The Meaningful Life Argument

This chapter explains one of the first arguments for anti-theism, the Meaningful Life Argument. It surveys a number of theories of meaning in life in order to demonstrate that the argument is consistent with every theory except those that hold God is necessary for meaning. One of the main goals of the chapter is to defend the argument from criticisms raised by Myron A. Penner (Faith and Philosophy 32:325–337, 2015). This is accomplished by showing while different goods that might be connected to meaning such as privacy, independence, and understanding also do not obtain in a complete sense on atheism, they still obtain to a fuller degree than on theism. The chapter concludes by suggesting that many of the goods mentioned in the meaningful life argument can be separated from meaning and examined individually as potential defenses of anti-theism.