So there’s this philosophy professor out there named Peter Boghossian, who recently published a book called called A Manual for Creating Atheists in which he advances all sorts of techniques of gentle Socratic persuasion aimed at getting people out of religion. Let’s all be sensitive to reason and evidence, etc. etc. Fine.

In the very same book, he advances some interesting views on the subject of the meaning of life, conveyed in this charming passage:

If life has no meaning for someone unless they know something they don’t know, then I would strongly urge extensive therapy and counseling. This is particularly true if feelings of meaninglessness and lack of purpose lead to depression, which is a serious illness. Absent a mental disorder or head trauma, there is no reason an adult should find life meaningless without maintaining some form of delusion. (p. 161)

I see. You’d better own up to the fact that life has meaning, and if you won’t, off to the padded room with you!

Whether life has meaning or not would seem to be a rather serious and challenging question, precisely the sort of thing that your intellectually-engaged professional philosopher would want to weigh arguments for and against. And indeed, certain professional philosophers rather higher up on the academic ladder than Boghossian himself has managed to reach do in fact reject the notion that life has meaning.

Not that this matters to him, apparently. If you’re not persuaded that life has meaning, then there will be no arguments and no Socratic persuasion for you. You’re just dismissed as insane, full stop.

There’s a dictionary in the Boghossian household from which the word “irony” has been excised, I’ll bet.