1.1. Preface:
There are many different ways to interpret and to answer or not to answer these questions.
Why are we here? . . . We are here because our parents had sex.
But I guess you want a greater or “ultimate” reason, and that is why you asked, right?
Concerning what answers there may be, I am going to start with the big picture, and I am going to start from a contemplative Christian’s perspective first, even though I consider Christianity false except for some of its symbolism. I will attempt to show that the ultimate answer or lack of an answer is pretty much the same with or without the God concept – that there may be no ultimate answer to an ultimate why question.
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1.1. Language: I will preface my comments by saying that sometimes language seems to break down at the “ultimate” level. After all, words are not themselves the things to which the words refer. Words are but signs, tokens, memes, stimuli, pointers, patterns connected to other patterns. Words are but parts of a whole, and the juggling of a few parts cannot “fully” or “ultimately” or “exactly” describe the whole. In a sense, all words are metaphors. This too is metaphorical.
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1.2. “Why is God here? Does God have a purpose?”
Have you ever asked this?
What was your answer?
Even in Christianity, IF one were to ask enough questions, the existential dilemma would boil down to this, since everything comes from God and depends on God: “Why is God here? Does God have a purpose?”
So, temporarily assuming there is a personal Christian God, . . .
The answer is this: There is and can be NO REASON whatsoever for God’s existence. God simply IS.
That is it. There is no answer to “Why is God?”
A person may consider the whole question “Why?” to be pointless or meaningless when used at the ultimate level. “Why?” asks for reasons; reasons involve causes; . . . but causes are senseless at the ultimate level, because for any cause, one can ask for the cause of that cause. IF one wants to avoid an infinite and arguably meaningless regression, one may say that the ultimate cause is un-caused, which is like saying there is no reason and there is no answer to any ultimate “Why?” And one can say, “The universe simply IS without cause and is the ultimate source and being and all,” just as easily as one can say, “God simply IS without cause.” The advantage to using the non-theistic language is that nobody really doubts the universe exists, except a person who doubts anything exists. So the “God” language may be an improper, meaningless, and unnecessary addition, used because so many people feel better when they vaguely imagine a personality, like themselves but better, to be in charge.
Again, assuming there were a personal God . . .
Does God have a Purpose?
Here are two answers.
1. No, there is no purpose for God’s existence. ‘He’ simply is what ‘he’ is. “I am that I am.” ‘He’ does nothing but express ‘his’ nature.’ He IS for no reason and his existence is pointless. There can be no purpose for something un-caused, and one should not say, “His purpose is to be,” because being is not itself a purpose.
2. Yes, there is a purpose for God’s existence. God’s purpose is to BE what God IS. . . .
But note that this same purpose can at any time be attributed to anything, regardless of whether or not one even imagines that God exists. If the statement, “His purpose is to BE what he IS,” is valid, then it is just as valid or even more valid to speak only of things we know exist and say their purpose is to BE what they are. Again, the theistic language adds no ultimate meaning or purpose.
Even within theism, God had no choice as to ‘his’ existence. Nobody said, “God, do you want to come into existence?” ‘He’ couldn’t help it.
God had no choice regarding ‘his’ character or development or anything. Nobody said, “God, what kind of character/nature do you want?” He simply IS.
In a sense, existence is ultimately pointless for God. He can only be what he is. He does not really have any choice but to be what he is.
In other words, the existential dilemma of a life with no “creator,” which some average Christians think only atheists have to face, would have to be faced by the very God of those who imagine there is a personal God. IF life without a creator is pointless, then God’s life would be pointless.
Everything else that exists is an outgrowth of God, a part of a ‘plan’ which is merely an expression of his nature. All concepts must ultimately derive from him, i.e. from his nature. All features and possibilities of life stem ultimately from ‘him’ and are simply aspects of the nature of God, or the nature of existence. Even ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are ultimately but aspects or perspectives within a system ‘he’ created or manifested; they are but manifestations of his un-chosen nature.
