A guide to reality.

The big persistent questions such as: ‘what is the nature of reality, the purpose of the universe, and the meaning of life? Is there any rhyme or reason to the course of human history? Why am I here? Do I have a soul, and if so, how long will it last? What happens when we die? Do we have free will? Why should I be moral? What is love, and why it is usually inconvenient? Contemporary religious belief is immune to rational objection because it questions the implications of their own worldview.

There is no God. Reality is what physics says (and evolutionary biology). There is no purpose to anything, anywhere, never was, never will be. There is therefore no meaning to life. I’m here because of dumb luck. Prayer doesn’t work. There is no such thing as a soul. There is no freewill. When we die, everything stays the same except without us. There is no moral difference between good and bad, right and wrong. You should be good because it makes you feel better than being bad.

Anything goes. Love is a solution to a strategic coordination problem. It’s automatic, programmed so there’s no need to go out looking for it. History has no purpose because the future is less and less like the past. Technology makes predicting the future a guessing game and their rational choice theories are outrageously bad psychology. The belief in free will and purpose and all that is belief in hokum of the same order as belief in God.

Naturalism to be the thesis that the natural sciences are the best guide to what exists in the world and that its methods are the best ways of extending knowledge of what exists. If we are still justified in helping ourselves to freewill, responsibility, self knowledge and all that, then what is there to fear, what’s the big deal? With superstitions all gone, the revaluation of values can be turned into a political, ethical, aesthetic programme for freethinkers no longer shackled by voodoo metaphysics.

Evolution underwrites the rationalism of being an atheist but doesn’t corrode our human image. Nothing in science underwrites the value of any categorical imperative such as thou shalt not steal or kill or you ought to look after your neighbor, the frail, weak and so on. There can be no deserving poor or deserving rich in a universe where there is no deserving anything. There’s just blind luck.
Evolution has selected the illusions that recognize our fates are yoked to living with others harmoniously. We are not inherently aggressive and competitive but gain advantage by being good at negotiating sociability.

Evolutionism and physics gives us a nihilist universe, purposeless, meaningless, ultimately devoid of everything we think is important. But it has constructed us as having evolutionary reflexes that grant us illusions of freewill and purpose we cannot but believe. The illusions are selected instincts that are too overwhelming and powerful to be overridden. This explains the sub title: -Enjoying life without illusion