Is nihilism possible?  A book by theologian Hans Kung, Does God Exist?, which I read many years ago but had occasion to reread recently, suggests that it is.  Life's ennui and uncertainty, he suggests, make nihilism possible.  It is possible, he goes on to say, that this life is meaningless, a chance and random occurrence without any point.
     Though in theory Kung is right, in practice, he is not.  To assert that there is no meaning is to insist, ironically enough, that some level of meaning exists.  We can't have our cake and eat it, too.  Meaning or no meaning, either way, how do we really know?  We can't see outside ourselves.
     Many years ago, the British band Traffic wrote a song that began with a question:  "On the one door is truth, on the one door is lie; which one will you answer to, you really must decide?"  It's a paradox:  how can we decide between truth or lie if we do not know what they are before we open the door?  So it is with nihilism and meaning.  Absent outside input, we do not know which one is true and which one is lie.  So how do we decide?
     On the other hand, if meaning does not exist, why do we still think about it?  Though we may try to live atop the skein of existence, blithely denying that it is anything other than a twist of quantum fluctuation, its deeper truths eventually surface.  If we are to make the material world mean anything, we must embrace more than its randomness.
     Cosmic accidents don't need a reason to happen, but meaning and purpose do.  And we would not know this unless we, quite apart from ourselves, are meaningful beings.