I meant more what is your definition of a meaningful life full of value and purpose. From your side, not the arbitrary/athetistic/illusory whatever you want to call it side. Clearly you have your "correct" answer in mind.
If one believes in God, afterlife and objective moral values (me), then the ultimate purpose of life would, very fundamentally, be to lead a life as morally as possible in order to ensure a desirable afterlife.
so how does this work out;
1. you read about an afterlife thus you want to follow the rules that get you the ticket.
or
2. you believe God has ingrained his set of morals into us.
If 1. how do you explain that people who have never heard of your God/Afterlife (for example the average Chinese farmer) still follow pretty much the same values as you? they still follow all ten commandments except for believing in God (which is an incredibly vain commandment anyway). Where did he found those values?
Isn't that evidence of an objective set of moral values which all humans intuitively recognize?
and with 2. I argue that these ingrained morals are a product of our evolutionary/cultural environment.
If atheism is true, then yes, I would agree.
"Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an 'objective something', ethics is illusory. I appreciate when somebody says 'Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction. All deeper meaning is illusory." - Michael Ruse, Evolutionary Naturalist, Atheist.
If atheism is true, then morals are merely meaningless personal opinions in which no one is either right or wrong.
Even monkeys roughly follow the ten commandments, is it because they want to have a cool afterlife? or does it make more sense that this arose as a beneficial strategy for them through thousands of generations?
Are an animal's actions ever considered to have a moral dimension? When a lion kills a zebra, is the lion "murdering" a zebra? When a cat kills an animal for mere pleasure, is the cat sadistic? When a male shark forcefully impregnates a female shark, is the male shark raping the female shark?
In every sense of the word, moral relativism leads to the same "morality" of animals: there is no objectively wrong or right actions, actions lose all moral dimension, there would be no morally discnerable difference between rape and love, and the only reason
not to kill members of society would be merely out of inconvenience, not some illusory sense of right and wrong. A life of self-interest would be the only rational path.