If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Angrboda]

But what was wrong with that?  Sure I was delusional in believing that Sky Daddy has important work for me to do, but those delusional beliefs gave me a strong sense of meaning and purpose.  What's wrong with that, especially if life is meaningless anyway?  In a billion years it will make no difference whether I was right about everything or whether I was totally delusional.

If there is no God, you found meaning from the scaffolding of believing in a sky daddy, you created that meaning by choosing to believe. Now you believe that life has no meaning. That there is no capital 'S' Significance to existing. I think you've just adopted another set of scaffolding, only one that says that meaning isn't real, that it's not a thing unless it's out there in the universe. I think that's just coffee house philosophy crap. What if you're wrong? What if meaning exists in a real way without God and this new scaffolding is as fictitious as the old? You seem remarkably invested in this idea that life has no meaning.

For my own personal belief, meaning is real, and we never escape it's grasp. We are built to experience meaning as something real. That makes it real to us. This idea that because the universe doesn't care that there is no meaning is imo wrong. Meaning is always meaning from some perspective. The universe isn't an agent, so it has no perspective. It's just a category error to expect meaning to come from the universe. But it's obvious that you care about things. So much so that it's eating you up at this time. Surely caring is a sign that these things in your life are significant. Maybe not capital 'S' Significant, but small 's' significant. You are a social animal. Certain things matter to you just because of that base fact. You want love, and you would experience sexual love as significant. You want the admiration of your peers. You want status in the scientific world. You want all the typical things that make life good. These are significant for you. All these things are meaningful to you, but you're experiencing their absence at this time. I think focusing on their absence is making you an existential gloomy Gus. You've got the telescope trained on the idea that ordinary things can't be meaningful because there's no big 'S'. I think you've deluded yourself by believing meaning doesn't exist as much as you'd deluded yourself into believing there was a sky daddy. I don't think we can escape meaning in this life. It is the water we swim in, so much so that we are distressed by its absence, or seeming absence. I think perhaps if you concentrated less on the big S and more on the small s'es, you'd be a lot happier. Epicurean things like good friends, satisfying work, good food, an occasional novelty to spice things up. In short, I think you're mistaken in believing that life has no meaning; I think you're surrounded by it. You've just chosen to focus on this idea that life has no meaning. And I think that's distorting things for you. We are built by evolution to experience meaningful things in a vast variety of ways. That you are experiencing a low in your sensus meaningfullitis is no reason to jump to the conclusion that meaning doesn't exist. I think you're mistaken. I think it does.

(I apologize in advance if this seems preachy or rudely impudent. I was trying to get across the ideas, but I couldn't help but incorporate some of the personal details. If my advice is off base, pay it no mind. I'm just trying to get the ideas across.)