On God and Religion

[Dr. Jones]

I can't help myself:

tl;dr
"Too long; didn't read."
1. The paradox of being able to read 400 small posts but not a single long post.
2. A sign of ADD or lack of reading capability.
3. A cry for attention: "I'm too lazy to read the entirety of what you said, but I still want to say something."
4. A sign that not only is someone too lazy and stupid to read, but also too lazy to even type out four words indicating such.
5. A desperate attempt at a comeback used by people who just can't think of one.

Late, I admit, but this was just awesome.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

Late, I admit, but this was just awesome.

I must admit that I cobbled it together from various definitions at urbandictionary.com... but thank you. I did particularly like #s 1 and 3, myself.

 

[billyshelby]

Well, you're wrong about one thing: the question of whether God matters is not simple.

The only thing I can say is: read what I originally posted. That's my response. I mean, the first section (after the intro) is titled "Humanity's need for ultimate purpose." The whole thing is very much about purposes and why God is important for human lives to have any meaning. It takes at least as much space as I've used to even begin answering that question. And even then, there's a hell of a lot I haven't addressed.

Odds are a message board post from some random guy isn't going to change your mind. But hopefully it'll at least provide some food for thought. FWIW, I used to be an atheist, and still agree more with atheists on many things than I do with conservative Christians.

It seems to me you get off track in your third paragraph (of "Humanity...Purpose"). You state postmodernists (or any unlabeled percentage of the people pie) are content with the notion there is no meaning to anything. That's a pretty simplified way of describing my own cosmological view. But you lose me when you switch to the Royal We: "We all believe we are building and contributing." You go on to other blanket assertions, but your argument seems to be that the 'postmodern' view is so patently invalid that it isn't worth examining.

So I'll pose my former statement as a question: Is it possible that life is more meaningful if god doesn't exist? And if the answer is yes (it is possible), then doesn't that also mean life might be less meaningful if someone chooses to believe in god?

 

[moevillini]

Christ and salvation really just don't fit into my concept of God at all. Jesus was certainly a real historical figure, but I don't subscribe to the claims Christians make about him. That's not to say he didn't have some interesting ideas.

Salvation... it's interesting, I was in a class here at UChicago a few quarters ago called "Being Human." In one of the discussions, the idea of salvation came up. And, somewhat politically incorrectly I suppose, I started pressing everyone in the class (there were about ten of us) about what exactly "salvation" meant for them. I never really got a straight answer.

But as I've said... I believe that when we're dead, we're dead. Our experiences survive in some way, but we don't go on experiencing. What is there to save?

Some would argue that we need incentive to be good. I think that's a bunch of crap. Unless loving is its own reward, then it's not really loving. Being happy and being moral go together... metaphysical doggy treats like heaven belittle the idea that being a good person is its own reward.

So yeah... salvation... I ain't got no use for it.

funny you mention the difficulty of defining salvation - my husband over the years has worked with many who are Hindu and Islamic, and every so often we'd get into discussions about the differences in our religious beliefs, and the Christian ideas of "salvation" and "grace" always seemed like completely incomprehensible concepts to them - of course, that might have been my own difficulty in trying to explain it. But those faiths have no concept of "original sin" so the idea of salvation seems pretty unnecessary for them.

 

[One Brow]

Well, God does interact with the present, acting as a lure and given things their initial aims. And God does "provide a concrete past" in the sense of preserving the past eternally, which in turn alters God's effects on us. But I am not quite sure what you mean by "mutualistic with the world."

The relationship would be mutualistic if God offered something to the worrld it did not already have on it's own. I don't find the lure of your notion of God to be any different than what most empathic social beings would choose for themselves. The existence of an inaccessible concrete past is no different than the non-existence of such a past, for us.

If no one remembers something that existed, how we can we say that it ever existed? You could say, "well of course it did, there is a concrete world in which true events occur," but this just displays the depth of our need for such an assumption. It's not ultimately based on anything.

We know that Ceasar crossed the Rubicon, that he had hair, and that all hair has a color. I don't see a problem there, unless you think we shouldn't assume all hair has a color.

Perhaps that's what you mean, that the assumption of homogeneity (things always behave the same way unless they have a reason not to) is unfounded. I have nothin to counter that except inductive evidence: so far, human experience is best explained under homogeneity. However, I don't see the problem of homogeneity asbeing solved by your putative God. God takes no action in the world, so God can not preserve homogeneity. The formulation of a concrete past is not imply present homogeneity.