If God created a ‘world’ or many ‘worlds,’ then created individuals might have relative temporary roles, missions, purposes, but there is no ultimate point for the entirety except for all to be what it is. We could say, “Our purpose is to serve God,” but we would be serving something that is itself pointless, un-created, un-caused, having no ultimate purpose or meaning. We could say, “Our purpose is to glorify God,” but we would be glorifying what is itself pointless, purposeless.
If such a God creates, there is no reason for it or point to it; it would merely be part of God being what he is.
Also,
Before "creation," would God really think, see, hear, have eyes, have a mind?
Why would God have eyes but nothing to see?
When would he develop eyes?
Will one admit that things must evolve even in a theistic universe?
Why would God create?
Where would his ideas or inspiration come from?
Does he have needs?
Where would he create? There would be no place except within himself. Does this not lead to pantheism – everything existing within God and being a manifestation of him, of his thought?
* In summary of this section, whether or not one posits a “God,” we all ultimately exist for no reason whatsoever. We simply are, as an expression of the nature of reality. We may serve relative goals, aims, powers, purposes, but there is no ultimate purpose.
1.3. “Why is the universe here? Does the universe have a purpose?”
These are the same questions as before, only without ‘god’ language. And the answers, too, are basically the same.
Definition: For clarity’s sake, let me state that I am defining the “universe” as . . .
“what is and/or becomes, what exists, all, reality, everything, all that is/exists/becomes, the all-encompassing, the entirety (including what-is-not, for those who believe that to some extent what-is-not can actually have bearing on reasonable discussion).”
For those physicists, like David Deutsch, who posit a “multiverse,” I would make no change to the theory, but would only suggest a change in terminology for the sake of simplicity and clarity – that your word “multiverse” (the all-encompassing) be replaced with “universe” and your word “universe” be replaced with “cosmos” or “sub-universe” or some other term to denote the status of a subset not equal to the entirety. Otherwise, for those who prefer to keep the word “multiverse,” please understand that when I use them term “universe,” I intend to refer to your term “multiverse.”
This is the least problematic and most helpful language to use, since practically no one concerned will deny that what-is IS, and we can start with something the existence of which is acknowledged – the universe, what IS – rather than a debated hold-over from ancient religions, the concept of a personal god. Also, if there were a personal god, then it/she/he would necessarily be included in the definition of “what IS,” and would, thus, be included in the definition of the universe. Again, “universe” is a better term than “god” for this reason.
The universe simply IS.
There is and can be NO REASON whatsoever for the existence of the entirety. This simply IS. It is, was, will be – to whatever extent anything ever is, was, will be. That is it. This is it. The universe is uncaused.
Does the universe have purpose?
Here are two answers.
1. No, there is no purpose for the universe’s existence. It simply is what it is. “I am that I am.” There can be no such thing as purpose in absolute terms, only relative purpose within a larger purposeless system.
2. Yes, the purpose of the universe is to BE.
The universe/entirety had no choice as to its existence. Nobody said, “Universe, do you want to exist?” It could not help but exist.
The entirety had no choice regarding its character or development or anything. Nobody said, “Universe, what kind of character/nature do you want?” It simply IS.
Since the universe, by definition, means everything, in some sense it matters not whether we call it “eternal” or withhold that adjective. The universe may be said to have a “beginning,” as in common interpretations of big bang theory, but even if this is so, It is as eternal as anything is or can be, and nothing could be greater. This is a semantic matter. It is still uncaused and the only ultimate reality. Even if “eternal” were withheld in one sense for semantic reasons under the suggestion that there is no such thing as “eternity” in the infinite sense, it would still be eternal in the sense of “encompassing all time.” One might also state, “The universe is always infinite in as many ways as it is possible to be infinite.”
Big Bang and Other Theories:
According to typical big bang language, the universe had a definite “beginning,” but such a “beginning” does not preclude a carefully-considered use of the term “eternal,” as I just explained it.
