Meaningfulness v meaninglessness; theism vs atheism;

[Ryft]

Absolute nonsense. Meaning is not an illusion at all. It completely makes sense from my atheistic viewpoint that meaning exists, because subjective meaning is still meaning and still exists—in the brain.

Interestingly, you just refuted yourself. If meaning is really just various biochemical brain states, then it actually IS an illusion, a private fiction we use to console or empower ourselves that in reality is just electrical and chemical signaling throughout specific neural tissue. Your very act of articulating yourself here is likewise just neurological and physiological activity. The reality turns out to be that you are simply a complex organism functioning on adaptation and evolutionary advantage, not these illusions of meaning and truth.

And yet you speak of meaning and truth as if they are real in themselves, like most everyone does. And I think you are right, but the point is that your atheistic views cannot account for this. On your atheistic view, meaning and truth are NOT real in themselves; they are actually just physiological manifestations of your brain's neurological activity. So when you speak of meaning and truth as if they are real in themselves (i.e., not an illusion) that is intellectual currency the origins of which is somewhere other than your atheistic view. If you were forced to remain consistent with your atheistic view, then we should never hear you speaking this way.

"Why are we here?" makes the assumption that there is a reason, a cause.

True. And yet that is nevertheless a very real and authentic question unique to the human experience and as old as mankind's ability to self-reflect. But under atheism (in whatever form it happens to be expressed), and especially atheistic biological evolution, that sort of thing is unintelligible; it cannot give a coherent account for that question and its underlying assumption of existential purpose. (This is why I say that Nihilism is the only internally consistent atheism.)

Theists don't know that God exists. They just speculate.

Incorrect. Agnostic theists don't know that God exists, whereas gnostic theists do.

As an atheist I likewise don't ultimately know the cause of the universe and ultimately why we are here, but I don't need to know, as they don't need to know. I speculate, just like they do as theists. I just don't make the assumption of God's existence.

Then you are an agnostic atheist, inasmuch as they are agnostic theists. But I fail to see how this autobiographical information about you is relevant to my point.

I've posted here more than anyone else, and I've yet to see any atheist say that either explicitly or implicitly.

I think that says more about your reading diet than anything else because it does indeed get said, most recently by downbeatplum and Paul the Human (in the "Belief" thread of the Atheism section).

There are the gnostic atheists who think they 'know', but I have yet to see them say they 'know' God doesn't exist because there is a lack of evidence.

Again, that is irrelevant autobiographical information. What you have or have not seen is simply irrelevant to my point. And all this talk about who "knows" what and who doesn't is quite beside the point at any rate, as I have been talking about atheism, which pertains to the category of belief and is distinct from the category of knowledge. In other words, you are at risk of committing the red herring fallacy.