Meaning of Life

Posted on February 5, 2009
Filed Under Philosophy, Religion | 21 Comments

Over on LDS-Phil there was an interesting question about the meaning of life. Someone posted an atheist’s existential question. They saw existentialism as the view of life as an sand castle or sand drawings that eventually get washed away by the waves. (Interesting image) We can spend our life trace patterns in the sand or building buildings but eventually they get erased. Given that, why do anything at all if it will all be destroyed? Really this is the question of death. How can there being meaning given human finitude.

The criticism is then raised against what the perceived LDS answer to this is.

The stereotypical LDS view is that we have eternal life so our etch-a-sketch never gets erased. That is there is no death and thus no finitude. Of course this isn’t a real solution since it doesn’t solve the problem of meaning. Just because the sand castle doesn’t get erased that doesn’t mean it is meaningful. “Merely existing doesn’t impart meaning.”

To quote,

Mormonism’s answer to “what is the purpose of life?” is “Become a God, reproduce, grant Godhood to worthy children. Repeat for all eternity.” But to what end? This kind of cosmic cycle appears as ultimately meaningless as a finite existence–it’s just a meaningless existence that never ends. (And, perhaps horrifyingly, cannot end).

Of course hearing that last sentence made me think immediately of Nietzsche’s horrifying thought experiment in The Gay Science §341.

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.’

I think Mormonism really as a practical matter embraces that thought experiment. Is eternal life divine or horrifying? Nietzsche’s thought experiment was to raise us to seek the life which, if repeated endlessly, would give us joy. That is the same question can make us see a demon or a god. It is a question of making this life good without necessarily saying there is something preceding the life that makes it good.

The question of the meaning of life from an atheist is very interesting to me. I actually agree with some of our Evangelical critics that with our rejection of creation ex nihilo ends up making us atheists relative to the kind of God traditional orthodox Christianity asserts. That is there is no intrinsic value. Given this it’s probably unsurprising that so many Mormons have had a strong attraction to existentialism broadly construed.

Existentialism is of course a broad label that encompasses a lot of disparate and often opposed views. If we characterize it, perhaps unfairly, as “existence precedes essence” we can see why Mormonism turns towards existentialism. For traditional Christianity with creation ex nihlo to generate existence there was meaning prior to existence and it is God’s creating that provides meaning. Meaning is inherently prior to existence. In the LDS conception there was no ontological creation and we were all co-eternal with God existence inherently must precede essence. So philosophically we end up finding ourselves with the atheists in the question of meaning.

Now let me return to the stereotypical LDS answer. Eternal life, to me, isn’t the answer of what value is or what gives value. Rather it is the answer of what the existential question produces. It is the end not the source of meaning. So to me the atheist critic of Mormonism above simply gets things backwards.

The problem of meaninglessness is really the problem of thinking meaning is something that must be given us. That meaning is external to us. For Nietzsche this was the question that brought nihilism. Which is, I think, the angst that causes this sort of depression when we think about it. Yet for Nietzsche there was also an announcement of an anti-nihilism that he felt could overcome nihilism. Now one can dispute Nietzsche’s view of this life. (I certainly do) But I think Nietzsche’s anti-nihilism was basically the idea that making and discovering values is simultaneous. We share with others the values we discover but don’t force them upon them. That is valuing must come from within. Or put an other way life’s meaning comes from living life. It can’t be arrived at as the discovery of something “out there” independent of life. Value can not be reified.

To me most Mormons will find a resonance when we consider the God that Nietzsche attacks as the God of creation ex nihilo. And the solution of meaning and meaninglessness (eternal life) is found when we give value to our life.

Put back in the allegory of our atheist critic it is the building of a sandcastle and seeing what remains after the waves. It’s not the mere accidental holding back of the waves. Rather it is the embracing of the waves as providing meaning. (Or in more philosophical terms it is embracing a sense of death as creating meaning rather than providing meaninglessness) So we build, see what remains, and the build some more. And we share our knowledge of what remains. In this view God is building just as we are. He can offer us a way. But each of us have to enter a place where we discover on our own. We can’t be in a place where God offers us values such that we treat them as valuable simply because God said them. We have to enter a probationary state where God becomes more invisible to us and we experience values here and now without God fully present to us. Where we face the waves washing away what seemed value. Only through that process (mortalness) can we find and appreciate value on its own terms as opposed to the principle of creation ex nihilo. That is as value welling up within a life well lived rather than as external to it.

Related posts:

  1. Sartre’s Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
  2. Meaning of Life?
  3. Language, Externalism and Meaning
  4. Ethics and the Death of God
  5. Digital Life
  6. Meaning in a Postmodern Vein

Comments

21 Responses to “Meaning of Life”

Perhaps the reason there are varying degrees of glory is that each individual finds his/her own meaning, which leads them to the kingdom that fits their meaning?

