I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning – the Christian meaning, they insisted – of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.
Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
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"...if your thoughts are just a by-product of atoms jiggling in your brain, that may make them sound chemically, but it does not make them sound logically. And if that's the case then you've no reason to trust your initial belief that your mind is composed of atoms. That's a circle that's not just vicious, but positively voracious and ravenous to boot. Once you've explained away mind as a chemical reaction, thinking as a reflex, and selfhood as an illusion...you are left with nothing...according to this description of reality, you don't exist. 'You' are just a flickering of electrons, a fizzing of chemicals, a banging-together of atoms."
Andy Bannister, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist, p. 135, 136
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