As an atheist, when I was in high school listening to a lecture on the civil war and hearing about all of the people who had died, I set two goals for myself.
(1) I would leave the world a better place than it would have been if I had not existed.
(2) No innocent person will have reason to regret the fact that I had lived.
One problem with leaving the world a better place is that I needed to know what a 'better place' would be like. This lead me into 12 years of college studying moral philosophy.
When I left college I wanted to put what I had learned to use - applying them to real-world issues. I objected strongly to spending my time pushing somebody else's agenda - particularly when I believed that people would be worse off. Instead, I sought opportunities to present my own ideas.
I consider the internet to be a wonderful invention. Three years ago I started my own blog, Atheist Ethicist (http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com).
There, I present ideas on moral theory (What is goodness and how can we recognize it when we find it?).
I also write about our every day moral lives. (What is an 'excuse' and what does it take for an excuse to be valid?)
And I write about contemporary moral problems; abortion, homosexuality, global warming, budget deficits, torture, discrimination, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and the like.
Hopefully I can make some contribution that will leave the world better off than it would have been if I had not existed in it.
