Question about meaning and perception of reality from a theist.

[Rev. Rye]

Can life have meaning w/o God?

Clearly, we can find examples of atheists who claim to have lives with purpose. If you can find one counterexample, you void the right to utter this sweeping statement.

I mean I understand how we could perceive it to be have meaninb w/o God, but that perception is just illusory isn't it?

And it's impossible for meaning with God to be illusory because? And what is the difference between a real and an illusory sense of meaning?

Without God aren't life and death ultimately meaningless?

I honestly think that the idea of God makes life and death even less meaningful. Life because, in many theistic worldviews, man is brought into existence primarily to populate God's cult of personality. Death because, in many cases, belief in God comes with a belief in an afterlife, which, the way I see it, reduces death to just a change of venue, and life to a game of "catch the soul."

As far as I can understand EITHER life has real meaning and there must be something real which we call "God" or "meaning" OR any "meaning" in life is illusory and people choose to believe in the illusion of God to give their life meaning.

So why is "meaning" something that must be equated with God? Why can't it just be a sense like "I have to go on. I must tell the world about my experiences and the ideas I've developed as a result."?

Believing that meaning is real but that "God" is illusory doesn't make any sense. It's exactly the same belief. It would just be another unverifiable belief for which the word "God" has been replaced with the word "meaning".

And why is it?

If someone could explain how life has real meaning without "God" I am all ears. Honestly I'm not trying to get into an argument I just want to hear the rationalization.

Here's a collection of writings by nontheists about how life can have meaning without God.
Come to think of it, even Victor Frankl, the writer of Man's Search For Meaning, a book anyone interested in questions of life's meaning should read, admitted that, for all his talk of God (as transcendental and far removed from that of organized religion as it was), meaning could be found even without giving it the name "God."

Furthermore, since all of our understanding of reality is based upon our perceptions, isn't the belief in the validity of human "perception" exactly the same as a belief in "God"? They are both ultimately beliefs in the unverifiable.

If we have anything else that's more verifiable, I'd like to hear it.