Meditation 36
The Meaning of Life...
is just the name of a Monty Python movie
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For more on the Meaning of Life, see Ask the Patriarch 35 and 42
For some reason, a goodly proportion of the e-mail I receive deals with the meaning of life. Typical is “The only reason to continue to live in this miserable world is to glorify God and spread His Word.” For those who have such a view, I can only ask what this attitude implies about the character of the God you are glorifying.
The flip side of this view is the argument that life has no meaning if there is no god, and that is a position that leads into nihilism.
But, there is an element of validity in both arguments. The concept of the meaning of life is inextricably linked to the concept of god, the creator. Life can only have meaning if assigned externally - by its creator.
Then, does that mean that I, as an agnostic and not believing in god, think that life has no meaning?
No! I consider life neither has meaning nor is it meaningless. Rather the entire concept of the meaning of life has no meaning. Life has no meaning. Life is not meaningless. Life just is.
This is not to say that your own life should have no meaning, nor that my life should have no meaning. You can determine the meaning of your life yourself, just as I determine the meaning of my life. But it is your personal choice and my personal choice. There is no need to try to determine the intentions of the eternal bogeyman in the sky.
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