"God and the Meaning of Life"

"Furthermore, the fact that everyone's life ends in nothingness in a naturalistic world does not imply that everything we do, whether for ourselves or for others, is for nothing. This idea probably stems from the thought that the actions that we perform for ourselves and others must ultimately amount to nothing—and thus are for nothing—because the people that they affect ultimately amount to nothing in the sense of ceasing to exist. But it simply does not follow that our actions for ourselves and others are for nothing just because we all ultimately amount to nothing in this sense. Our actions need not contribute to an eternal existence to be for something; they are still for something by contributing to finite existences. So even though our lives do end in nothingness in a naturalistic world, the actions that we perform for ourselves or others are still for something—they will improve the quality of finite lives. Therefore, our actions should not be thought of as for nothing and thus doomed to meaninglessness."
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That's right. Otherwise we would have serious social disintegration.

The day is coming though when we will have serious social disintegration.
The Bible calls it "great tribulation" .

There is something of a restraining force keeping things from becoming berserk.
Something is holding society together. Can you feel it?

These thoughts are right so far as it is still a time when people can still act sanely.
But I believe that this order preserving power will be lifted sometime.

"For it is the mystery of lawlessness that is now operating, but only until the one now restraining goes out of the way.

And then the lawless one will be revealed (whom the Lord Jesus will slay by the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of His coming... (2 Thess. 2:7,8)

God is to be thanked for keeping things from completely falling into chaos. To wrap up the present age though, this restraining for preventing disintegration will be lifted to manifest the true situation below the surface. The earth needs the kingdom of Christ and of God.

There is not enough meaningful do good-ing to stop man from ruining his environment and violently splintering hopelessly his societies.

Originally posted by sonship
We are talking out of our experience. We don't know what our feeling will be because we haven't had the experience yet of checking out. That is basically what I am saying.

And I am asking why that feeling or experience would matter more on your deathbed than whatever experience or feeling you have now.

It is easy for us to talk now because we deem that we have plenty of tomorrows to go.
That doesn't make my deathbed thoughts any more valid.

And there is nothing wrong with contemplating how one will feel when "today" is that last one.
Sure, we can contemplate it. But you seemed to think that how one would feel on ones deathbed has some special significance.

I suspect you'll find some thing to disagree with about that.
No, actually. I agree with it.

I spend some time with very old folks. That is true. But it is more like, the very essential matters of what they have lived, they remember. Minutia is what has slipped away.
Or so they believe. But then what you remember is of course what you think are the 'essential matters'. You could not very easily think of essential matters that you have forgotten.

It remains the case that your initial post that I was responding to implied that deathbed thoughts were somehow special. It seems you are now rather withdrawing from that position and just saying 'well its fun to speculate about'.

Consider a personal example. On April 15, 2011, one of my cats, Bubbles, died from a fatal disease. My spouse and I did what we could to save him—we even drove him from Ann Arbor to East Lansing so that he could receive the best possible health care at Michigan State University. We also did what we could to provide comfort and general care for him during the remaining days of his short life. And before the disease took over, he lived one of the best possible lives that a cat can live: he had plenty of good food, fresh water, comfortable lodging, fun toys, health insurance, and all the physical affection he could want. Overall, he was loved and treated like he was our child. (In fact, this is exactly how we thought—and still think—of him.) But even though Bubbles' life ended in nothingness, it does not seem like what I did for him ultimately amounted to nothing. I played a crucial and substantial role in shaping his entire life—I largely ensured that he had a really great cat life instead of any of the many inferior lives that he could have had. That certainly seems to amount to something. And even if everything that I did for him "ultimately amounted to nothing" (whatever this means), everything that I did for him is still very meaningful for me. My efforts to save him, even if futile, were undertaken as part of my role as one of his caregivers—a role that has given a lot of meaning to my life. The fact that his life ended in nothingness does not take anything at all away from the meaning of what I did for him.
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I wonder how he would have felt if the cat hissed and spat at him, clawed at him or ran away out of the house.

I wonder how he would have felt if the cat could talk and said "I don't even believe you exist. Who needs you ?"

Originally posted by twhitehead
And I am asking why that feeling or experience would matter more on your deathbed than whatever experience or feeling you have now.

[b]It is easy for us to talk now because we deem that we have plenty of tomorrows to go.
That doesn't make my deathbed thoughts any more valid.

And there is nothing wrong with contemplating how one will feel whe ...[text shortened]... are now rather withdrawing from that position and just saying 'well its fun to speculate about'.

That doesn't make my deathbed thoughts any more valid.

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Doesn't make them any less.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And I am asking why that feeling or experience would matter more on your deathbed than whatever experience or feeling you have now.

[b]It is easy for us to talk now because we deem that we have plenty of tomorrows to go.
That doesn't make my deathbed thoughts any more valid.

And there is nothing wrong with contemplating how one will feel whe ...[text shortened]... are now rather withdrawing from that position and just saying 'well its fun to speculate about'.

Sure, we can contemplate it. But you seemed to think that how one would feel on ones deathbed has some special significance.
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I think how one things each day has special significance. The last day is not less significant.

