An Oxford Philosopher Investigates the Meaning of Life

¶1Tim, how are you doing? >> I'm well. How are you? >> me? >> I can hear you.

¶2Can you hear me? >> I can. >> Excellent. Good. And I can see you, too.

¶3>> Well, how have you been? It's about 7:00 p.m. for you. What have you been up to? >> It is, indeed.

¶4Yes, 7:00 p.m. here in Oxford. Whereabouts in the world are you? >> I am in New Mexico right now. >> Right.

¶5What's the weather like in New Mexico right now? >> Oh, it's absolutely perfect. Um when you have air conditioning. So, it's it's sunny and warm and great, and then I can go inside and it's cool, and I have no complaints. But, I know that the UK has not been so privileged in that respect.

¶6>> This summer. So, what would the outside temperature be for you? In either Fahrenheit? >> Oh, 90. Degrees Fahrenheit.

¶7So, I guess in Celsius, that's going to be 33, 34. >> Yeah. Yes, a little bit hot, but we've had it hotter here. And we still have it hotter. It's about 35.

¶8Yeah. >> Mhm. >> Uh and of course, air conditioning is something which we haven't really got on to in the same way as the US and other parts of the world have got on to. Uh so, my office here in college is relatively cool because it's it on the building, it's got big stone walls and so on. It's nice and cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

¶9But, uh at home, it's it's yeah, it's not so good. >> No, it's brutal. It's brutal. I mean, what do you do on a day where it's you get you're in the heat wave, it's brutal outside, it's brutal inside, but you have to teach or you have to study? Like, how do you How do you live, Tim?

¶10How do you do that? >> I failed, really. I sort of get to about after lunch time, and then I flop around uselessly. Yeah. >> Honestly, that's so fair.

¶11Well, what have you been working on of late? Where has your research been focused? >> Um so, I'm currently in between times uh writing a book on the nature of God. So, I wrote a book a couple of years ago on the divine attributes. It was called The Divine Attributes.

¶12And came out with Cambridge University Press. That was a relatively short book. They wanted it to be short and I wrote to their remit. In writing it though, I thought, "Oh, I could say a little bit more about this, probably a little bit more about that. I could bring these together in an interesting way maybe." So, I'm writing a more significant book on that.

¶13And that's the background project. And then in in the foreground now and again, I do the odd paper. I've written a short paper on the Trinity, short paper on an implication I think that open theism has. That's currently with people who are more knowledgeable about open theism than me and will be able to tell me if really does have that implication or perhaps it does, but someone's already spotted it and so it's not worth telling people about it again. And a few other things as well.

¶14Yeah, so I'm keeping out of mischief. >> That's good. How do you feel about open theism? >> I'm not a great fan. But this paper argues for an implication of it that I think should be congenial to most open theists.

¶15So, even though I'm not a fan of the view, I say, "Well, if you are a fan of the view, you might be interested to know that according to my argument, your view has this implication. But you're probably quite keen on that implication, so you'll say, 'Whoop-de-doo for the view. Thanks for writing the paper.'" But on balance, I'm more of a neoclassical theist, I think. Or I sometimes tell myself a classical theist. All depends how keen one has to be on the doctrine of divine simplicity under some of its more extreme readings to count as a classical theist.

¶16>> Yes. >> I'm not very keen on it. >> Neither am I. Well, No, neither am I not at all. I am curious, what what is this implication you draw?

¶17I mean, I won't I won't let us get too tangentially distracted, but I'm curious. >> Um I think it is an implication that um if you're an open theist of a particular stripe, you think that God's inside time, so a certain uh amount of time ago, 13.8 billion years ago, according to science's best understanding of the matters, God decided, "Oh, I'm going to create a universe." And when he acted at that moment, he had his reasons in mind, and those were reasons on which he could have acted then, but they weren't requiring reasons. He's a libertarianly free over such a matter. Uh so, he could have chosen to not act on those reasons at that time, and then that moment would have passed, and he would have gone on to the next moment without having created. Um and at that next moment, he would also, being the sort of being he is, would have had in mind what reasons he had to create and what reasons he had did not to create.

¶18And so, he would have made a decision at that next moment whether to create or not on those reasons. And perhaps he'd have decided not to create then, and so on. But whatever these reasons are, they give him a non-zero probability of acting on them at any moment of choice. And if you're an open theist, and you have It's You might The argument might work for the temporalist as such, but I'm narrowing it to open theists to try and keep the number of moving pieces to a minimum. Um so, if you're an open theist, you think, "Well, God's life is really just a series of moments of choice, isn't it?" And if at any of these moments of choice, right up until the moment of creation, if he does come across such a moment, he's got a non-zero chance of acting so as to create, then over an infinite series of these moments, he's got a next to one chance of creating on those reasons, however weak they might be.

¶19So, I think open theism has as an implication that God will almost certainly uh create. Uh and that then maybe uh why I think it's congenial is that I think, "Well, if that's true, uh maybe it's not, but if it's true, uh then in a natural theological project, if you're running some sort of apologetic arguments, naturally enough, you'll be focusing primarily on whether the evidence raises the probability of the hypothesis that God exists. But relevant will be whether the hypothesis raises the probability of the evidence. And if this argument is right, the hypothesis that the open theistic God exists raises the probability of there being a universe or some creation anyway to something close to one. So, the probability of the evidence we observe on the hypothesis is something close to one.

¶20And if you're an A-temporalist such as I in fact am, it doesn't raise it close to one because it just raises it well, it'd be that's itself controversial, but it raise it God only if you like decides once whether or not to create on the reasons he has in his eternal now as it were. And he doesn't revisit that decision infinite number of times potentially into the future. So, whatever the chances are that being considering these reasons would create on those reasons at a moment of choice, well, those are just whatever the chances the A-temporalist God has to create. So, whatever the evidence is on that A-temporalist hypothesis will be less than the evidence on the open theistic hypothesis. So, that's the idea.

¶21And I just thought, well, I I I've written it up, sent it around a few people to say, "Look, does this does this really work? What do you think?" And we'll see what they say. >> What role does God's lack of foreknowledge play in that argument? It seemed to me that the only moving part really was God existing in time, but his lack of foreknowledge or his possessing it didn't seem to play a play a role. >> Yeah, I I I think you might be right.

¶22But I suppose I didn't I was quite keen on God's not being able to know of himself that So, suppose God's got to a certain point in in time and he hasn't yet created and Molinism is true, maybe he could say, "Well, I know all the counterfactuals of divine freedom now and I know every possible sort of timeline from where I've got to into the future now. And so, I know I'll never freely choose to create because I've sort of locked in the decision not to create. Having got this far without creating, I I'm never going to create, and I know that. And so, the probability of my get creating in the future is is zero, and I'm I've I've not got to a creation yet. So, actually on the on this Yeah, on the sort of God who can somehow lock in a decision not to create, which I think makes sense on Molinism, uh then I'm not really sure because I'm not I don't really fully understand all the Molinist moves, either.

¶23But then I thought maybe that will that will that will mess my argument up. So, let's just let's just back it up off by saying ignoring Molinism, what I've attempted Oh, let's go for the open face model. That's quite famous and popular, and see if it works on that. But yeah, I I'm not really sure myself. >> Okay.

¶24It's interesting because it seems to me that if you think that time itself is eternal, but creation is not, this kind of probabilistic argument seems to imply that for any moment in the past, the probability that God would have created prior to that moment is essentially one. And so, it it it might have the implication that at no moment of past time would we expect God to have created. We already would expect him to have created. Yes. And so, it it seems to have this implication that creation I mean, maybe it has the implication that creation should be eternal.

¶25>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's right, which would be less congenial, I take it, cuz I take it most or someone like Swinburne at least would say, "Well, God could have always at every moment chosen to create and sustain a universe, and then the universe would have been co-eternal, sempiternal with him.

¶26But in fact, he didn't choose choose to do that. He chose to wait a certain period, of course, it's an unmetricated time according to Swinburne up until the moment when he chooses to create, but a certain period in loosely, and then choose to create, so that the is actually a finite age in the backwards creation in sorry in the backwards direction. Um it's not sempiternal with him. Uh but you might think, yeah, okay, yeah, that that's that seems like a good good, you know, set of views to have, you know, God's free over whether or not to create. He could have created through all time.

¶27He could have created at a particular moment in time. In fact, he's chosen to create at a particular moment in time. The universe is not sempiternal with him. Maybe he'll choose to bring it to an end. Maybe he won't, uh in which case it would be potentially infinite into the future.

¶28Uh but, you know, all of these are options for him. Uh but uh you you might um think, yeah, well well wouldn't it would So, wouldn't implication of this argument be a uncongenial one that uh God can't but have always done this? I mean, it's not quite can't but have, but the probability of his not having created is is close to one. Uh it's not quite one. Um maybe that would be a bit of a get-out.

¶29Yeah. >> Yeah, I mean, it it's intriguing. And then what about a view according to which time itself begins to exist with creation? On that account, there's just there's no sense to the question, why didn't God create sooner? >> Yeah.

