What is the point of life from the atheist's perspective

Introduction My thanks to Con for his quick response. While I would agree with Con that this is not a debate in the traditional sense, I still do think that there is still points to discuss and debate, and perhaps it is the merits of these points that voters can choose to decide on. Anyway, let's jump right in. A1 - The biological perspective The first example of disagreement is Con’s response to the biological perspective of life. The first mistake Con makes here is to conflate biological function with morality. While it is true that some humans (for whatever reason) cannot procreate, this is not a moral issue, precisely because (as I noted in my last post) morality is unique to humans with a capacity to grasp and recognise moral facts, duties and obligations, while the biological function refers to all organisms, from humans to viruses (again, as I mentioned in my last post). The confusion comes here from inserting morality into what should be a question about purpose. Only by injecting morality do we make the mistake of criticising things like homosexuality on such a basis. Note here that “purpose” is synonymous in the biological sense with function, and no one would say that a mutated gene for example is immoral, because it cannot perform the function it is supposed to. The problem here, as I predicted is the irrelevance of morality in the discussion, and Con's insistence in throwing it into the discussion, where it has no role to play. A2 - The personal perspective I think Con agreed with me on A2, so essentially the debate resolution has been met. However, I would like to make one final point, and that is that Con agrees with me on A2 despite the moral implications of this argument. Although I said that morality (and its consequences) doesn’t matter in the context of this discussion, if Con thinks it does (as indicated in his response to A1), then surely the subjective nature of the purpose of human life should also be as concerning to him as biological function was, as this could imply all sorts of moral consequences, including even the example that he used earlier of homophobia. In fact, I would go so far as to say that only agreement with me on the irrelevance of morality could yield a compatible acceptance of this point without a glaring double-standard. Con needs to clarify here. A3 - On the relevance of morality Although I have repeatedly said that I take morality to be irrelevant in this debate, I will answer Con’s points about it anyway. Firstly, on the different views of morality from the atheist community, we have a variety of positions: Nihilism - “ Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived.” (1). Proponents of this view include atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (2). Moral Subjectivism - “Ethical subjectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: Ethical sentences express propositions. Some such propositions are true. Those propositions are about the attitudes of people.” (3) An example of such a view would be atheist Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science from Birmingham (4). Moral objectivism - is the view that questions of morality refer to something real which exists “whether anybody believes in them or not.” (5). Walter Sinnott Armstrong would be an advocate of this position, and also a committed atheist (6). Quite clearly, all these positions are compatible with atheism (at least according to atheists themselves), and yet all are very different, which the point I made in my first post about the variety of the atheist moral viewpoint. Indeed, if we were to go in depth about the various approaches within moral realism, for example, one could quite clearly see that even those who agree on the ontological nature of morality have wildly different moral systems, which is exactly why I criticised Con's blanket statement on the moral position of atheists. They are all very different, and cannot really be generalised to such a crude extent. Lastly, on the point over Con’s stance on the relevance of morality in daily life, I completely agree that we should all care about questions of morality, as well as the actions performed as a direct consequences to these moral perceptions, and how it affects our daily lives. However, as always, what matters here is context, and morality does not really fit the context of this discussion. Even if it does however, I think I have answered all the relevant points, and would like to wish good luck to Con for his final round. Sources (1) (2) http://en.wikipedia.org... (3) http://en.wikipedia.org... (4) http://www.guardian.co.uk... (5) (6) God? A debate between a Christian and an atheist, William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott - Armstrong, 2004, Oxford university Press, New York. pp 17, 33.