You're blocking the conversation from getting anywhere, it never develops into the directions I want it to go in. — baker

I'm doing no such thing. Everyone is free to try to take the conversation in an on-topic direction, although no one is obliged to follow them. I couldn't tempt WF to go my way, but there's nothing stopping you, fill your boots. Since my and WF's conversation died ages ago, the obvious blocker is that you're spending your time talking to me about my conversation instead of having yours.

Or do you mean I was supposed to take my conversation in your direction? I am not a performing monkey :rofl:

1). Too early to say, given the pandemic. — Tim3003

Too late, surely. When was the Conservative party last the steward of a strong economy? Certainly not Thatcher's 15% interest rate which killed investment and growth. And let's not forget that her decision to close down manufacturing and bet everything on a deregulated financial sector didn't work out that well in the long run.

The myth of the strong Tory economy seems to be entirely down to the older, broader belief that our superiors are more competent, a belief that survives all evidence to the contrary.

But it's conceivably much worse. The Boris economy is the same as the Cameron/Gideon economy, based on the principle that the purpose of government is to transfer money from taxpayers to friends. Can't be an improvement.

Maybe it makes sense in ways I don't understand — counterpunch

Like inflation theory?

While you're painting him as the standard Southern redneck fundie. — baker

Wayfarer hit me with a similar accusation earlier. It's not true, though. My description is limited to the constraints in understanding how different ideas of life's meaning appear to different people. I'm hardly painting him as a placard-waving, abortionist-murdering, homophobe who loves his guns just for pointing out that the only meaning he recognises isn't worth a damn to many of us.

By idiosyncratic of course you mean anything not accepted by scientism... — Protagoras

By ideosyncratic I mean ideosyncratic. Look it up.

No, I didn't convert to Judaism. I've been a Jew for 30 years because I was born one and being an atheist doesn't disqualify one from being a Jew. — BitconnectCarlos

The second sentence doesn't support the first. Jewish is an ethnicity. Judaism is an ethnic religion, as you apparently know since you tell me that:

Under Judaism our purpose is to connect with God and we do this via rituals (like praying) and mitzvot (good deeds) — BitconnectCarlos

Or are you trying to say that Jewish atheists' purpose is to connect with God? :rofl:

This "all or nothing" mentality you have here seems to me like it's a more of a factor in Christianity than in Judaism. There are plenty of Jewish atheists but just because one is an atheist at one point doesn't mean that that will always be the case or that God's non-existence is regarded as a certainty. — BitconnectCarlos

That would seem to be an inferred "all or nothing" mentality then, not an implied one. Nothing in any of my posts to suggest that beliefs are fixed. Although a good way of fixing ones beliefs is to ensure that you cannot entertain others.

the best spreaders like Islam and Christianity are universalistic and faith-based and they tend to spread quicker — BitconnectCarlos

Well, one of them did have the Roman Empire at their disposal.

That is not what is meant by common sense and you know it! — Protagoras

Indeed. I have a sneaking suspicion that I might have nailed your idea of common sense up front:

Or try and pass off ideosyncratic views as common sense, which happens a lot. — Kenosha Kid

Show me some philosophers or scientists who proved their ideas with common sense? — Protagoras

Is this your first day of having conversations?

By the way, scientists make their arguments to each other, and it is based on sense (empiricism) and is common to them (in principle anyway: consensus). In that respect, it's the epitome of common sense, it's just that 'common' is across their community, not the global one.

What do 'believers' 'theists' 'idealists' et al mean when they chastise atheists and/or materialists, etc by saying, in effect, that atheism / materialism entails "life has no meaning"? — 180 Proof

No takers. From the opposite perspective:

1. An existential meaning is personal, so long as one is rigorous in excising bad faith (religion, communism Mr. Sartre, etc.). A personal meaning is more important to me than an impersonal, shared one that takes no account of who I am.

2. A meaning can only be important to me if it is a meaning in the world. Believing that the meaning of life is to psychically rearrange the planets of a distant galaxy to allow the Great Yaggant to be reborn in the flames of a dying star to defeat the evil Bong F'Dassir and bring balance, peace and life to a part of the universe that will, according to prophecy, unlock the Great Secret which will allow the whole living Universe to ascend to Bahkt Morran, events which our descendents will know about in the year of Yaggant 3,845,297 isn't very valuable to me since the world is much the same whether it's right or, more likely, I'm delusional. Meaning has to have a real context, not a made up one, which means being alert to the world, being curious, seeking answers to questions rather finding questions for your answers, correcting one's errors, identifying and adjusting for one's biases.

