# I Create My Own Meaning Objection Defeater ## Intro Christians often say that without God, life has no meaning. Many atheists answer: *"That's not true. Atheism doesn't make me a nihilist. I create my own meaning. I love my family, I do good work, I help people. My life means plenty."* Start by agreeing with what is true in that. Atheism does not force anyone to live as if nothing matters, and plenty of atheists live full, generous lives. The question was never whether atheists can *live* meaningful lives. It is whether, if there is no God, anything *makes* those lives meaningful beyond the fact that the person feels that way. That is where "I create my own meaning" runs into trouble. Ask one question: could someone create meaning out of anything at all? Picture a man who has been made to love counting blades of grass, and who spends his whole life doing it, perfectly happy. Most people, atheists included, say his life is still not meaningful, however much he enjoys it. So meaning is not just a feeling we produce. It needs something actually worth caring about. Once you admit that, you have stopped saying "I create my own meaning." You are now saying that some things really are worth living for, whatever anyone feels. Christianity agrees, and it can say why: we were made by a God who is good and made us for Himself. The atheist who lives for things that truly matter is living as if that were true. Quick reply in conversation: *"I believe your life means a lot. My question is what makes it mean something, other than your deciding that it does?"* ## In full Defeater for the existentialist and secular-humanist reply to the charge that atheism leads to nihilism. The objection has a strong form and a weak form. **(A) The strong form:** meaning is created, not found; a life means whatever its owner makes it mean (Sartre's "existence precedes essence"; Richard Taylor's 1970 conclusion that the meaning of life comes from within us). **(B) The weak form:** meaning is objective but natural; some things really are worth caring about, and loving engagement with them makes a life meaningful with no God required (Susan Wolf's "fitting fulfillment"; Thaddeus Metz's naturalist objectivism). The page grants the precision the question deserves: atheism does not logically entail that anyone lives as a nihilist, and the dispute concerns **grounding**, not living. The defeat then runs on a fork. Form (A) fails the Sisyphus test that Wolf drew from Taylor's own thought experiment: a life of pointless activity made subjectively fulfilling is still not meaningful, so self-made meaning is not sufficient. Form (B) succeeds only by conceding that meaning depends on objective worth, which moves the debate onto the ground of the [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/) and [its naturalist rivals](/codex/morality-is-emergent-objection-defeater/). Even granted objective worth within life, Nagel's analysis shows why the naturalist is left with *local* meaning and an ironic stance toward the whole, not with an answer to the question the objection claimed to answer. The page ends with the Christian alternative: meaning received from a Creator rather than manufactured by the creature. **What the page does not claim.** It does not claim that atheists are nihilists, that their lives lack value, or that the argument from meaning proves God by itself. Its claim is narrower: "I create my own meaning" does not answer the grounding question, and the best secular answers concede what the theist asked for. ## Argument structure | # | Premise | |---|---| | **P1** | Atheism does not logically entail that anyone lives as a nihilist; the question is whether atheism can **ground** meaning, not whether atheists can live meaningfully. | | **P2** | Self-made meaning is either purely **subjective** (meaning is whatever fulfills its owner) or depends on **objective** worth (meaning requires engagement with what is really worth caring about). | | **P3** | Purely subjective meaning fails the Sisyphus test: a pointless task made deeply satisfying is still not a meaningful life, as Wolf argues and as Taylor himself later conceded. | | **P4** | Objective-worth accounts concede that meaning is found, not made, and owe an account of what makes things objectively worth caring about; on naturalism the best on offer is local meaning inside life, which Nagel shows leaves the whole open to doubt and ends in irony. | | **P5** | Christian theism explains why meaning is received rather than manufactured: persons made by and for a good God, whose work "is not vain in the Lord." | | **C** | **Therefore "I create my own meaning" does not answer the charge that atheism cannot ground meaning. It either fails as an account of meaning or concedes the objective standard that theism grounds and naturalism has to borrow.