Jet Grind

I guess that the answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" would all depend on how one defines the word "meaning". If any meaning has to be externally imposed then yes, a Godless universe is meaningless. However, this doesn't translate to mean that life is "worthless", which is often what is interpreted as. Whenever the meaning of life question is thrown at me I just say "It means whatever you think it means."

That's probably what russell actually meant as well, It really bothers me that atheists are slandered like this so often.

Clutch

I can see Russell saying this, or something much like it. The real ambiguity isn't with 'meaning' but with 'life'. Understood in the general sense that the quote gives it, the term suggests 'all life', or 'everyone's life, irrespective of preference, goals, values...'.

The idea, presupposed in such a question, that there should be a single, unique purpose to absolutely everyone's life, is utterly unmotivated in the absence of some assumption about the preference- or culture-transcendence of such a purpose. Russell would be perfectly correct to note that only some belief about a deity would even be a candidate for underwriting such an assumption.

Of course, it hardly follows that lives don't have purposes. Just that there's a missing presupposition for the question, "What is the purpose of Life?" Perfectly straightforward observation, really.

Eric Starnes

What could make the question meaningless other then life being meaningless?

If life does in fact have meaning then the question has an answer, and therefore is not a meaningless question. Right?

The only thing i disagee with in the quote is the idea that a god could make life meaningful. God or not, the life of a human being is meaningless.

babelfish

I think you've answered your own question with this statement.

Why does Being Created lend any intrinsic Meaning to Life? If we argue that we were created to serve a god, then the next question would be "What is the purpose of this god?"

Clutch

I explained this. What could make the question meaningless (or, more accurately, a kind of misfire) would be its faulty presupposition of a unique and general answer. This is of course consistent with each life having a meaning, though.