If you want to think then "Today, what I think means nothing." you have that right.
But don't boast because you're not there yet.
You hope you'll just yawn.

Originally posted by sonship
I think how one things each day has special significance. The last day is not less significant.

Agreed. Can I take that as you backtracking from your original position or were you simply unclear as to what that position was?

If you want to think then "Today, what I think means nothing." you have that right.
But don't boast because you're not there yet.
You hope you'll just yawn.
Huh? What are you on about?

Is this one of your attempts at making an argument based on what you imagine someone might think in some hypothetical future?

Originally posted by twhitehead
Agreed. Can I take that as you backtracking from your original position or were you simply unclear as to what that position was?

[b]If you want to think then "Today, what I think means nothing." you have that right.
But don't boast because you're not there yet.
You hope you'll just yawn.
Huh? What are you on about?

Is this one of your attem ...[text shortened]... t making an argument based on what you imagine someone might think in some hypothetical future?[/b]

"You have that right" means you have that prerogative.
You can think whatever it is you want to think.

And you can put a question mark after whatever it is you want to think also.

Originally posted by twhitehead

It remains the case that your initial post that I was responding to implied that deathbed thoughts were somehow special. It seems you are now rather withdrawing from that position and just saying 'well its fun to speculate about'.
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It is interesting to speculate. And final thoughts are significant.
Some records suggest people share their final thoughts.
And some do not for one reason of another.

Thoughts are something one may make known to others or keeps private and that no one knows, except that person and God.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And I am asking why that feeling or experience would matter more on your deathbed than whatever experience or feeling you have now.

[b]It is easy for us to talk now because we deem that we have plenty of tomorrows to go.
That doesn't make my deathbed thoughts any more valid.

[b]And there is nothing wrong with contemplating how one will feel whe ...[text shortened]... that your initial post that I was responding to implied that deathbed thoughts were somehow special.

And there is nothing wrong with contemplating how one will feel when "today" is that last one.

Sure, we can contemplate it. But you seemed to think that how one would feel on ones deathbed has some special significance.
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That's true.

I suspect you'll find some thing to disagree with about that.

No, actually. I agree with it.
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I still expect you to withdraw from that agreement. And it looks like you're already well on your way.


It seems you are now rather withdrawing from that position and just saying 'well its fun to speculate about'.
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Seems like you are withdrawing from any agreement in order to say Its more fun to do so.

I suspect one's final contemplations are really down to the core of one's being.
I don't think a lot of people will just look back over their existence and say -

"That was weird. O well, I never did figure it out. That was strange."

But some do crack a joke. But I think contemplations when there is no tomorrow coming is significant.

I confess that I only skimmed the cited essay, but I was immediately reminded of our old discussions about Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, and his notion of the “absurd situation”, to wit: that external reality discloses to us only facts and patterns of facts, etc., while human beings (absurdly) expect that external reality to, in some way, also disclose, not just facts, but “meaning”. And Camus (just going from memory here) talks about the various kinds of “leap” that must be made for the idea of such a disclosure (from some source exogenous to our consciousness) to make any sense at all. Including the leap to a divine being.

Of course, whatever “leap” one makes requires epistemic justification—and to argue that, absent this or that “leap”, life would be meaningless, is just viciously circular.

I still think that Camus nailed it. Meaning—in either sense—is a product of our consciousness as we existentially engage the world in which (and of which) we are. Meaning is neither exogenously disclosed (or bestowed) nor necessarily simply made up out of “whole cloth” in our minds—it arises from that engagement. Quite frankly, that makes the question of “meaning” also an ethical one. Camus thought that those “leaps” were examples of existential “bad faith” (I don’t recall if he used that Sarteian term) in the attempt to escape the ethical responsibility of finding (making—living) meaning in the crucible of that absurd situation.

Again, I still think he nailed it. (And a careful reading of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning shows that he, also, was not talking about some exogenously-sourced and disclosed “meaning”, but a meaning that one could find for oneself in the most horrifically absurd situation: the Nazi death camps. EDIT: Frankl, of course, was not concerned about whether that meaning entailed some "leap" or not; he was interested only in it's survival value--which does circle back toward Camus' only "really serious philosophical problem".)

Originally posted by sonship
"You have that right" means you have that prerogative.
You can think whatever it is you want to think.

And you can put a question mark after whatever it is you want to think also.

I am afraid that has not made any clearer what you are trying to say. If anything it has just made it less clear.

I've read it now, I agree with his last paragraph (except for the stuff about shoddy foundations), but have problems with some of his earlier arguments. There's something like a strawman argument appearing around some of the questions - "Theists claim x, I know an argument against x" - I can't say I remember ever hearing anyone claim that life only has meaning if God exists. Also it's all rather absolute. What's wrong with more meaningful and less meaningful? I think there's a problem in that he seems to have confounded "happiness", "purpose", and "meaning". So to be psychologically stable the monks and nuns in his example may well need human company, but this is not the same thing as requiring each other for their purpose, and neither of those are the same as providing meaning.

