The sort of “objective meaning” you’re looking for doesn’t exist, and wouldn’t exist even if there was a supernatural element to us. Essentially all you’re doing is propping up your subjective purpose (pleasing God, worshipping God, etc.) and calling it objective.
No, I’m expressing my subjective opinion, formed through a process of deduction, that there is an objective purpose to the universe and human life. My desire to please God follows from that belief. You have it exactly backwards.
And you are wrong that objective meaning would not exist even if there were a “supernatural element” (for our purposes, I’ll interpret this as God) to our existence. As God, assuming he exists, ontologically supersedes and, in fact, both creates and sustains all else, his intentions for those things are objectively real insomuch as they cannot be negated, eliminated or overruled by anything else. The terms he sets (or, rather, the terms that are set by his nature) are irrevocable. Even the consequences of our refusal of those terms are set in stone.
Believe it or not, your definition of faith is not the most popular one used by Christians. Most Christians, at least in my experience, hold that faith is persisting in belief despite a lack of evidence.
Have you taken a survey on this? Have these Christians actually expressed that idea directly to you? Regardless, I base my definition on the understanding of the Church, not on individual Christians. Faith is belief in a person’s integrity and trustworthiness. There is no lack of evidence for God’s activity in the world.
To be subjective is not to be unreal. Pain and happiness are both subjective, and yet I think you would not find those things any less real. In fact, one could argue that they are more real and important than most things held to be “objective”.
Pain and happiness are both subjective sensations which correspond directly to material realities. They are not abstractions like meaning. Meaning is not something that can be experienced in the way an emotion or stimulus can, though emotions may accompany a sense of meaning. They are, however, two separate things. To reiterate, emotions and physical sensations are experiences which correspond to physiological realities whereas meaning is an abstraction that corresponds only to an intellect. The valuations of an intellect which places import on things that are invariably bound for destruction are logically absurd.
This whole idea of basing importance and purpose on personal whims is, for that reason, a dangerous business. What makes one man’s meaning more important or valid than another’s? If feelings are to be the basis of these things, whose feelings do we follow? If one man feels his meaning in life is to kill other people, are you prepared to say he’s objectively wrong in so doing? If so, how do you justify that charge? If the majority of people want slavery to be reinstated, do we assent? If not, on what grounds do we object? Are we to base our ideas of purpose and meaning on a utilitarian notion of progress or efficiency? Well, that’s been tried before and the results were, needless to say, a bit more than nasty.
Reread Ecclesiastes and Sartre. Both are widely misunderstood. I like Ecclesiastes because it deals with existentialism, and it makes good points about what’s important in life. But it misses something very important.
I don’t think it’s me, but you rather, who needs to reread Ecclesiastes. The overarching theme of the book is the futility of man without God. It concludes that the ONLY thing that’s truly important is the question of God. As far as earthly life goes, Ecclesiastes covers all ground. It’s not Ecclesiastes that misses something important, it’s Sartre.
And I’ve read Sartre enough. I don’t misunderstand him, I simply disagree.
