What is The Meaning of life

"What is the meaning of life?" is probably the most-asked philosophical question by humanity at large, though we will probably never find the answer, for whatever reason. Common answers include: happiness or flourishing; love; compassion; pleasure; reproduction; power; 42; knowledge, understanding, or wisdom; and being blessed, or achieving union with God or the divine; or simply that there is no meaning to life. ...
This article concerns the philosophical question of the meaning of life itself. For the movie by Monty Python, see The Meaning of Life.
The answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" has resulted in a wide range of debates and theories, from practical scientific guidelines through to philosophical, theological and spiritual explanations. Similar questions people ask themselves are "Why am I here?" or "Why are we here?".

Philosophical views

Over the millennia, philosophers have had much to say about this question--though philosophers do not fixate on it as much as popular conceptions might lead one to believe. Theories of value--of which there are very many indeed--are not necessarily, but can sometimes be construed as theories of the meaning of life. Great philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and many others had clear views about what sort of life was best (and hence most meaningful). The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer offered a bleak answer by determining one's life as a reflection of one's will and the will [and thus life] as being an aimless, irrational, painful drive. The existentialists followed Schopenhauer's lead in addressing themselves to the question head-on. More recently, Robert Nozick discussed the question at great length in his Philosophical Explanations.
Using a general line of thinking exemplified by Wittgenstein and the logical positivists, it could be said that, expressed in language, the question is meaningless. This is because 'meaning of X' is a term in life usually conveying something regarding 'the consequences of X', or 'significance of X', or 'that which should be noted regarding X', etc.
Things in a person's life can therefore be said to have meaning (for that person, for other people): the person's life can even be said to have meaning (legacy, achievements, family, etc.).
But to say that life itself as a whole has meaning is a misuse of language, since any note or significance or consequence would be 'in' life and therefore highly dubious in status. The Wittgensteinian line would say therefore that language cannot provide a meaningful answer unless it refers to a realm 'in' the realm of life, but this is not usually given. Other philosophers have sought to discover what is meaningful within life by studying the consciousness within it. Hence when philosophers looked for a holistic definition of the "Meaning of Life" for humanity, they were stone-walled by this, as well as concepts of Free will, versus Determinism and Teleology.
Pragmatic philosophers suggest that rather than a "truth" about life, we should seek a useful understanding of life. William James argued that truth could be made but not sought. Thus, the meaning of life is a belief about the purpose of life that does not contradict one's experience of a purposeful life. Roughly, this could be applied as, "The meaning of life is those purposes which cause you to value it." To a pragmatist, the meaning of life, your life, can be discovered through experience.

Religious views

Religion itself, it is often suggested, is a response to humanity's search for meaning or purpose. Indeed, the realm outside life itself referred to in the previous passage could be interpreted as the religious or spiritual realm. Most people who believe in a personal God would agree that it is God "in Whom we live and move and have our being". The notion here is that we do or ought to seek a higher purpose that will give our lives meaning.
One particular perspective on how religion answers the purpose for human life is given in the biblical story of creation: That the purpose for man is to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it..." Gen 1:28. This may indicated that the propagation of the human race, the care and restoration of the earth, and the control of our environment are the three goals God has set for man. However, instructions given by God and "the meaning of life" (or the purpose of one's existence), may not be synonymous.
In Mark 12:28-31, we read about the two greatest commandments of all: "Then one of the scribes ... asked Him, "Which is the first commandment of all?" Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."
Another perspective looks at the history of what God has taught man, and then summarized. The Westminster Shorter Catechism did so, famously answering at its outset that "man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever." [1]
However, this does not help the non-religious person in dealing with the question "What is the Meaning of Life?" when it is asked in a philosophical context. It is not a complete answer to say "Believe, and you will understand", as this relies on faith in the delivered truth rather than logical or rational justification.
Islam's viewpoint is that God created man for one purpose only and that is to worship God. Worshipping in Islam does not only mean performing rituals, but also means to work, produce, innovate and improve the quality of life thus obeying their creator. To Muslims, life is like a test. How well you perform on this "test" will determine whether you get into Jenna (Heaven) or Jehenim (Hell).
I only created jinn and man to worship Me. (Qur'an, 51:56)
Purely theological answers raise other questions. For instance, if we exist to obey, how does obeying improve us? If we live to worship God, what is God's purpose? Even for the religious, dogmatic imperatives may not be satisfactory.

