A God who gives us meaning versus the notion that life is absurd

 

The argument that life is meaningless supposedly says life should be denied.  But that is clearly nonsense. To say life should be denied is to admit a should and to admit a meaning.  That you can live and not commit suicide says something.  Should is not about free will or purpose or intention though it can be.  Water is not for putting in water pistols though it can be.  There is a sense in which it makes sense to say that a totally uncontrolled universe should not produce viruses to kill babies.  That should is the most basic and important one of all.

 

Some believers in God argue, "Even if God created this state of affairs called life it does not follow that your getting meaning has anything to do with God. Creating in some ways does not imply God is responsible for the result. He can do this by creating an autonomous universe.  Why can't the meaning of life be simply you making your own meaning?  Why can't that be the meaning that God is all about?"  Most do not want to think that way because they decide what the meaning should be and work their way back to God.

 

We don't need life to be a gift from God in order for it to have meaning.  It has meaning even if God does not want it to. Thus it cannot really be a gift for a gift and meaning go together.

 

Christians argue that life is either a gift from God and thus full of purpose and meaning or if there is no such God then it is absurd.  That dichotomy is fake.  It does not follow that God has to give us much meaning if he creates us.  And if there is no creator to give us a purpose the universe may simulate a purpose or act as if there is one.  You get meaning if you think the tree deliberately gives you shelter though it does not intend anything.

 

The believers actually think somebody’s value comes from what God does for them or what he thinks of them.  That is to deny it comes from within themselves.  God valuing you is no good if you do not value you.  Thinking he values you when you cannot sense it or if it is not true will only make it harder for you to value you or anything else for that matter.  It is how you value you that matters and the idea that God gives you no value but only gives you the tools to create your own value is interesting.  Those who value themselves are only pretending they get value from God.  It is quite a boast to imagine that how they feel about themselves is a direct miracle of God! 

 

Those who believe that the only value that matters is God's valuing of them will feel compelled and bullied to try and redeem themselves from their uselessness all their lives.  Their lives are ruined by faith.

 

Christians say that if you say the universe has no purpose and is not made by a loving God then you are saying that it and life are absurd and you may as well commit suicide as live.  That is not logical.  It is obvious that it is not a good enough reason for suicide.  The use of the problem of suicide to insinuate that unbelief in God demands and leads to suicide and to blackmail believers to believe is scandalous.  It is obvious that if life feels meaningless you only lose something by giving up.  Human nature cannot see life as literally useless or totally useless.  Useless is a word used for what is not very useful and not just for what is totally useless.

 

The atheist is accused of saying that as the universe has no purpose and was not made for a reason or reasons that it is therefore absurd. But nothing is completely absurd. Absurdity is always non-absurd and absurd things thrown together. It is a mix. For example, the concept of 1 is sensible. The concept of adding 1 to something is sensible. The concept of 2 is sensible. The concept of them being equal to something is sensible. The concept of 4 is sensible. When you have 1 + 2 = 4 you have things that make sense but giving an absurd result. You see how the sensible things are thrown together to produce an absurdity. But it is wrong to forget that it is not completely useless or absurd.

The Christian argument is too negative and extreme and is just an attempt to punish atheists by driving them to despair.

 

It is deliberate malice for when Christians say that evil is really good that is misused and thus there is no such thing as evil as such it is impossible to argue that atheism really could stand for the belief that life is all absurd. It would be impossible to manage the belief. In other words, it would be impossible to have a thoroughly absurd or evil outlook when evil is merely good that falls short of what it could and should be.

 

Some people are happy BECAUSE they see life as ridiculous.  The absurdity of life does not mean it will feel it has no meaning.  We have to wonder if some of those who do commit suicide because they see life as absurd in fact have a depressive illness.

 

If our sense of justice and love and our power to be fair and to love came about and were not planned or intended by any magical being that makes them all the more precious and fragile.  If you think there is a loving God then love is indestructible but surely it is better to see it as something you constantly have to keep in existence for it can vanish from the universe forever?  Its fragility gives it meaning.  Same with justice.

 

Love is all the more precious if it is here by chance. A medicine is more precious if it appears randomly than if it is given to you by a doctor. Indeed you only appreciate the doctor giving it for you think that randomness made it happen. By chance somebody discovered the medicine for example.

 

Love is good in itself so how it comes to be, whether created by forces or by an intelligent designer is irrelevant.

Happiness is all the more precious if it literally just happens. There is a link between love and happiness and that link is more important than any other.

Justice from God is a core reason for believing in God. But it is immoral. Who cares if a monster gets away with it in the next world? It is immoral to want somebody punished unless it is going to do something for us and society in this world.  But our justice and the way we do it is riddled with guesswork and thus it is only justiceish not justice.  Justice is seen as a form of love for the two must agree to be equally precious.  We have to love for it is fair and be fair for it is love.

 

We see that the preciousness of love and justice comes not from whether we can be good at them or not - we cannot.  It comes from their inviting us to an ideal and comes from their fragility and that we or random forces can obliterate them forever.  The person who battles for love for it is fragile is better than the person who battles for it believing God will keep it around if he fails.

 

Intention is not essential for meaning. Religion presumes that you need a God to intend your life to be valuable for it to be valuable! But life has to be valuable for intending cannot make it valuable. You cannot make a pebble you pick up on the beach as important as the Hope Diamond.  To want God to intend you to be precious is making it about you not him.  Existentialism tells you to intend your life to have meaning regardless of what a God intends.  Ironically both God believers and existentialists are doing the same thing: they are trying to make life have meaning by giving it meaning.  So believers are really existentialists who wish to use God or the God idea like a placebo.  Again they are just being manipulative.  To treat God like that is like atheism in the sense that God is not taken seriously.