¶30>> That might That would be a combination view like William Lane Craig's, and I wonder if you could combine that with open theism and then and then avoid this result. >> Yeah, that that I I don't really understand Craig's view that God is timeless sans creation, but but inside time with it. Uh but insofar as it does seem as you've characterized it, would seem to offer for the if it makes sense, the promise of avoiding this kind of worry, yeah. Um okay. >> Well, good.

¶31Uh but what I hear then is that you're not currently working on the questions of the meaning of life and God's relationship to it. That that is a project that you've completed, or or do you intend to continue working on that? >> Well, I still think about it now and again. Um and uh yeah, I wouldn't say I've plumbed the depths of the topic of the meaning of life or even sort of waited around to my satisfaction in the shallows of the topic. So, I continued to sort of paddling now and again, um read a few things, think about a few things.

¶32Um and as you know, I've written a couple of books on this and a few papers. Uh the last book was about 5 years ago. Uh and I'm still still thinking about it, but I'm not yet got anything new enough to say about it or substantial enough anyway to say about it to generate another paper. Uh but I'll I'll keep circling back to it, I think, for the rest of my life uh thinking about it. >> It's funny because when the the lay person thinks about what philosophers do, like the archetypal question that seems to capture what philosophy is is what is the meaning of life.

¶33And philosophy is reflection on that question. But in all my time doing philosophy, I have never once thought about or read about discussion of that question in the philosophical literature, like at all. And it seems to me, my impression is this like actual analytic reflection upon the the question what is the meaning of life? That seems to be relatively new. So, what explains this disconnect between the conception of philosophy as almost solely devoted to the question what is our what is our meaning?

¶34What does life signify? And then in practice, analytic philosophies almost complete negligence in addressing that question. Like what What What's the disconnect here? >> So, so okay, good. Um I think well, first I think you're absolutely uh right in uh what you say.

¶35Uh this is a question which isn't uh commonly addressed by authors in that analytical tradition. Uh it's not a common subject for undergraduate classes, for um questions on finals papers uh for even graduate classes. It's not as if oh yes, it's a it's a known topic in the discipline. It's just a bit technical and specialist and undergraduates wouldn't study it. No, no, it's nowhere to be seen.

¶36But that has or it has been nowhere to be seen, but that has changed in the last 40-50 years. There are now some classes at some universities in it. It's topic that you can study now and again. Not a whole paper, but you know, there's one question or something in finals in on in on ethics paper or value theory paper or something else where. So there's a I think there's a historical explanation for that.

¶37I think in the analytical tradition, if you think of how it started off, you know, there was a great deal of skepticism, logical positivistic skepticism about grand eloquent questions like what is the meaning of life? And as a philosopher trained up in that sort of ethos, one would have been very skeptical and worried that this was really a pseudo question as was all of metaphysics and theology and ethics anyway. It seemed to sort of fall into that category. And then even as philosophy moved past the heyday of logical positivism and took the linguistic turn, if you were a philosopher of language, you'd naturally think what is the meaning of X? Oh, well, X must be a linguistic object if it's to have a meaning, a word, sentence, what have you.

¶38And so it didn't fare very well under ordinary language philosophy either. But then you know, ordinary language philosophy sort of as that was dying away 70s, 80s, um some authors did start writing about it in the analytical tradition. And now it's a pretty popular still, you know, I'm not surprised that you've never come across a philosopher giving a lecture on it or a thing course on it or you know, you know, article on it in the in a mainstream journal. Uh but well popular small field uh and it has its own journal uh now, uh but there are other papers appearing in journals that you'd have you'd have heard of, too. Um uh and so it is it is a field that analytical philosophers are taking a little bit more seriously, answering uh the question, uh talking about questions that the question raises, and so on.

¶39Um so it is a topic now. >> Okay. Well, let me give you a analytical philosopher's first question they might ask about this question, which is what does it mean to say does life have meaning? What are we talking about? I I have a vague grasp on on the what it might mean to say that life has objective meaning versus subjective meaning.

¶40But for example, William Lane Craig distinguishes between meaning, value, and purpose. And so meaning for him is like what is life signify? Purpose is what is life for? And value is like what is life worth? Okay, that gives me a bit more of a of a concrete grasp on on what kind of overlapping concepts might be at work here.

¶41But uh in the best way that you can, what are we asking when we are asking does life have meaning? Uh yeah, um good. Uh so I think uh one of the problems, if you like, with addressing the question what is the meaning of life on my understanding is that the question itself has many many meanings. So it's an assemblage of rather uh connected but and overlapping but somewhat disparate uh concerns that one's voicing when one asks what is the meaning of life. So um I think the things that Craig distinguishes there, as you characterized him, I'd say well, those are probably all a part of what we're asking when we ask about an individual life, what is it my life mean, what is its significance?

¶42What if any purpose does it have? What if any sort of ultimate destiny might it have? What if anything about it makes it good, worth living for me living it? And so on. Does it fulfill a role in an appropriate larger scheme of things?

¶43Is there some aspect of it or it as a whole that could be made the proper object of a certain feeling of satisfaction and sort of existential completion I sometimes put it the sort of feeling you'd have if on your deathbed you imagined yourself saying of your life up until that point that you had no major regrets in the like rather than that you wish you'd taken a radically different course. So I think when one asks what is the meaning of life, one's asking an assemblage of largely overlapping but significantly different questions all at once. And so in order to make progress with understanding the question and answering the question with scare quotation marks there, one does best to initially disaggregate these various meanings of the question, what is the meaning of life? And then see what under these various interpretations one can do to answer the questions and then possibly ultimately at a later stage try and put these questions and considerations back together again. So I think the unfortunately in a sense the answer to your excellent question, okay, here's a set of words, what does that set of words mean?

¶44What's the what's the what's the yeah, can be is is not a simple simple one. Um and then once you've decomposed it into its component parts, uh what each of the component parts mean maybe not what each of the component parts mean but what at least some of the component parts mean is not itself either entirely clear. And then how the answers to these would be connected to one another is not entirely clear. And indeed what the answers would be even in that situation is not entirely clear. So there are other perplexities and confusions and worries that await.

¶45Uh but the first sort of thing to appreciate probably is that the question is really many questions. So I call this the polyvalence thesis, you know, many values and you know, there's many meanings. It's not a monovalent or one value. It's kind of question it's a polyvalent question uh that one is asking. Yeah.

¶46>> Yes. I I think perhaps the place to begin is the distinction between objectivist, subjectivist, and hybrid views that you might you might uh uh espouse as an answer to this question, does life have meaning? You might be an objectivist, a subjectivist, or or give a hybrid answer. I like that three-tier three-tier distinction. Could you expand on that and then I can >> Yeah.

¶47>> inquire. >> Yeah. So, um what um most philosophers writing in the field today do is they say, "Well, firstly, uh there are some This is all brush, but they'd say for there are some um interpretations of the question, what is the meaning of life, uh which are to do with uh cosmic uh questions, they might say. So, it's what, if any, purpose does life as a biological sort of kind have? Is it here for some God-given purpose or is there something functionally very similar to God uh out there in the supernatural realm that's to divine purpose?

¶48And these questions we're we're not going to answer. So, the meaning of life questions uh uh we don't get into. Oh, okay. Uh but what we'll talk about instead is meaning in life. And they'll say, uh what we can ask about is this thing which individuals' lives we can spot do seem to have meaningfulness or meaning.

¶49Uh now, not every individual's life has this to the same extent as every other individual's, but there are, according to this methodology, which is pretty widespread, uh some characters uh who we can all agree on have this thing, meaningfulness, in their lives. So, we can sort of spot it by example out there. And so, classic examples would be things like uh Mahatma Gandhi, um Martin Luther King, um Nelson Mandela, um there'll be also uh great artists, uh, would have it. Uh, you know, Mozart, Haydn, uh, painters, Monet, Picasso. Uh, they'd also be, um, great scientists or, um, people who discovered great things, so great philosophers, too.

¶50So, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, um, Socrates, uh, you know, Plato, uh, Wittgenstein. So, these are people whose lives were clearly meaningful. That's the starting point. So, what is it about their lives that, in virtue of which their lives were meaningful? Meaningfulness of the sort uh, that we've now identified by example seems to be a gradient value.

¶51It comes in degrees. It's not binary. You either have it or you don't. Uh, some people's lives can be more or less meaningful than others. Um, it seems to be a sort of final value.

¶52It's not to be explained as instrumentally worthwhile alone in virtue of it leading to other things or they may also lead to other things that are valuable, but it's a final value. It's a worth pursuing. It's an end in itself, not merely as an instrumental means to other ends. Um, and it seems to be, uh, maybe that this is subject for investigation, uh, connected to other values that an individual's life might have, but it's not to be equated with those. So, it's not just happiness.

