{"id":846,"date":"2008-06-20T09:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T09:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/06\/20\/the-meaning-of-life-part-ii\/"},"modified":"2008-06-20T09:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T09:06:00","slug":"the-meaning-of-life-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2008\/06\/20\/the-meaning-of-life-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"The meaning of life &#8211; part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_M3KcDDpUUfo\/SFt0Ers4guI\/AAAAAAAAAIw\/rPh0XD_lI3g\/s1600-h\/the-meaning-of-life-thumb.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px;float: right;cursor: pointer\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_M3KcDDpUUfo\/SFt0Ers4guI\/AAAAAAAAAIw\/rPh0XD_lI3g\/s400\/the-meaning-of-life-thumb.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>Following on from the <a href=\"http:\/\/stephenlaw.blogspot.com\/2008\/06\/meaning-of-life.html\">previous post<\/a> on this theme, and your many excellent comments&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When the religious insist God, and only God, can make life meaningful, they often exhibit a pattern of thought that crops up again and again in religious circles. First, they spot a philosophical puzzle regarding e.g. ultimate meaning, or the justification or ground of ethics, or source of existence, or whatever. \u201cWhat, ultimately, makes things right or wrong?\u201d \u201cWhat, ultimately, gives life meaning?\u201d etc.<\/p>\n<p>They then say, \u201cGod is what solves that puzzle\u201d. E.g.&#8221;God is what ultimately explains the meaningfulness of life&#8221;,&#8221; God is what ultimately explains all existence&#8221;, &#8220;God is what ultimately lays down right and wrong\u201d or whatever.<\/p>\n<p>But rarely do they actually <span style=\"font-style: italic\">explain<\/span> how God solves the puzzle.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, usually the puzzle is merely postponed, for the same old problem crops up again at the level of God.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s what happens with the divine command theory in ethics, for example (Ophelia\u2019s example of the Euthyphro dilemma). The same postponement crops up here too. God is the external something that bestows meaning on our lives, but then, as Rayndeon asks, if meaning requires an external meaning-giver, what bestows meaning on his existence?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, they want to make God the \u201cexception to the rule\u201d so far as, say, the existence of things requiring an external explanation, or an external meaning-giver, or whatever.<\/p>\n<p>But what\u2019s the justification for making God the exception? That\u2019s the bit of explanation they rarely provide (which is not to say it cannot be provided).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod just <span style=\"font-style: italic\">does<\/span> explain it\u201d, they say, without bothering to explain how, or indeed, even think about how.<\/p>\n<p>God just becomes an excuse to stop thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Rather than provide a genuine solution, they just say, in effect, \u201cIt\u2019s mysterious God magic! Problem solved!\u201d Then they add \u2013 \u201cNow, what\u2019s <span style=\"font-style: italic\">your<\/span> solution?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Very irritating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following on from the previous post on this theme, and your many excellent comments&#8230; When the religious insist God, and only God, can make life meaningful, they often exhibit a pattern of thought that crops up again and again in religious circles. First, they spot a philosophical puzzle regarding e.g. ultimate meaning, or the justification [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-meaning-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}