A past which makes no difference to anyone or anything cannot be said to really exist because there are no effects. That's why I believe the idea that God remembers everything and preserves it eternally is important.

Yet, you solve this problem by proposing a God which has no detectable effects.

 

[One Brow]

You know, I've already responded to this a little bit, but some other thoughts occurred to me.

I welcome the opportunity to read more of them.

But the unwritten assumption in this criticism is that there is an atheistic worldview that is more likely to be true than the theistic position I've outlined. I'm not so sure that's the case.

I agree it is not the case. It is almost meaningless to talk about a likelihood for God existing. God exists, or God does not.

Further, I make no claim that my position is true and yours is false, misguided, etc. I have no evidence to bring to bear, no non-circular chain of logic to present. I am a searcher for truth, and a discoverer of precious little thereof.

Since, that is, God is the necessarily existent who is therefore tolerant of all empirical realities, his existence can be neither verified nor falsified empirically.

A reasonable statement about many conceptions of God.

But any scientific theory rests on the shoulders of a metaphysics -- a comprehensive view of how the universe works -- whether that metaphysics is stated or not.

Have you read much in the philosophy of science? You'll find terms like homogeneity, isotropy, etc. discussed in detail, as well as the usual contradictory positions and open questions philosophy generates. Though, this is usually in the epistemological branch of philosophy, not the metaphysical. Nor am I sure is should be otherwise. We base our vacinations programs on biology, not the other way around. If metaphysics is to be a descripiton of our world, should it not be based in physics, rather than dictate physics?

And there are certain basic realities -- such as the emergence of complex organisms -- which science doesn't explain particularly well. Certain theistic theories have a more credible ring to them than any scientific theories I know of.

For centuries science could not explain the flight of bees well. It could not explain volcanoes well. Both of these are simple problems compared to abiogenesis.

Alfred North Whitehead's little book, The Function of Reason.

One of teh issues I have with thee passages is the notion that "more complex" = "higher". That reads a lot of value into a basically random occurence. Thereis no tendency in life to become more complex. For example, most viruses are considerably less complex than their likely ancestors. Most organelles lose complexity over time.

Here an illustration for increasing complexity. You line up a million drunks against a wall to their right. Each drunk will stagger while moving forward, and at random will stagger forward, stagger left, or stagger right. Those who hit the wall can't move further right, and so continue to go forward. After 20 steps, you'll find many drunks have traveled a considerable distance to the left, and than overall the leftness of the crown has greatly increased. It's not because there was any advatage or superiority to going left.

I do agree that life is deficient in survival value. Over 99.9% of species go extinct. However, life is callous to the lives of its individual constituents. The remaining .1% keep going. A rock may be a hundred million year old, but our ancestry is some 3.5 billion years old.

In summation... yes, we can both agree that the viewpoint I've expressed is more comfortable than the idea that we die and have not accomplished anything that will persist in any kind of meaningful way. But the fact is this: I wouldn't believe in God if I thought it was any less likely than the notion that there isn't a God. I would prefer truth and despair over self-delusion and happiness.

I have no desire to convert you. I question to learn, not alter.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

It seems to me you get off track in your third paragraph (of "Humanity...Purpose"). You state postmodernists (or any unlabeled percentage of the people pie) are content with the notion there is no meaning to anything. That's a pretty simplified way of describing my own cosmological view. But you lose me when you switch to the Royal We: "We all believe we are building and contributing." You go on to other blanket assertions, but your argument seems to be that the 'postmodern' view is so patently invalid that it isn't worth examining.

My point is that the "postmodern view" as I've described it leaves no hope that there is meaning to anything. Now, granted, "postmodernism" is a pretty ambiguous term. It can mean lots of different things depending on who's using it. What I want to assert is that there is meaning to life that is not somehow arbitrary, and that such meaning will not die out when humanity does. Otherwise, why do we bother?

So I'll pose my former statement as a question: Is it possible that life is more meaningful if god doesn't exist? And if the answer is yes (it is possible), then doesn't that also mean life might be less meaningful if someone chooses to believe in god?

My answer to your first question here is: no, at least not on my understanding. Of course, it depends on how you conceive God. The "traditional Christian" conception of God I outline is a God that I believe offers us no help as far as meaning goes. I find atheism more credible than that conception. But I can't think of a way that life would be more meaningful without God than with the God I've outlined. Certainly I could be wrong. But that's how I see it.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

The relationship would be mutualistic if God offered something to the worrld it did not already have on it's own. I don't find the lure of your notion of God to be any different than what most empathic social beings would choose for themselves. The existence of an inaccessible concrete past is no different than the non-existence of such a past, for us.