** | ## Form **Defensive (a defeater) with a fork.** P1 is a **precision concession** that removes a strawman from the theist's own side. P2 states an **exhaustive dilemma** about what "creating meaning" can mean. P3 defeats the first horn with a **counterexample** drawn from the objector's own literature. P4 shows the second horn **concedes the point** and then hits the grounding problem. P5 offers the **positive alternative**. Soundness is **contemporary and contested**: the meaning-in-life literature is a live field, and Metz in particular defends naturalist objectivism in detail. ## Cheatsheet **The 30-second reply (read aloud).** I agree you live a meaningful life, and I'm not calling you a nihilist. My question is what makes it meaningful. If it's only that you feel fulfilled, then a man drugged into loving to roll a rock up a hill forever has just as meaningful a life as you, and nobody believes that. So you need some things to be really worth living for, whatever anyone feels. Fine, I agree. But now you're not creating meaning, you're finding it. And if the universe is matter with no purpose, where does real worth come from? I think you're living as if God made you for something. I think He did. **The 5 fast facts:** 1. **Sartre's slogan.** "Existence precedes essence": no human nature is given in advance, so each person makes himself (*Existentialism Is a Humanism*, lecture 1945, published 1946). 2. **Taylor's Sisyphus.** In *Good and Evil* (Macmillan, 1970), ch. 18, Richard Taylor imagined the gods implanting in Sisyphus a desire to roll stones, and concluded that meaning comes from within. He later revised this view ("Time and Life's Meaning", *Review of Metaphysics* 40, 1987), making creativity the criterion. 3. **Wolf's verdict.** Susan Wolf (Princeton University Press, 2010) calls the case "Sisyphus Fulfilled" and argues the task "remains futile"; her formula is that "meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness." 4. **Nagel's diagnosis.** "The Absurd" (*Journal of Philosophy* 68, 1971, 716-727) locates absurdity in "the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary." His conclusion: "irony instead of heroism or despair." 5. **Augustine's thesis.** "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" (*Confessions* 1.1, Pusey translation). **The 3 strongest counter-moves:** - *"Could a person create meaning out of anything?"* If yes, the grass-counter's life is as meaningful as a nurse's. If no, meaning depends on something beyond the person's choice. - *"Are you creating meaning, or finding it?"* Most people who say "create" are describing commitment to things they believe are really worthwhile. That is finding. - *"What makes your projects worthy?"* Push past the feeling to the standard, and then ask where the standard comes from on naturalism. **Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):** - *Grant:* atheism does not logically entail nihilism, and atheists live meaningful lives. *Now collect:* then the issue is grounding, and "I create my own meaning" is a report about living, not an account of grounding. - *Grant:* the meaning-in-life literature has serious naturalist objectivists, such as Metz. *Now collect:* their view concedes that meaning is not self-created; it depends on objective value, which is the very thing the theist says needs a ground. - *Grant:* Christians also find meaning in ordinary things, family, work, friendship. *Now collect:* the Christian can say why those things matter beyond the feeling (they are goods given by a good God, and labor in Him "is not vain"), and the self-creator cannot. **The closing line.** If meaning is whatever you make it, then nothing you make it into can be a mistake. You don't believe that. Neither do I. ## P1, Atheism does not entail living as a nihilist ### Affirmative case 1. **The careless version of the theist argument is false.** "Atheists are nihilists" is false as a description of atheists. Most care about their families, their work, justice and truth, and many live with more visible devotion than many believers. 2. **The serious version is about grounding.** The question is not whether atheists find their lives meaningful but whether, on atheism, anything *makes* a life meaningful beyond the agent's attitudes. This is the distinction the [Argument from the Unlivability of Nihilism](/codex/argument-from-the-unlivability-of-nihilism/) relies on: the issue is the gap between how people must live and what their worldview can underwrite. 3. **Nietzsche saw the grounding problem, not a behavioral one.** The madman of *The Gay Science* 125 announces that "God is dead," and the scandal is not that his hearers stop behaving but that they have not noticed what has been lost. See [Friedrich Nietzsche](/codex/friedrich-nietzsche/). