To see what the picture is saying, click the picture.
So basically, Christians think the purpose of life is to serve god (mainly) and fellow men (probably meaning helping your fellow men in serving god), and they think atheists like Dr Dawkins think life is meaningless because we are robots built by DNA.
The quotes in the picture above seem to be taken from the Selfish Gene without context. The 'purpose' in the sentence means the 'purpose' of DNA. Mind you, 'purpose' IS in the eye of the beholder. There is no purpose in nature. It is a concept we humans have invented. What is the purpose of a stone? To help us to build a stone tool? No, that is our point of view. Stones cannot think, therefore there is no purpose; they are just there. We project our purpose to them. Seeking purpose on something other than human is like asking what is the smell of a melody. It is undefinable.
What Dr Dawkins meant in the quote-minded passages above is that:
- DNA exists because it replicates, and there is no hidden purpose or magic in that.
- All life forms including humans are created during the process of DNA replicating itself.
- There is no hard-defined purpose for human life, you define yours, and if you are happy with it, it is good enough.
Actually, I am quite surprised that a person who read the Selfish Gene could make that kind of excerpt. The person is either
- tremendously stupid, did not read the whole book, and only skimmed the book to find anything to criticise atheists
- cunning enough to deliberately quote-mine those in order to deceive gullible, uneducated Christians.
, and I am afraid it is more likely the latter.
However, even if the purpose if life for atheists were really "live for the sake of living and creating more life", it seems to be vastly better than the other choice to serve that homophobic, kitty-killing (yeah, he drowned all kitties with the flood), egomaniac god of Christians. And I suspect most Christians do not even think like that; they are just paying lip service, like how we always say physical beauty is shallow and yet are attracted to pretty people. I mean really, how many Christians really think their top priority in their life is serving their god? How many of them are willing to sacrifice their personal life to serve god, like sacrificing their son? Are you willing to sacrifice your son to serve god, if your god order you to kill your son, as he said to Abraham?
Well, I would rather be a purposeless replicating machine than a slave.