Does Life Have Meaning If God Does Not Exist?
Absolutely, and it may be even more meaningful without a deity.
If you doubt that God exists, then you probably also suspect that humans are little more than collections of randomly colliding molecules. If I am just a bunch of atoms clinging together in the shape of a person, then it seems to follow that how I live my life doesn’t ultimately mean anything. After all, while a chunk of quartz may be pretty to look at, its formation and eventual fracture doesn’t have any lasting significance to the universe.
Even if God does not exist, however, human life may still have meaning — we are almost certainly more than just the sums of our chemistries. In a previous essay, I argued that there are several paths to life after death, even if God does not exist. Each of those paths could provide life with meaning. In this essay, though, let’s assume that there is no afterlife.
With no God and no life after death, how does human existence have meaning? The answer comes from considering why so many people believe that God must exist for life to have significance. The reasons fall under two headings — heaven and eternity.
Heaven and the rules to get in
The first of these is heaven. The traditional biblical story says that the point of being alive is to get into heaven, and that there are certain rules you have to follow to achieve that celestial goal. In other words, God has provided laws you have to live by to get into the afterlife, and it is only by following those rules that life has meaning.
But even if God did exist, would following His rules provide meaning? If God is all-powerful, He could make any rules He wanted for humans to follow. Living according to the arbitrary rules created by someone else is hardly a meaningful way to exist.
For instance, if you needed a certain score on a standardized test to get into college, you would probably spend time studying for the test, and be happy with yourself if you got a high enough score to get in. Despite your happiness, though, the test itself wouldn’t be meaningful. Spending a lifetime studying God’s rules in the hope of passing the exam to get into heaven is similarly hollow. Indeed, we all live according to human-made laws, but I think everyone would agree that following those laws isn’t what gives life meaning — it’s what we do beyond the rules that provide significance.
If the meaning of life isn’t about trying to pass a holy version of the SAT, then what is it about? I believe the answer comes from biology.
From the simplest bacterium to the most complex mammal, life depends on the organization of molecules in cells. Thus, life arises from the creation of order at the scale of the cell. Next, consider the mind. For every human being, consciousness depends on the organization of billions of neurons in the brain. Thus, consciousness arises from the creation of order at the scale of the brain.
In a similar way, it seems very likely that a meaningful life arises from the creation of order at the scale of the lifetime. Just as life and consciousness are emergent properties that arise from order at the scale of the cell or the scale of the brain, meaning is also an emergent property that arises from order at the scale of the lifetime.
At first it may seem obvious that meaning comes from creating order. But consider how often we are told that the meaning of life is something different. As already mentioned, the Bible claims that meaning comes from living by God’s rules. Some philosophers have argued that meaning derives from leading a virtuous life, or by trying to be constantly happy. But as I wrote in a previous essay, those are just strategies for how to live in the moment, not a way to construct greater meaning throughout a lifetime.
If a meaningful life arises from the creation of order at the scale of the lifetime, then what form should that order take?
The answer is that the order can take any form. If God does not exist, then there is no one to judge whether one form of order is better than another. A person may decide to create order over her lifetime by starting a social movement, or raising a family, or simply planting trees. How you decide to create order throughout your life doesn’t matter, it is the process of creating that order that gives life meaning.
Eternity and the desire for permanence
The natural objection to the idea that meaning arises from creating order is that as soon as we die, any order we create begins to erode. If the order we create is not permanent, then perhaps our lives truly are ultimately meaningless. This leads directly to the second reason many people believe God must exist for life to have meaning — eternity.
We intuitively think that meaning depends on permanence — a painting that hangs in a museum for hundreds of years seems meaningful, while even the most intricate sand sculpture is a mere curiosity. Similarly, many people assume that their life is meaningful only if God grants them an afterlife that lasts for eternity. As I wrote in a previous essay, though, eternity may not depend on the existence of God.
Time does not behave how we instinctively believe it does, flowing forever onward in a straight line. Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity shows that the flow of time changes depending on something as simple as how quickly a person is moving. It should come as no surprise then, that time is much weirder than we believe. Many physicists argue that time is a non-changing block — that every moment from the beginning of the universe until the end of time exists simultaneously. They call this the block universe hypothesis. If true, it means that every thought you think and every action you take exists for eternity.
For the sake of this essay, though, let’s assume that the block universe hypothesis is wrong and that time does indeed flow in a straight line that erases the past. If so, then eternity is impossible, and our thoughts and actions will eventually be forgotten. Must we conclude that life therefore has no meaning?
Certainly not. Once again, it is helpful to turn to biology.
The carbon cycle describes the movement of carbon atoms from organic to inorganic spheres, and then back again, in an endless loop. For example, a deer grows by taking in carbon from the plants it eats. After the deer dies, the carbon from its body is released back into the environment. Some of that carbon ends up in the atmosphere, where a shrub may take the carbon from the air so that it can grow. That shrub may then be eaten by a horse, who in turn uses the carbon from the plant to grow. When the deer died, if all its carbon stayed together as a lump for eternity, then it would not have been available for the shrub or the horse, and neither would have been able to grow.
Similarly, meaning may also be a cycle that depends on constant creation and destruction. The order that we create during our lifetimes must eventually decay so that it can provide the raw materials for future humans to create order in their lives. This is true for the order we create using physical materials, as well as for the more intangible order we create using ideas.
Consider the buildings and monuments erected by the ancient Romans — many lifetimes were spent creating such order. The vast majority of Roman buildings and monuments, though, have long since been pulled down, their stones used to create new buildings and monuments. This may seem sad, but if the Roman constructions hadn’t been pulled apart they would have stood forever, permanently blocking new creations.
The same holds for ideas. The works of William Shakespeare are constantly being pulled apart. As his life continues to recede into the past, fewer and fewer people will read Shakespeare’s works or sees performances of his plays. The stories he told and the language he used to tell those stories, though, have long been used as the foundations for an enormous number of new stories, plays, and movies. In a few thousand years, Shakespeare will be read by only the most diligent of academics, but the order he created during his lifetime will continue to provide the material for other authors and playwrights to create their own order.
In this light, it seems clear that the hope that our achievements will last for eternity is extremely selfish — if our achievements last forever, then those born after us will not be able to create their own achievements. Part of what makes a life meaningful is providing the raw materials for other lives to be meaningful. As a consequence, the end of each meaningful life is also meaningful, because it creates new opportunities for those that come after to flourish.
While living a moral life or a happy life may be nice, doing so won’t lead to a meaningful life. A meaningful life requires creating order out of the chaos of a lifetime. As you move through your daily existence, continually ask yourself how you can create more order over the span of your lifetime. Always remember, though, that death and the dissolution it brings is also meaningful, as it will provide the materials that will allow others to create their own meaningful lives.