¶53So, maybe Socrates' life wasn't very happy. Plausibly it wasn't. Wittgenstein's life wasn't terribly happy. Uh, but his life was still, uh, meaningful because of it. And indeed, perhaps his unhappiness led to him, uh, doing more significant philosophy than happy being a more sort of equable, uh, relaxed kind of guy who, who, um, could, you know, take his mind off philosophical topics rather than more than he found himself able to do.

¶54Um, and there are moral virtue as well. It's not it's, uh, you know, maybe, uh, Picasso wasn't a very nice person, uh, but his life was still meaningful. Morally nice, I mean. Uh, but his life was still meaningful despite that, uh, because of the great art that he produced. So, there's this thing, meaningfulness, in individuals' lives that we need to be giving an account of and we can give an account of despite not being able to answer the more cosmic questions about how life came to be, where it's all going in the end.

¶55And then they say, so sorry, this was a bit of a roundabout way of getting to your point. Then those three broad ways of answering that question as to what meaningfulness in an individual's life uh is, there's the subjectivist view, uh which says, well, a life is meaningful for an individual leading it just to the extent that they feel a certain way, subjectively, towards it, either as a whole or certain broad aspects of it or periods in it. So, there's a dispute in all accounts about whether the appropriate bearer of this value of meaning is a whole life or part of a life or period or an aspect or so. But, uh in roughly the idea might be this. If you say, "Look, I'm really passionate about um stamp collecting.

¶56I love stamp collecting. It's you know, it's what I live for. I get up in the morning. I'm checking online on my internet auction sites. I'm using my money to buy stamps.

¶57I'm building I'm putting them in my album. I'm setting it all up. And I I you know, it's it's great." Um So, it's a real you know, passionate philatelist. Uh Yeah. Then okay, then that's great.

¶58Then that is the meaning of your life and your life is meaningful to the extent that you do in for deep feel passionate. So, that kind of find something that you can really be passionate about, that you can really love, that you can really devote yourself to and throw yourself at it wholeheartedly. And if it does stick, if it engages you um psychologically, existentially in that sort of way, right until your deathbed, then your life will have been meaningful in virtue of that. And as that example of stamp collecting shows, it doesn't really matter how objectively worthwhile stamp collecting is. Perhaps we think of stamp collecting, well, it's it's a hobby.

¶59It's not culpable. It's not It's not the greatest sort of achievement of humanity to have built a wonderful stamp collection, but you're probably not harming anyone else by building your stamp collection up. I mean, there's if you're conscientious, you'll think, "Oh, what about the capital you've got locked up in stamps? You should really be visiting Peter Singer's latest website and transferring it all over there." But, you know, notwithstanding that kind of concern, you might say it's pretty morally blameless kind of activity. But, it's not morally morally very credible kind of creditable kind of activity either.

¶60But, never mind, says the subjectivist. I wasn't talking about what was morally worthwhile or not. I was talking about what it was for a life to be meaningful. And life to be meaningful just needs to have this kind of substantial emotional engagement in in well, the board activity or theme or aspect. Um so, that's one that's the subjectivist account.

¶61If we slip over to the other side of the spectrum, uh you could say, "Well, what the objectivist says?" No, no, no, it doesn't matter how subjectively engaged you are or not with the activity. It's whether the activity which you are devoting your life or significant aspect of your life to is really worthwhile. So, um in this context, I tend to myself use the example of a a disaffected charity worker. So, this is someone who works in a um pretty uh you know, dungeon-like office in a pretty uh boring job. They're just sitting at a computer screen moving figures around in Excel spreadsheet from 9:00 till 5:00.

¶62They have a sort of half-hour lunch break where they eat their sandwich at their desk and have a cup of water and then they go back to it. And they're This is a terribly tedious job. They don't really see anyone they don't interact with anyone much. Every now and again, someone from head office comes down and tells them they're doing a great job, shakes their hand, and goes off again. But, that happens only about once a year.

¶63But, what they're actually doing, and they know themselves they're doing this, is they're working for a charity. And the the the figures they're moving around on the spreadsheet help the logistics of that charity in delivering medical food supplies to really needy parts of the world. So, if they weren't there doing that, people would die who don't die as a result of them moving the figures the way they're doing it. And so, they know that. Um but it doesn't really give them any sense of satisfaction, as it were.

¶64They're they're disaffected, as I say. Now, according to the objectivist about meaning in life, this person really is leading a very meaningful life, because they really are saving, you know, hundreds of people. You can imagine, if you get the numbers in the right way, Peter Singer would be, you know, delighted at this, as it were. The effective altruist would say, "This guy is really saving a hell of a lot of lives, uh sitting in the office doing what they do." Um but they're not so they're not subjectively engaged with it. So, on the subjectivist account, their life is not at all meaningful.

¶65On the objectivist account, their life is very meaningful, and more meaningful than most people's lives, because they really are engaged in really worthy activities. Um and on the hybrid account, uh neither is right, as it were. Each has only got half the picture. What you have to have to have a meaningful life is to have that sense of subjective affection towards what you're doing. Uh but that what you do also be the sort of thing that's fitting to have that sense of engagement towards.

¶66So, if you imagine a really engaged charity worker who felt towards the project of moving figures around a spreadsheet, as the stamp collector felt towards the project of collecting the stamps, their life would be meaningful. So, according to the hybrid view, neither of my first two examples, the stamp collector, enthusiastic stamp collector, nor the unenthusiastic charity worker, neither of those lives are meaningful, but the enthusiastic charity worker, yep, their life would be meaningful. So, that's the hybrid account of this meaningfulness in life. >> It's not clear to me how either of these three camps would answer the question, is there an objective meaning to life? Because you might say that the meaning of life is to be happy.

¶67Okay, and that's a subjective state of consciousness, feeling happy. But you you could also say, without contradicting yourself, it is the objective purpose or meaning of life to be happy. Maybe you think God created us so that we could experience this positive subjective state. And on that account, it really is objectively true that the meaning of your life is to be happy. Because if you thought instead that the meaning of life was to serve the purposes of an evil creator and to suffer, you'd be incorrect, just like you'd be incorrect if you thought that 2 + 2 = 5.

¶68You're just objectively wrong. But nevertheless, the objective meaning or purpose of your life is to feel a certain subjective state. And so it's not clear to me how that kind of answer maps onto this three-tiered distinction. It's almost like that's getting at an orthogonal question of objective-subjective, which isn't quite the way that it's it's being used here. So maybe you can help me think through this.

¶69>> Yes. So, um you you might say this these people talking in about the sort of issue that we I've been talking about the subjectivism I've been doing the that I've been talking about. Uh they're talking about, I think, what it is for an individual's life to have this quality meaningfulness. On one account, it's an entirely subjective psychological state that as long as they can sort of maintain it with a certain degree of robustness, that's meaningfulness. On the extreme account, it's no, no, it's engagement in certain worthy activities, which as long as they can maintain, doesn't matter what And on the hybrid account, it's no, they've got to do both these things.

¶70And you're you're saying, "Well, another I I I take you're saying that one question which we might ask is what is the purpose of of my life?" And these guys are like, "Well, I'm sorry, I'm not answering that question. I was telling you what meaningfulness in in a in a life in a life was." Now, it may be, they might say, that in So, you might say, "Oh, well, I want to know about the purpose of an individual's life or my life or, you know, life per se, you know, biological life or humanity's life, maybe some subgroup of humanity that is not so so such a small subgroup as to be an individual. You know, I I want to know about the purpose of of of one of these things." And they'll say, "Oh, well, we're not we're not telling you about that." So, you might say, "Oh, well, you're not telling me about all aspects of what I was asking when I was asking about the meaning of life. You maybe told me about some proper part of what I was asking about, but you've not told me about this." And I'd be sympathetic to that. I think, "Yeah, I think the question is many questions, and one of the questions is about purpose.

¶71That's not a question that contemporary philosophers are terribly sort of interested in." But if they did say something to you, they might say, "Now, suppose you could It could be that you know, there's a God, and he has given your life a purpose. Um and that purpose may be to you know, at least in principle, it may not be to be happy. It may be to do something which won't make you very happy at all, but will produce some great good over there or something. So, you know, Jonah, go and preach to Nineveh because Nineveh really They're like, "Oh, I'm not going to be very happy preaching to Nineveh." I know you're not. You know, even if I do it, you know, you'll probably let the guys off, and I won't get the credit, and I'll go to my grave thinking, "What a waste of time.

¶72I really hate those Ninevites." Yeah, that's the kind of guy you are, says God to Jonah. You're not going to be happy doing this, but you know, the Ninevites are going to be a lot better if they repent and you know, I forgive them and so on. So, for their sake, you're going to bite this bullet, and you're preaching to Nineveh. My purpose for you is that you go and preach to Nineveh. And the meaning meaning literal tends to say, well, if that was the way it fell out, then Jonah's purpose would be to preach to the Ninevites, but that purpose would not be one that fulfilling of which made his life meaningful.