I expect this is likely only valuable in an atheist or physicalist or skeptic framework though, and has no value if you know that life is about getting into Heaven, ascending to Nirvana, proving you're in a simulation or whatever.

I was trying to give an example of a property that could give intrinsic value to an object. — Hello Human

Electric charge?

When was the last debate or post you saw settled by common sense? — Protagoras

When was the last time I saw a debate settled full stop? That's not a useful criteria and you've shifted your goalposts some. There is nothing stopping you appealing to common sense in a rigorous way. Whether it'll win you the argument is an entirely different matter. If you lose the argument with common sense, that might be your fault you know?

I can't appeal to common sense because justificationism is the only public game in town. — Protagoras

Yes you can, you just can't do it mindlessly.

EDIT: Or try and pass off ideosyncratic views as common sense, which happens a lot.

beauty could give nature value, and that's just for intrinsic value. — Hello Human

Hello Hello Human! What do you mean here, that beauty is intrinsic to beautiful things? It almost certainly isn't.

Okay, this isn't the first time you've tried to hit the destruct button, I'll take a hint.

Connecting with God is a good in itself; the ultimate good, really. Jewish teachings as it was taught to me has always been to not worry about the afterlife until one is near death. — BitconnectCarlos

There's no bigger anti-smoker than an ex-smoker, and no greater evangelical than a recent convert. So you went for Judaism? Good for you. This Christianity nonsense is just a fad, it'll pass :D

Same problem, though. If you believe that your purpose is to love God, nothing can be more important, right? But if you don't believe in God, that notion of meaning is worthless. The meaning only has value if you believe in it, which means it's basically arbitrary (insofar as one can choose to believe anything else or nothing).

So many paragraphs just to say "I don't like race mixing, and you shouldn't either". — StreetlightX

Worse: "... and I know you don't either, so it's a conspiracy to force us together against our will." Bingo if he's a Jesus freak.

It looks like the exact opposite. We're cohabiting pretty peacefully without anyone intervening and, instead, the racists among us are making a concerted political effort to stop it, viz. Trump and the white supremacists in the US, UKIP and Brexit in the UK, Penn's abject failures in France among the various racist parties in Europe vying for a tiny slice of proportional representation. It seems to take a lot of effort to keep people apart, which is extremely encouraging. My step-kids' generation look on appalled and will hopefully put another nail in the coffin of the dead argument made by the OP.

There are people who hate difference (difference in appearance, difference in sexuality, difference in beliefs and opinions) and people who love it. Most of us seem to be in the second camp, so don't be too surprised if, when the racist eye is off the ball, people just naturally come together again.

As for overcrowding, gotta stop breeding so much. There's a potential anti- or discerning immigration argument there maybe.

You don't think there's an objective truth over whether God exists? Last time I checked these religions set forth hypotheses that one will come to know after death or who knows in some cases maybe even before. Islam, Christianity and Judaism assert the existence of a certain type of God and that is a proposition. — BitconnectCarlos

Objective truth has nothing to do with it. This concerns belief. If you believe in an afterlife, your idea of life's meaning will be with respect to that. The relative quantity here is the value of that meaning. The belief is a reference frame. If you don't believe in an afterlife, such meanings are valueless and of no loss to the disbeliever. Likewise if you don't believe in a creator, or a simulation, or the Fatherland, etc.

In an interesting way, as a theist, I view your quote there as probably blasphemous - the purpose of life is to connect with God, but not because of the afterlife and but because connection with God is good in itself. Jews virtually never talk about the afterlife and if that's how Christians have pitched it to you I'd be turned off as well. — BitconnectCarlos

It was an example. Different religions have different beliefs and therefore different claims about the meaning of life.

I was glancing over an earlier response and I must have confused artefact with artifact. — BitconnectCarlos

Haha no worries.

Whereas I, being a fundamentalist, am saying that the Bible is the innerant word of God and the sole path to salvation. — Wayfarer

Whereas you don't seem to be able to wrap your head around the idea that a meaning derived from a teleological creator isn't worth a damn outside of a creationist framework, that other meanings that are worth a damn in other frameworks are actually the weightier ones in those frameworks. No one's craving a higher purpose from a non-existent entity, it's not that conceptually difficult.

