Hello, Calhoun! Thanks for the article. I have been thinking about it a lot since the day you posted it. I decided to make an account so I could comment. 

I think there are some problems with Megill and Linford's arguments that have to do with imprecision in their language. I am in the process of writing a thorough counterargument, but it is taking longer than I expected, so I will just share the gist of it. I am something of a beginner to philosophy, so if I a missing something please let me know. 

I think we can take the phrase "the meaning of life" as Megill and Linford use it and divide it into three separate concepts: (1) the purpose of a life, (2) the value of a life, and (3) the meaning of a life. For myself, I think the meaningful life is something like a life lived for a certain purpose. "Purpose" is an end for which one acts, and value is the condition of being desirable. Megill and Linford's arguments lose a lot of force once these distinctions are made. 

Under classical theism, humanity has an innate value and an ultimate purpose. Our ultimate purpose, ie. the purpose for which God created us and the optimum condition for our flourishing, is loving union with God. But as the freedom to choose is a necessary condition for loving relationship, God rightly gives us freedom to choose to pursue our own ends. Some choose to spend their life on baser purposes. We say to these people that they are living "a meaningless life," but they do not lack purpose or value. They have purpose and value simply by being human persons created and loved by God. By my reading, this account of purpose, value, and meaning avoids most, if not all, of Megill and Linford's arguments. Try it out at and tell me what you think.  
 

Calhoun,

Let me then offer some examples of the efficacy of my distinction in breaking down their arguments:

On page 4, they offer their second argument for the premise (2) if the God of classical theism exists, then no lives lack meaning. Their argument is, given God's perfect goodness and that meaningful life is preferable to meaningless ones, God would actualize a world in which life has meaning. But with my distinctions of the word "meaning" this argument obviously fails for the reasons I mentioned in the last post: if the purpose and ultimate condition of flourishing of mankind is union with God then God could only actualize a world in which we have the freedom to make union with him the purpose for which we live. If we have the power to make this choice then we also have the power to choose otherwise and spend our lives on meaningless purposes. 

On page 5 they argue for (2) on the grounds that if God created lives that lack meaning, then creating us would be meaningless, ie. there would be no reason for God to create us in the first place. This is true so long as what they mean by "meaning" is what I call "purpose." So long as God has a purpose for us when he made us, he has reason to make us. If we reject to pursue that purpose our lives might lack some measure of meaning, but God is not responsible for that. 

Now Megill and Linford foresee something like this objection. In the next paragraph, they point out that someone might object that all God need do is create lives that have the possibility of meaning. They attempt to counter it by writing: "if some lives lack meaning, then the suffering that those  with meaningless lives endure is gratuitous, and gratuitous suffering is inconsistent with the existence of God." I just don't see how this follows. Gratuitous suffering is suffering without purpose. But as I said above, every life has a purpose, even if they fail to realize it. The suffering from a meaningless life is suffering we choose for ourselves, we can't  hold God accountable.  

Anyways, that is one argument in their paper that I think gets undercut by a proper distinction in the term "meaning," and it is key to their overall case. After all, their final argument against the existence of God includes the premise (1) If God exists, then all lives have meaning. If what I wrote above is correct, I have given us reason to doubt (1).

Let me know what you think. 

Calhoun, 

Don't worry about it. 

You write: " they take it [meaning] to be to be some positive feature of an individual’s life that is distinct from (though perhaps related to) other positive features (wellbeing,happiness, etc.) that a life might or might not have(do you agree?)." 

Yes, I agree. I think a meaningful life is something like a life lived for a purpose. Of course, we could still live for purposes in a world where God doesn't exist, so I agree that life can have meaning without God. That is not the area where I disagree with them. There are a few places where I think they make a mistake, but the one I outlined in my last post is on the question of the premise "if God exists, then no lives lack meaning." I think the arguments they give for this being true err on the conflation of "meaning" with "purpose." I think if God exists then no lives lack purpose, since, if a life lacked purpose there would be literally no reason for her to exist, and everything that she suffers in this life would be an instance of gratuitous suffering. But since free will is necessary for us to fulfill our ultimate purpose God must allow some people to reject it and thus live lives lacking in some degree of meaning. I accept your characterization of this as a sort of free-will defense. 

You mentioned the four arguments they offer for why God can't be the source of the meaning of life. I actually think those arguments fail, but I haven't gone into that for time purposes. I also don't need to. As far as I see it, I can grant them that point and still reject their concluding argument since I have refuted their argument for the premise "if God exists, then no life lack meaning." I think God is compatible with lives that lack meaning, so long as those lives have purpose. If you would prefer we talk about those four arguments instead I would be happy to table this issue and skip over to that one. 

"[s]o If I am understanding correctly what you're trying to do .. you might try to offer a cogent Free-will theodicy or try to demonstrate confusion in their use of Meaning across their paper... to undermine their main argument and the claim that meaningless lives and God aren't compatible"

This is correct. 

" [b]ut first you need to elaborate what your God-based account of meaning of life is, how can it be defended against their criticism?"

I thought that is what I did in my last post. My account for meaning is not God based. I think lives can be meaningful in a world without God. Only I also think lives can lack meaning in a world with God. 

Anyways, I hope that clarifies where I am coming from. There is so much more that can be said, but I find that on forums like this it is best to take things slowly, one step at a time, so I will leave it here and wait for your response. 

Calhoun, 

Yeah, my bad. I read your op a long time ago (the night you first posted it) then started mulling over the paper. I forgot that you mentioned you specifically want to discuss those four particular arguments. I don't think those four arguments are the real crux of their case, but I am happy to discuss them nonetheless. 