Yeah, I’ve long thought that myself.

I think that when one is “in the moment” and experiencing love and grace, you don’t have to think about meaning, the experience is enough. Go Zen!

4 Carborendum on February 5th, 2009 4:36 pm

I’ve asked myself the same question as this atheist. In the end, this just reinforces the fundamental difference in a nihilistic atheist (as this one seems to be) and a man of faith.

The answer to any search for meaning is essentially “a higher purpose”.

To most, the afterlife is enough.
To LDS, Eternal Progression is enough.
To this atheist (and many others I’ve known) nothing is enough.
In the end you have to believe there is such a thing as a “higher purpose”.

But when you have a world view that says this tiny little blue-green ball in an infinite universe is all there is to life, and you are only one of billions that inhabit it, there is nothing that is high and noble about anything. What importance is there to anything?

I believe that this search is part of what makes us human. This search is itself one of the purposes of life. Maybe we’ll come up with an answer in mortality. Maybe not. But the search is what is important to humanity.

I really like this, Clark.

I also like Rameumptom’s comment. It resonates well with me.

I don’t think the proposition that the rejection of creatio ex nihilo entails radical existentialism is a necessary one. The only persons I can see likely to accept that proposition are radical anti-realists, and I don’t think radical anti-realism is remotely compatible with LDS theology.

More to the point, the idea that only the act of willing creation can give meaning to something is not a necessary assumption. It entails the proposition that all value is subjective, and thus reduces the choice between good and evil to nothing more than a choice between alternative lifestyles. It means that choosing to wipe out every living thing has nothing inherently wrong about it, that God’s dominion is nothing more than a power play, and so on.

I’m trying to fully comprehend Mark D’s idea in 6, because I think that from an LDS perspective, there’s something to it.

For example, even before reading his post, and just from reading the original entry, the first thing that crossed my mind is that it definitely did not feel *right* to say that LDS theology entails existentialism.

Regardless of the rejection of creatio ex nihilo, the church does make stances about the eternal nature of gender. It does have a system of objective values that will not sway. There are laws about Justice that presumably must be followed (although that’s where we can go around that with principles of Mercy as well).

So, as an atheist/nihilist/existentialist/whatever-ist, I see a difference.

I mean, it’s interesting that in the beginning article,

But each of us have to enter a place where we discover on our own. We can’t be in a place where God offers us values such that we treat them as valuable simply because God said them. We have to enter a probationary state where God becomes more invisible to us and we experience values here and now without God fully present to us. Where we face the waves washing away what seemed value.

I mean, I’m not sure how much is just Mormon culture and how much is doctrine, but it seems apparent to me that we are expected, in the gospel, to learn to treat the values that God offers us as valuable simply because God said them. Yes, we are in a probationary state where God is invisible to us, but then that just raised a *new* value that is valuable just because God said so: faith.

When you start experiencing other values that don’t mesh with the church, then you diverge from the church’s path. You might come to a time where you face disciplinary action as a result, maybe you’re leave on your own accord, or perhaps your path won’t be so disparate. So even though something like this *sounds* nice, I just don’t see how it practically fits within the church’s model.

This is the Euthypro dilemma. There are three solutions for theists:

1. God is the timeless definer of the good
2. God is the arbitrary definer of the good
3. The fundamentals of goodness are independent of God

(1) is Thomist, (2) Calvinist and (3) relatively unique to Mormonism.

Those who hold the third position often also hold that God is worthy of worship because he is good, and that if he ceased to be good he would either cease to be God, or cease to be worthy of worship.

Perhaps we should be asking what the meaning of happiness is.

Mark, I don’t think rejection of creation ex nihilo entails existentialism. (Otherwise every non-theist would be an existentialist) I think it explains why many Mormon thinkers choose existentialism. Of course one could always just say that value is an intrinsic ontological feature of the universe. On what basis one would say that seems a tad harder to figure out. I think the typical view is what I’d term a mild existential position of meaning-making – a kind of subjectivism of value.

Andrew, I think we’re conflating senses of value. We have to distinguish value as meaning from value as function or utility. My sense is you are confusing them. I think the Church teaches moral codes and ascribes utility to them. I’m not sure that entails how they are grounded. Likewise I think one could be a moral realist (say a Utilitarian) without seeing meaning as inherent in the universe.

Why mix meaning with purpose. People argue about meaning, but the laws of nature don’t care about you, we’re just not the center of the universe, and when the waves of reality wash over the sand of our life, we are not around to observe what, if any, is left.

