Why Meaning Leads to Belief in God

God just won't go away. He's always in the news, being debated about, people trying to eradicate him from life via books and articles such as the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Whatever you think about God, discussion and thought about the idea He embodies is everywhere. In the last article, I tried to demonstrate that the view that God exists is true given the success of the Ontological Argument. In this post, I intend to look at the Argument from Meaning.

It is important to point out that from now on, unlike the Ontological Argument, the following ones only at best show the existence of God is highly probable, not logically proved. But bare in mind, everything outside of logic, mathematics and semantics is shown to be true in a similar way, even things like the natural sciences. So this should not provide a problem when it comes to the conclusion of my argument.

The argument goes something like this:

Human beings are meaning seeking animals. That is definitive of who we are. Take away meaning, you take away humanity. Almost every achievement in the arts, humanities, sciences, anything which has ever been done which is great, has been in response to a sense of meaning.

Now we need to think about the meaning of any system, as systems are what humans inhabit. I propose the following axiom:

1) The meaning of any system lies outside the system itself.

To demonstrate this truth, let me use the following example. Suppose a martian comes to Earth and decides to follow you around for the day. You go to the shops to buy some food, and you make a transaction for the products using a credit card. The martian asks to examine the card, which you let him have, and he studies the plastic. He then says 'so you lend them this card for a minuite and you get all that stuff, how does that work, is there some kind of magic involved? Now tell me, what property of the plastic that magics that stuff into your possession?' Now you could not explain to anyone the transaction taking place by explaining the properties of a credit card. You'd have to teach them a little bit about barter, exchange, money, and then the abstract value of money as credit, and the object that symbolises money. You would have to teach a great deal of human history of economics, cooperation and exchange to explain the meaning of this system of putting a card in a machine and gaining all these possessions. Thus, the meaning lies outside the system of events.

All systems, whether they be human insitutions, behaviour of organisms and laws of nature requires a theoretical ontology to be applied to it. The system itself is just a series of events or ideas, they are only ordered by an applied meaning from outside it. So take gravity. Newton's Laws were one application of meaning to the observable system the world worked under. Einstein's theories of relativity were another one. Neither can come from inside the system itself, because both explain the same thing in different ways. Rather, they are conceptions from the exterior of the system. Thus, this first premise seems to correspond fully to the way human investigation works.

The second premise is:

2) The universe is a system.

This also seems true. It is a system of laws, governing the motions of particles and matter. It seems self-evidently true.

The conclusion that follows then is:

3) The universe's meaning lies outside the universe.

This follows logically from the first two premises. Now we need a theory which provides some understanding of what the meaning of the universe is. It cannot be atheism or naturalism, for they posit no being outside the material universe, and as already shown, the universe's meaning must be outside the universe. Polytheistic religions such as Hinduism or Norse Mythology also offer no explanation, as the God's in their religions in some way are governed by the laws of nature and exist within the universe. Likewise, Pantheism also fails, as that suggests God is the universe, which means He cannot be its meaning, but as God  is all that there is, there is no meaning to the universe as a system. That leaves us only with the theistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which provide a detailed account of the meaning of the universe, for God in their conceptions is clearly distinct from creation, He lies outside the system. So if this argument holds and is sound, which I think it is, the fourth premise should be:

4) The meaning of the universe is provided only by the God of the theistic religions.

Now the atheist may respond by denying the existence of meaning. But this is essentially to deny their humanity. So if an atheist is willing to be like an animal, without requirement for intellectual probing and a fulfilling life, then they can deny the existence of meaning. But this should sound uncomfortable to most people, as most humans embrace their humanity and respond to the meaning in life. That is why atheism fails, as it cannot offer us the bedrock foundations we need for meaning, which is essential in everything we do.

To summarise the argument:

1) The meaning of any system lies outside the system itself.
2) The universe is a system.
3) The universe's meaning lies outside the universe.
4) The meaning of the universe is provided only by the God of the theistic religions.

If you deny meaning, you deny you are a human. Thus, what this argument tries to demonstrate, is if you consider yourself human, you should believe in God.