And yet if the past is not somehow preserved, then we are not really affecting or building anything. Our lives would be meaningless. The fact that God knows us and all we are, and acts as a lure toward greater things, is enough. True, it doesn't really affect our own access to the past, but it does mean that we actually accomplish something in our lives which endures.

We know that Ceasar crossed the Rubicon, that he had hair, and that all hair has a color. I don't see a problem there, unless you think we shouldn't assume all hair has a color.

Perhaps that's what you mean, that the assumption of homogeneity (things always behave the same way unless they have a reason not to) is unfounded. I have nothin to counter that except inductive evidence: so far, human experience is best explained under homogeneity. However, I don't see the problem of homogeneity asbeing solved by your putative God. God takes no action in the world, so God can not preserve homogeneity. The formulation of a concrete past is not imply present homogeneity.

My point is that the past isn't real. It doesn't exist. Period. We like to think -- have to think -- that it did exist. If we remember something, we can at least posit that it did exist at some point in the past. But if there is some theoretical event or person which no one remembers, which causes no effects, then we cannot even say that it ever existed at all. How could we?

The idea, then, is that God's memory is exactly equivalent to the actual past. It doesn't matter that we as humans can't access it like flipping through a picture-book. The fact that someone remembers with perfect clarity simply gives us license to assert that the past has some mode of existence in someone's memory. And that thing -- God -- remains in constant contact with all the creatures and things of which the universe is made up.

Yet, you solve this problem by proposing a God which has no detectable effects.

But here's the thing: I make this statement below, which you agree is reasonable: "Since, that is, God is the necessarily existent who is therefore tolerant of all empirical realities, his existence can be neither verified nor falsified empirically." In other words, God is omnitolerant of all possible realities (at least on my conception). You say "God has no detectable effects." And all I can say in response is: of course not. God is a basic fact of the universe. Everything is tinged with God... much as Paul Tillich asserted that "God is being as such." We will never be able to detect God apart from reality, because all is a part of God, and God is a part of all things.

I'll grant you that this is not a very satisfying answer. It's also why many people will not kind this kind of conception very helpful, because it depersonalizes God to such a high degree. If God is indistinguishable from the universe at a basic level, one that we can never overcome by definition, then is this conception appreciably different from atheism? Functionally, in terms of how it affects how we live our lives, it makes very little difference at all.

You see why I say that I still have a lot more in common with atheists than conservative Christians.

Yet still, my view is panentheistic rather than pantheistic: God is the universe, and yet greater than the sum of Its parts. That doesn't mean that we detect this "greater part" empirically. But I do think Teilhard is right when he asserts that "a universal love is not only psychologically possible; it is the only complete and final way in which we are able to love." I don't think we can love parts of the universe without first loving the whole. To quote Teilhard a little further:

"A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music... how has psychology been able so consistently to ignore this fundamental vibration whose ring can be heard by every practised ear at the basis, or rather at the summit, of every great emotion? Resonance to the All -- the keynote of pure poetry and pure religion. Once again: what does this phenomenon... reveal if not a deep accord between two realities which seek each other; the severed particle which trembles at the approach of 'the rest'?"

I don't think we sense the universe in this way as a collection of parts. We sense it as a unified whole... much as we experience another person -- or any animal or creature, for that matter -- as the person or animal or creature, and not as a collection of cells, or electrons and protons and neurons. And I think the experience of sensing the universe as a unified whole is sensing God.

Again, highly mystical, and perhaps not very helpful. But there it is.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

I have no desire to convert you. I question to learn, not alter.

I want to take this last comment first.

I did not intend this as some sort of indignant response to your comments, or some passive-aggressive attack. I am very sincerely sorry if you interpreted it in that way. All I wished to emphasize was the importance, to me, of finding the truth, and that I think (and hope) that my desire for non-arbitrary meaning does not get in the way of my search for it. If there is a rebuke in the statement you've here responded to, it is directed at myself for possibly letting my wishes get ahead the facts... it is not directed at you or at anyone else.

I've found all your comments extremely helpful. I plan to be working in this stuff for a long time, and it's always good to get as much feedback as possible on where your weak spots are.

I welcome the opportunity to read more of them.

Good! I don't often get the opportunity to seriously engage with someone intelligent over things like these.

I agree it is not the case. It is almost meaningless to talk about a likelihood for God existing. God exists, or God does not.

