McGowan & Pinn/Everyday Humanism, 1. On the Meaning of Life

"We live in a meaning-rupture," says humanist poet and author Jennifer Michael Hecht, "because we are human and the universe is not." This compelling sentence captures the essential problem of being human. We are born conscious and mortal into a universe that is both dangerously chaotic and utterly indifferent to our existence. Religious thought solves this essential problem by declaring the universe "human" after all. This chapter examines ways in which individual humanists can find satisfying answers to this most basic human challenge within a fully naturalistic worldview.