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"So you admit atheism doesn't lead to nihilism. Argument over."* 2. *"Grounding is a philosopher's worry. Lived meaning is all anyone needs."* ### Rebuttals 1. **It doesn't lead to nihilistic living. That was never the serious claim.** Whether atheism can ground meaning is a separate question, and the self-creation reply has to answer it on its own terms. 2. **Lived meaning makes claims about worth.** A parent who says "my children matter" does not mean "I have a feeling about my children." The moment lived meaning is challenged, it appeals to what is really worthwhile, which is a grounding claim. ## P2, Self-made meaning is either subjective or objective ### Affirmative case 1. **The subjective option.** Meaning is whatever fulfills the person. Sartre's existentialism, in which "existence precedes essence" and each person makes himself ([Jean-Paul Sartre](/codex/jean-paul-sartre/)), and Taylor's 1970 conclusion that meaning comes from within, are the classic statements. 2. **The objective option.** Meaning requires engagement with what is genuinely worth engaging. Wolf's "fitting fulfillment" requires that the objects of love be "worthy of love" and adds: "Nor is it guaranteed that the subject's own assessment of worthiness is privileged" (Wolf, 2010). Metz (Oxford University Press, 2013) defends an objective naturalist theory against both subjectivism and supernaturalism. 3. **There is no third option inside "creating" meaning.** Either the person's attitude is sufficient for meaning, or it is not. If it is not, something beyond the attitude is needed. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"It's a mix: I choose what to care about from among things that are worthwhile."* 2. *"Camus avoids both: he revolts against meaninglessness."* ### Rebuttals 1. **Then it is the objective option.** Choosing among things that really are worthwhile presupposes that some things are worthwhile independently of the choice. That is Wolf's hybrid, and it is the second horn. 2. **Camus's revolt is a value judgment.** *The Myth of Sisyphus* (1942) tells us to "imagine Sisyphus happy" and to refuse suicide. Both presuppose that revolt is better than surrender, which is a claim about worth, not a feeling. See [Albert Camus](/codex/albert-camus/) and the fuller treatment on [Argument from the Unlivability of Nihilism](/codex/argument-from-the-unlivability-of-nihilism/). ## P3, Subjective meaning fails the Sisyphus test ### Affirmative case 1. **Taylor's thought experiment.** In *Good and Evil* (1970), ch. 18, the gods take pity on Sisyphus and give him an inner compulsion to roll stones, so that his endless labor fulfills him. Taylor's conclusion was that this would make his existence meaningful to him, and that meaning comes from within. 2. **Wolf's reply.** Wolf names the case "Sisyphus Fulfilled" and argues that although his task is "no longer boring to Sisyphus," it "remains futile. There is no value to his efforts; nothing ever comes of them." Many feel his situation "remains far from enviable," and since what is missing is not subjective, it must be "an objective feature" (Wolf, 2010). 3. **Taylor later moved too.** In "Time and Life's Meaning" (*Review of Metaphysics* 40, 1987), Taylor, as studies of his later work read it, no longer treated inner satisfaction as enough and made creativity the mark of a meaningful life. The best-known subjectivist case was left behind by its own author for an objective criterion. 4. **Everyday versions agree.** We do not call a life meaningful because its owner was satisfied with it if it was spent in pointless repetition, in a cult's service, or in a delusion. Wolf's own examples include a cult member and an attorney serving an unscrupulous client: they feel fulfilled, and "according to the Fitting Fulfillment View, they would be mistaken." ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Who are you to say his life isn't meaningful to him?"* 2. *"Intuitions about Sisyphus are just bias."* ### Rebuttals 1. **"Meaningful to him" is not in dispute.** The question is whether a life can be meaningful *full stop*. If "meaningful to him" were all that meaning is, the grass-counter and the nurse would be equal, and the self-creator would have no ground to call any life wasted, including a life wasted on cruelty. 2. **The objector has the same intuition.** Ask whether he would accept the drug for himself, swapping his family and work for a perfectly satisfying stone. Almost no one would. That refusal is the intuition doing its work. ## P4, Objective meaning concedes the point and meets Nagel ### Affirmative case 1. **The concession.