Further, I make no claim that my position is true and yours is false, misguided, etc. I have no evidence to bring to bear, no non-circular chain of logic to present. I am a searcher for truth, and a discoverer of precious little thereof.

This reminds me... have you ever read John Dewey's A Common Faith? Remarkable book, only 88 short pages. He makes a brief but compelling cases for a new sort of faith tied to scientific discovery and divorced from supernaturalism. I've quoted him here before... in fact, I quotes him in the concluding section of my original post.

Here's a good quote from A Common Faith to chew on:

"Understanding and knowledge also enter into a perspective that is religious in quality. Faith in the continued disclosing of truth through directed cooperative human endeavor is more religious in quality than is any faith in a completed revelation. It is of course now usual to hold that revelation is not completed in the sense of being ended. But religions hold that the essential framework is settled in its significant moral features at least, and that new elements that are offered must be judged by conformity to this framework. Some fixed doctrinal apparatus is necessary for a religion. But faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add that there is but one road to it. It does not depend for assurance upon subjection to any dogma or item of doctrine. It trusts that the natural interactions between man and his environment will breed more intelligence and generate more knowledge provided the scientific methods that define intelligence in operation are pushed further into the mysteries of the world, being themselves promoted and improved in the operation. There is such a thing as faith in intelligence becoming religious in quality -- a fact that perhaps explains the efforts of some religionists to disparage the possibilities of intelligence as a force. They properly feel such faith to be a dangerous rival."

A reasonable statement about many conceptions of God.

You're right, of course, that not all religions subscribe to such an idea. Hinduism is polytheistic, and their deities are ultimately contingent. That's part of the reason why I have a hard time taking much of Hinduism very seriously. I find Buddhism much more compelling.

Have you read much in the philosophy of science? You'll find terms like homogeneity, isotropy, etc. discussed in detail, as well as the usual contradictory positions and open questions philosophy generates. Though, this is usually in the epistemological branch of philosophy, not the metaphysical. Nor am I sure is should be otherwise. We base our vacinations programs on biology, not the other way around. If metaphysics is to be a descripiton of our world, should it not be based in physics, rather than dictate physics?

Yes, absolutely. I'm reading a book (Adventures in the Spirit) right now by Dr. Philip Clayton, who is one of the two big shots at Claremont who I'm going to study with. He's both a scientist and a theologian, and much of what he stresses is that scientific and religious thinkers must communicate more effectively and act more cooperatively. There is so much knowledge out there, no one can no it all. I am certainly not a physicist, and could very much benefit from a physicist's input. I'd especially like to know more about the nature of time. In my view, metaphysics is meant to fill in the gaps of what we can't establish empirically.

Of course, none of this is easy. there are competing theories in every discipline, and most people are not willing to give up their strongly held beliefs in one area when an expert in another area starts criticizing him. That's partly a good thing -- as I've said before, we'd never learn much if we didn't have the inclination to defend our pet theories against some overwhelming evidence and opposition within our own fields as well as outside them. That's how paradigm shifts happen.

All we can do is come up with our own comprehensive explanations and keep testing them against the evidence -- hopefully while in honest and non-defensive communication with other specialists.

For centuries science could not explain the flight of bees well. It could not explain volcanoes well. Both of these are simple problems compared to abiogenesis.

That's true. And hopefully with enough work we'll arrive at some sort of explanation that is more compelling than what we've got. We're just not there yet.

One of the issues I have with these passages is the notion that "more complex" = "higher". That reads a lot of value into a basically random occurence. Thereis no tendency in life to become more complex. For example, most viruses are considerably less complex than their likely ancestors. Most organelles lose complexity over time.

Here an illustration for increasing complexity. You line up a million drunks against a wall to their right. Each drunk will stagger while moving forward, and at random will stagger forward, stagger left, or stagger right. Those who hit the wall can't move further right, and so continue to go forward. After 20 steps, you'll find many drunks have traveled a considerable distance to the left, and than overall the leftness of the crown has greatly increased. It's not because there was any advatage or superiority to going left.

I do agree that life is deficient in survival value. Over 99.9% of species go extinct. However, life is callous to the lives of its individual constituents. The remaining .1% keep going. A rock may be a hundred million year old, but our ancestry is some 3.5 billion years old.

I'll take your word for it that viruses have a tendency to become less complex over time, and that there or another organisms of which this is the case. You clearly know more about it than I do.

But isn't it true that beings in the universe have, as a whole, tended toward a higher complexity?

