe the only gods would those with superior technology (possibly aliens) that are simply perceived as gods to a lesser public. Although some scientists have created life from nothing, are they gods?

Jesus is a character in a book.

I am a realist, it's not always the happiest life but it's the truth.

What is the ultimate purpose for life?
As a biology student, I take it that the ultimate purpose of life is to pass on our genes to the next generation. However, in a more philosophical view, I think that we find our own purpose in life. As we get experience, we explore different paths, until we find something we feel passionate about. That one thing you are passionate for would be your purpose in life.

How do we make moral judgments?
As time passes, we as a society learn to be fair with each other, and understand that certain actions taken in the past were not necessarily the best. For instance, no one in their right mind thinks slavery is good anymore. It's immoral to own another person as property. We make moral judgements based on reason and logic. Well, at least some of us do.

What happens when we die?
I don't ultimately know what happens when we die. We have no method of studying the supernatural, and the people who claim they know how to do so, use dubious methods. Also, studies done on people who claim to have seen their bodies after temporarily dying have demonstrated that their accounts are inconsistent at best. Can we really trust a dying brain? I personally doubt it. Based on the accounts seen so far, nothing comes after death besides the biological processes of decomposition.

What do you believe about god?
I am not convinced about the existence of a god. I am not sure we can even study her existence, if she happens to exist. I don't think anyone can claim for sure there isn't one, but nobody can say there is one for sure as well. If there is one, it just raises the question, who created that god? Many people ask themselves, what caused the big bang? It must have been a god. Well, not necessarily. Physicists have not been able to determine what happened before the big bang. What if a multiverse exists? What if the multiverse is eternal? Wouldn't that defeat the idea of a god who started everything? What if this being is not even supernatural, but biological in nature? What if there are many of them? I guess we have to keep researching and hope to get an answer soon.

What do you believe about Jesus?
As a student I am likely to side with those who are experts in the matter. Majority of historians agree in the existence of a historical Jesus.
Therefore, I side more with the idea that he existed, but I do not think he was performing miracles. The accounts described in the first gospel, were written after 30 or 40 years after Jesus' existence. The people who wrote the gospels were educated Greek individuals who never met Jesus. Stories change over long periods of time, so accounts on the resurrection are likely to have been added by word of mouth later on. These happened to be the stories these 4 individuals heard when they decided to write the gospels. Therefore, the gospels can be trusted up to a certain extent because they aren't eyewitnesses' accounts of what actually happened when the historical Jesus lived.

What is the number one reason why you don’t believe in the God of Christianity?
It's very hard to pick one. I think a big one is that there is as much evidence to support his existence, as there is to support the existence of Zeus or Krishna. Since we have no way of objectively testing for his existence, or the existence of any god, I choose to live my life as if no god exists.

Hope this helps you to understand my position.
If you'd like to talk more about these topics you can always message me. I'll be willing to respond to any further questions you may have.
I would like you to always remain skeptical about everything. Investigate things for yourself, and learn to look at them objectively.

Hi, Kali. Welcome to Atheist Republic. I applaud curiosity. Most people within this forum are deeply curious. Curiosity and intellectual honesty are the foundational requirements for determining truth. As you're interested in our perspectives, we are interested in yours. I'll provide answers to your questions and I ask that you please answer them as well so that we know something about your position. My first answer will be longer and will help address the other questions.