What 'narrrow framework' are you referring to? What 'framework' have I been arguing for? You're writing as if I've been pushing evangelical Christianity, which I haven't. — Wayfarer

I didn't say you were arguing for a narrow framework, rather that your posts betray an inability to think outside of one.

That's correct, and I stand by that. — Wayfarer

And it holds true only in that narrow framework.

And note the qualification that immediately follows: — Wayfarer

I think you rather missed the point, which is that even the leader of a religious group can step outside of their own current beliefs for a moment and gauge how they might appear in a broader context.

Bottom line is, all I said was that there is something good about religion. That triggers hysteria on this forum. — Wayfarer

Some specific points you've made have triggered disagreement from a few people. No one, except perhaps yourself, is being remotely hysterical.

Can we just clarify this concept of "philosophical value" here - what exactly do you mean? Are you saying that since e.g. ancient statues from lost cultures or tribal statues don't have "philosophical value" it's either okay to destroy them or not to maintain them? Can we just simplify this discussion and replace "philosophical value" with "reason?" — BitconnectCarlos

No, I'm saying that something like "the meaning of life is to honour God so that he will let you into Heaven" has no value outside of religions where there's a God and a Heaven and an afterlife. Likewise the Buddhist meaning of life has no value in the absence of Nirvana. These sorts of meaning are binary and relative: they take on non-zero values only in the frames of the religions that beget them.

The point of my conversation with Wayfarer is that he believes these sorts of meanings, where there is some higher purpose intended and some ultimate goal to aspire to, have values generally, such that to be without such a meaning is a loss.

It doesn't really have anything to do with statues, sorry.

The left insists they are basing their claims on science — Hanover

... And decency. And history. Historically we have rejected men dictating womanhood to women, white women dictating womanhood to non-white women, middle class women dictating womanhood to working class women... It's not rocket science to need a better reason to dictate womanhood to trans women than the above had to assert their definitions.

I'm glad you were alert to the statue subtext of the conversation :wink:

Buddhism likely has value even if I'm not too familiar with the actual teachings and practice. — BitconnectCarlos

It can't have much value to you since you haven't looked into it :p The value we're talking about here is philosophical though, more than decorative. I value churches, cathedrals, temples, statues, etc. too but they're not a reason to live your life according to a specific definition of religious meaning.

The Buddhist meaning of human life is comparable to the Christian one: both are transcendental, involving ascensions for the ethical and devout, which is unsurprising as both religions concern how the existence of different kinds of afterlife should dictate how we behave in this life. Remove that afterlife and the meaning disappears: the meaning only had value in those religious belief structures. Wayfarer believes this is a loss, and I'm just trying to get him to see that it could only be a loss if you believe in that meaning, in which case nothing is lost.

Nobody can accuse Schopenhauer of being a religious apologist, and yet he too recognises the basic demand of the search for meaning. But he says that philosophy seeks that meaning through understanding, not through mere belief, although that is a distinction I guess won't get any traction here. — Wayfarer

I hope it does, you might yet see my point. Having an arbitrary belief of a particular teleological meaning isn't good enough. I'm not saying abandon anything, but you demonstrate an astonishing inability to gauge the value of your beliefs outside of the narrow framework you acquired them in. Your average ideologue can probably handle the "and what if such and such a belief isn't true" okay, simply because there's less fear surrounding doubt. Since your idea of philosophy is ad hominem, i.e. largely to quote somebody important saying the thing you want others to believe, here's another:

I have often said that if science proves facts that conflict with Buddhist understanding, Buddhism must change accordingly. We should always adopt a view that accords with the facts. If upon investigation we find that there is reason and proof for a point, then we should accept it. However, a clear distinction should be made between what is not found by science and what is found to be nonexistent by science. What science finds to be nonexistent we should all accept as nonexistent, but what science merely does not find is a completely different matter. An example is consciousness itself. Although sentient beings, including humans, have experienced consciousness for centuries, we still do not know what consciousness actually is: its complete nature and how it functions. — Lamarana14

The Dalai Lama can get his head around the idea that the teachings of his religion can be erroneous and subject to change. You can't get your head around the idea that the meaning of life you're taught isn't even worth a ha'penny to those not so taught. Similarly...

