Do I have to, or is it incumbent on you to prove a god and it’s intended “purpose”? You are the one making the claim.
No, it’s real, but our inevitable demise is the same for EVERY single person who has lived or is currently living on this rock we call earth. We all either rot in our grave or are reduced to a small pile of ash and bone in a crematorium. There’s no escaping it, no matter how hard you try to believe otherwise.
WHAT! Don’t you DARE have a go at the sacred Bananas. The fruit that isn’t a fruit from which all life flows. The sacred YELLOW. The holy Crescent. The mighty tree dwelling creator of the universe and beyond. DON’t You dare go there you blasphemous turd!
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That’s Sheldon’s proposition not mine .
I failed to find a corresponding proposition from Sheldon. 
Maybe you could be more explicit?
That was Sheldon’s question to me .
I replied that the question works both ways as evidenced by thousands of years of Philosophy .
Prove there is no meaning is just as valid a question.
Evidence of absence is typically considered good enough for a negative claim in philosophy. The burden of proof is not equal for positive and negative claims in philosophy; despite your statements to the contrary.
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If there is no meaning to life or the universe then how would know there is no meaning ?
I don’t know that there is any objective meaning of life; and I also don’t know that there isn’t. However:
- The people who say it has a meaning have the easy job: they just need to tell us what it is. This is why they have the burden of proof.
- The people who say it has no meaning; have the impossible job: there is no way to establish that there is no meaning. They could be 100% right, but it is totally impossible for them to ever demonstrate it. It is an impossible task.
By flipping the burden of proof; you are crafting a situation where you can never be shown to be wrong and your opponents can never be shown to be correct; regardless of the claim in question. It’s dirty pool!
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Evidence of absence. Absence of evidence. Evidence of evidence. Absence of evidence of absence. Evidence of absence of evidence. Evidence of evidence of absence. Absence of evidence of evidence of absence. How far can we take it and still keep it meaningful in any sense?
Was that a yes or a no?
I’ve not any claims, my atheism is a lack of belief, not a contrary belief.
You didn’t answer the question either?
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I don’t need to know, in order to withhold belief, and this kind of sophistry leads to an obvious inference, that you can’t demonstrate any objective evidence for your belief.
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Why do people have to tell you what it is ?
If it is an impossible task then why would the claim be made that there is no meaning to life ?
Unfalsifiable claims are meaningless, and they are easy to create. To believe them all is a rational impossibility, to believe some or one obvious bias, and therefore closed minded. To remain agnostic, and withhold belief until or if they can be demonstrated as at least possible, seems the only rational position to me.
So I ask again what objective evidence can you demonstrate that there is some overarching meaning to life? It is after all a scientific fact that all living things evolved, and that humans are a very new addition, evolving a mere 200k years or so ago, and in a universe that in it’s current state is 13.8 billion years old. So what evidence there is, certainly contradicts core aspects of the Abrahamic religions, and roundly contradicts their creation myths. So the belief is off to an inauspicious start.
No it isn’t, not being able to falsify a claim lends that claim no credence at all, to claim otherwise is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy. As has been explained, disbelief or lack of belief need not involve holding a contrary belief. Thus I can and do disbelieve the claim there is some overarching meaning to human life, as what evidence there is does not support it, and no one can demonstrate any objective evidence for the claim.
Do you believe in invisible mermaids?
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I made no claim to any overarching meaning to life .
The proposition is “ What is the biggest lie “ ?
My reply is “ that life has no meaning “
By describing it as a lie you are making a claim. It seems you want to hide behind semantics though, rather than admit you can’t demonstrate any objective evidence that life has any overarching meaning.
As I said, the evidence though not conclusive, is that humans evolved like all living things, and evolved just 200k years ago. If human life has a meaning, other than the meaning we arbitrarily attach to our own lives, then that fact seems at odds with the claim.
FWIW, we already know you’re a theist, it’s in your profile, thus these semantics smack of sophistry to me. It is a common tactic very much in vogue in religious apologetics, to make these attempts to reverse the epistemological burden of proof that their beliefs carry.
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If I believed a 27 headed dragon lives in New York City, and you didn’t; how could you demonstrate that you were correct? There is no obvious way for you to do that, because if you are right, then there is no dragon to demonstrate.
If I’m correct; then there are a myriad of simple ways for me to at least attempt to demonstrate it (photographs or video of the dragon, the dragons street address, etc). The burden of proof would be on me.
Because true statements are often impossible to prove/demonstrate. Presumably the statement “there are no 27 headed dragons living in New York City” is true, but is impossible to demonstrate.
Same goes for the meaning of life. I don’t think it exists, so if I’m correct, there will never been anything to demonstrate. You suggest that it was false (you said it was the biggest lie). Presumably all you would need to do to demonstrate you are correct, is just tell us what this meaning is. Unless of course you don’t know it, which would make me wonder why you said it was a lie…
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Well we do know that meaning and the search for meaning exist in everybody’s life and that means something rather than nothing