What is the ultimate purpose for life? There is not a set purpose to the universe, life, or the future. While there are working hypothysis concerning the events leading to the Big Bang over 13.7 bya (billion years ago), we don't know with confidence how it happened. What we do have confidence about are many of the major events since the Big Bang, including what occurred during the very first second of the Big Bang. Physicists understand much about how gravity, the electromagnetic force, and the strong and weak nuclear forces were unified and during that first second split from each other. We've learned how an inflationary expansion of energy grew at an exponential rate and directly led to the expanding universe we live in today. The process seeded hydrogen atoms across the universe, and the seperated forces of nature caused those hydrogen atoms to coalesce into countless stars. Inside those stars the hydrogen fused to create helium and lythium and carbon and oxygen and many of the elements on the periodic table, and countless supernova created the rest of the naturally occurring elements (types of atoms.) This process continued until 4.6 bya when interstellar dust coalesced into our sun, Jupiter, and the rest of our solar system, including the earth. This planet is about 4.5 bya. Water, which is ubiquitous across the universe, covered the earth by about 4.3 bya, and created the medium for molecules to chemically interact with each other. Those reactions eventually led to the first self-replicating molecule roughly 4 bya. The molecules that emerged from that process replicated as well, with some replicating more efficiently than others. The ones that replicated the best continued, and the others were overwhelmed and replaced. That process was the origin of what we call the Theory of Evolution, a known, factual process that accounts for every lifeform on this planet. You and I and every dog and lizard and jellyfish and bacteria and bird and fish and plant and mushroom in the world has a single ancestor, our ultimate parent. We are all related to each other through that first self-replicating molecule.

No plan was involved in this process. No creator was required. No being managed it or oversees it. We are purely natural manifestations of the forces of nature. Any "purpose" is of our own making. As Carl Sagan said in the 1970's, "if we seek some cosmic purpose, let us find a worthy goal." We as intelligent beings can have incredible, important purpose to our existence, but we are the creators and custodians of that ultimate purpose.

How do we make moral judgments? Humans are an evolved primate that is a herd-like species, and like all herd animals, we have shared needs and responsibilities to each other. Our intelligence and our need to cooperate to exist in a dangerous world led to the evolved community of humans that exist today. We have an evolved capacity to empathize, and we have an awareness of our need for and dependence on others. The moral decisions we make are natural extensions of our evolved nature and result from our species' efforts to exist and persist.

What happens when we die? We are made purely out of the elements of nature and the forces of nature. When we die, our constituant parts continue the exist, but the consciousness that each of us call ourselves will dissipate and cease to be. Our cellular processes are natural, and the mitochondrial effort to produce energy for our lives is natural, and our deaths are natural. We don't have a soul or spirit, we are only stardust and the forces of nature. We don't visit dead loved ones in heaven, we simply dissipate and cease to exist as a consciousness. That's what happens when we die.

What do you believe about God? God was and is a mental construct of ignorant people trying to understand reality. The more we understand reality, the less we need that ignorant construct. There is no "god" or spirits or supernatural forces or hidden purpose or meaning. There is only a naturalistic reality.

What do you beieve about Jesus? The jesus myth is a compilation of various myths and legends.

What is the number one reason why you don’t believe in the God of Christianity? Beyond the fact that no creator is needed to explain existence, the number one reason I don't believe christianity is the absurdity of the bible. One can point to things in the bible that can't be tested, but a great deal of the bible CAN be tested. The factual, historical claims in the bible can be tested, and they are all incorrect. The earth did not come into being as described in Genesis, life didn't come into being as described, no one named Noah carried all life on a boat during a global flood, and millions of Israelites were not slaves in Egypt and didn't build the pyramids. The sun didn't stop in the sky so that Israelites could slaughter the Amorites as described in Joshua. And we shouldn't believe that a snake spoke with Eve, that a donkey spoke with Ballam, or that zombies rose from their graves and walked throughout the streets of Jerusalem. A dead-but-now-alive Jesus didn't levitate up into the clouds, either. And diseases aren't the fault of curses and demons, earthquakes aren't the wrath of god, and rain doesn't come from "floodgates" in the sky. The bible is preposturous, and we owe it to ourselves to be honest with ourselves.

A great number of smart, well meaning people have believed the bible and in god, but as the multi-millineal effort to indoctrinate future generations collides with humanity's realization about what constitutes reality, more and more people are realizing that there is no god.

We are Atheists, and I invite you to wake up to reality and join us.