Well, I dont want to get too far ahead of RLK. I'm always interested in his perspective and I'm not as clear as I thought I was about where he's coming from here.

For my part, I think the infinite thing is a misnomer. I think a God-given world where there was no afterlife would have the same, privileged status that an atheistic one wouldnt. Similarly, if we lived forever in an atheist world, we'd still face the problem that our meaning was entirely conventional and arbitrary.

I prefer to think of it as being not that God is eternal, but more broadly that God as being uniquely special (an extension to NotReady's frequent reference to God as a moral arbiter - I'm pretty sure he'd broadly agree with my generalisation of that concept).

Yes I agree with all of the above.

What do you mean by empty set?

I'm not making my assignations of meaning by chance.

Ok, thats his purpose for us. How does that give you a purpose? How does that bring meaning into your life?

A set of objects such that no object is an element.

The set of primes is {2,3,5,7,11,....} the set of odd numbers less than ten is {1,3,5,7,9} the empty set is {}

Yay!

Yeah i like to hear his views even when he is in the get off my lawn mood.
This is how i see it but im not so sure RLK or other theists who make the argument (its pretty common) see it that way.

I really have no issue if a theist says my life is ultimately meaningless without God regardless of the finite or infinite. I dont think they can know that but i understand where they are coming form... and kind of agree. Its just when they use the finite argument i think it goes down a road they might not want to go down. I think it takes God out of the meaning business.

I mentioned above this is complex and takes time to unfold completely. I don't like pithy sayings and one liners, but here goes.

It brings meaning to my life beacuase I set out to love God and love people. How that works itself out will be different for everyone.

This is preferable IMO to living my life day in day out having no clue why I exist or if I exist for any reason apart from time & chance.

Yes but IMO if you exist by chance this undermines any type of meaning you may assign.

We should perhaps not get too far afield. My initial response would be that I dont accept that, if God didnt make the world, it exists by chance. Therefore as an atheist, I dont accept that I am here purely by chance. However, a moment ago you did agree with a post I made above which included the idea that perpsective is what matters. That meaning exists in an atheistic and theistic world, but there is no 'privileged point of view' without God:

"If my framing of the issue were accepted it wouldnt be correct to characterise an atheist universe as without meaning. Rather, it would be to say that there was no privileged frame of reference. No true "answer" to the big questions - just a whole bunch of ephemeral suppositions and subjective opinions."

Do you still agree with that?

I agree if God doesn't exist then all we have is " just a whole bunch of ephemeral suppositions and subjective opinions."

But thats just saying, you value it because you value it. You are just accepting a value system, same as anyone else. It doesnt show why this particular purpose is meaningful.

Again, this is no different to someone taking on a purpose of , i dunno, becoming really good at playing the piano, because they cant face having no purpose, or having no clue why they exist.

Also, your preferences have no bearing on whether its true. The fact that you cant face living your life with no clue, is irrelevant to the truth.

Sure. I knew you'd think that. I was referring to the post where you "agreed with all of the above".

My point is, if God doesnt exist, we can still have meaning. (Even if you think there's no way to determine who's correct). It's not lack of meaning that atheism brings, but lack of an "ultimate arbiter".

I agree preference is not relevant to truth.

I think God existing is preferable and true.

I am accepting a value system because I think it is true.
I am not trying to evade your question, just not sure how else to explain.

I may have been too hasty to agree

IMO a universe that exists soley because of time and chance is devoid of meaning period (you can convince me otherwise, just what I think).

There could have been hundreds or millions of similar universes that existed like this thorughout history. *shrug* Each one would share the characteristic of being temporal and meaningless.

People in said universe can try and think up meaning and explore concpets etc. but ultimately there is no meaning to it all.

You stated that without god, life can have no meaning.

You havent shown how you accepting a value system is any different from an atheist accepting a different value system.

You havent shown how accepting this value system gives life meaning, but accepting a different value system doesnt.

