My friend Norm passed on New Year’s Day. He’d made a surprising comeback from my original post to the point where he had a fantastic Christmas with his family, then took a sudden turn the next day and was gone within one week.
In the same time, several of my musical heroes–Lemmy, David Bowie, Glenn Frey, and Dale Griffin–passed in rapid succession, further reminding me how short life is.
While my grandparents were still alive, the end of my life was not tangible. But since my dad’s death nearly four years ago, and as more of my parents’ generation passes, I have become acutely aware of how little time I have remaining.
As the eventuality of my own death becomes more real, my awareness of the lack of true meaning of life grows. Fool yourself all you want, but unless there is a supernatural being(s) who can provide purpose to our existence, the answer, as Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, becomes the only plausible response: “42.” That is, life is meaningless if this is all there is. Search all you want, but in a wholly naturalistic universe, there is no significance to our existence apart from the illusions we create to fill our desire to have meaning.
That is why I believe in God. I would rather have the hope of having purpose that only a supernatural being could provide than to live out what’s left of my mortal existence knowing that life is meaningless and hope is an illusion.
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