¶73Um so, you could have purposes assigned to you by God or another which weren't meaning generating for you. So, let's not get distracted from understanding what it is for an individual's life to be meaningful by thinking about what it is for it to have a purpose. Uh because purposiveness of a life uh doesn't guarantee meaningfulness of the life. Even if a life has a purpose, that might not be a meaning-generating purpose for the for the person whose life has that purpose. Uh so in this context, the standard sort of example is to uh we are asked to imagine that uh humanity's life uh is created for purpose.

¶74Oh, really? Okay. But it's not a god, and it's not a particularly benign purpose. Um I mean, even the Jonah's purpose was benign. I mean, not particularly benign towards uh towards Jonah, but towards the Ninevites.

¶75And uh but this uh it's all experimental. It asks us to imagine that we discover that uh Martians uh seeded the planet with genetic materials, which they knew would evolve into beings very much like us. And they've now gone off on a round-the-galaxy trip, and they're now just returning some several million years later. And they're saying, "Oh, great. We we've come back.

¶76This is This is uh you know, we knew you'd evolve by now." And we're saying, "Oh, great. Are you going to share your technologies with us and, you know, tell us a few interesting philosophical things, too?" And they say, "No, we actually seeded it so that we would have you to eat at a feast. So, you are foodstuffs. Uh you know, we're going to slaughter you like you slaughter cattle, and we're going to eat you." So, our purpose as a human race then would be to be the main course at a feast for the Martians. But that uh discovering that that was our purpose wouldn't be discovering, "Oh, that's the meaning of our lives." But it would rather be discovering, "Oh, actually, uh the purpose of our lives is um antithetical to us having meaningful lives." I mean, having lives at all.

¶77What do they care if they're effective? So, these philosophers tend to say, "Oh, issues of purpose don't really have anything to do with issues of meaningfulness in a life. Or if they do, it's just a happy coincidence, if you like, because God already spots, "Hm, it'll make Tim's life meaningful if he was happy. So, I'm going to have that as the purpose." He's a good god. So, I'm going to have that as the ultimate purpose uh of Tim's life, too.

¶78I am going to take him after his death to some heavenly place where he'll be perfectly happy. But God didn't, if you like, make it true that it was happiness that made my life meaningful. He noticed that it would be true, and that's why he had the purpose. So, the purpose comes along too late in the sort of order of explanation to be give it to be explaining the meaningfulness of happiness if indeed it is by being happy that we lead our most meaningful lives. I don't know if that answers your your your concerns or not.

¶79Yeah. >> Yes, it does. I think a very related question then, which will help continue to clarify my thoughts, is whether you can be an objectivist or a hybrid hybridist on this account but still think that there just is no meaning to life. So, perhaps you would say that for life to have meaning requires the attainment of some sort of end, some objective state of affairs, regardless of how we feel about it. Maybe you think that to have a meaningful life is to generate as much moral good as you can, to make a difference in the lives of people around you, and to really do so in an objectively valid way because to have an objectively meaningful life requires objective moral values, and meaning consists in achieving those objective values.

¶80But maybe you think that there just are no objective values. Maybe you're convinced that moral realism is bankrupt, it doesn't make sense, there's good objections to it, and so in the end there is no moral value objectively speaking in the universe. And just like there's no objective facts about what is tasty or what is not tasty. Those are just subjective facts about us. In that case, you would be an objectivist in your sense, but you would just say those necessary conditions for an objective meaning in life don't obtain.

¶81So, it does still seem like there's an orthogonal set of distinctions here about what are the necessary conditions for a meaningful life, and then the second question is do you think those necessary conditions actually obtain? Is that maybe the distinction I'm >> Yeah, I know I think that's absolutely right and there are people who would say that so um they they in the I mean the word nihilist is used in a variety of context with a variety of meanings but sometimes the view is is called nihilism here so it would be the view that uh for you know those objectives are completely right about what it would be uh would need to be the case for any individual's life to have meaning viz that they need to engage in objectively worthy activities. However, there are objectively never objectively worthy activities therefore none of our lives actually do have meaning. Uh we have the illusion of it or something and perhaps that's kind of good enough or you know we should get by with it or perhaps we should just throw our hands up and you know face reality head-on with a sort of steely gaze uh but those so that is a that is a a view out there. Um Uh I think Craig you mentioned uh discusses uh what would follow on his view which is I think uh that he thinks that if there's not a god then um there are no objective values because um he's takes a particular horn of the Euthyphro dilemma there so there wouldn't be any objective values um and there wouldn't be any uh ultimate destiny for us of a good sort.

¶82I mean we just there's no ultimate destiny of us dying and that's it but but you know we don't continue on in a in any way. And everything we do is equals is is only relatively significant. So I might save someone's life you know I it was a brilliant you know uh day for me the other day and you might say oh why I just had you on holiday you had a great time. I said well I was you got I got into the sea and I dragged someone out and I sort of camped on the beach and you think well that sounds awful you know but but I saved their life and you say oh I see why you said it was a brilliant brilliant day because you know most of your days on holiday are just spent sitting on the beach, you know, getting more and more pink and whatever it is. But that was a day which you'll remember for the rest of your life as a really, you know, amazing day when you save someone's life.

¶83What a what a what a great day. I understand what you mean. But then, you know, what what what happened to that person? I said, "Oh, I I hear they sort of, you know, fell under a bus 2 days later and died." Oh, well, you know, you know, that sort of deflates you somewhat, doesn't it? And even though, you know, we live longer, you know, God willing than a couple more days and then fall under a bus, you know, we're all ultimately going to fall under a bus.

¶84So, in the end, whatever you do to sort of, you know, up the total of human well-being, decrease the total of human suffering, it'll be negligible in the span of eternity. So, he has So, Craig thinks, "Well, this is what would happen were there to be no God. There'd be no objective value, no ultimate sort of destiny for us, no ultimate significance, nothing but relative significance, all of which would be washed out." So, we would have to be nihilists about meaningfulness on on his account were there to be no God. But there was a God, so we don't have to be nihilists. But you could imagine someone who is impressed by Craig's argument who thought, "You know what?

¶85I think you're right in the implications of there being no God, but there is no God, so I just take the implications." And yeah, that view is is out there. It's not a very popular view amongst analytical philosophers, but it's it's it's, you know, it's certainly there. Craig cites a few people in his writings in continental philosophers who have that view. >> Well, I think that's a good segue to more a very set of topics which is the relationship between God and meaning. Because one of the titles of uh a title of one of your books is God and the meaning meanings of life, what God could and couldn't do to make our lives more meaningful, which I think is a very provocative title.

¶86What Let's start with the first half of that. What could God do to make our lives more meaningful? What resources does theism have to ground meaning in life? >> Yeah. Well, um so I think um you could do uh a number of things.

¶87Uh so one of uh the things which he could do is he could give us um an afterlife. Now, you might think, "Well, um yeah, what it what is it about giving us an afterlife which will be meaning generating for the antemortem section of our life? Well, it is be sort of continuation and whatever he's doing to make life meaningful, he'll have to be doing over the antemortem and postmortem section uh of it. Um what is about the later section of your life that makes the earlier section of it meaningful interior to the antemortem section? Um but sometimes uh that a particular activity leads to a particular outcome makes it um meaningful.

¶88So, if I spent 2 years training to be an automotive uh mechanic uh and then change career and you know, didn't do any of that stuff, you might say, "Oh, so that was a little bit of a waste of time, wasn't it?" And maybe I'll say, "Oh, no, there were certain aspects of it, yada yada." But if I don't say that, I could say, "Yeah, uh it would have been more meaningful as the 2 years had it led uh to something uh which used those skills in a particular way." So, there might be some um antemortem activities which are made more meaningful by their consequences um in an afterlife. Um that being an afterlife as such of the right sort um adds of course quantitatively uh to the meaning of our lives considered as antemortem plus postmortem wholes because it just go goes on a lot more. It's like sort of, you know, if you had Oh, I've been given you 40 more years of earthly life in good health and so on and so forth. Uh you know, well, you say, "Well, that's going to add to to meaning of my life even if things continued pretty much the same, I mean good health cuz it just got 40 more years of whatever was meaning adding this in the first part, I'm going to get 40 more years of it and it'll be that but ad infinitum potential in the past. Um and God might be able to help also meaningfulness this side of the grave.

¶89Uh he could perform miracles perhaps which might add in response to prayers which might add to meaningfulness. Um and so on. Um and then it might be this is not quite an answer to the question but might be that belief in God uh which isn't quite whether or not God exists but whether or not you believe in God or whether if God exists you might be able to increase your chances of believing in him if you pray for such a matter case and he decides to answer your prayer in a certain way. Um it could that could also help with with meaningfulness in life. Could help on both this sort of um uh subjectivist account of meaning of life.

¶90You might feel more engaged in some uh worthwhile pursuit cuz God would only ever sort of direct you towards it worthwhile pursuits. Um and so you might feel more uh engaged with it, more existentially replete. You satisfy the hybrid account and the objectivist account. Uh so uh he he might be able to help in a variety of ways like that. >> Mhm.