The other thing is that I think he's accepted the notion that life must have meaning and purpose, or there's something wrong. Why must life have purpose, either intrinsic or extrinsic? That we might find meaning or purpose doesn't imply that we are somehow morally obliged to search for it, or necessarily require it for happiness.

I have the same feeling I had reading Plantinga's article on Ockham's Way Out - there's something wrong with the argument I can't put my finger on.

I think what God was after was all the brilliant speculations as to why God created life in the first place that we see here at RHP.

He just wanted a good laugh is all.

Originally posted by whodey
I think what God was after was all the brilliant speculations as to why God created life in the first place that we see here at RHP.

He just wanted a good laugh is all.

If God exists and is omniscient then it could hardly be new to him.

Originally posted by sonship
The article says:

[b]" For even if life is meaningless in this larger but unimportant sense, it is not necessarily meaningless in the other, important sense—the lack of cosmic purpose to life in no way entails that life cannot be particularly valuable, worthwhile, or fulfilling. "
--------------------------------------------------------------------- ...[text shortened]... self with purposeful projects, hopefully they will be worthwhile ones that do no harm to others.[/b]

Sonship, I think you have really missed the point. If you look carefully at Stringer’s argumentative points, several of them go like this. He starts by saying, gosh, isn’t it intuitively seductive upon introspection to think it is all meaningless because a, b, c; he then goes on to argue that, notwithstanding its intuitive introspective appeal, such a disillusioned view is unfounded and does not survive deeper scrutiny because of x,y,z. As I said, several points are structured in this way, and they for the most part acknowledge, either implicitly or explicitly, that confrontation with impending death is a predominant precursor to this disillusionment. Obviously, then, Stringer already accepts that a good many will be naturally disposed towards disillusionment, especially late in life when their introspections will be subjected to the greatest emotional duress from imminent demise. But, of course, his argument consists in purporting to explicate in detail why such disillusioned attitudes are unfounded. So, can you not see how your response to his arguments is just a nonstarter? Here is Stringer arguing that disillusioned attitudes toward the prospects of meaning in life are often intuitively seductive and yet turn out to be wrong for reasons he identifies. And your response is basically, well, “of course” young people in the normal stride of life are going to agree, but we need to defer to the contemplative attitudes of those late in life. Well, those persons constitute exactly the group most susceptible to the disillusioned attitudes that Stringer is arguing are unfounded in the first place. Basically Stringer is arguing that outlook X is wrong, and you’ve responded with saying that’s all well and good but we ought to defer to the opinion of those who happen to be the most prone toward holding the outlook X. I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works. You need to actually address the content of Stringer’s argument against X.

Beyond that, I’m really not sure why you think the “final” introspective value/meaning assessments of one who is very late in life are somehow more “honest” or authoritative than those of his or her younger self. If anything, I would have thought just the opposite given that mental faculties often deteriorate late in life and given that, as already discussed, those final introspections are often the ones most susceptible to duress. Typically, duress is taken as a contra-indicator toward healthy assessment, and you haven’t made it clear why we should take this case as an exception. Perhaps your thought here is that one near the end of his life has the greater vantage point to look on the whole of his life and place it in the context of a grander scheme of things. First, that this is a clear vantage point is open to doubt: memories fade, or else are less than faithful to facts, or else get selectively prioritized, particularly late in life. Second, Stringer already addresses in the essay that not all vantage points are equally appropriate for assessing meaning and value. Please refer back to the part of the essay where he argues that such reflective introspection on how things look “in the grand scheme of things” might not be the best vantage point. See if you agree or not.

Moreover, there is a stronger point to be made here. Just because personal meaning and value have inherent subjective dimension, that does not imply that claims about meaning/value are somehow made true or false on the basis of subjective attitudes, let alone subjective attitudes late in life. Just because an old person in the grips of dread from impending death may feel compelled to chalk his whole life up to meaninglessness, that doesn’t mean the world is obliged to bend in order to meet this attitude. Even if meaning/value have inherent subjective dimension, the truth conditions for meaning/value claims may still be objective. And that would mean that persons can be wrong in their meaning/value assessments, even about their own lives, particularly from the perspective of differing vantage points. I would argue that the way in which a person imbues his or her life with meaning/value does not subsist merely in whatever current introspective attitudes he or she holds, particularly from the vantage point of looking back on one’s life. Rather, there is a chain of imbuement that runs throughout one’s life on the basis of how he or she lives and conducts oneself. After all, that is what really stands representative of one’s values and evaluative commitments in the actual course of life, not some late-in-life assessment made under emotional duress from a detached, backward looking vantage point. This chain of imbuement does not somehow get erased just because one has some second thoughts as death encroaches.

Beyond that, your posts remind me of the progressive disillusionment process that can attend life and which does inflict many. You should check out Schopenhauer’s On the Vanity of Existence, which to my mind is just a beautifully written piece, when taken in the context of expressing the various flavors of disillusionment. Of course, the outlooks described therein are the sorts of outlooks that Stringer thinks dissolve under deeper, healthy scrutiny.