Sorry I didn't get to post on this thread earlier....

I was busy with my son's grad, my adorable grand daughter's Kindergarden Grad, juggling my two jobs, making time for the goddess I sleep with, helping another son with his girlfriend problems, counciling an abused, woman friend of ours, planning a weekend away with some dear friends, visiting with some other grandkids who decided to pop in (giving me a chance to intimidate one of them's new boyfriend), get some work done on a play I'm writing (have been writing forever it seems), persuading the dog to give up HIS spot on the couch and finally making it back to the computor...

Now what was the question?

LC >;-}>

What does a stone falling mean? It shows a property we call gravity. It means nothing.

A two headed calf is born. What does it mean? That there was a defect in the reproduction process which is random and has no meaning.

What does Bush mean when he says Iran has a nuclear weapons program? There are a lot of answers but all of them are quite human.

What does life mean? That a certain class of chemical processes are self-sustaining. But what does that mean? Why does one try to find a human meaning in things which are not human?

In the general sense the question of meaning to life is an attempt to anthropomorphize reality, to make the world human.

Although the Greek-like pantheons likely started as humans elevating themselves to god-kings it did serve to almost humanize the world. Unfortunately it was such an incomplete explanation that the gods had to be declared arbitrary and capricious and vain and cruel to humanize their actions.

The jewish god is simply one of the members of a Greek-like pantheon. Such pantheons existed from Persia to Rome to Egypt. The christian god is a vague amalgam of several deities, the product of a committee, a god for all seasons. But the first unambiguous statement of monotheism does not appear until Islam but it was quickly adopted by Christians and later by Jews.

This mono god was originally the christian "true" god but the meaning of true god and false god was as in true and false love or true and false patriotism not real and unreal. This god gave meaning to life as a testing ground for the afterlife. Rather than have the arbitrary and capricious characteristics of the previous pantheon he was always "testing" people. There was always a method to its meanness and sadism and downright savagery.

And THAT is the key to your question. Atheism did not take away the meaning of life. It did get rid of the sadistic meaning of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim god. You can go back to that meaning any time you want but you will have to make all kinds of excuses for that god's behavior and treatment of you. You can go back to a life that has meaning but you have to accept that meaning is ad hoc, irrational, inconsistent, arbitrary and incomprehensible. If you of a theological bent you can go back to a world which has a meaning but a meaning which cannot be known.

Occam says an unknowable meaning for life is an unnecessary hypothesis in place of no meaning at all.

Christian and Theist doctrine is that your life has no purpose. Man's only purpose is to serve the purposes of an invisible god. So, if their life has any meaning at all, it's to be the slave of an all powerful imaginary entity.

In Atheist/freethinking, the purpose of life is what you decide it is at every moment. If you choose to decide that life has no meaning, that is YOUR choice. If you choose not to assign a purpose or meaning to life, you still have made a choice. So you're the decider not a religious leader or invisible god.

What evidence is there to suggest the universe has any purpose never mind life in it. I don't think the 'meaning of life' is a question beyond our knowledge I think its a question that just doesnt make any sense. You might as well ask why do unicorns have a single horn, why does a dragon breathe fire or less fantasy based why can't you smell the colour red?.

The entire planet could be wiped out of existance by a meteorite tomorrow wiping out 20 000 years ? of human civilization and 4 billion years of life. Would it matter to the life on the planet definitely , but to the universe as whole absolutely not we simply are not important on a universal scale. Just human arrogance to assume otherwise

Even if you could only get meaning for life if there existed a god, that would not be evidence for the existance of a god. They are using an argument from emotion - a logical falacy. Wanting something to be true because it makes you feel better does not make it true. They're just trying to distract you from the real argument at hand - the validity of their religious claims (existance of god, virgin birth, whatever).

