Question about meaning and perception of reality from a theist.

[amkerman]

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.

Alright, excellent. When I say meaning I mean a real meaning not an illusory one. I will explain shortly.

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?

God is usually interpreted to be a universal standard of rightousness and goodness, the perfect being. God's will or purpose would be considered a "real" meaning. People could still form beliefs about what the meaning of life is, whether or not thoses perceived meanings were illusory would depend on how closely they coincided with God's will.

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."

Without God, without a "real" meaning to life, all meaning is illusory. You can percieve how ever much or little meaning in your life, but in the end it doesn't matter. If you get hit by a bus tomorrow after murdering some children or live a philanthropic life to old age it makes no difference. One life is not a better choice than the other because "good" and "bad", "right", and "wrong" are merely personal subjective perceptions. They are not real outside your mind. With God, on the otherhand, there IS actual purpose and meaning to life. One can judge one persons life to anothers and that judgement actually means something more than just opinion. Even with God, we are still able to perceive meaning, whether the meaning we perceive is correct in reality is a different story.

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."?

It can just be a "sense". If it is just a sense though, the meaning is illusory. If all meaning is illusory a belief in "meaning" is identical to a belief in "God". They would just both be beliefs in illusory things which we make up to give our lives purpose. However, you can't say that the "meaning" is real but that "God" isnt. They are both equally real to those who believe them, and equally nonexistent in reality.

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?

-Above

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.

Thanks. Ill look into them. I posted an argument for why belief in reality necessitates a belief in "God" a few pages back. I'll repost it and maybe you wouldn't mind taking a crack at it.