Against Hill's Meaning of Life

In this essay, I will attempt to disprove Daniel Hill's argument that life can not be meaningful unless god exists. First, I will describe Hill's argument. Next, I will provide my rationale for why Hill's Glorification Thesis does not work. Then, I will attempt to disprove Hill's 4 main premises. Ultimately, I will reject Hill's final conclusion that if life has meaning, God exists.
Daniel Hill devised a rather solid argument for his notion that life can not be meaningful unless God exists, however his argument has failed to fully convince me. His argument as a whole is valid, but I do not believe some premises and theories he uses to back up his premises are adequately justified or without counter-arguments. Hill's core argument is as follows;( Premise 1) if something has meaning, its meaning is the purpose it was created for. ( Premise 2) So if life has a meaning, its meaning is the purpose for which it was created. Hill then goes on to explain how (Premise 3)if life has meaning there must be a creator to life and (Premise 4) that if there is a creator that creator must be God. (Conclusion)Hill concludes that if life has meaning then God must exist. To justify his premises and conclusions, Hill utilizes two main theories/ arguments. The Endowment Thesis, and what I will be calling the Glorification Thesis, for simplicity. One of the most integral pieces of Hill's paper is Thomas Morris' Endowment Thesis. The Endowment Thesis is the idea that something can only ever have meaning if it is endowed with meaning by a purposeful agent or group of agents (Hill 2002). Hill uses what I called the Glorification Thesis in an attempt to prove his final conclusion. This thesis is effectively describing how glorifying God is of the highest moral importance and that every action an individual takes, good or bad is still in effect glorifying God, therefore fulfilling God's prescribed meaning of life.
To begin to dismantle Hill's arguments we have to first find a way around his seemingly impregnable Glorification Thesis. If someone gave themselves the purpose of stopping as many people as possible from glorifying god or to kill as many innocent children as possible, Hill might suggest that in doing so this individual is exercising their freedom to do what they want/ choose good or evil, which was given to them by God, and is therefore glorifying God. However, this claim proposes that every action whether good or evil is actually glorifying god which cannot be the case. Suppose you are hired for the purpose of selling computers to customers. Your boss would have hired you with the notion that you would accomplish your purpose using good customer service, making the product seem better than it is and even possibly telling little lies about the product, but instead, you threaten customers at gunpoint to purchase computers. While you still are accomplishing the main purpose you were hired for, the way you are accomplishing this purpose would not be acceptable to the one who hired you for that purpose, not to mention the sales would not be legally binding.
Hill also states that glorifying God is morally more valuable than anything else ( implying that murder, rape, etc.. is less morally significant than the glorification of God). However, this is paradoxical on two accounts. Hill states that God gave everybody free will, and in exercising that free will we are glorifying god even if that action is evil. If somebody were to purely desire to dishonour God but every action that he/she takes glorifies God through the usage of free will. Then the individual would be unable to truly pursue his or her goal/will then we all do not truly have free will. Secondly, If God created humans with the sole purpose of glorifying Him, then one person who ends the lives of multiple people would be creating a net loss of possible and actual glorification, which should be regarded as not to be glorifying God. Hill also states that God has a claim and right to our lives, so by murdering somebody you are eliminating God's claim of that person's life, in effect not glorifying Him. One last counterexample to this thesis is the issue of unborn/ stillborn children and children with terminal illnesses. Hill claimed that God created humans with the sole purpose of glorifying him and not to benefit or harm us. If all God wants is glorification, then he would not allow his creations to die before even being able to begin glorifying him.
Hills' first two premises are very heavily influenced by the Endowment thesis previously mentioned to help prove his first and second premise. Although there are many examples that can support this Endowment thesis and therefore Hills premises. Things can be created for one purpose yet they end up serving another, or accidentally created with no meaning and yet it serves one. For example, Coke-a-Cola, one of the most popular sodas in the world was initially created with the purpose of soothing headaches and nervous disorders. As time passed, the product was altered to fit with the laws at the time and the syrup was accidentally turned into the sweet soda we know today. It was originally endowed with one purpose, medicine, but eventually, it was given a new purpose, quenching thirst and tasting good. Things can also be created with no purpose in mind yet end up serving one, and a great example of this happening is the creation of popsicles. An 11-year-old accidentally left a stick in his cup of powdered soda and water overnight and it ended up freezing and turning into the first popsicle ( Weller 2016). The liquid went from neglected trash with no purpose to become the catalyst for one of the most iconic summer treats in existence. These two counterexamples prove that not every situation can fit into the definition of the Endowment Thesis. If that Thesis is no longer all-encompassing, then Hill's second Premise is also flawed. Because it is designed around the idea that the Endowment Thesis applies to everything, it loses some credibility when counterexamples are applied to the Thesis proving that is not the case. Since we know things can develop new meanings and purposes for their existence aside from what was given to them, nothing is to say that Humanity or individual humans cannot be the same.
Hills' third premise that there has to be a creator of life for life to have meaning is the premise that I disagree with most. Life does not have to be created to have meaning. As discussed in previous paragraphs, anything can develop meaning from nothing or drastically change purposes proving that just because something is endowed with meaning or endowed with no meaning, that does not mean that is its meaning for the rest of time. If the science of evolution is correct, humanity, as it is today, is basically one big accident. The lack of a purposeful creator would not have taken away from the purpose humanity had given itself to reproduce, survive and improve their livelihoods. Just like how the lack of a purposeful creator of the popsicle did not stop the soda from freezing into the first recorded popsicle. A sudden revelation of the true creator did not change the innate purpose or meaning that the popsicle had. Just like the popsicle, a discovery that God exists and created us or the opposite would not and should not change the purpose that humanity and individual humans have.
Hill's fourth premise is making a self-identified, baseless claim. He knows he is unable to prove that God would be the creator of life if there even was one, but yet this premise is a large part of his argument. Humanity has existed for a relatively infinitesimal amount of time in comparison to the scale of the universe. In this short amount of time, we have been able to create artificial intelligence that is on the path to rival that of human intelligence, have been able to clone multiple animals etc… If we are able to accomplish this, then it is not impossible that an older, more advanced civilization were our creators instead of a God. Another possibility would be that there is no creator of life and time is just an infinite wheel constantly in motion with no beginning or end. That the big bang that starts the universe is really the big crunch that ends the universe. These claims may seem outlandish but they are no more improbable than a perfect all-powerful being that has always existed and has the power to create worlds and consciousness, and that is without bringing up the question of who or what created God and what created Gods creator etc…
I believe that the existence of a God that Hill has depicted in his paper could be sufficient to give life meaning. However, the existence of God is not necessary for life to have meaning. We could have been given a purpose by a different kind of creators, a more advanced alien species or even by ourselves. We don't need an incredibly important lifelong purpose to make our life worth living. Changing one person's life, creating new life, helping others and even just plain survival are all equally valid purposes for life. Humanity as a whole can also have their own purpose when not under the heavy wing of a God, that purpose can be as simple as keeping the race surviving or improving the world we live in for our children. These purposes do not elicit the same ethereal sensation that the glorification of God does, but they are equally as legitimate and important.