Other potential semantic misunderstandings seem noteworthy, too.
Allow, for example, that there was a big bang. Such may not necessarily be ‘the’ start of ‘the’ all-inclusive universe, but could just as well be described as an event within the life of the larger Universe, or “the most recent measurable ‘start’ of what is currently measurable in this system within which we operate, which is itself within larger parameters of the All-encompassing.” This is to say that some physicists propose that the big bang for this particular universe or cosmos was still an event within a larger all-encompassing universe. Some would say it is a “beginning” for this particular cosmos/system, but not for the universe that contains everything.
Also, since Einstein included space and time within the universe, it is still not possible to speak of any TIME when the universe did not exist. Thus, even within the big bang theory, the universe is “eternal” in the sense that It exists “for all time” and in the sense that time is but an aspect of It. How meaningful is it to say time had a beginning when it is impossible to speak of a time before the beginning of time? Let each decide. The kind of “beginning” a physicist may refer to in positing a big bang is not really the same kind of beginning as we typically think of beginnings, which are usually on a continuous line.
Also, a scientist who says, “In the big bang, the universe came from nothing,” may be using accurate data but poor word choice in describing the big bang. For example, there was no “nothing.” One should not say that a “nothing” existed and then the universe came from that. If “nothing” existed before the universe, then the universe would include “nothing,” since the universe includes all that “exists.” In other words to say that something came from “nothing” implies that nothing is a thing from which something can come, which is a linguistic contradiction. Note also that the word “came” implies some kind of directionality, which is misleading, since there was no directionality except within the universe itself.
(* See for example this great 2009 lecture by Lawrence Krauss, "'A Universe From Nothing," where Dr. Krauss uses the word "nothing" in a relative sense and somewhat facetiously [I think] -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo . The "nothing" to which Krauss refers is not really nothing or empty. "Empty space" still has existence. There seems always to be a "that-from-which" or "that-in-which")
Re: “nothing” – The same points hold true when someone suggests that in quantum theory, matter and antimatter particles are “created in pairs all the time out of nothing (i.e. vacuum) and cancel each other out with no effect on the universe.” “Created” is simply metaphorical language and is misleading, because it causes some people to imagine that a personality must have created them, which is not what quantum theory posits. It is poor word choice. So is the word “nothing.” There has been an old and lengthy debate in science on whether the vacuum is empty or full (a plenum). Any vacuum that exists is, by the fact of its existence, part of the universe and cannot be called “nothing” in any ultimate sense, but only in a misleading and relative sense. A vacuum is theoretically “empty” of certain detectable particles or is a lowest possible energy state, but no “vacuum” is ever truly, completely empty, and vacuum itself, as used in physics is actually still a “thing,” in the sense that it has existence, it is within space-time. So anyone who calls a vacuum “nothing” is dangerously playing with words.
Other than as a metaphor, a scientist also cannot logically say the universe "appeared," as if it were an event in time, for appearance implies an observer, and there was no observer; otherwise the observer would be part of the universe, which is all that is, and then the universe could not be said to have “begun” at the big bang. Also, it could not have been an event in time, since time was defined as part of the universe, something within the universe, in both the big bang theory and in my definition.
A scientist cannot logically say that it was "made," for that implies (to anyone not recognizing the metaphorical speech) that something existed before it, and both by definition and by the theory, there was no “before.” “Made” is a poor word choice.
Additionally, I should state that the big bang theory is but one of several current theories held by professional, respected physicists.