** If meaning requires objective worth, then meaning is not created by the agent. It is found, and the agent's role is to respond to it well. The self-creation slogan has been given up. 2. **Objective worth needs a ground.** What makes some projects really worth caring about, whatever anyone feels? This is the same question the [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/) asks about obligation, and the naturalist answers to it are examined on [Morality Is Emergent Objection Defeater](/codex/morality-is-emergent-objection-defeater/) and [Moral Anti-Realism Defeater](/codex/moral-anti-realism-defeater/). Wolf does not take up that question: as Stephen Macedo's introduction to her lectures notes, her subject is not "the ultimate meaning of human life" of the kind associated with religious traditions. 3. **Local meaning is real, and it is not the whole.** Nagel grants that "chains of justification come repeatedly to an end within life": taking aspirin for a headache needs no further purpose. But he argues that we can always step back and view the whole "sub specie aeternitatis", from which our seriousness "appears gratuitous." The result is absurdity: "the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary" ("The Absurd", 1971). See [Thomas Nagel](/codex/thomas-nagel/). 4. **Nagel's own endpoint is irony, not self-made meaning.** "In continuing to live and work and strive, we take ourselves seriously in action no matter what we say," and his closing counsel is to approach "our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair." That is an honest naturalist conclusion, and it is not the confident "I create my own meaning" the objection began with. ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Nagel says God doesn't help either: we can step back from the glory of God and doubt it too."* 2. *"Local meaning is all anyone needs. Ultimate meaning is a confused demand."* 3. *"Metz grounds objective meaning naturalistically."* ### Rebuttals 1. **The strongest objection on the page, and it misfires.** Nagel argues that any larger purpose, including "the kingdom, power, and glory of God", "can be put in doubt in the same way." But the theist's claim is not that we serve a larger enterprise whose significance needs further support. It is that God is goodness itself, the standard by which worth is measured, so stepping back from God is not stepping back to a higher vantage point; there is none. Nagel's own principle that "justifications come to an end when we are content to have them end" fits a terminus that is self-explaining. Whether such a terminus exists is the theism question, argued on [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/) and the cosmological pages, but the regress objection does not show that it cannot. 2. **Then say so, and drop "nihilism is false."** If only local meaning exists, then nothing makes a whole life worth living rather than not, and the absurdity Nagel described stands. That is a coherent position. It is a concession that the theist's charge was correct about grounding. 3. **Grant that it is a serious attempt.** Metz's book is a major work and should be engaged on its merits. But it is an objectivist theory, so it agrees that self-created meaning fails, and its objective standard faces the grounding question in point 2 of this premise's affirmative case. The debate then moves to whether objective value fits better in a theistic or a naturalist universe. ## P5, Meaning received, not manufactured ### Affirmative case 1. **Made for a purpose.** "All things have been created through him, and unto him" ([Colossians 1:16](/codex/colossians-1-16/), ASV). A creature made *for* something has a meaning it did not have to invent. 2. **Work that lasts.** "Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord" ([1 Corinthians 15:58](/codex/1-corinthians-15-58/), ASV). Paul names the alternative plainly: "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die" ([1 Corinthians 15:32](/codex/1-corinthians-15-32/), ASV). 3. **Ecclesiastes ran the experiment.** The Preacher tests pleasure, work, wisdom and wealth "under the sun" and finds "no profit under the sun" ([Ecclesiastes 2:11](/codex/ecclesiastes-2-11/), ASV). Yet God "hath set eternity in their heart" ([Ecclesiastes 3:11](/codex/ecclesiastes-3-11/), ASV), and the book ends: "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man" ([Ecclesiastes 12:13](/codex/ecclesiastes-12-13/), ASV). The book is an ancient version of Nagel's step back, with a different ending. 4. **Augustine's restless heart.** "Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" (*Confessions* 1.1, Pusey). The ache Nagel describes as absurdity, Augustine reads as a signal. See [Argument from Restlessness](/codex/argument-from-restlessness/) and [Augustine](/codex/augustine/). 5. **This explains the data the objector lives by.