That's a clear statement of relativism. — Wayfarer

I gather you're using "relativism" much as right-wingers use "woke". You know that's only a negative term to absolutists, right? It's not a thing that needs to be defended. If you are sitting down right now, the altitude that you are sitting at depends on the height of whatever you're sitting on. Same thing. Of course it's a clear statement of relativism, I used the words "relative to" :groan:

The point about any kind of philosophical hermenuetic is to try and discern what factor, if anything, they are pointing at, so as to disclose a larger truth. — Wayfarer

Which is incompatible with the idea that the loss of a particular artefact of a particular religion or ideology that has zero value elsewhere must be protected and vouchsafed for its own sake.

This is a philosophy forum, and I'm putting the question in philosophical terms — Wayfarer

Your not, that's my point. It oughtn't be profound that what's at stake in terms of meaning is only considerable if you already are biased about what that meaning is. From within a particular ideology that makes claims about meaning, those meanings are important. But outside, other meanings are important, or none are important. What's at stake is relative to what you believe. You cannot compare the meaning of life as understood by a creationist to that of a Buddhist, or an atheist, or a simulationist, since the values of each kind of meaning differ from reference frame to reference frame.

That depends on what is at stake. If we're simply material aggregates and death is the end, then nothing is at stake. But if there is a higher purpose, and we don't see it, then we've missed the point. And it's a very important point to miss. — Wayfarer

Yeah, like Pascal's wager... Believe in this arbitrary and utterly daft collection of iron age fictions because, according to those fictions, we're screwed if we don't. This is only compelling to people who already believe: it doesn't change a Buddhist into a Christian.

This is the communication problem in a nutshell: theists struggle to understand that what seems compelling to them is a product of a religious upbringing and of holding the religious beliefs they're trying to argue for. Stepping outside of the Jesus-riddled brain, the 'higher meaning' of Christianity is no more compelling or less arbitrary-seeming than any other, or none, or some as hoc theory one could construct right now.

Any religion or ethical ideology has firm opinions. Most, if not all, have to be wrong

I think a naturalistic explanation for religion would be along the lines that the states of higher awareness that sages exemplify are the true fulfilment of a natural process, but that it goes far beyond what can be defined naturalistically (in the sense that Western culture defines it) — Wayfarer

I expect it's much like stock traders today. Once we moved far from the equator, our historic ways of living didn't work. There was an expertise gap, and human nature abhors a vacuum, religion being the best example of this. Experts were those who said, 'If we do X, Y will happen'. If they happened to be right, they were elevated. These became the people others came to for advice, and the people that had to make decisions for the group. Problem was, no one knew why things worked. Like all such expertise without comprehension, a certain amount of bias is required to maintain it.

I maintain that the creationist hypothesis was a perfectly good scientific hypothesis thousands of years ago, but another advantage of it was that, for experts in petitioning a creator, it's no mark of failure on the part of the expert if X doesn't yield Y. It is simply not God's will that Y be done, and no amount of X-ing is going to change that. The appending of "if the god's will it" or similar is a memetic adaptation that makes perfect sense since, without it, the memes risk being made extinct by turns of events.

And when the mothership comes to save us, you're not invited! Mwhaha! — baker

Good. I'll think of y'all getting your anal probes while I sit safe in my tin hat.

Speaking of things that smell bad...

Being human has its charms if chain smoking is one! — TheMadFool

Only if you say "Mish me, Moneypenny?" Sean (actual name Sorn) is the only person who makes me wish I still smoked.

What would you like me to argue or defend? — NOS4A2

For the third time (and I don't think the last), your claim of:

The overestimation of the power of speech — NOS4A2

I don't really care about the Trump part, hence I was pointing out the error in your argument against the power of speech, on which:

I assure you I have focussed on those topics, and long before you “invited” me to do it. So now what? — NOS4A2

So now could you show some evidence of it?

I’d be careful about that collective pronoun. — Wayfarer

No, I'm confident about that one.

:( Sorry bro :(

The overestimation of the power of speech is an old tale it and goes back thousands of years or more to the Sophists. Gorgias, for instance, believed speech had an effect like drugs upon the body. — NOS4A2

To spell it out even more clearly, your argument against consequences for Trump inciting a riot against the Capitol is that the power of speech is overestimated. Your illustration of this is that Gorgias believes speech to be potent, like a drug. This is a bizarre approach to making your point. If you'd cited someone suggesting that speech is impotent that would be, at worst, an ad hom. But citing someone who believes speech to be potent is not an argument for dismissing the potency of speech. The invitation remains open if you ever fancy actually engaging with your own beliefs but, like I said yesterday, I do understand why you prefer not to.

