Atheism and the meaningless life

Twenty ago Air Supply sang about "Making love out of nothing at all." A challenging task no doubt. But it ain't nothing compared to making meaning out of nothing at all. And that is the challenge faced by the atheist who denies that there is any objective meaning. (There is another kind of atheist but I haven't heard a peep from that kind in this blog, so I shall not worry about her for now.)

Atheism such as I have been encountering it here in debate is saddled with the view that the atheist's life, and indeed all our lives, are objectively meaningless. This means that there is no objective fact about whether person A lives a better life than person B. And that is a truly astounding claim.

The last time I took on atheism and meaning (in my post "Atheism: A Cost/Benefit Analysis") a heated discussion rising to 75 posts ensued. Sadly, nay tragically, the thread was lost by an apparent crash at the website. This was most unfortunate because the responses began with a lot of heat but ended with a lot more light. Many atheists responded initially with the assumption that I was painting them as leading lives of quiet desperation, rather like Richard Cory of Robinson's famous poem. Nope. Others assumed I was suggesting that atheists don't accomplish a lot of good in their lives. Wrong again. Rather, the issue was that atheism does not provide the metaphysical ground for the objective meaning that in fact frames our lives.

And with that it is time to define "meaning". I take the word meaning to refer to the purpose or value of something. That is, something is meaningful if it has a purpose or a value.

To have a purpose means that there is a particular way a thing should be. A hammer is meaningful in this sense because it has a purpose: pounding nails. And eyes are meaningful in this sense because they have a purpose: seeing. Consequently the eye that is blind fails to achieve its purpose or fulfill its meaning.

To have a value means that an object or action has an associated goodness. That goodness is often helpfully illumined by comparing it over-against other things with less goodness or value. Thus the action of helping a little old lady across the street is of value. And most of us will agree it is of more value than standing on the street corner and passively picking our nose while the old lady fumbles by herself. And it is of much more value than pushing the old lady into oncoming traffic.

Atheists, no less than anybody else, navigate the world with the apparent belief, convictions, and actions that the world is full of meaning (that is, purpose and value). They will agree that eyes are for seeing and it is of value to help little old ladies across the street.

But that initial agreement, while sufficient for the conduct of society, is nonetheless metaphysically superficial. Why you ask? Because atheists do not believe that this meaning is objective.

Let's begin with purpose. Atheists do not believe that objectively eyes are for seeing. The blind eye is of no more objective value than the 20/20 vision eye. (Granted the eye that sees may aid the flourishing of the individual, the conduct of various coital acts, and consequently the propagation of the seeing individual's DNA. But none of that has any objective purpose either and so it cannot imbue the seeing eye with any objective purpose.)

And helping little old ladies across the street? In fact many of us prefer that to pushing them into traffic. But even if we prefer that, we do not do so because it is of greater value, objectively speaking. Conversely, the individual who pushes granny in front of a bus is not engaging in an action which is objectively of lesser value. And thus an entire life helping little old ladies is of no greater objective value than a life spent pushing them in front of buses.

That which applies to eyes and actions applies to lives as well. On the atheistic view, our lives have no objective purpose (we are not for anything) and they have no objective value (no more so than a rock). We are thus left to find, construct or live in accord with purposes and values which we are fated to concede are mere preferences of the individual, social group, or species.

Let me wrap this up with two propositions:

(1) Objective meaning (purpose and value) exists.

(2) An entire life helping little old ladies across the street is of no greater objective value than a life spent pushing them in front of buses.

Each one of us must choose which of these to deny for they cannot both be true. The atheist rejects (1) and embraces (2). I embrace (1) and strenuously reject (2). Each one of us must decide.