** The self-creator treats his family and work as really worth it, not merely as preferences. Theism says he is right, and why: they are goods given by a good God to persons made in His image ([Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/)). ### Anticipated objections 1. *"Being made for someone else's purpose is demeaning. I'd rather make my own."* 2. *"This is wishful thinking: you want meaning, so you believe in God."* ### Rebuttals 1. **Being loved into existence is not being used.** The worry is real if the maker is indifferent or exploitative (Nagel's own example of humans raised as food). Christianity claims the opposite: a Creator whose purpose for persons is their own good, communion with Him. A purpose given by love is not a cage. 2. **That is the genetic fallacy, and it cuts both ways.** Wanting something to be true does not make it false ([Genetic Fallacy](/codex/genetic-fallacy/)). A wish not to be accountable to God is just as much a motive. The question is which account fits the facts, including the fact that the objector cannot live as if his own meaning were merely invented. ## Cross-examination ### Round 1, Separate living from grounding 1. "Do you think I'm calling you a nihilist? I'm not. Your life obviously matters to you and to others." 2. "So can we agree the question is what makes it matter, not whether it does?" ### Round 2, Test the creation claim 1. "Could someone create real meaning out of anything at all, say counting grass forever?" 2. If *yes*: "Then the cruel man who finds meaning in cruelty has a meaningful life too. Is that right?" 3. If *no*: "Then meaning needs more than choosing. What is the more?" ### Round 3, Find the standard 1. "When you say your work is worth it, do you mean you feel it is, or that it really is?" 2. "If it really is, what makes it so, in a universe that wasn't aiming at anything?" ### Round 4, Nagel's step back 1. "Can you step back and ask whether any of it matters in the long run?" 2. "Nagel thought the honest answer leaves you with irony. Do you think he was wrong? Why?" ### Dodge table | Dodge | Reply | |---|---| | "Meaning is subjective, end of story." | Then no one's life can be wasted, including a life of cruelty or delusion. Do you accept that? | | "You're just saying atheists are sad." | I said the opposite. Many atheists are happy. Happiness and grounding are different questions. | | "God's purpose would be just as arbitrary." | Only if God is one more agent with preferences. The claim is that God is goodness itself, the standard, not a further opinion. | | "Ultimate meaning is a confused idea." | Then we agree that atheism provides none, which was the charge. | | "Christians create meaning too, they just credit God." | That's the question at issue. Assuming the answer isn't arguing for it. | | "Science gives my life meaning." | Science tells you how things are. Whether understanding them is worth a life is a value claim science does not make. | ## Live-cite kit **Scripture (ASV):** - "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity" ([Ecclesiastes 1:2](/codex/ecclesiastes-1-2/), ASV). - "He hath made everything beautiful in its time: also he hath set eternity in their heart" ([Ecclesiastes 3:11](/codex/ecclesiastes-3-11/), ASV). - "This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man" ([Ecclesiastes 12:13](/codex/ecclesiastes-12-13/), ASV). - "Your labor is not vain in the Lord" ([1 Corinthians 15:58](/codex/1-corinthians-15-58/), ASV). - "If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable" ([1 Corinthians 15:19](/codex/1-corinthians-15-19/), ASV). **Scholarly:** - Jean-Paul Sartre, *Existentialism Is a Humanism* (1946): "existence precedes essence." - Albert Camus, *The Myth of Sisyphus* (1942; English translation by Justin O'Brien, Knopf, 1955). - Richard Taylor, *Good and Evil* (New York: Macmillan, 1970), ch. 18; and "Time and Life's Meaning," *Review of Metaphysics* 40 (1987). - Thomas Nagel, "The Absurd," *Journal of Philosophy* 68, no. 20 (1971): 716-727. - Susan Wolf, *Meaning in Life and Why It Matters* (Princeton University Press, 2010). - Thaddeus Metz, *Meaning in Life* (Oxford University Press, 2013). - William Lane Craig, "The Absurdity of Life without God," in *Reasonable Faith*, 3rd ed. (Crossway, 2008), ch. 2. - Augustine, *Confessions* 1.1, trans. E. B. Pusey. **Aphorism:** "If you can make meaning out of anything, you haven't made meaning. You've made a mood." **Aphorism:** "The question isn't whether your life matters to you. It's what makes it matter." ## Connection to Scripture - [Ecclesiastes 1:2](/codex/ecclesiastes-1-2/) and [2:11](/codex/ecclesiastes-2-11/), life "under the sun" tested and found without profit. - [Ecclesiastes 3:11](/codex/ecclesiastes-3-11/), eternity set in the human heart. - [Ecclesiastes 12:13](/codex/ecclesiastes-12-13/), the book's verdict. - [Colossians 1:16](/codex/colossians-1-16/), all things made through and for Christ. - [1 Corinthians 15:19](/codex/1-corinthians-15-19/), [15:32](/codex/1-corinthians-15-32/) and [15:58](/codex/1-corinthians-15-58/), meaning tied to the resurrection. - [Romans 8:28](/codex/romans-8-28/), purpose given, not invented. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record. - Albert Camus, *The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays* (Knopf, 1955). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1230690W) - William Lane Craig, *Reasonable Faith* (2008). [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21745843W) - Thaddeus Metz, *Meaning in Life* (Oxford University Press, 2013). [doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001](https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199599318.001.0001) ## See also - [Argument from the Unlivability of Nihilism](/codex/argument-from-the-unlivability-of-nihilism/), the positive argument this objection tries to answer. - [Argument from Purpose Meaning and Hope](/codex/argument-from-purpose-meaning-and-hope/), the case that meaning, purpose and hope fit theism best. - [Argument from Restlessness](/codex/argument-from-restlessness/), Augustine's restless heart as evidence. - [Moral Argument](/codex/moral-argument/), the parallel grounding question for obligation. - [Morality Is Emergent Objection Defeater](/codex/morality-is-emergent-objection-defeater/), the naturalist grounding of value examined. - [Moral Anti-Realism Defeater](/codex/moral-anti-realism-defeater/), when the objector denies objective value altogether. - [Love Is Just Chemicals Objection Defeater](/codex/love-is-just-chemicals-objection-defeater/), the reduction applied to love. - [Kantian Ethics Without God Defeater](/codex/kantian-ethics-without-god-defeater/), value grounded in rational agency. - [Jean-Paul Sartre](/codex/jean-paul-sartre/), [Albert Camus](/codex/albert-camus/), [Thomas Nagel](/codex/thomas-nagel/) and [Friedrich Nietzsche](/codex/friedrich-nietzsche/), the thinkers behind the objection and its diagnosis. - [William Lane Craig](/codex/william-lane-craig/), the "absurdity of life without God" argument. - [Imago Dei](/codex/imago-dei/), why persons have worth they did not create. - [Atheism](/codex/atheism/), the master hub. - [Atheist Upbringing Devalues the Child Argument](/codex/atheist-upbringing-devalues-the-child-argument/), what the consistent naturalist message tells a child about purpose. ## Common questions this page answers **Q: Does atheism lead to nihilism?** Not in how atheists live: atheism does not force anyone to live as if nothing matters, and many atheists live meaningful lives. The real question is whether atheism can explain what makes a life meaningful beyond the person's own feelings, and that is where the reply "I create my own meaning" runs into trouble. **Q: Can you create your own meaning without God?** You can choose what to devote yourself to, but choosing does not by itself make a life meaningful. A man made to love rolling a rock uphill forever would feel fulfilled, yet most people agree his life is still pointless. So meaning needs things that are really worth caring about, and then the question is what makes them so. **Q: What is the Sisyphus Fulfilled argument?** Richard Taylor imagined the gods giving Sisyphus a desire to roll his stone, so that his endless task satisfied him. Susan Wolf argued that his life would still not be meaningful, because the task remains futile. The case shows that subjective fulfillment is not enough for meaning. **Q: What did Thomas Nagel mean by the absurd?** In "The Absurd" (1971), Nagel said life is absurd because we take our lives seriously while always being able to step back and see everything we care about as arbitrary. He concluded that we should face our lives "with irony instead of heroism or despair," which is not the same as saying we can create meaning. **Q: Isn't meaning from God just as arbitrary as meaning I make up?** Only if God is one more agent with preferences. Christianity holds that God is goodness itself, the standard of worth, so meaning that comes from Him is not someone else's opinion imposed on you. Whether such a God exists is argued elsewhere, but the objection does not show that God's purposes would be arbitrary. **Q: What does the Bible say about the meaning of life?** Ecclesiastes tests pleasure, work and wisdom "under the sun" and finds them empty on their own, then concludes: "Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man" ([Ecclesiastes 12:13](/codex/ecclesiastes-12-13/)). Paul says that in the Lord "your labor is not vain" ([1 Corinthians 15:58](/codex/1-corinthians-15-58/)), because of the resurrection.