exnihilo

There can be no one universal answer to the why that you are asking. Life only has meaning, if it indeed does, based upon the individual aspirations and of the living being in question. Whether or not another living being believes in the meaning of another is immaterial. Some living beings may not even be conscious of their "life", but that obviously doesn't make them meaningless. What would happen for instance if all single-cell organisms ceased to exist?????
The point is that subjectivity, while being a great tool for understaning the world, is after all just that: a tool. Thus any evidence that could be supplied, as you request, is itself subjective and thus open to infinite questioning and is thus irrelevant since it proves and claims nothing. This applies to scientific evidence as well as Lakatos, Kuhn and Feyerbend have illustrated.

--exnihilo

mosaic

Because you make it. Whether through some metaphysical belief of meaning or through materialism, secular humanism, whatever. We are the creators of meaning. Deal with it. You want evidence. Look at your beliefs. If you spend the rest of your life, wondering if it has any meaning then thats the meaning of you've given to your life life. No matter what logical subtleties anyone trys to get around this, if you insist to living, you give meaning to it.

Normal

Ok, but I don't see how ~p -> ~q

IOW: If god doesn't exist, it doesn't follow that life doesn't have meaning.

Wyrdsmyth

The argument is valid. But you can still object to the premises.

I agree with you that it doesn't follow that life has no meaning if god does not exist.

Solanalos

Is it logical to require of life that it must have meaning?

Wyrdsmyth

What we 'require' or 'want' from life has nothing to do with what is. On that, I agree with you. It is the difference between projecting what you want to be true onto the universe, with all the attendant meaning and storyline and eschatology, and just seeing a universe.

dspeers

Nor does it follow that, if there is a god, then life has meaning.

Boy, a moment's reflection on that phrase reveals how ambiguous it really is, and so how difficult it is to argue against without common understanding of the terms. What is meant by "life"? My personal, individual life (and by extension, every individual life in the history of life)? Or life in general; simply the existence of mankind, without regard for the individuals (like an ant farm: my son is entertained watching the ants, but he doesn't pay attention to them individually, only collectively)? And then, what is "meaning"? That our collectively being here fulfills some purpose (we entertain our creator, with no profound "purpose")? Or that each individual has some important part to play? Or that we're all part of some huge, organic computer program trying to compute the answer to the Ultimate Question?

Such vagueness. I don't think it can mean all these things at the same time and still be a cogent statement.

Taffer

I've thought about this ever since I had it thrown at me by my classmate fundie. (I can't see the truth because my logic and conclusions are being distorted by teh Debil!!1!)

My conclusion (which is doubtlessly equally distorted) is that as long as we, as humans, cannot examine the laws of logic with a truly objective eye and therefore can't prove them beyond a shadow of doubt, we might as well accept anything that we're merely pretty damn sure of.

I have to go to school today. But what if wild animals chewed on my bike during the night and caused invisible but fatal damage that will certainly cause my death in the heavy morning traffic? What if a nutcase with an assault rifle and a dozen grenades attacks my school while I'm in it? What if a highly improbably but argumentatively convenient meteorite vaporizes me as soon as I step outside?
I could dream up a dozen more what-ifs until I'm too scared to get out of bed, but then I wouldn't get to school, would I?

The human race didn't get this far by constantly second-guessing every single one of it's achievements and principles.

SRB

Words and sentences have meanings. It is not clear what it means for human life to have meaning. Here are some suggested definitions:

D1: "Human life has meaning" means the same thing as "Humans were created for a purpose."

D2: "Human life has meaning" means the same thing as "Humans have reasons for their actions."

If definition D1 is used I would call into question whether human life has meaning. There seems to be no reason to think it has.

If definition D2 is used I would agree that it is obvious that human life has meaning, but would reject the idea that life would have no meaning if God did not exist. Humans obviously have reasons for their actions, whether God exists or not. I think D2 comes closer to capturing what people mean by "human life has meaning."

SRB

Wiploc

We can make it intuitively obvious with an example:

Let p equal I threw the baby in the river.
Let q equal the baby is wet.
We see that If p then q becomes quite plausible.
And, if If p then q is given as true, then
it becomes impossible to also have [p but not q].

Quote:

IOW: If god doesn't exist, it doesn't follow that life doesn't have meaning.

Agreed.
crc