Is God and immortality necessary for meaning in life?

My concern in this essay, is firstly, to raise some doubts regarding some of the unnecessary consequences that Craig attaches to moral relativism, and secondly, to outline some of the potential consequences of holding an absolutist conception of morality. Showing how moral relativism might be less problematic than moral absolutism will not in itself be sufficient for the achievement of my overall aim; namely, to show that (a) it is not clear whether immortality would in fact be beneficial to leading a purposeful and meaningful life, and (b) that meaning need not be lost if one accepts a weaker, yet, perfectly plausible conception of objective meaning.

European Journal for Philosophy of Religion

2016

Through the examination of the lives (or afterlives) of several immortal beings, this paper defends a version of Moritz Schlick’s claim that the meaning of life is play. More precisely: a person’s life has meaning to the extent it there are things in it that the person values (i) intrinsically rather than merely instrumentally and (ii) above a certain threshold of intensity. This is a subjectivist account of meaning in life. I defend subjectivism about meaning in life from common objections by understanding statements about life’s meaning in quasi-realist terms.

The question of the meaning and meaningfulness 1 of life has come to be neglected by today's philosophers. Meaning is implicitly assumed to be associated with individual choices and preferences. This article sets out by arguing that meaningfulness works in another way as well. It points out that we are appealed by something that provokes meaningfulness. The article then elaborates on the consequences of this vision, one of these being that there may well be implicit 'standards'. Some authors writing on meaningfulness or related subjects indeed believe that this is the case, but the point made here is that certain benchmarks -i.e. references concerned with our 'being-in-the-world' -have not been explored fully enough.

Dialogue, 2017

Kirk Lougheed has argued that the Objective Meaningful Life Argument establishes a type of anti-theism, the view that a theistic God’s existence would make things worse and thus it’s rational to prefer that God not exist. The objective version of this argument is said to be an improvement over my subjective version of the Meaningful Life Argument. I argue that Lougheed’s version fares no better than the subjective version.

This book is a collection of all the papers and essays published in the Special Issue “Nihilism and the Meaning of Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with James Tartaglia,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.7, No.1, 2017, pp.1-315. Two years ago, in 2015, we published the book Reconsidering Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz, and after the publication, one of the contributors to the above book, James Tartaglia, published his own intriguing philosophical book on the meaning of life and its connection with nihilism, entitled Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality (Bloomsbury 2016). I thought it would be a good idea to have a symposium on his book in the Journal of Philosophy of Life. I invited ten philosophers who have a strong interest in this topic, and edited a special volume dedicated to Tartaglia’s book. After receiving their papers, I asked James to write a reply to each of them, and in July this year we published a special issue in the Journal. You can read all of them, along with the replies by Tartaglia, in this single book.

Ars Disputandi

Theists are inclined to assert that human life would be meaningless if there was no personal immortality and God did not exist. The present paper aims to evaluate the truth of this claim. The author first explores the conception of meaning that is at the roots of the theistic position. After pointing out some difficulties with it, the author shows that, on a plausible alternative interpretation of what it is for an activity to have meaning, human life would fully qualify as meaningful even if it were not inscribed in a universal divine plan.

The Australian Book of Atheism, editor Warren Bonett, Scribe, Melbourne, 2010, 2010

Is atheism worse off when it comes to providing a meaning for life than belief in supernatural powers such as God and karma? The paper considers whether the supernatural gives a better account than atheism of life's purpose or value or significance or a better reason for being moral. It looks at opinions offered by Bertrand Russell, Leo Tolstoy, Peter Singer. Richard Dawkins, and others.

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2015

We raise various puzzles about the relationship between God (if God exists) and the meaning of life (if life has meaning). These difficulties suggest that, even if we assume that God exists, and even if (as we argue) God's existence would entail that our lives have meaning, God is not and could not be the source of the meaning of life. We conclude by discussing implications of our arguments: (i) these claims can be used in a novel argument for atheism; (ii) these claims undermine an extant argument for God's existence; and (iii) they suggest that atheism is consistent with our lives having meaning.

2017

the publication, one of the contributors to the above book, James Tartaglia, published his own intriguing philosophical book on the meaning of life and its connection with nihilism, entitled Philosophy in a Meaningless Life: A System of Nihilism, Consciousness and Reality (Bloomsbury 2016). I thought it would be a good idea to have a symposium on his book in the Journal of Philosophy of Life. I invited ten philosophers who have a strong interest in this topic, and edited a special volume dedicated to Tartaglia's book. After receiving their papers, I asked James to write a reply to each of them, and in July this year we published a special issue in the Journal. You can read all of them, along with the replies by Tartaglia, in this single book. Nihilism is an important topic in the field of philosophy of life. Currently, anti-natalism is hotly debated in the context of the meaning of/in life in analytic philosophy. The idea of anti-natalism goes back to ancient Greek literature and philosophy in Europe, and ancient Indian philosophy and religions in Asia. I believe that tackling the theme of nihilism will contribute a lot to contemporary philosophical discussions about the meaning of life and death in the contemporary world.