¶91>> Yeah. >> Well, one claim that you made is that God can give our life particular vocations. Now, maybe that's more pertinent to purpose but you do address it in the book on the meaning of life. So, I wonder what what role that plays in meaning specifically because to me it's very apparent like God can create each individual person with a very specific vocation for them. I mean that seems like supercharge one's life with with meaning if in so far as the vocation is itself meaningful but God can make sure there's a connection between vocation like what you you are end up called to do and objective meaning.

¶92What Where does this fall? Where does this play in? Yeah, so that's the you're you're right. That's another thing. I mean, I talk about variety variety of things and that's another thing I think which is important.

¶93I don't know if God gives everyone Well, I think there's probably some generic, if you like, vocations, if that's not a contradiction in terms, that humans as such have. So, uh if you think, you know, we're all called to, um you know, love one another, follow the commandments, you know, do our moral duty, and so on, grow in love towards one another and God and so on. Um and uh fulfilling those purposes uh of God's for us uh will make our lives more meaningful. This isn't None of this is, of course, uncontroversial. Uh I think that God's having those purposes for us probably makes our lives more meaningful even if we don't realize that he's there having those purposes for us.

¶94Uh so, it's a little bit like if you are working in a factory uh and you're sort of putting sort of widgets onto a thing that comes past you on a conveyor belt, uh but in fact, you're there as a result of a prudent decision of the managing director of the factory, and these widgets are attaching to a thing which goes into the next room and becomes a piece of life-saving medical equipment, and goes out into the world and does great work. You're that you're there with that purpose, fulfilling it, even if you don't realize why you're there. You just sort of, you know, "Oh, I'll just do this. And what what what what who's Oh gosh, I'm just going to do it." Um and you've got no idea what your what what the whole great bigger scheme of things is. Your life probably is made more meaningful by this engagement in this activity than it would be had you been put into a different position in the factory by a less wise managing director.

¶95But I think it can make your life more feel more meaningful to you. So, on the subjectivist account or the hybrid account, then it will become more meaningful. Um uh insofar as you do realize what the purpose is and you appropriate that purpose for yourself. So, uh you're not like the disaffected sort of person who I "I what I'm doing and it's saving lots of people, but I really wish, you know, I wasn't doing it versus I know what I'm doing and so I come in and although that's a little bit of a boring activity, I, you know, take pleasure in the fact that I know with each widget I attach I'm doing my bit in the great scheme of things as a result of the prudent decision of the managing director. So, if you can appropriate the purpose for yourself, then it makes your life all the more meaningful and God might reveal that purpose for you and so on.

¶96And then as well as these things, I mean, this analogy works for specific purposes as well as more generic ones. Maybe everyone's got to put their own widgets on in some aspect of their life. But, vocations, I think it's plausible that on earth and God does have specific vocations for at least some people. Maybe he has them for specific vocations for everybody. Uh, so, you know, Jonah would be a classic example from the Bible.

¶97He had a specific vocation. Jonah, I want you to go and preach that to Nineveh. But, we've no need to think that it's exhausted by, you know, biblical characters. You know, people, oh, I felt God was calling me to be a missionary in this part of the world or I felt God was calling me to work in this area rather than that. Or even in a sort of more, less theologically inflected zone, you know, as it were.

¶98I oh, I got given, you know, two job offers, one with company A and one with company B. And neither of them were particularly religious companies that, you know, but I did, being a Christian, I prayed, you know, to God, you know, which of these do you should I take? And after a while, I got a feeling that God was probably telling me to take the job in B. Okay, well, if that feeling was reflective of reality, then that you could think of it as your vocation to take the job in B rather than company A. God wants you there for some reason which may come manifest later on or may not.

¶99Um, and then if you're fulfilling a purpose in an appropriate larger scheme of things, I think that is another sort of meaning that a life can have. And it can have it, as I say just in in a entirely secular context if you as it were you know why you win so you know you get caught oh we need you Miles come in come in we need you in this group meeting. Oh really? Why? I get just sit down and you you know and once you find out oh I'm here because I've got a role to fulfill then you can you can't that is a set the meeting will be more meaningful for you and then you'll go out and you'll know why you were there.

¶100Um and even if you know so well sorry so I think yes giving God's giving us vocations I've can make our individual lives more meaningful than they would be. We don't have the worry that we have with the Martians so much that they God might give us a purpose which was degrading. We may have the worry that we had with Jonah that God might give us a purpose or a vocation which we're not immediately at least existentially gripped by and indeed think oh no why have you chosen me to preach to the Ninevites? Uh but I take it that he in that that's a an unfortunate aspect of the situation. Um he wouldn't prefer to give people vocations which they wouldn't be able to existentially engage with.

¶101Um and so if you ever so most of the time that won't happen but if you were ever to find that it did happen so God speaks to me perhaps says "Tieman I want you to you know give up being philosophy professor in a comfortable office in Oxford and sell all that you have and go and you know minister to street children in Rio de Janeiro." And I think oh my goodness this is this is going to be way outside my comfort zone my capabilities my what am I going to do? This is a disaster for me everything that I value about life is going to you know be sucked away by this but it's absolutely sure that God's speaking to me. I think well gosh I yeah I mean I would think in that case it's really unlikely that God would want me to do this so I'd have to question whether this was a revelation from him on those grounds alone. But if I somehow got over that um that barrier to rationally believing it was God speaking to me, uh then I'd think, "Okay, well then I can be sure that uh given that God knows that it's a downside to this that I'm totally sort of existentially ill-equipped for this um and in other ways ill-equipped for it, um he will only have chosen me as the least bad of the options available to him. And I'm really surprised I'm the least bad of the options available to him.

¶102Uh but that's why he would have chosen it, and I could draw some comfort at least from that." Uh so I think even Jonah could have thought, "Well, you know, I'm not This isn't great. I wouldn't have chosen to do this. I don't feel very warm about this project, but you would know all that, God. And if you have, knowing all that, still chosen me, I guess I must be the best candidate to do the thing cuz you wouldn't have chosen a sub-optimal candidate um to do the thing, however sub-optimal I might be. Um so even there you might be able to get some sense of um comfort from doing your part in God's scheme of things.

¶103>> Mhm. Well, you've made the interesting claim that God can select vocations with differing levels of meaning for different people. So I read that as saying that God sees to it that some lives are more meaningful than others. Now, first of all, is that what you're claiming? And second of all, I have the intuition that that wouldn't be fair.

¶104Maybe some some vague idea that like a perfectly good God, I don't know about this. But that a perfectly good God would not give to people radically different levels of meaning to their lives. What do you say? Well, I I talked about this in what one of the books a bit, and I say, "Let's go back to that Jonah example. Now suppose that there were two brothers in fact.

¶105There was Jonah, who we've heard about, and there was this other guy, his brother Jonas, who we've not heard about. And either of those brothers would have been equally good at the project of, you know, saving Nineveh. And so God needs to choose No, nobody else would be in the running, but either those two would be equally good. So God, in the divine economy, has to choose one of these people to give the vocation to go and preach to Nineveh. And each of the brothers is equally um as, you know, psychologically well disposed towards it and so on and so forth.

¶106Equally as well disposed towards it. And he actually chose Jonah, you know, and he did the equivalent tossing a coin and Jonah fell on it. Now, now what happened to Jonas? Well, Jonah and Jonas had been talking about spending the relevant period um in a place called Tarshish, which they'd always talked about as the perfect holiday uh getaway escape destination. And so Jonas just went off there um and, you know, spent sort of, you know, the months sitting on a beach with a jug of sangria feeling very happy and so on.

¶107Uh Jonah had to sort of, you know, after the stuff in the belly of the big fish and stuff, he had to preach to Nineveh and eventually was able to say to sort of join his join his brother. But missed out on loads of months of holiday. So Jonah's life is more meaningful in this period than Jonas, who just, you know, was drifted away happily on a beach for for several months. Um but Jonas's life was happier than Jonas. Uh you know, he was sitting on a beach while his brother was in the belly of a big fish.

¶108And so you might say which life, on balance, would you have overall most reason to prefer um if you were sort of pre-incarnate soul and you could choose whether to be Jonas or Jonah? And you might say, "Oh, oh, I should be Jonah because I lead a more meaningful life." But someone else might say, "Well, I think you should be Jonas because you then don't I mean, it's it's I mean, it's good that someone does that, you know. I mean, you know, yeah. But if you can get your brother to bite that bullet and you can go and sit on a beach, then great. The Ninevites get saved.

¶109Yeah, you've just sat on a beach. You haven't been the one to save the Ninevites, but hey, you know, the Ninevites you know, so actually get, you know, get your brother to do that. You should choose to get have the sort of, you know, beachy, sangria, and, you know, um nice swims sort of holiday um months. Um and you might say, "Well, I wonder if there's a kind of incommensurability of value here and an unrankability. One brother's life is more valuable in terms of the meaningfulness.

