Someone once asked me what my worldview was as a theological non-cognitivist (which I would argue makes me an atheist). It's an interesting question, not because my worldview is obscure, but because it seems to upset so many people. Baffling, I know, but nonetheless, here we go.
I don’t think the universe exists for anything. I think it exists, full stop. I’m comfortable treating the universe as a brute fact; not because I lack curiosity, but because I see no reason to invent metaphysics where explanation ends. Saying “God did it” or “it has a purpose” doesn’t actually explain anything; it just moves the mystery behind a word.
That doesn’t commit me to nihilism. It commits me to honesty. Meaning, value, and morality are not written into the fabric of the cosmos, but that doesn’t make them illusions. They are things minds do. They emerge from beings like us interacting with one another in a world that places real constraints on our behaviour. That makes them contingent, not arbitrary, and real in the only sense that matters.
When I say something is “objective,” I don’t mean “independent of all minds.” We have no access to that, and never will. What I mean (and all we ever mean) is that a claim is publicly verifiable, rule-governed, and open to correction. Moral claims work the same way. They are human constructs, but once a framework exists, we can make objectively better or worse judgments within it, just as we can in logic, language, or games.
I reject the idea that morality needs a divine foundation to have authority. Appealing to God doesn’t remove subjectivity; it just hides it behind obedience. Divine command theory doesn’t solve the problem, it abandons it. If morality is good because God commands it, then goodness is arbitrary. If God commands it because it is good, then God isn’t doing the work.
Religion, as I see it, isn’t stupid. It’s an understandable response to uncertainty, fear, and the human desire for reassurance. But it consistently commits category errors: treating metaphors as mechanisms, meanings as causes, and metaphysical assertions as if they were empirical explanations. That’s why so many theological arguments feel like wordplay rather than discovery.
I’m also wary of a certain kind of humanism that wants the comfort of cosmic meaning without the cost of metaphysics. You can’t say the universe is indifferent and then talk as though dignity, value, and purpose are built into reality itself. That’s performative nihilism, denying meaning at the foundation while acting as if it were guaranteed.
I accept that death is final. I don’t see that as bleak. It’s what gives weight to time, urgency to choice, and seriousness to living. I don’t need an afterlife to justify caring about this one, and I don’t think hope that depends on fantasy is particularly healthy.
So my position isn’t despair, and it isn’t faith. It’s restraint. I’d rather live honestly in a universe that doesn’t owe me meaning than pretend certainty where none is available. Meaning is something we make together, under real constraints, in full awareness of our limits. That, to me, is enough.