Religious explanations of abiogenesis never used to impress me. My basic position was that, given how old the universe supposedly is, there's sufficient time for random conditions to get life started. But the more I thought about, the more I tended to think, "Really? No amount of time could have just made life emerge from non-life." And the sort of explanation I just posted, strange as it may sound, is the best I can think of: that the matter of the universe is somehow driven -- or drives itself -- toward a higher consciousness, (that is, the general thrust of things, notwithstanding specific occurences like viruses which may become less complex as a survival mechanism). And I do think that "higher" here is the right term, at least in the limited sense that humans have a greater capacity for understanding, abstraction, and reason than any other creatures do.

If this is the case, then the question becomes: why do things tend to evolve toward a higher consciousness? That's the million-dollar question for me. The fact that we have leads me ask what the purpose of life is, since, as Whitehead pointed out, rocks are a lot better at maintaining their existence then we are. So what's the point of us, then?

But who really knows? As you say, abiogenesis is one of the trickiest questions there is. And the data we have is very much open for interpretation. But from what little I know, there is a greater amount of consciousness that exists in the universe here and now than there was five billion years ago. And while that development might be somewhat random, the notion of abiogenesis itself has me thinking that the universe is more directed, or purposeful, than many scientists would care to admit. If not God, then some variety of panpsychism, with consciousness somehow latent in all matter.

 

[billyshelby]

My point is that the "postmodern view" as I've described it leaves no hope that there is meaning to anything. Now, granted, "postmodernism" is a pretty ambiguous term. It can mean lots of different things depending on who's using it. What I want to assert is that there is meaning to life that is not somehow arbitrary, and that such meaning will not die out when humanity does. Otherwise, why do we bother?


My answer to your first question here is: no, at least not on my understanding. Of course, it depends on how you conceive God. The "traditional Christian" conception of God I outline is a God that I believe offers us no help as far as meaning goes. I find atheism more credible than that conception. But I can't think of a way that life would be more meaningful without God than with the God I've outlined. Certainly I could be wrong. But that's how I see it.

My argument is life is actually more meaningful if it is arbitrary, if we just die, if there are no explanations for anything. I realize that sounds paradoxical, but I'll try to explain what I mean.

On God matters, the only certainty is we'll never know one way or another if there is or isn't a god. A lot of people decide there is one, and I don't doubt that belief helps make their life more meaningful. But ultimately, it's a belief in something for which insufficient evidence is available. Every one of those people will have to die knowing they aren't actually certain anything happens once the music stops, and their whole meaning for life could have been a fallacy.

That doesn't work for me. The truth is life might be arbitrary. Death might be permanent midnight. We may never get any answers. So I'd rather base my meaning for life on things I know. I know there are lots of relationships in my life that really matter to me. I know I've got 2 dogs that play a large role in the meaning of my life. I know I have ambitions to accomplish things which gets me out of bed every day. I know I have great memories of things I've done, and a huge list of things I want to do.

God has nothing to do with any of this and never will. I don't need to know anything about God to appreciate and enjoy my life. If someone proved tomorrow that God absolutely didn't exist, nothing would change for me. My "meaning" is totally self created and not dependent on even a flicker of hope. More than that, I don't need the world to make sense. I don't need the cosmos explained. I don't need to know that death is a new beginning. I don't need to know anything about the beyond.

To me, that's a much more meaningful existence because it's based entirely on my life, however designed, random, lucky or cursed it may be.

 

[AtheistPreacher]

My argument is life is actually more meaningful if it is arbitrary, if we just die, if there are no explanations for anything. I realize that sounds paradoxical, but I'll try to explain what I mean.

On God matters, the only certainty is we'll never know one way or another if there is or isn't a god. A lot of people decide there is one, and I don't doubt that belief helps make their life more meaningful. But ultimately, it's a belief in something for which insufficient evidence is available. Every one of those people will have to die knowing they aren't actually certain anything happens once the music stops, and their whole meaning for life could have been a fallacy.

That doesn't work for me. The truth is life might be arbitrary. Death might be permanent midnight. We may never get any answers. So I'd rather base my meaning for life on things I know. I know there are lots of relationships in my life that really matter to me. I know I've got 2 dogs that play a large role in the meaning of my life. I know I have ambitions to accomplish things which gets me out of bed every day. I know I have great memories of things I've done, and a huge list of things I want to do.

