What is the meaning of life?

Question

Your own opnion.

Answer 1

80% of humanity, the religious folks, don't need to ask the meaning of life, the church tells them....the supernatural explanation. But the rest of us can't swallow religious dogma, because there's no evidence. Nobody can prove that there life after death, that people are tortured or rewarded after life or that there's invisible spirits running around.

I've come to two conclusions recently:

1. Life has no meaning
2. Life has a million meanings.

First, there's a certainty that death and annihilation awaits not only you, but the Earth in general. It's an astonomical certainty that our sun will supernova and leave the earth a burnt crisp, not to mention all the other extinction level events around the corner.

Second, the million things that give us meaning are the pleasurable experiences we can conjure up during the short period we are here on the earth, in the form of the relationships we have with our kids and other people, and the 'housekeeping' types of purposes. What i mean by that are the curing disease, ending hunger, improving literacy, reducing crime, preventing war, helping other kinds of things.

So the bottom line is, we only have a temporary meaning to life, to reduce pain and increase pleasure, other than that everything is lost to oblivion.


To be or not to be? "To be" is temporary and "not to be" is inevitable.....

Answer 2

The approach is actually very simple. Life can have meaning if and only if God exists. For meaning comes from having a purpose to live for.

“Unless you assume a God, the question of life’s purpose is meaningless.” –Bertrand Russell (noted philosopher, mathematician and atheist)

But many people are willing to settle for a feeling instead of the reality. Perhaps one day medicine will find a drug that will give us that feeling. But if you want the reality of purpose and real meaning, you have to seek God.

Reject God + accept the truth = nihilism
Reject God + self deception = happy feelings
Seek God + accept the truth = possibility of real meaning

Answer 3

I love the brevity of your question.
Would you then like an equally simple, brief answer?
The meaning of life is non existent because it cannot be defined. Since it varies for each individual, AND its mere existence is questioned by existentialism, it really is not worth discussing. Some might say love, family, doing what you love, but the truth is....meaning..there is none.

Answer 4

So far, on Yahoo answers archived, some form of this question has been asked in excess of 49,000 times. There are at least 250,000 answers. After you go through those, if you still have a question, I will be more than happy to try to answer it for you.

Answer 5

Bran muffins all round! Seriously, no more than that. It's up to each of us to find a meaning in life and not let others dictate one to us.

Answer 6

Life means exactly and precisely just what you think it means and what I think doesn't count at all.

-- George Burns as God in Oh God!

Answer 7

Waaaa! I'm born! Wait, why am I here? Why am I getting older? Religion? Don't you see that doesn't make any sense? Ahhhhh I am dying!

Versions of death may vary slightly.

Answer 8

we should make the most of it

Answer 9

Don't think! Look!

Answer 10

to live.....it's alive......a living and breathing creature