Follow-Up to Metaxas Post

Toward the end of last month I wrote a post for VP based on a claim by Eric Metaxas when he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight that “If you actually believe we evolved out of the primordial soup and through happenstance got here, by accident, then our lives literally have no meaning.”

David Klinghoffer at Evolution News has written a follow-up to Metaxas' statement in which he quotes a number of people who responded to a query at another site soliciting opinions on whether the respondents, mostly atheists, believed their lives had no meaning.

Typical of the responses were these:

• "My life has no purpose, my life has no meaning, but I do not care!"
• "There is meaning and purpose within my life, but my life itself has no meaning or purpose."
• "...meaning and purpose do exist, but only insofar as one’s desires create them."

In other words, these respondents acknowledge that there's no objective meaning to human existence but believe they can contrive subjective meanings that animate them and give them motivation to get up in the morning.

Their life's purpose, on this view, becomes something like alcohol. It may dull the pain of an empty life, it may give a sense of comfort and solace, but it's all illusory.

One can, however, find a multitude of more clear-eyed views on the matter, such as these from atheists (mostly) who have thought deeply about the problem of human meaning and purpose:

• "What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto." Philosopher Alex Rosenberg
• “ If you believe science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life doesn't have any." Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi
• “Unless the point of life is to suffer, there is no point.” Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
• "The meaning of meaning - the meaning of all these particular meanings - is lacking." Philosopher Luc Ferry
• "There's no me, there's just things happening...You've got to admit, this (all we do) is completely meaningless." Actor Jim Carrey
• "I don't want to kill myself because I'm sad or depressed," he told them. "It's because I don't like people. I don't see a point in life, like you're just going to die and there's nothing after that, I think, so what's the point?" School shooter Robert Gladden
• "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference." Biologist Richard Dawkins
• "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal." Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre
• "Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful." Novelist Albert Camus
• "Life is an unpleasant interruption of nothingness." Lawyer Clarence Darrow
• "Man knows … that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity out of which he emerged only by chance." Biologist Jacques Monod
"Neither the existence of the individual nor that of humanity has any purpose." Biologist/philosopher Bernard Rensch
• "Life is a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is seen no more. It is a tale told by an idiot; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." William Shakespeare
• "If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good nor to fear evil, I must ask myself what am I here for….Now the answer is plain, but so unpalatable that most will not face it. There is no meaning for life, and [thus] life has no meaning.” Novelist Somerset Maugham

Klinghoffer quotes Kirk Durston who was among the theists who responded to the query about whether life has meaning:

No one disputes that atheists can make up a meaning for their lives … we make up stuff all the time …. fairies, unicorns, and so forth. I trust, however, that when we apply reason and rational thinking that we all realize that we just made that stuff up …. including the belief that life has meaning and purpose. Making up a meaning and purpose is quite a bit different from their actually being objective meaning and purpose.

Just so. It may be that there is no God who purposefully created mankind, but if there isn't then neither does anything we do in this life really matter. Only if what we do matters forever does it have any genuine, objective meaning. Only if what we do matters forever does it really matter at all.