Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of life?
The question itself is a bit poorly phrased, since we aren't just trying to define the word "life". The actual questions alluded to by the "meaning of life" are varied:
- Where did we come from?
- Why are we here?
- What is the purpose of our existence?
- How should I act on this information?
"Where did we come from?" is always answered by a creation story, and metaculture is no different. Science answers this question with the Big Bang theory and Evolution. However the question of "why are we here?" is often said to be outside the realm of scientific inquiry.
The notion of meaning or purpose often implies the existence of a conscious being to whom our existence is meaningful. Otherwise the answer to "why are we here?" tends to reduce to "we're here because we aren't not here". But it is possible to come up with a meaningful answer to this question without a supernatural actor given the right perspective on the issue.
We are here because the self-organizing principles of matter and logic make any sufficiently large mass will inevitably give rise to self-aware beings capable of asking this very question. It is the destiny of existence itself. A different universe of matter with different laws of physics might result in a totally different type of intelligent being, but that being will always arise and ask itself "why?" Either that or the alternate universe will collapse on itself before that happens and nobody will be there to ever know it ever existed in the first place.
But the important thing is that it's not the will of some supernatural being that causes us to exist, our existence is simply inevitable. But that inevitability can also be seen as the will of the divine, being carried out in the interactions of every atom in the universe.