Scientific views

For centuries scientists have contributed gradually to the diverse scientific worldviews we commonly hold today on MOL, like the heliocentric view by Copernicus and Galileo, to the mechanistic clockwork universe of Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton, to the still deterministic Albert Einstein's "God does not play dice", to Benoit Mandelbrot's Chaos Theory and so forth. Even the more avant garde Gaia Theory and teleonomy have rarely addressed the question. Where the scientists and the philosophers do converge on this quest of MOL is an assumption that the mechanics of life would be determinable, thus the meaning of life would be eventually derivable from the understanding of its mechanics.
In etymology, Science has its roots in "scientia" or knowledge, and "scire" to know. Science by nature is to learn and distinguish one thing from another, and it is not the role of scientists to delve into the metaphysics of life. There are thus, strictly speaking, no scientific views on the meaning of life (and indeed this is often given as a criticism of science itself): science simply addresses quantifiable questions such as By what means? and To what extent?, rather than the For what purpose? which is typically implied in the phrase "the meaning of life". However, many scientific disciplines have given rise to developments which are often interpreted philosophically rather than literally, (and sometimes in different ways by different people), such as Gödel's incompleteness theorem, the halting problem, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
Some scientific theories suggest that life on Earth was created when a lightning bolt, comet, or meteor impact, or other "accidental" event caused a group of organic compounds to bind together forming a primitive cell, which was then able to reproduce and eventually evolve into higher life forms. Based on these or similar theories, some philosophies say that because life was entirely coincidental, one cannot expect life to have any significant meaning at all, other than its own self-perpetuation -the purpose of life is to reproduce.

Humorous and miscellaneous views

The very concept "the meaning of life" has become such a cliché that it has often been parodied, such as in the radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, later released as a novel, a television series, a film, and a computer game. His answer was 42. As the story goes, an advanced race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings (mice) builds a gigantic computer called "Deep Thought" to find the Answer to "Life, the Universe, and Everything". Seven and a half million years later, the computer gave the answer: "42". After giving the answer to an (unsurprisingly) underwhelmed audience, Deep Thought explained that the problem with the answer was that no-one really knew what the question was. To resolve this, an even larger computer (the Earth) was built to find the question; however the Earth was destroyed minutes before the final readout. The question was still found though, by Arthur Dent (one of the few that escaped the Earth's destruction). By taking random letters from a Scrabble set he got: "What do you get when you multiply six by nine" (which involves some artistic license, as there are insufficient letters in an English Scrabble set to make up this sentence). Since 6 × 9 = 54 this being the question would imply that the universe is bizarre and irrational; on the other hand, given the means employed in obtaining this question, it is not certain that this really was the actual question. Some have noted that 6 × 9 = 42 when expressed in Base-13. However, Douglas Adams himself claimed that this was purely coincidental, and that he was not the sort of person to make obscure jokes in Base-13.
Or maybe there is no meaning to life, that is, What you see is what you get, as portrayed in the comedic movie The Meaning of Life mentioned above: you are born, you eat, you go to school, you have sex, you have children, you grow old (if someone doesn't kill you first), and you die, and in Heaven every day is Christmas! According to The Very Big Corporation of America: "One: People aren't wearing enough hats. Two: Matter is energy. In the universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person's soul. However, this 'soul' does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man's unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia ... has anyone noticed that building there before?" At the very end of the movie, Michael Palin, in drag, is handed an envelope, opens it, and says nonchalantly: "Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try to be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."
Rufus, the naked mole rat from the TV series Kim Possible, insists that the meaning of life is cheese.
Jane Roberts in the Seth books gives Seth's distinctive views on the meaning or purpose of life and Seth's view can be paraphrased as "the purpose of life is achieved by being not by doing". More specifically in the books that Seth once described as his masterwork (see references below) Seth introduced the concept of value fulfilment. He said that the concept was difficult to verbalise but meant something like achievement of self-expression. In his works Seth argued that all things are conscious (trees, animals, the environment) and that each conscious entity seeks to more fully realise its potential i.e. it seeks value fulfilment...the exploration and growth of its own way of being.
Mitch Albom wrote about his dying professor Morrie and their last lessons together in the bestseller Tuesdays with Morrie in which some interesting questions were raised. His life as a writer was until then in vain because Albom was chasing the wrong things in life, bigger houses, bigger SUVs, bigger paychecks could not fill the emptiness still. The true meanings in the professor's life was in the giving, the loving and the sharing of what he had, which would in turn live on and get passed down. An observation that all of us might eventually have to confront was similar to the day Morrie learnt he had the Lou Gehrig's disease- the world was as green, as alive as before he contracted the illness. The world did not stand still nor come to an end. This would be a haunting experience to all of us with an ego-centric view about oneself.
Paul Gauguin's interpretation can be seen in the painting, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?
A supercomputer that had a small appearance in the TV series "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" was asked, "What is the meaning of life?" He replied, "Life has no meaning. Only intelligent machinery has any importance on a cosmic scale!"
In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Bill and Ted, accompanied by the Grim Reaper, are asked, "What is the meaning of life?" They respond "Every rose has its thorn, just like every dusk has its dawn, just like every cowboy sings a sad, sad song." ("Every rose has its thorn..." is the chorus to Every Rose Has Its Thorn by the band Poison.) The answer is apparently correct, since it grants them an audience with God.