But overall, the erosion of the sense of meaning, the loss of the sense of mankind having a meaningful place in the Cosmos, has been a major theme in modern culture, expressed in countless works of philosophy, drama, art and literature. Existentialism was one of the responses to that, but there have been many others. I don't think it's necessary to be religious to live a meaningful life, but as a consequence of my own search, I interpret religious ideas as expressions of mankind's search for meaning or of the relationship of the human and the Cosmos. — Wayfarer

I understand, and figured this is what you meant. 'Meaning' in the sense you... uh... meant is not 'meaning' but a specific meaning or kind of meaning: a meaning that places us as the most important things in the universe, the point of the universe perhaps... according to us.

But again I question whether even this kind of meaning is meaningful. Does it change the way a person behaves, for instance? I'm pretty sure every individual who believes that mankind is the point of it all would say yes, yet statistically it doesn't seem to hold up. My Catholic housemate defended the Church against accusations of being effectively a paedophile ring by pointing out that the church had exactly the same percentage of paedophiles as the secular UK. (She apparently didn't see how damning this was in terms of the church being any kind of moral authority.) If this kind of meaning, even when backed up with some awful threats, neither deters nor attracts the most wicked behaviours, can it be said to be worth a damn? I'm sure some would point to the interior life of these people but, of course, you can't (the problem with hypothesising a completely invisible part of people is that you can't say anything about it).

Either way, it doesn't seem like much of a loss. If there is a teleological meaning to us, we don't know it. It could be to worship a vain, jealous god, or to figure out that we're in a simulation, or to make the greatest possible cheese. It doesn't seem beneficial to pick one and run with it or, worse, have one picked for us, and be almost certainly wrong than to evaluate our own biases and admit that maybe we can exist without being the reason for everything's existence. (If any other species develops religion, or even just metaphysics, you can be quite sure that they will conclude that they're the point of everything.) Delusions aren't the gold standard of meaning. We can do much better. In fact, no meaning at all is a huge improvement over your definition of meaning imo.

That enumerating instances where people thought that speech was rousing is not an argument that speeches aren't rousing.

Empirically proving what a particular war was (actually) about is virtually impossible. So as much as one might dislike religion, there are things one cannot say about it without thereby losing one's self-respect as a lover of wisdom. — baker

:100: :up: :heart:

I was raised by wolves

Declining the invitation, huh? I'm noticing, and this is probably old news to most, that bullshitters are distinguishable from wrong-headed people in the energy they put into avoiding dealing with their own arguments, presumably because they've seen so many wrong-headed people suffer epiphanies.

If you have anything to counterargue what I just wrote in the previous post, please do that, because I'm tired of infantile belief arguments that would never pass basic philosophical scrutiny or believers just saying I'm wrong without any further elaboration. I'm still waiting for anything substantial. — Christoffer

As am I. To be clear, I'm an atheist with a strong dislike for religion. But claims like 'most wars in human history have been religious wars' need to rest on more than having atheism in common. In no sense have you supported your claim, and this shouldn't be too surprising given a) your unnecessary hostility toward disagreement, b) your preference for expansive complaints over a single sentence of justification, and c) your inconstant attitude to whether the problem is that people are focusing too much on this one thing or aren't going into enough detail.

Let's take what should be an easy example for you: jihad. On the one hand, nothing could be a better example of the warlike nature of religiosity than something that calls itself Holy War and whose Cyberman-like message is 'convert or die/be raped'. It's written there in their primary text, so no escaping it.

And yet, for the most part, Islam has been and remains a particularly peaceful, sophisticated religion. If 1001 people read the same book, 1000 think "peace" and 1 thinks "kill", is the religion accounting for the war, or the difference between that 1 and the other 1000?

No one is arguing that religion isn't an enabler for war, it clearly is. But you have to show that religion is the reason for war to pin it on theism, and that's not possible. The Church definitely has an insane amount of blood on its hands, but the history of the Church can be exemplified more succinctly with the word "power" than with the word "piety". It was a powerful, violently expansive state, with more in common with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union than with, say, Buddhist Tibet or Jainism. The common denominator in all war is definitely not religion, and the common denominator of all religions is not war.

Also since evolution is not about identifying truth, only what works for survival, then anything that comes out of an evolutionary perspective (e.g., anything by Dawkins) has no truth value. — Tom Storm

Aye, which is clearly wrong, since most of the things I'm looking at right now as I wait for this bus weren't biologically selected for (just the trees and bushes really), hence shirts.