Let me just say something quickly about the my "free will argument." I accept the characterization so long as we clarify it is a type of free will defense. It isn't the same as the free will defense. I am aware that the free will theodicy is controversial, in fact, I don't accept it. What I am doing here is stealing a single maneuver used in that argument and applying it to this issue. My argument will succeed or fail on its own merits. 

What difference does(or would) God of Classical Theism make in the world? Why would one want him to exist? (it important for theist that God's existence actually does make a difference in the world because then he might be able to offer pragmatic reasons for inferring God's existence where for example a premise of a Cosmological argument is dubious, or generally its the very point of accepting theism..) 

Okay, fair enough. That isn't my preferred way of arguing theism, but pragmatic arguments are useful regardless, and I do think there are pragmatic reasons to accept theism, including ones that have to do with the meaning of life. 

First off, it seems obvious to me that one doesn't need to hold a strictly theistic account of the meaning of life to affirm that the existence of God adds something valuable to one's account. For example, in the account I offered, one could have a meaningful life even if God doesn't exist so long as one lives for a purpose that has intrinsic value. However, if God exists then we have reason to believe we were made for an ultimate purpose (whatever it is). Such a purpose would be extremely valuable and affirming to our intrinsic worth. So while meaning is possible in an atheistic world, there is a higher ceiling for potential meaning under classical theism. That is one advantage theism has.  

Anyways, let me say something now about the four arguments you wanted to discuss:

Argument One: The authors admit that this argument is undone if one distinguishes between purposes we chose for ourselves and the purpose for which God made us. They write in the conclusion: "For instance, maybe God created us for some purpose, and our lives have ultimate significance only insofar as we fulfill this purpose" (which is what my account does). They then move on to argument two to demonstrate this cannot be, so argument one isn't relevant where my account is concerned. 

Argument Two: This is the most important argument for me since the authors clearly frame it as an argument against the proposition I quoted above, namely "That God created us for some purpose, and our lives have ultimate significance only insofar as we fulfill that purpose." Let's call this the Ultimate Purpose claim (UP). I agree with UP, depending on how we are meant to interpret it, and I think their arguments against UP fail (I take them to be offering two avenues of argumentation for the same conclusion in the section titled "Argument Two".  

The first argument I would summarize as follows:

(1) Supposing human life has meaning, it is either intrinsic meaning or extrinsic meaning

(2) If intrinsic, then UP is false, because we would have meaning regardless of the purpose God creates for us. 

But then suppose that meaning is extrinsic in that meaning is only found in some relation to God. In that case:

(3) God's existence is sufficient for life to have meaning.

(4) If God's existence is sufficient for life to have meaning, then all life will have meaning.

(5) If all life has meaning, then meaning doesn't depend on the nature or content of a life.  

(6) Meaning (probably) does depend on the nature or content of a life. 

(7) Therefore, meaning (probably) is not dependent on some relation to God.
 
As you have probably already guessed, I would just reject (3) on the grounds I have already outlined in my other posts. This is just more evidence that the proposition "If God exists, then all lives have meaning" is really the crux of the entire paper, which is why I thought it was sufficient to simply discuss it. 

Nonetheless, there is another part of the above argument that confuses me. UP is a claim about ultimate significance/meaning, not about meaning in general. A theist can accept (as I do) that meaning in general is possible without God but maintain that there is a higher dimension of meaningfulness, ie. ultimate meaning, that still depends on the existence of God. I think this is enough to justify the intuition that most of us have that a world without God would lose something important as concerns meaning in life. Perhaps when Megill and Linford used the phrase "ultimate significance" they didn't mean it in the same way I understood it. Perhaps they meant something life "true meaning" or "actual meaning," ie. general meaning that exists. If that is the case I don't see why a theist would be motivated to accept UP.  

On page 14 they begin another argument against UP where they outline the four possible positions one could take concerning the purpose and meaning we ascribe to ourselves in relation to the purpose and meaning God ascribes to us and argue that each is problematic, suggesting that God is not necessary for life to have meaning. I am willing to grant that the second and third positions (b and c) are indeed problematic. I think their problems with (a) and (d) are weak. For the sake of space, I am just going to discuss (a), because I think it is the most important. Notice their argument depends on them showing that all four positions are problematic, so if I can show that even one of them is tenable I will have done enough to cast doubt on the whole argument. 

Concerning position (a) the author's say the following:

First, Suppose that (a) the purpose we devote ourselves to matches the purpose for which God created us. But it is not clear that simply following God's purpose for us would be sufficient to imbue life with meaning. For example, even though a child might be created by her parents for some particular purpose, the child might have no obligation to fulfill this purpose. If Sue learns her parents created her solely for the purpose of harvesting her organs for a sibling, Sue has no obligation to fulfill this purpose. There are many differences between God and human parents, and perhaps there is some relevant difference in virtue of which God's purposes for us should be our purposes for ourselves, but it is difficult to see what that relevant difference could be. (14)

To me, the relevant difference is obvious: human parents are creators of an instance of a particular form, God is the creator of the form itself. Imagine there was a task you needed to perform and you invent the perfect tool do it. The tool is so perfect that you make several molds for other people to make their own. Now imagine I got a hold of a mold, made the tool, but then used it for some other task, one completely different than the one you designed it for. Should I expect the tool to be perfect for my task just because I made it? Obviously not. If God exists he would be the designer of the human form and could fashion it to be perfect for the end he desired. Such an end would be proper to our very essence and thus be fulfilling to a degree that is impossible in a world without God. What is more, in classical theism God is not just some being who is good, he is goodness itself. If it isn't meaningful to pursue the purpose that the Good itself designed you to pursue specifically then I don't know what is. 

So thats arguments one and two. Let me know what you think.