Most things you have said are incoherent and thus it is not possible to act on them in a meaningful manner. However, this is both coherent and entirely false. The interaction of photons with fermionic matter boils down to two phenomenon: Emission and absorption. In principle, any fermionic matter will release photons when excited enough. By "excited" I am referring to the energy levels of electrons, which, under the Bohr atom model, jump energy levels given a sufficient increase in temperature. This is normally expressed as the following equation, crucial to the entire discipline of quantum mechanics and physical chemistry:

E=hc/lambda

E being the energy released in SI units, h being Planck's constant in SI units, c being the speed of light in SI units, and lambda being the wavelength, again, in SI units.

So, no, DNA does not emit light. Fermionic matter undergoing excitation will release photons due to the jump of electrons from energy levels and their resulting relaxation. For example, an unexcited piece of copper will not emit light unless inserted into a flame, at which point it will emit photons of a pleasant green color (or blue. As a transition metal, it will have different emission spectra for different oxidation states). This is called a flame test. Very common for quick element Identification, a crude form of spectroscopy.

So, to round this off, here's a nice picture to demonstrate.

The deep red indicates lithium.

And to preemptively answer the question: No. DNA does not do this. I would know. I look at it all the time.

This is the meaning of life.

It's absurd, intelligent, and very, very funny. Just like life.

To me, it seems the meaning of life should be just about the only thing on which theists and atheists agree. To an outside observer (I have never believed in God, but I know many who do), it seems that if there is a God, He would want but one thing for His children: for them to be joyous and happy.

The whole "worship" thing never made sense. What kind of people do we most admire? Those of great skill, and are still very humble. Boastful people, and people who demand our attention for their own sense of self-worth, are generally considered... well, assholes. So why should our God be any different? In my estimation, any God worth His salt wouldn't want to be worshipped. He might want some gratitude, but that's hardly worship.

Rather, it seems He'd want us to be happy, and boisterous, and filled with joy and fun. I doubt He would want to be surrounded by parsimonious sycophants, which is what it seems the Christians think of their God.

As someone who doesn't believe in God, I realize that we have only this one life. As such, I want to get as much as I can out of it. I want to have fun, and feel joy, and have good conversations with interesting people (which is why I'm here at RRS). As my joy and happiness depends on the goodwill of other people, often complete strangers who will never know me, I try to practice goodwill to make others' lives better in return. This just makes sense to me, out of fairness -- but it also makes sense that if their life is better, mine will also be better in return. ("A rising tide raises all ships," and whatnot.)

Anyway, that's the way I see it. I think that the "purpose of life" issue should be moot, just from the nature of life, and the imagined nature of a "supreme being," in whose image we are shaped (in the Christian belief, anyway).

But really, as others have said, it's up to you to find your own purpose. Really, what I've defined as a "purpose" is really just a goal -- to be happy. I treat that as my purpose, and most things I do are in service to that end, but truthfully, it's not much of a purpose. It's just the only universal thing I can think of that makes sense.

WOW!!  I got exhausted just reading that.  Never mind trying to keep up.  Your wife must be very patient.

Life cannot really have an absence of meaning. Nothing can, if meaning itself means explanation. It can be a difficult explanation, or a disappointingly banal one, but it cannot absent itself. Also I note that you use "life" to mean that of the individual and not the concept in general as it applies to plants etc. Religious people tend to do this too, since even they throw in the towel when it comes to brainwashing lupins, so I'll limit my answer to the same definition if that's ok.

In your example you substitute meaning for purpose, since religion has patently failed ever to explain life but has made repeated stabs at providing its subscribers with a purpose (normally to perpetuate the religion). Since we are talking therefore about the difference between objective explanation and totally subjective purpose then the answer to your question is that subscribers to subjectively imposed values are capable of just about anything except reasoning unpolluted by lies.

Your last statement is that you are seeking a way to refute the assertion "religion is good because it gives meaning to life". The assertion is false and the only refutation required is to phrase it correctly "religion is bad because it provides subjectively defined purpose to an individual's life". It is, in rational terms and in terms of applying rationale, an obstacle to progress. As long as we all accept that "progress" is in itself a positive concept, then religion inhibits this progress at best and reverses it at worst. It is anti-life.

Your forum name wouldn't be inspired by a book written by Orson Scott Card would it?