Asking, “If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?” is like asking, “If there is no master, whose slave will I be?” If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest. — Dan Barker “Live as God’s slaves.” — 1 Peter 2:16

Most Christian apologists will admit that yes, atheists have meaning. It just doesn’t have the caliber of Christian meaning.

And they’re right.

Take William Lane Craig, for instance. This apologist argues that atheist decide their own “subjective”meaning; it’s not given to them from an outside source. Christians, on the other hand, receive their meaning from God, making it “objective” and more “real” than flimsy atheist meaning.

Of course William Lane Craig and all the other apologists who argue this (Alister McGrath is a recent example) are right in saying that, unlike Christians, atheists don’t see meaning as something that is assigned by God.

But they’re wrong on just about everything else, and I suspect most Christians get too enthusiastic about having a way to distinguish their lives from atheists to see why. It’s time to move on from something so obvious. Yes, Christians, you’ve shown us a distinction between the way you think about meaning and the way that most atheists think about meaning. Let’s take a closer look and see which one makes sense and is more meaningful.

When I did this as a Christian, I found that I had been blind to seeing the ways such apologists use a special Christian definition of “objective” meaning to steal meaning from human beings. These apologists have taken the notion of an outside being who has absolute tyranny and rather intrusive authority to tell you what your life is for, and then dressed it up with the word “meaning” to make it sound nice when it really robs your life of your own sense of meaning (which is the only real sense of “meaning” in the game — God, who doesn’t exist, is just a way to steal it from you). In reality, it’s a pretty disturbing concept.

But, perhaps more important than that, it is a concept that simply doesn’t make logical sense.

Here’s why:

Suppose your buddy was like, “You get your meaning in life from your own desires, experiences, relationships, etc. That’s all subjective. I get my meaning from an outside source. His name is ‘Joe.’ Therefore, my meaning is objective and superior to yours.”

I don’t like it. I don’t want some guy named “Joe” to tell me what my purpose is. I don’t care if Joe is a great guy. I don’t care if he’s all powerful, super-smart, or if you assure me that he’s super-nice. I don’t want some outside guy to have absolute authority to tell me, “This is your meaning, whether you like it or not.” To say that it seems really intrusive is an understatement.

And besides…what is this Joe guy’s meaning? Does he get meaning from an outside source? No? Then his meaning is just as subjective as mine — it depends on his subjective whims.

So…this is where things really stop making sense. In Joe-follower’s philosophy, if someone uses their subjective judgement to assign meaning to themselves, it’s subjective…but if someone uses that same subjective judgement to assign meaning to someone else, it’s suddenly objective? The logic is nonsense or a meaningless rearranging of words.

Seems to me that if someone — be it God or Joe — uses their subjective judgement to assign meaning to someone else, it’s subjective meaning because it came from their subjective judgement. And it’s also a bit…rude. I have my own life; let me define what it means.

So…that’s how I feel about God. The Christian is right — I don’t have some outside being telling me my life has a meaning I have to fulfill whether I want to or not. So yes, we’re different there, and I don’t mind keeping it that way.

“But,” some Christians protest, “You don’t get it. God has greater knowledge than we do. So it’s not like he decides on a whim. His greater knowledge enables him to determine what the most meaningful way to live our life is.”

The difficult thing here is in determining what “meaningful” means. If “meaningful” isn’t defined by us or assigned by God, what does “meaningful” mean? You can say that it means power, happiness, etc. — but these are all subjective desires. They are things that we subjectively judge as meaningful based on what we want out of our experiences. There really is no such thing as a meaning for life that is disconnected from subjectivity. It simply doesn’t exist. Try to think of it. You may feel like you’re thinking about something “deep,” but you won’t come up with anything. It’s not profundity; it’s nonsense.

And even if it were possible to have meaning that was outside of subjective judgement…it would simply exist…outside of God’s desires and subjective preferences and our own.

How boring. Who would want a disembodied meaning?

All “meaning” is based in our experiences, in what gives us hope, in what makes us laugh, cry, love and the rest. I don’t want to miss out on the adventure of experiencing meaning in my life due to some imaginary wagging finger or some disembodied principle (even if such a thing were even possible) that I have to dedicate my actual subjectively experienced life to. Both sound unpleasant — as if they would suck all of my own sense of meaning from my life.

“But,” some Christians respond, “What I mean by ‘objective meaning’ is ‘universal meaning’ — God knows what we will eventually want, what will fulfill all our wants and desires, and that’s the meaning he has in store for our lives.”

There are so many problems with that logic that it’s hard to know where to begin…but I’ll try.

First, if God knew what would fulfill all our wants and desires, why did he make a world in which all our wants and desires wouldn’t be fulfilled? Second, why set so many rules in opposition to our desires? Third — is it true, as most Christians say, that God doesn’t send people to hell, people choose to go there? So God’s meaning obviously isn’t working for a lot of people there. Fourth, how do you know that your God has access to all of my wants and desires? No one seems to have enough knowledge of my life to know that — isn’t it better for me to say what my wants and desires are rather than trust, for example, a random book that seems to run, in the real world, counter to millions of people’s natural desires? Fifth, why should I think that your God has access to what I ultimately want when he clearly is getting so much of it wrong here in the present moment? He really has a terrible track record.

I probably could say more, but you get the gist. If the knowledge of meaning you’re saying God has is based on what all human beings in the world want…why trust a nonexistent God for it? Why not actually — here’s a thought — ask the human beings, valuing their subjective judgments of their lives, and see the commonalities between human beings as instances of more widely held meaning? I’d rather go directly to the people who do exist in the flesh and right in front of me than to a God who doesn’t seem to exist that no one has ever seen, especially since we are the ones whose lives are being defined as having meaning.

So…that’s why I think objective meaning, as Christian apologists define it, is unsavory, intrusively framed nonsense, and that, rationally speaking, human subjective experience is far more important than any theory of God in any attempt to define meaning.

Thanks for reading.

And now, this, from world-class rock climber and atheist Alex Honnold:

