What is the Meaning of Life?
It's a question that has been asked, by many, throughout all of recorded human history, "What is the meaning of life?" Many people have regarded this question as a mystery. Others simply claim that no one knows, or that it can't be known. This article will not only give a serious exploration of this question, but it will, ultimately, come up with an actual answer.
First of all, because this question is most often regarded as a mystery by countless people, let's approach an answer based on this perspective. This type of approach is most commonly seen in a court of law. We will come to a conclusion based solely on facts and logic.
Because the question "What is the meaning of life?", is such a heavy question. It's often common for people to interject bias, or personal belief, when attempting to come up with an answer. This is almost inherent in every individual. For this reason, it's important to stick to facts and logic. So in the same way that a judge or lawyer would explain what is expected from a jury when making decisions based on facts and logic, I will do the same here. This is a very useful tool to use whenever the jury may be tempted to interject bias based on personal beliefs.
Because facts are often obvious, and easy to prove and agree on, lets give more attention on how to apply logic.
Consider this scenario. You are having a little car trouble, so you take your car to the shop, in order to get it fixed. As you stand by, you watch a man, wearing uniform overalls with a name tag, work on your car. Logic would allow you to conclude that the man is a mechanic.
This is the type of simple logic that is often used in court cases when looking at evidence. The facts are that you are at a car shop, the man working on your car is wearing a uniform with a name tag, and you drive away with a fixed car. Logic allows you to look at all of these facts and conclude that the man must be a mechanic. This same kind of logic will be used during our search for an answer to our important question.
Before coming to an answer to this important question, I want to reiterate the importance of a person not interjecting preconceived bias, or personal belief, when searching for the answer to this question. This is most difficult for people who already have well-defined, deep-rooted views about life, death, religion and ethics. If you're religious, you probably already have a strong view about this topic. Therefore, it may be extremely difficult to "turn that off", and simply think objectively, looking solely at the facts, and applying raw logic. The same thing is equally true for the atheist, or for a person who may be anti-religious. Not interjecting preconceived bias is almost impossible to avoid, but it is possible if a person is willing to let facts and logic prevail, rather than pre-programmed thinking. Because of how powerful, and deep-rooted a person's beliefs can be, it may help if you consciously try to only allow logic and facts to drive this process, and do your best to turn off your well-established belief system for the remainder of this article.
So First, in our quest to figure out the meaning of life, lets look at a couple of facts. One fact is more of an observation. It's the observation that as you go through life, you realize that people are born, they live, and then they die. We all have a date of birth, and we are all aging. Most of us know of a person who has had a baby, and we also probably know of someone who has died. If you go to a cemetery, you will see that most headstones have two dates, a birth date and a death date.
Fact number two. The world has a lot of people in it. Today it's estimated that the population of planet earth is around 7 billion people. With these two facts, "we're born, we live, we die", and "the world has a lot of people in it", we are able to create an image of what I like to call "the static television".
Before the FCC demanded that all television broadcasters switch to digital signals, you may remember the old analog televisions. When no signal was going to the television, you'd get the static screen of black and white dots dancing on the television screen. With digital television, it's the familiar blue screen. But the analog television, with the screen showing noise and static when there is no signal, can be viewed as a representation of what happens in this world. The area of the screen, represents the entire face of the planet. And every little dot that appears, represents a person. The little dots appear and disappear, representing a person's birth and then their death. Throughout all of human history this has been going on. We're born, we live, we die. Every person has their little amount of time on this earth before they are gone, just like a dot on the static television screen.
So imagine the countless number of people that are both living in the world today, and that have also lived before us. They all had a chance to contribute something to the knowledge of mankind. When their knowledge and discoveries were important, it was recorded and passed on to the next generation.
I say all of that in order to make this one, simple, point. We have a greater advantage than anyone else, in all of human history, when it comes to solving such mysteries as "What is the meaning of life?" This is because we are not only able to look at current observations and ideas from people who are living today, we can also look at ideas that were proposed in the past. The question, that we are trying to answer, has been asked by many people for a very long time. If anyone had an answer, it certainly is important enough to have been written down and passed on to the next generation. In the same way that Einstein's principles were recorded and passed on because of their importance, so would be the case for the answer to our important question.
So the next question we have to look at is whether or not there is anyone who has answered this question in the past. If someone had answered it, we would likely know about it. Their name would be a household name, like Einstein. The question, "What is the meaning of life?", is important enough to have triggered that response if someone had come up with an answer. They would have been an uncommonly bright spot on the static television screen -- maybe even the brightest. So who's the most well-known person in all of human history? The answer, to this question, is an easy one. It's Jesus Christ.
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