Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
To come back to the core issue, any rational spirituality must reject any attempt to dissociate man from meaning. Given that we deny a fundamental Other - a non-natural Creator being - then we deny outside meaning. The only rational alternative is self-meaning : that man, as owner of his own self (however tenuous this notion may be), determines his own meaning. The self, in this view, is analogous to the hammer I discussed earlier.
On the other hand, this seems to create ideological tension. Religion did set meaning apart from man, but it also made man the center of the universe. Man could only be made special if there was a meaning-giver powerful enough to make man special. But we are not the center of the universe. We must admit that we are limited in all respects, and that there is no escape from this metaphysical fact.
However, it is this metaphysical fact that opens the door to rational meaning. As I pointed out before, an unlimited being cannot have meaning, since it has no particular reason to act or live. As long as we are limited, we are pushed act towards our survival and flourishing - experience pleasure, work, desire greater things, evolve, seek more knowledge, perpetuate our species.
On the other hand, a being without limits has no grounds for growth or evolution of any kind. Such a being would have no reason for its actions. I discuss these deductions at the end of my article "Evil is as evil does". Why should a god create a universe ? Why should it not ? No such criteria is possible, since a god is infinite and therefore cannot fulfill any more values by deciding one way or the other.
Not surprisingly, it turns out that the religious rationalizations are once again the opposite of what we hold true - it is through our limits, not through specialness, that we can effect meaning. Indeed, the mere fact of our specific existence is amazing.
We are very lucky accidents or at least each one of us is - if we hadn't been here, someone else would have been. I take all this to reinforce my view that I am fantastically lucky to be here and so are you, and we ought to use our brief time in the sunlight to maximum effect by trying to understand things and get as full a vision of the world and life as our brains allow us to, which is pretty full.
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