Which was my point to Wayfarer: whether or not meaning is illusory is an interesting question. "If there's no God, it must be" is not a good answer.

I'm an atheist who finds meaning in the usual things, probably not much differently from theists and other non-believers. I think that's just what humans do. Calling any values 'underwritten' is just a labelling exercise - like having a brand of marmalade that is sold by 'appointment to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth' (reference for Commonwealth country folk). — Tom Storm

Yeah, mostly. That said, I think the word means something different to creationists than to, say, the French existentialists. Creationists believe that humans are an outcome of a teleological process, and 'meaning' here largely denotes 'higher purpose'. Sartre's idea of meaning is non-teleological and individualist, more like 'personal values'. How we use the word dictates our conclusions: for Wayfarer, 'meaning' is apparently "underwritten" by definition. There's no analogue of that in atheism or, to date, physicalism.

Let's start with everyone else supporting their counter-argument first, please. I can either roll my thumbs waiting or just continue to ask for something substantial. — Christoffer

I can see how you'd like that to work, but that's not how it works. Claims aren't true until proven otherwise. Since you are unwilling to defend your point, no one else is obliged to disprove it. That which is claimed without justification can be dismissed without justification. I also reject the idea that your above performance was anything like an entreatment for naysayers to expound upon their views. It was infantile tantrum-throwing and nothing more, quite obstructive to the sorts of detail you now claim to want.

It's a matter of underwriting meaning - not simply 'making it up'. Buddhists don't believe they are 'given meaning by a Creator' but they nevertheless accept there is dharma, that is, moral law. — Wayfarer

So "illusion" was the wrong word, then. A refinement might go something like:

if what materialism says is true - if we are a kind of 'rogue chemical reaction', the outcome of a 'collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it- then any meaning is not underwritten. — Wayfarer

This seems to be approaching tautology now, but at least it's trivially true.

Hopefully this isn't a pile on Wayfarer thing. :smile: — Tom Storm

Good point. So...

I think the atheists would argue that meaning exists because we are meaning making animals who endlessly invent things - a range of loose, shared meanings being amongst these inventions, which include mores and morals. — Tom Storm

I'm an atheist (and a physicalist), but even with my protest to I'm not claiming to have meaning or believe that anyone else does beyond the sort of illusion he refers to. My point is more that, if meaning is an illusion, it must be shown to be so with something more thorough than "Neither God nor evolution gave it to us," which misses out a lot, for instance most of culture.

The existentialists hold meaning as something you arrive at: it's personal, perhaps even unique, like a fingerprint or your DNA. There's also a compelling argument that the language is itself meaningless: it borrows a concept that is well-defined in theism but doesn't really have a correlate in a Godless world.

A good way of approaching the question imo is anthropologically: do humans tend to behave as if their life has meaning, not just value? There are people for whom this seems to be true, but they are likely exceptional. I doubt that I, being unexceptional, would live much of a different life whether it had meaning or not, which is as good an indicator as I can think of that it doesn't.

It is a pathetically simplistic statement. — Wayfarer

Which? This:

if what materialism says is true - if we are a kind of 'rogue chemical reaction', the outcome of a 'collocation of atoms', as Bertrand Russell put it- then any idea of meaning is basically an illusion. — Wayfarer

? Agreed, but there's nothing wrong with starting simple and refining it as we go (this is how science proceeds, for instance, a huge improvement over having to get it right first time and stick to it regardless of its increasing apparent silliness).

So if materialism says we're not given meaning by a creator, and let's assume we're not given meaning by our genetics (unless you don't want to assume that), we're still not necessarily deprived of meaning. The argument, as you presented it, needs refining at least, perhaps discarding. Is there anything missing from it that would deprive us of meaning?

The point about philosophical materialism is that any notion of meaning is at best a biological adaptation. — Wayfarer

Another simplistic statement, and very wrong. There's no biological adaptation for watching Netflix, painting Warhammer miniatures, reading one book and not another, having roast beef only on Sundays, or any of the other myriad things we spend our time on, nor is there any claim for such. Biological adaptation specifies our capacities: it cannot dictate outcomes, like finding a particular meaning, or not.

Okay then. X is not given to us by a creator. We are not born with X. Does it follow that X is, at best, an illusion?