What's Better Than Ultimate Meaning?

Last time, I focused on the claim “materialism implies that there is no ultimate meaning.” I wanted to understand what exactly was being asserted. Eventually, I came to this incomplete syllogism:

• If materialism is true, then X.
• If X is true, then there is no ultimate meaning to human life.
• If materialism is true, then there is no ultimate meaning to human life.

Our first concern, the obvious problem, is determining what X might be. Two also-obvious and complementary possibilities present themselves:

• X = God did not create us.
• X = We are random products of nature.

I don’t expect any argument on the first possibility, but I may get a question on the second. I think this latter possibility is articulated by, for example, the popular and influential Pastor Rick Warren, who asserts that “if there is no God, then our lives really don’t matter. We are just random accidents of nature, and neither our births, our lives, or our deaths have any meaning or value.”

I give a viewpoint like Warren’s because I want to be clear that I am not creating a straw man argument here. Nevertheless, I think that argument covers over too much to be very useful. Whether “we” refers to humans from an organic or a subjective standpoint, we are products of social interaction and cultural conditions in addition to evolution, biology, chemistry, and physics. Broadening our scope here reveals that “we” are subject to determining forces and not only to random nature.

In other words, we are products of our environment and genes as much as randomness. If materialism is true, then, we are products of social forces and internal and external natural operations all interacting together.

With this adjustment, our under-construction syllogisms now look like this:

• If materialism is true, then God did not create us. And if God did not create us, then there is no ultimate meaning to human life. Therefore....
• If materialism is true, then we are products of social forces and internal and external natural operations all interacting together. And if we are products of social forces and internal and external natural operations all interacting together, then there is no ultimate meaning to human life. Therefore....

Our next task will be to get an understanding of the idea of "ultimate meaning." In closing, however, let me say I find Pastor Warren's comment above both disgusting and wrongheaded. So let me ask:

Would you rather

• Live an extremely unhappy life that "mattered"?
• Live an extremely happy life that "didn't matter"?

I would rather live a happy life. I would rather my children lived a happy life.