Meaning and purpose are the same thing:
rational attraction to being.
IMO this is the
eidos of the "meaning of life".
... in
phenomenology, a method by which the philosopher moves from the consciousness of individual and concrete objects to the transempirical realm of pure essences and thus achieves an intuition of the
eidos (Greek: “shape”) of a thing—
i.e., of what it is in its invariable and essential structure, apart from all that is contingent or accidental to it. The eidos is thus the principle or necessary structure of the thing. Being a science of essences, phenomenology finds this
reduction important for its methodology.
http://www.britannica.com/topic/eidetic-reduction
So what about Christianity
For a Christian this actually means means a Christian lifestyle. Rationality is pursuit of interests
according to the available information - so if thats your world concept than act on it. Whether its objectively efficient, or ultimately clouded by superstition, we may never know with total certainty inany case.
So Christianity is the only way then?
For an artist, life-meaning may be in part through artistic expression. For a tired person, in having a sleep. We all have to breathe and eat, even yogis, that's part of the equation too.
So is this an a priori truth about human beings?
Yes.
So we
all have rationality, in some way, and are also attracted to being in some way - either as living things sustaining their life biologically, or as spiritual beings engaged in metaphysics etc and are at work on of existence and its causes -
simply because we are alive and because we survive.
After all, if theres a meaning to life, it would be odd to say "youre alive, but you dont really embody life meaning in any particular way".
We all live, were not dead, so we ALL have life meaning either consciously (philosophically aware in a direct sense) or in a non conscious fashion... just because we live and
are (i.e. posess being).