Neeel,

short of repeating myself I don't know what else to reply.
sorry

Do you accept that what you are doing is simply accepting a value system, and that you accepting a value system to give your life meaning is no different from an atheist accepting a different value system to give their life meaning?

That there is nothing intrinsic about your value system that makes it valuable, or gives it meaning?

I think you should have agreed (obviously) - I just think you should remain clear that what you object to is meaning assigned by temporal beings as opposed to the meaning that God ascribes. You value the latter more than the former (the the latter is undeniably different, in my view so we agree there - we just disagree that, in an atheist universe there'd be no such thing as a dictionary).
I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as God. I have no idea if the universe exists solely because of time and chance (I'm more inclined to the view that it is, in fact, necessary).

Being an atheist doesnt mean I think everything is random.
I think you're confused. In an atheistic universe, is there no meaning or is there no ultimate meaning?

Does the word "ultimate" have any point? If you think there's no meaning without an ultimate arbiter - why use the phrase "ultimate meaning"? It's just a waste of pixels.

Yup. This question of how one gets from "there is no ultimate meaning" to "there is no meaning, period" was the question Kagan asked WLC in that debate I mentioned upthread. Only time I've seen WLC literally unable to answer a question, so I'm not surprised amateur apologists struggle with it too.

Yeah, this is my understanding of the situation. The problem is that RLK slips into talking about his argument using the language of cost-benefit analysis or EV calculations, which presupposes that we are talking about something like utility, i.e. comparable quantities. However, if he is talking about utility then his claim that a temporary material life cannot have any utility is just obviously false.

Thus, I think we shouldn't understand him as trying to do this kind of EU calculation, but to instead be making the claim that utility wouldn't have any significance or meaning on the materialistic hypothesis. I.e., while it is true that our decisions can lead to greater or lesser utility, there is no significance or meaning to living a life of greater (or lesser) utility. This would presumably be true of any goal other than utility that we might choose to direct our lives towards as well.

I actually agree with this claim. I understand RLK as talking about what I usually call "ultimate" significance, meaning, or purpose. And I think it's true that on the materialistic hypothesis, there is no ultimate purpose or significance to my life. There are no natural final causes (sorry Aristotle!), and since the natural is all there is, that means there are no final causes--except for the ones we create ourselves. But human-created final causes don't extend beyond the life of humanity, and so are not ultimate, since humanity will at some point cease to exist.

The following does not address the question of God, only that of the mortality of consciousness.

OrP's last paragraph is again pretty close to what I am trying to say. In the materialistic view, my consciousness will end at death. At that point, I will enter a state in which there will be no difference for me from never having existed at all (call it a null state). That condition will persist for eternity. I do not exist, nor is there anything that remains of my having existed (again in my perception).

Now imagine that you could prove that this was in fact true, ie. that my consciousness ends at death. (I am assuming that you agree that however much you suspect that this is the case, you are willing to concede that it is not proven. If that is not true, then I guess I would have to ask for the proof as I have not seen it and the remainder of this does not apply.) Under the assumption that consciousness is mortal, I would make all of the statements that I have seen here. We should live this life to extract what meaning that we can while we can, essentially. And then, good night Irene.

But that does not mean you have actually created real meaning or significance. It is really an illusory meaning, that will vanish at your death. You created it to make your life a little more tolerable.

Take the other case, in which consciousness does not terminate at death. What does that mean? Well clearly I do not exactly know, but it does create the probability that everything that you do creates a truly persistent effect within you and the other consciousnesses (is that a word?) that you interact. An effect that is never reduced to a null state. Would that not be of infinitely greater significance than the illusory meaning created to deal with mortality? If there is a possibility that this is true, should that not be at least a factor in how we live our lives?

I understand at least the broad thrust of your view, but don't really get your choice of terminology:
How do you go from "temporary" to "illusory"?
Or why does "real meaning" imply "eternal meaning"?

(I think this was old prunes' query with his furry hammers and so forth..).

Also, though its a bit flippant, I think this is an inconsistency in your criticism:
In an atheist world there's no purpose right? Wouldn't you claim we didn't do it for any "real" reason?