The meaning of life

'Dad, what do you think the meaning to life is?' Jake and I are talking in the car on the way home from Tae-Kwon-Do. I tell him that is a multi-layered question, so he asks me what the layers are, and I list them, starting with 'there is no meaning to life' and working my way through 'forming deep relationships with friends' and 'being close to your family', and 'actually there is really no meaning'. He keeps probing, and I am about to get on to layer 5, to do with reaching self-enlightenment through deep introspection, when he interrupts, so we never get to layer 6, and tells me 4 things he thinks in his case define the meaning of life.

1) Happiness and enjoyment, living life to the fullest,
2) Cure aging - 100 years is nowhere near enough,
3) Remove all traces of religion from the world, as so many wars are caused by it, and society as a whole would be 2000 years further advanced if it had not slowed us down,
4) Find out once and for all what really happened at the beginning of the universe, how something came from nothing.

I certainly can't say he's not ambitious, even more so than other 14 year olds. Number 1 is probably common to many people, but I don't think you will find many others sharing his goals for the last three, at any age.

'How are you going to do number 3?' I ask. 'Easy' he says, 'I'll use number 2 - anyone who wants extended life will have to swear on a bible that he doesn't believe in god. All the atheists will live pretty much forever, and all the religious people will die off.' (Of course I think he may have overlooked the tiny issue of reproduction, although if you are fertile for a few thousand years I guess you could have more children.)

'How are you going to do number 2?'

'I'm going to have a team of people working on it, and I'm going to be the head scientist.'

'Well, you better get started on those right away then.'

'I've started already, but I figure I have till age 30 to finish them - they can wait that long.'