¶110One brother's life is more valuable in terms of the sort of happiness and general sort of psychological ease with which they spend their time and physical ease uh with which they spend their time and then never swallowed by big fish." So, uh I don't know. Maybe there's no way of uh deciding which of these lives would be, yeah, all things considered better or worse than another. And so, then God might be thinking, "Well, if by giving sort of someone a meaningful life and and their brother sort of uh a less meaningful one, I was somehow showing favoritism in an unjustified way towards someone that I needn't show. Well, then it maybe there'd be a problem. But anyway, that's not always going to be a problem because sometimes at least there'll be this kind of scenario going on.

¶111Um I also think you might just think, "Well, I wonder if uh it just is pretty clear that some people's lives just are more meaningful than others. And so, any system of view which implies that God wouldn't tolerate that is going to run up against uh some pretty hard evidence. So, you know, I gave some examples earlier, but I I take it, you know, Martin Luther King's life was more meaningful than Bob Smith. And you say, "Who's Bob Smith?" And I say, "Oh, he was a really nice guy. He lived down the street from me, you know, he was an accountant to the small firm in Basingstoke.

¶112And then, you know, lived a quiet life in a bungalow and died." Um and what was his greatest achievement? Oh, oh, he was I remember once he told me he was very pleased about having repainted his whole house and someone had said, "Oh, you'll never be able to do that. You'll need to get a professional painter." And then he said, "No, no, I got the ladder and I I the paints and I did it." So, that was his greatest achievement. Yeah, a little lovely guy. I don't He never had any children.

¶113Never Never did anything else, but very quiet, kept himself to himself. Uh and then died at a ripe old age. And you might say, "Oh, okay. Well, his life sounds, you know, perfectly pleasant and inoffensive." But, his life was significantly less meaningful than than Martin Luther King's, wasn't it? Um and God tolerates that.

¶114Now, you could say, "Well, he tolerates it because it's part of his permissive will." But, in fact, he had for Bob Smith a vocation which was just as meaningful as the one he had for Martin Luther King. It's just that Bob Smith never picked it up. So, Bob Smith could have been a civil rights leader whatever his vocation needed to be in the civil rights movement. Uh and so, actually God does give everyone an equally meaning-generating vocation. Everyone could have a life as meaningful as Martin Luther King's or Nelson Mandela or whoever it is who are the top scorers.

¶115And those who don't are just those who failed to notice the meaning-generating vocation that God has given them. But, that seems really unlikely. And it seems also that those who uh it would mean that some people who think they've identified as a vocation that God's given them something which we all agree is less meaning-generating than Martin Luther King's vocation was have made a mistake. So, suppose I say, "What about um and down the other end of the street there was a guy called um uh Jim Smith. What did Jim Smith do?" "Oh, well, he um you know, was a devout Christian and he felt that God was leading him to uh work in youth work and so he set up a local youth club in the village that I lived in.

¶116Um you know, there was some drugs problems and stuff with kids and he got a lot of kids out of drugs. He did this and it's now it's still called the Jim Smith Youth Center or something. It's still He died a few years ago. It's still functioning, you know, it's still doing good work around the village. And the number of lives that Jim Smith saved, you know, maybe 20 20 30 young kids' lives he turned around in radical ways.

¶117Many more than that he sort of turned around but in less radical ways than saving their lives or um you know, to getting off drugs. And he said, "Wow, Jim Smith Jim Smith, yeah, you that probably was God's vocation for him and he did he did it he didn't do it really well. But hang on, that's not as good as Martin Luther King's. Even Jim Smith's life not as meaning generating. So so actually Jim Smith must have misidentified what God's vocation is cuz my commitment is that God gives to people vocations which are all equally meaning generating and I spotted the top ranked people like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi.

¶118And therefore I now need to think anyone who's identified in the vertical as a vocation which isn't as meaning generating as theirs has misidentified it. So I think we'd have to drive a bit of a steamroller through a lot of common sense school judgments if we are going to persist with that. Everyone's life must be equally meaning gen- meaningful. At least ante mortem. Now you might say, "Well, post mortem, what's going to happen?" Well, it's going to be quite different, but you might think there's a sort of leveling out there.

¶119So sort of when I meet Martin Luther King in the afterlife I'd say, "Oh, Martin Luther King, yes." Yes, you you want to heard of me, but I've heard of you and you know, we get through our introductions. And I I say, "I must I must say, you know, your life was totally meaningful." And he said, "I get a lot of that Tim." He said, "Well, what I'd say, you know," he says, "I yeah I my ante mortem life was a much more meaningful than yours Tim, but um you know, the last you know, how long when am I meeting you by the way? Oh, it's we've been here 10,000 years bright shining as the sun." I'll say, "Oh, yeah, of course we are." Anyway, so we've been here 10,000 years in heaven, haven't we Martin Luther King? He says, "Yeah, yeah, but the last couple of years of my life have only been as meaningful as yours Tim." And I might say, "Yeah, okay." So there may be a leveling out in the in the afterlife uh of our meaning generation meaning fullness of our lives, but in the ante mortem life it's still the case that ante Martin Luther King's life is going to be more meaningful or it's been more meaningful than my life will ever be or Bob Smith or even Jim Smith whoever the other guy I talked about was. >> So you contended earlier that God can give us an afterlife and this is this is going to be positively relevant to having meaning in life.

¶120And I I agree, there's a very strong intuition that the fact that we will die one day on on some views and cease to exist, that calls into question. That put That puts a big question mark behind everything that went before it. Like what difference does it make if we just all end up dead anyway? Like no matter what you do, you're going to end up in the same state as everybody else. And so ultimately, you can't really make any difference.

¶121And so in a sense, ultimately, you can't have any meaning in your life. And this is something William Lane Craig says that I do resonate with. I see the point of. But on the other hand, there are some philosophers who think even if you live forever, you still can't have meaning in life. So this would be you could affirm both of those views and just say meaning as such is just impossible.

¶122It's conceptually impossible. It's a very strong conclusion, but maybe you affirm that. So So looking at that other horn, assume that we just live forever. Some philosophers will say, "You would ultimately inevitably, no matter how long you live, and no matter how how long you think you could live meaningfully, engaging in projects, doing good things, learning things, you're going to run out eventually. After a Google years, for example, you're going to be bored.

¶123And so eventually, you will reach a state of interminable boredom. And that's not meaningful. So the idea that we could engage in meaningful activities and projects forever strikes these philosophers as as mistaken. And I have a few interesting quotes here for your consideration. Aaron Smuts has said that, "An immortal life for those of fixed ability will inevitably result in endless frustration, since the number of significant projects that one is capable of completing is finite, but the span of time is infinite." And I think Bernard Williams has also said more strikingly, quote, would be, were conceivable at all, intolerable." And then he references a play where a woman becomes immortal at age 42.

¶124And then he gives about 300 years of meaning. He says, "By by 342, she no longer wants to live." And why? Well, quote, "Her trouble was, it seems, boredom. A boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one human being of 42 had already happened to her." Now, I think that that is mistaken to think there's only 300 years worth of stuff you could do. But assuming you retain your memory, you don't like reset in kind of a reincarnation scenario, assuming you're just constantly building upon what went went before, is it truly the case that there are an infinite number of worthwhile things to do?

¶125Yeah, there you go, Tim. >> Uh good. Uh that's nice. Yeah, um so that this is a good um area of debate and uh yeah, Williams's uh paper still garners approving remarks now and again and um uh smarts and others have um said similar things. Um so uh it's is So, it will be true, of course, that how you'll never have completed, assuming uh that we started a finite amount of time ago, you'll never completed an infinite number of things because your life will be potentially infinite, but never actually infinite.

¶126>> Right. >> So, at any stage in in heaven, as I look back, how many days have I had in heaven? The number which I'll give will be a finite number uh because uh you know, uh and how many days of life in heaven plus your antemortem life if you had, again, they'll be a finite number. Uh so, there doesn't have to be an infinite number of things that would worth doing uh uh to um mean that you will never run out of things uh to do. Um, um well, uh, and it well, the the fact that's a potential infinite rather than an actual infinite might make a difference.

¶127Uh, although that's itself controversial whether it would be potential rather than actual. Um, but sorry, there was something else I was going to say which was more germane before I as something like that. Well, oh yes, so um, the smart quote was quite a good one, wasn't it? Because it said, "Oh, any any being of finite abilities." Well, um, we we won't have infinite abilities in in in heaven, it's true. But we will be assisted by being being who has who is omnipotent.

¶128And so, if you could find an activity uh, that was, uh, uh, uh, as well as being guaranteedly absorbing, what he says you need is a guaranteedly absorbing activity. And if you're an objectivist or hypotheist about this that is worth, uh, being absorbed in absolutely, well, then you could, uh, spend an eternity doing just that one thing and it be uh, rational for you to become bored by it. And so, you might think that well, worshipping a being who is infinitely worthy of your worship would be an activity that would be guaranteedly absorbing. And it boredom is a psychological reaction to one's state, uh, which it's not a necessity that one have, um, in response to any state. Uh, and so, if there's an omnipotent being and it would be inappropriate for one to be bored of this activity, then he'll be able to assist you in not being bored of that activity.