God has nothing to do with any of this and never will. I don't need to know anything about God to appreciate and enjoy my life. If someone proved tomorrow that God absolutely didn't exist, nothing would change for me. My "meaning" is totally self created and not dependent on even a flicker of hope. More than that, I don't need the world to make sense. I don't need the cosmos explained. I don't need to know that death is a new beginning. I don't need to know anything about the beyond.

To me, that's a much more meaningful existence because it's based entirely on my life, however designed, random, lucky or cursed it may be.

Okay, I see where you're coming from.

I agree that death is the end of subjective experience... that there is no afterlife. So I'm with you there. And I also think you're right in asserting that it doesn't actually change very much in daily life if you believe in God or don't.

The only thing I would say is that we as human beings do need some kind of purpose for living our lives. And you clearly have reasons and purposes for your life that have made you feel very secure with where you are and what you're doing. That's about the best we can hope for. The only comfort that belief in the sort of God I've outlined would be that whatever you accomplish in your life won't simply disappear when you and everyone you know is gone... because while I don't belief in an afterlife, I do believe God preserves our experiences, and that those experiences continue to inform the rest of the universe, however small the effect might be. But as you say, death might bring total annihilation with the death of the individual and ultimately of the human race... maybe in the end none of it means anything. But I tend to think humans are hard-wired against that kind of fatalistic assumption. What God makes intelligible is that our accomplishments and effects never disappear... I can't see how an atheistic system can provide that kind of meaning when there is a good chance that humanity will eventually perish and leave nothing behind. That's why I don't buy that arbitrary purposes created by people themselves can ever be as meaningful as contributing something to the divine experience. Your idea seems to be based on the idea that the latter might be false (a worst-case scenario sort of attitude), rather than a direct comparison of the two.

But if you're content, then I see little need to argue the point. As you say, God either exists or doesn't, and what will happen will happen.

 

[billyshelby]

Okay, I see where you're coming from.

I agree that death is the end of subjective experience... that there is no afterlife. So I'm with you there. And I also think you're right in asserting that it doesn't actually change very much in daily life if you believe in God or don't.

The only thing I would say is that we as human beings do need some kind of purpose for living our lives. And you clearly have reasons and purposes for your life that have made you feel very secure with where you are and what you're doing. That's about the best we can hope for. The only comfort that belief in the sort of God I've outlined would be that whatever you accomplish in your life won't simply disappear when you and everyone you know is gone... because while I don't belief in an afterlife, I do believe God preserves our experiences, and that those experiences continue to inform the rest of the universe, however small the effect might be. But as you say, death might bring total annihilation with the death of the individual and ultimately of the human race... maybe in the end none of it means anything. But I tend to think humans are hard-wired against that kind of fatalistic assumption. What God makes intelligible is that our accomplishments and effects never disappear... I can't see how an atheistic system can provide that kind of meaning when there is a good chance that humanity will eventually perish and leave nothing behind. That's why I don't buy that arbitrary purposes created by people themselves can ever be as meaningful as contributing something to the divine experience. Your idea seems to be based on the idea that the latter might be false (a worst-case scenario sort of attitude), rather than a direct comparison of the two.

But if you're content, then I see little need to argue the point. As you say, God either exists or doesn't, and what will happen will happen.

You call it a worst case, I call it the only absolute certainty -- god really might not be out there. Consequently everyone has a choice to base their meaning on a total uncertainty, or base their meaning on something actually tangible like their own life. In my way of thinking, basing meaning on things that are uncertain is inherently less valuable than basing meaning on things that are.

I can address the 'comparison' angle, too. (As an aside, the one thing that particularly bugs me about the god makes life meaningful angle are all the presumptions that go along with it. That god exists does not mean he loves us. Or that he has a plan for anything. He could be completely indifferent. Even evil. He's a naturally logical construct we've created to fill in the enormous gaps of knowledge that come along with existence. He's a wish fulfiller. There's been gods of brussel sprouts. In nearly all incarnations, we've shaped him into something that "makes" life infinitely more meaningful by virtue of his ability to counter strife. I digress)

What I don't get is why you assume human 'needs,' or the human condition in the abstract as self evident. You seem to place a lot of weight on permanence in various forms. We don't want to be erased, we want to live on in the cosmos, we don't accept that life can really be arbitrary, we want reasons. I can look at a sand castle and not love it any less once the ocean washes it away. In fact, knowing that the ocean WILL wash it away might even make me love it more. You ascribe universal human traits that don't apply to me and aren't universal.

I'm not pretending to understand your whole outlook, but it looks like you've constructed a massive argument to justify your own personal anxieties about existence.