Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. ~ Viktor Frankl
I maintain that what most people seek as 'the meaning of life' is found in the maxim that life is gift or an honor, for which we owe something. You say I must be able to prove this so? That I need evidence or irrefutable proof? These requests confound me. This kind of insight is just the kind that cannot be proven without destroying it. For proof removes the need to make a decision. I do not need to decide whether I see a computer right now or not. The fact that I see one imposes itself upon me. I do not have to 'take responsibility' for this belief. But if the quest for meaning in life ends in accepting responsibility, then the act of believing or not believing must also involve taking some responsibility. Some beliefs are imposed, some are chosen.
Dostoevsky said that life in it's essence is about each man realizing that they are responsible for the sins of all men, and all men taking responsibility for the life of each man. Maybe that is foolishness, but it isn't obviously so. What is obvious is that coming to such a realization could never happen by evidence of philosophical argument. It is about insight, and intuition. One has to choose to live this way if one is to know whether the proposition itself is true or not. Faith and action must precede experiencing and perceiving. The religious life is an invitation: "come try things this way", not a coerced obedience. And an invitation of such a kind could never accompany the kind of evidence one gets in science. For by definition evidence like this, when properly understood by a properly working mind, coerces assent.
Atheists and hard agnostics stand around and ask for proof of the existence of God. They demand of the believer that he make some account, give some piece of sense data that will imply or prove that the theoretical posit of God is something that as some predictive efficacy, that helps us make sense of the world as we experience it in our senses. The theist may enter into this kind of practice, and the results of this kind of project can be impressive. They aren't just BS. But as my apologetics project on this blog shows, my approach is vastly different.
For the real question at issue, the belief that needs 'justification' is not whether there is a God per se, but the attitudes, experiences and beliefs that underly this belief. What could it possibly mean that we have to 'respond' to 'life' by being 'responsible'? Life is inert isn't it? It is just a fact that is out there, that has no personality. Unless Frankl is right, and this is truly what the meaning of life IS. In that case life is more than just some inert fact. It is personal, and living, and something to which we can be responsible. What would it mean to be thankful or to feel like one owes a debt for one's life, unless LIFE is itself alive, and very much like a person, and sacrifices and gives to us. A fundamental attitude of thankfulness implies that we are thankful TO someONE, as Bill Vallicella has argued extensively.
So the real issues at hand are whether one must live as one who is responsible to 'live truly', and whether life is a gift for which one owes a debt, whether humor and play can be trusted and lived into fully, and so on. These beliefs and attitudes are foundational to belief in God; belief in God 'supervenes' upon them. But surely all of these propositions are the kind that stand beyond the kind of proof that atheists demand of theists. If an atheist demanded proof of these kinds of beliefs in some kind of debate, wouldn't this seem strange to you? It would to me. Certainly asking for belief in something like GOD in and of itself, as if it were a metaphysical posit removed from some form of life, would not seem so, but when put into a particular form of life, that kind of request for evidence no longer makes sense.
In the end I believe in Jesus Christ because of the way He makes sense of my deepest and most amazing experiences and insights. Most of those experiences and insights were gained through years and years of struggle, self-doubt and examination, meditation, and living and working and dying to myself every day. I could no longer hand you 'proof' of them than I could force you to live the life I've lived. But spiritual experience is strange in that way: until you walk a mile in my shoes, you cannot see what I have seen.
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