¶129So, we all know that, you know, sometimes people get bored of things that really shouldn't bore them. Uh, and, you know, if we had enough powers as educators, we'd say, "Look, I know you find this totally boring. I I I can stop you being bored and you can find it as interesting as I do." And we sometimes don't. Um, but God wouldn't be in that sort of hamstrung position. So, I think that uh, the fact that the the main activity I mean I think there'll be other activities not that oh, so that's the only thing we're doing we're worshiping God.

¶130I think we'll also this is of course, you know, very speculative but I think you might be oh, no, there'll be goods of inter you know, inter human sort of fellowship as well as divine human fellowship in heaven, too. So, we'll be worshiping God together um rather than sort of each like sort of panopticon like the filing it in to the center. But in that sort of intercommunicative to you there'll be value, too. Um and that this yeah, this there's no reason to think that sort of on it you're on any day, you know, as it were we meet up at the end of the day. I mean there may not in a sense be an end of day, but when I say oh, Miles, how have you enjoyed it?

¶131I say it's brilliant. It's brilliant. Loved it. And I say do you want to do the same tomorrow? And you say, you know what?

¶132I really do. And you know, why would it just be that if that's the state you're in at the end of you know, Monday you'd be in a different state at the end of Friday? Well, only because you'd have become well, yeah, I've done it now so many times it's just not worth doing. Well, I mean it's worth doing once, you know, so I've just seen this this film that there's a lot of hype about at the moment the Odyssey and I'd say, yeah, it's worth seeing, you know, if you've not seen it, you know, seen it. It's great.

¶133It's worth seeing, yeah. Um I can you know, wasn't the biggest fan but I can see what some of the hype is about. It's worth seeing. How many times would you like to re-see it? Ooh, I could do without re-seeing it or maybe maybe in a couple of years time when I've forgotten a bit about it, I could re-see it.

¶134Or even, you know, for some works of art, you know, there might be things you'd you'd say, you know, actually I I want to re- re-see it or re- listen to it music piece of music. You just want to go straight back. You've played it once, you want to go straight back and you want to play it straight back again. You know, you don't need to wait a few weeks until you've gotten about it. You say you'll play it on a loop if you get the chance or something at least until you eventually go I'm of it.

¶135And if there was a piece of music like that that was such that it retained that capacity to interest you at on an infinite loop, well, then and of course we're not going to be in a piece of music that will be infinitely repetitious, but you know, there's sort of certain things about the arts display that capacity for infinite development. So if you're joining a song which has got the capacity for infinite development, you'll never want to stop singing it. And you know, William will be there right now saying this is considerably less boring than I thought it would be. And I'll say, "Yeah, well, that's right. You were you predicted yourself to be more easily bored than you turned out to be." >> Well, I mean there's a a related concern adjacent to these, which is that if you have infinite time to do anything, there's no urgency at all to do it right now.

¶136So you can think in heaven, if this is a situation you find yourself in, you could you could lay in bed as it were or do the equivalent thereof for 10 billion years. And at the end of it, you would have no less time to accomplish everything you could possibly want to accomplish. There there is no loss to you for delaying. And in that respect, compare it to life today. Like part of the reason I do anything is because there is no time to waste.

¶137It really is urgent. If I if I waited 60 years to build my career, to have a family, there would then be no time left to do it. And so part of what motivates me, part of what makes it so meaningful now is that this is the only time that I have to do it. Whereas if you have infinite time, you could give any finite amount of time at all, carve it away doing absolutely nothing, and you'd be no worse for wear. So that seems to undermine in a in a sense the motivation to do anything.

¶138What do you make of that? >> Well, it could undermine some motivation to do something. So, um Yeah, it's but think of a thing that's sort of intrinsically enjoyed. So, there's some things which are just chores, as it were, and you one puts off but yeah, so oh, the washing up. Do I have to do that now?

¶139No, oh well, then great. I'm just going to put it off because I don't really really like to do it. Um but things which are intrinsically sort of enjoyable and worth doing, uh you might find you don't take that attitude to. Uh so, there might be some activities which one does in a particular day, uh which it's true that one could have not done that day and could have done equally well the day after. So, why did you do them that day?

¶140Uh well, because it wasn't like the washing up or whatever it was. It was something I found intrinsically uh enjoyable and worth doing. Uh and so, I leapt out of bed this morning, even though I I'm glad of the opportunity to do it today. Even though it's also true I'd be equally glad if I had the opportunity to do it the next day and the next day and the next day afterwards. Um And so, and some again, some artwork strikes you strikes you this.

¶141Sort of if I say, "Oh, um you know, here we are in Oxford. Oh, um there's a new exhibition on at the Ashmolean. Um uh you know, I'm I'm going to see it today. It's got a new you hear about it and you think, gosh, that does sound like something I definitely want to to go and see." And uh I and I and you say, "How long is it it it going to be on for?" And I say, "It's going to be on for 6 months." Or is it a permanent exhibition exhibition actually? It's a new permanent exhibition.

¶142It's going to be on forever. Uh or you know, decades. Um you you could say, uh "Well, in that case, I'm not going to bother seeing it today." Uh but if you did, that would be either because you didn't actually realize how intrinsically worthwhile it was to see the thing or because there'd be some other activity that preclude Ah, I won't actually see it today then cuz I can see it tomorrow and I have this other thing which is a little bit more urgent that I need to do today. So, I think sort of intrinsically enjoyable worthwhile activities, um you know, engaging in certain works of art and the like, are things which we don't put off even if we suppose that we could equally well engage in them a few days later on because we want to engage in them as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Um and so and those that would be the sort of activity that we would be in engaging in in heaven.

¶143So earlier on I um I mentioned uh or alluded to a the the verse from the song which says, "When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." And the news is that's true. Uh so um uh the you might say, "Oh, so let's you know I'm just going to chat to Martin Luther King." And I'll say, "Should we just take a a day off praising God, you know, cuz we still got no less days to praise him later on?" And so you know well this but this would be a little bit like, you know, "Should we spend some time not doing the thing that it's we both most want to do and it's most objectively reasonable to want to do and instead do some suboptimal thing for a period?" Um and that's kind of why, you know, that's a little bit like, you know, you know, say, "Oh, here's another, you know, Miles I cook for you every day as you know. Here's another gourmet feast." Um and you say, "Yeah, you do cook for me every day, and you're going to cook for me every day, aren't you, Tim? And I do appreciate that, but what I think I'm really going to do uh today is just, you know, um sort of eat rubbish or something or go hungry or Right. >> Right.

¶144Right. Why would you do that? >> Why? Why would you ever choose that? And the sorts of things that we might Oh, because I could be wanting a change or you know, whereas you're trying to imagine yourself anti-mortem, why would you ever choose to just eat dust off the floor or go hungry for a day rather than be or to make a point or to show yourself that you could still do it if you wanted to or um to piss me off or something.

¶145Yeah, any of those sorts of reasons you might you might have plausibly this side of the grave for refusing a greater good and going for a lesser good. It uh you know, they don't seem to track over into the the next. So, I think um you wouldn't um uh find a a lack of urgency uh generated by your appreciation that this thing you were doing you could do and would do an infinite number of times uh days into the future, too. >> Mhm. I think a lot of people, you know, from their Sunday school days will remember hearing for the first time that like in heaven we will praise God forever.

¶146And at least for me, and I think for most people when they're being honest, that sounds awful as an eternal fate. I mean, not to say that it's not worthwhile or not something you'd want to do, but to to do that forever they to me that sounds like an eternal church service. And that that seems truly mind-numbingly terrible if you're stuck in that for an eternity. Now, that's not what the the the uh the sophisticated theologian will want to say is really going on here, but I wonder if you are able to comment on what we might expect phenomenologically, you know, what it would actually look like to engage in something that is subjectively satisfying and blissful. How does that connect to praising God as such?

¶147Now, maybe you'd say, "Well, we're going to undergo such a radical change in our cognitive capacities and we will see things from a much different vantage point than we do now." But that's kind of more like a promissory note. That just is to grant that these sorts of activities do not currently seem satisfying. So, how There's a family of of issues here. >> I think that I think what you say is is right and um uh I I think it's uh uh it'll always be hard in a sort of pre-fully sanctified fallen condition if this hypothesis is true to fully sort of empathetically understand what it would feel like to be fully sanctified and and redeemed. Um and so if I said to you, you know, suppose I was the world expert on Wagner and I said to you, "Miles, you should really you should really get into Wagner." And you said, "Oh gosh, you know, but his operas go on forever." And he says, "Also, I don't know.