However….

Your life does have purpose, and you define what that purpose is, and that is worth living.

Clark, I maintain that moral realism is necessary for LDS theology to make any sense.

In particular, it is the only way we can distinguish between God and the devil, or between competing gods or coalitions of gods for that matter. Without such fundamentals, the identity of the one true God reduces to a question of nothing more than might makes right or personal preference, take your pick.

The most fundamental question in theology is why there can (or must) be only one true God. Mormonism shorn of moral realism cannot answer that question.

Clark: I agree with you completely here — our meaning is not given to us from outside and it isn’t based on the purpose for which we have been created. Ultimately, the meaning of our lives, what they are about and where we will end up, are dependent on our choices. It just happens to be our nature to be meaning creating organisms. We both create and find meaning in our lives because it is intrinsically meaningful for organisms such as us to be in loving relationships, to flourish in learning and growth and to enjoy the ride along the way in the here and now.

Mark, I’m agnostic about the necessity of moral realism although I accept moral realism. One should note though that there are lots of possible kinds of moral realist models. Utilitarianism is, for example, a moral realism. One can dispute why happiness should be our aim but the Utilitarian might simply reply that they are explaining what people mean by goodness and not why we should seek it.

In any case I don’t think morality and meaning are the same thing. So I think you might be conflating the two the way I think Andrew was.

JTJ I don’t think purpose and meaning are the same thing. I think love is a kind of meaningfulness but there isn’t necessarily purpose to love. (Purpose in the sense of some teleological aim or utility) So I completely agree that conflating purpose or utility with meaning is incorrect.

Andrew, I think we’re conflating senses of value. We have to distinguish value as meaning from value as function or utility. My sense is you are confusing them. I think the Church teaches moral codes and ascribes utility to them. I’m not sure that entails how they are grounded. Likewise I think one could be a moral realist (say a Utilitarian) without seeing meaning as inherent in the universe.

Even though I think the church does teach moral codes and ascribes utility to them, I think they also entail that these codes are grounded. It may not say *how* they are grounded, but it establishes, I think, that they are grounded.

If as Mark D said in 8, a Mormon answer is that the fundamentals of goodness are independent of God, then that’s ok, but then that means that we still have “fundamentals of goodness.”

I think Andrew the question is what kind of grounding they are grounded with.

As I said though the bigger issue is that one shouldn’t equate as equivalent the question of meaning with the question of moral rules.

The other interesting question is the question of whether moral laws are absolute. (i.e. exceptionless) My sense is that the LDS position either says there are exceptions or else suggests there’s some higher arche-laws beyond the laws we are given.

Mark, Do we really think mormonism actually makes sense, or do we suspend normal critical thought that we normally apply to others? It certainly takes the long route when logic is applied. Also, isn’t our view of morality relative? History and current studies seem to suggest that -

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/11/the_spread_of_disorder_can_graffiti_promote_littering_and_th.php

#13 well put.

Clark, I believe there is such a thing as natural moral law, but I do not think that natural moral laws are absolute. Moral realism has to work at a lower level than that.

For example, if suffering is a metaphysical primitive, then a suffering metric applied over the universe of available actions should grant a partial ordering to those actions according to the principle of least suffering.

In my opinion, moral laws are a quasi-natural superstructure built over lower level principles such that all legitimate moral superstructures have fundamentals in common despite differing widely in the details.

JTJ, I believe that Mormonism has the fundamentals of the best theological infrastructure on the planet, due to an inspired rethinking of fundamentals centuries after classical (“onto-”) theology had long congealed. That doesn’t mean I think its perfect.

JTJ, I don’t see how that study suggests morality is relative.

Clark, Are you saying ethics have no influence on morals?

Mark, Considering the history of theology, it’s not that difficult to claim the best (admittedly imperfect) infrastructure, although Jainism would present a formidable claim to that role. However that role is constantly evolving as societies recognize more reasonable morals and ethics. Even hollywood knows this and mocks it. see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHaVUjjH3EI

Umm. I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’m saying formal philosophical reasoning on ethics rarely changes our moral views. That’s not to say reasoning in general won’t. However my personal belief is that the reasons for our change of view will tend to be more irrational than formally rational. (i.e. you have an emotional response when you consider some dilemma) So I’m not saying don’t think about the issues. Just that any effect will probably be a secondary one.

In effect I suppose I’m taking the Moore view where we have a kind of intuition of ethics. I don’t believe in the least intuitionalism of the sort Moore believed. More just that it is our basic beliefs about right and wrong that are foundational and that ethics can’t really help us much beyond that. Ethics tends to be self-justifying of our intuitions.

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