¶148I can't possibly do that." I said, "What about this?" What he said, "No, I quite like that bit. You know, I can see what you mean, but oh gosh, you know, hours of this stuff." And I said, "No, no, that's it. I'm taking you to the Bayreuth Festival. Here you are, you're going to sit through 16 hours of Wagner back-to-back." And you say, "Oh my goodness, this is going to be awful, you know, that I could sort of get glimpses of the why you might be into it, but you know, it's not going to do much for me and I'm going to be, you know, biting my fist by, you know, 2 hours in and climbing up the walls and it's not going to work for me." And um I I'd say, "Yeah, no, I can I can sort of understand that that at the moment it must be very hard for you to believe that you could get so into Wagner that this would, you know, be just unalloyed pleasure for you for the other many hours it's going to be." Uh but Mark Twain has said famously that Wagner's music is a lot better than it sounds. And if you sort of think, "Yeah, I kind of cognitively believe that if you like that, you know, even if you're not the world expert in Wagner, which I'm not, that oh yes, I bet that I think there's a lot more in Wagner than I can get out of it." And so I would find it pretty awful to be sort of, you know, sat in a in that festival for days on end or whatever it is listening to this stuff.

¶149But if you could guarantee that you could so transform me so that I would get out of it that which could be got out of it, um then I'd say, "Well, okay, that's fine. I find can't imagine enjoying it at the moment, but I can imagine becoming the sort of person who could enjoy it cuz yours is the person who could enjoy it. You're the world expert at this thing. You say it's it's it's marvelous. And I'm really missing out and I kind of believe you taking the truth of my trade's aphorism, that there's a lot more in there that I can't get out of it and that you can get out of it.

¶150And if you can change me into the sort of person that you are and can get that out of it, then sure, sign me up. I'll I'll come on that plane to that sort of festival and I'll I'll sit very happily uh in the in next to you and and we'll listen to it together. Um but yeah, prior to me undergoing that transformation, it's all a bit of a distant, you know, concept. You know, the Wagner Appreciation Society, yeah, I kind of, you know, feel I should sign up for it. Um yeah, it would be good for me.

¶151I would enjoy it eventually. It's all a bit of a trauma, a bit of a trial. I can't really be bothered. Uh yeah, very human set of reactions. Uh but, you know, if you could get into Wagner, you know, I'm I mean I'm not totally into Wagner, but you know, I believe that if I could get into Wagner, you know, I'd never look back.

¶152Um it's just that I can't really imagine myself doing it. So, you know, there it is. I stuck stick with Gilbert and Sullivan too much more accessible. >> Well, we're nearing the end, but the other half of the implied thesis of your book is that there are things God cannot add to life's meaning. What are some of those things?

¶153What differences does theism or God not make to life's meaning? >> Yeah. So, um we mentioned Craig at a couple of times and he has a view which is in relation to now called extreme supernaturalism and as far as I'm aware he's the only person who holds that view. Uh Cottingham said something similar to it at some stage, but I think he's changed his view slightly. And a more moderate supernaturalism is the more widespread view amongst those who are supernaturalists.

¶154So, extreme supernaturalism as it says without God there can be no meaning meaning at all. Moderate supernaturalism says without God there could be some meaning, uh but it would be less good or less substantive, less of the sort we have reason to desire than the sort of meaning we can have if there is God. Maybe more just transient um or maybe all of those things. And so, most who are supernaturalists uh are moderate supernaturalists uh now uh and have been it I think always. Um and uh it's compatible with moderate supernaturalism which is the view that I I suppose to think that although God is on balance a net benefactor when it comes to meaningfulness, our lives are better uh in terms of meaningfulness because there's a God than they would be if per impossible play they were otherwise to say "We just take God out and the things that he's sort of responsible for." It's a hard thought experiment to uh conduct, but there you go.

¶155Um so, uh he's a net benefactor, but uh he does give us some losses to the nearest world in which he doesn't exist, but nevertheless things are pretty similar, don't they? Um So, um uh one of these is on our uh level of uh personal autonomy. So, we're less free if there's a God to choose uh because we are in effect you know, to go back to my previous example, working for a managing director uh who we didn't choose in a company that we didn't choose to sign up for. Uh he may well have given us a job which we didn't apply for and that is our job to do it. Um you if he hasn't given all of us vocations, he may not have given us a job.

¶156He's given all of us vocations. He has given us a job. And he's given us uh in virtue of his existence certain generic duties which we wouldn't have had had we he not existed to to learn to know him um and uh to worship him. So, uh these are things which it's not within our authority to sort of pick and choose uh between. Now, if there wasn't a God but things were otherwise the same, now this is the slightly different thing.

¶157I think we would be better off in terms of autonomy. Um we'd be working for ourselves, self-employed as it were. Uh we wouldn't have a father who to whom we had obligations. Uh so, uh some people, Sartre in particular, think it would be awful if there was a father. It'd be better to be an orphan.

¶158It'd be awful if you were employed by someone else. It'd be better to be self-employed. And uh therefore, it would be a disaster for the meaningfulness of life if God existed because he would be in effect a sort of micro-manager who would reduce us to the status of artifacts such as example is a paper knife. Um I think it wouldn't be it's not that bad. There you go, Sartre.

¶159You've got some There's some truth in what you're saying, but it's not that bad. He's not a micro-manager. He's a manager, but you know, he he's uh got a looser providential um scheme in play than you, Sartre, seem to think he would have that way to exist cuz you didn't think he did exist. Um uh but you're There's some truth in what you what you say. Uh the uh and then individuals' lives uh can be made less meaningful because of God's existence than they would be had they not.

¶160So, the sort of easy example here would be someone like Bertrand Russell. You might go, "Oh, yeah, great philosopher. He surely had a meaningful life." Oh, yeah, but of course he was a very keen atheist, wasn't he? And he wrote um his popular works and he didn't really have say terribly um sort of significant things in philosophy really, but yeah, his popular works with a lot about philosophy religion. We're all arguing for atheism in a variety of ways.

¶161Uh and you might think, all right, so if God does exist, then he's arguing for a significant falsehood in a variety of ways. And that probably makes his life as a philosopher less meaningful than it would be if um God didn't exist. Uh because uh you know, as a philosopher, one of the things uh you're trying to do is get to important truths. You're trying to get to it by good arguments. So, maybe Russell had a lot of good arguments even if they started from false premises as the saying goes.

¶162Maybe had a lot of valid arguments that weren't based on um but he said he had clever arguments in other areas as well. Anyway, um but uh he you know, atheists are leading less meaningful lives if God exists than they would be leading ceteris paribus if God didn't exist because they're constructing I mean, it depends to what extent they're they're atheists and what extent they build their identity around their atheism. Um but uh if they build their identity around their atheism a lot and there is a God, then they've they're leading less meaningful lives than if there isn't a God. So, God can't help but detract from the meaning of atheists' lives in that respect by existing. Um you know, he'll he'll make it up to them in in some way in the afterlife if universalism is true as I happen to believe it is.

¶163Uh they'll say, oh no, we really backed the wrong horse. We really wasted our time arguing against your existence antemortem. And he'll say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that that was that was unfortunate. You had some clever arguments, but they were going in the wrong direction. Um yeah, your life as a philosopher was less meaningful than it could have been.

¶164Anyway, now you're here. Uh join in uh the worship. It's just starting. Uh And it'll never finish. And Russell will say, okay, well, I you you've given me enough evidence now, God, so you know, I come.

¶165>> Mhm. Well, okay. Last question. And I think it's a fitting final question. What then, all things considered on your view, is the meaning of life?

¶166>> Um well, because as you know, and as we started by saying, I think the question what is the meaning of life is really many, many questions. And their answers are not all clear by any means, and the connections between the answers are not all clear. I think there is no simple, pithy way of answering that question that is informative. Uh so, all I can do is suggest that people who want to find out more should buy a copy of one of my and read what I say there. And they will find that in fact, about halfway through the book, I put this only sentence in bold font.

¶167I put it in bold font saying, "So, we have now learned that the answer to the question, what is the meaning of life, cannot be given in a simple, sort of pithy answer." Um and then we and then we move on to give a considerably less pithy and less simple answer in the second half of the book. Uh so, I just suggest to people, yeah, I'm sorry, I can't answer it straightforwardly. You have to go and read the book. >> Great. I think all good questions don't usually have short, pithy answers.

¶168So, I think that is an indication that maybe you're right in your long answer. >> Maybe, maybe. >> Yeah. >> I remember once at the end of a tutorial with my uh tutor, and I said an undergraduate at the end of it saying to him, "But we still haven't found an answer to the question." And he said, "No, uh but our question has got a lot better, hasn't it?" Uh and this was, you know, his way of indicating that this is what we should really expect from philosophy. And I hope, anyway, that, you know, by chatting to you, we've we've managed to make our questions a bit better.

¶169And people listening, watching will think, "Yeah, okay, I maybe not have agreed with everything this guy said. Um I think he fluffed that point, didn't make that point very convincingly, but at least one or two things that this guy said made me think a little bit better about questions I should be asking about the meaning of life. >> Mhm. Tim Larson, thank you for coming on the podcast today. I appreciate it.

¶170>> Thank you very much, Miles. It's been lovely to see you again.