Examples:
a. Cambridge University mathematical physicist Neil Turok thinks that “the Big Bang was big, but it wasn't the beginning . . . . He theorizes that the universe is engaged in an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction: There have been many Big Bangs, and there will be many more” (“Physicist Neil Turok: Big Bang Wasn't the Beginning,” by Brandon Keim, Wired News, 2008-02-19. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/qa_turok?currentPage=all).
b. “The big bang could be a normal event in the natural evolution of the universe that will happen repeatedly over incredibly vast time scales as the universe expands, empties out and cools off.” (Sean Carroll, Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Chicago, and Jennifer Chen, graduate student, cited here: “Physicists Say Big Bang was 'Nothing Special',” by SPACE.com, 27 October 2004, 1:59 am ET. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/big_bang_041027.html .)
c. Multiverse Theory. e.g. One proponent is Oxford physicist David Deutsch. “A growing number of physicists, myself included, are convinced that the thing we call ‘the universe’ — namely space, with all the matter and energy it contains — is not the whole of reality. According to quantum theory — the deepest theory known to physics — our universe is only a tiny facet of a larger multiverse, a highly structured continuum containing many universes.” (Frontiers magazine, December 1998. Reposted on his personal web site - http://www.qubit.org/people/david/Articles/Frontiers.html.). Again I note that the terminology is but a matter of semantics and the term “universe” or “multi-cosmic universe” is just as good a term as “multiverse” for describing the reality within this system.
d. String Theory. Here is an entertaining 20-minute TED talk by Brian Green, “Brian Greene: The universe on a string,” filmed 2005 and posted 2008. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html.
Other related posts/articles:
"No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning," posted at Phys.org on Feb 09, 2015, by Lisa Zyga: http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html.
"A Universe From Nothing" -- a 2009 lecture by Dr. Lawrence Krauss, -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo.
“Big Bang Cosmology and Atheism: Why the Big Bang is No Help to Theists,” by Quentin Smith. (Professor of Philosophy at Western Michigan University.) Free Inquiry magazine, v18, n2. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/smith_18_2.html.
"David Christian: Big History," an 18-minute TED lecture exploring the history of the universe, http://www.ted.com/talks/david_christian_big_history.html.
"Backed by stunning illustrations, David Christian narrates a complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in a riveting 18 minutes. This is "Big History": an enlightening, wide-angle look at complexity, life and humanity, set against our slim share of the cosmic timeline."
One problem with the lecture is that he takes an imaginary start "before" the big bang and has the audience imagine themselves in a time when there was no time. While he is trying to help them imagine things, that part of the exercise was actually misleading, since there was no time before time. He should simply have started with the big bang or made more careful statements about it.
An old Christian friend posed to me the question, "What Caused the Big Bang?" He imagined a divine being must have done so. I explained why that was both unnecessary and not a good idea.
In a sense, existence is ultimately pointless for the universe. It can only be what it is. It does not really have any choice but to be what it is.
In another sense, the universe is awesome, and “being itself” is the point, the greatest point imaginable.
Everything else that exists is an aspect or manifestation of the universe, a part of the entirety, an expression of the nature of the All.
Individuals have relative temporary roles, missions, purposes, but there is no ultimate point for the entirety except for all to be what it is.
If there were a personal “God,” such would add no value whatsoever to the whole and would only create silly problems which I will discuss below under Question 3. And even if it were theoretically true, it would still be the case that the entirety ultimately exists for no reason whatsoever, from no cause whatsoever. We ultimately simply are.
1.4. Now, within the universe is there meaning/purpose?
Yes and no. The answer is different for different individuals.
Do I have a purpose? . . .
1.4.2. Does a flower have purpose?
Yes and No. Depends upon perspective.
No. The flower simply is/becomes what it is/becomes. It is an aspect of an uncaused universe; as an uncaused phenomenon, the universe as a whole is meaningless.
Yes. The purpose of a flower is to bloom, to blossom. .. to serve in the reproductive process of the plant, etc.. (or imagine it from a bee’s perspective.) Although the entirety is uncaused, within the entirety operates the law of cause and effect. One thing leads to another. Everything is interrelated. All parts/aspects/components of the universe have meaning in relation to one another.
1.4.3. Do I have a purpose?
Yes. My purposes include, but are not limited to, these: to ‘blossom,’ to live, be the best I can be, to contribute to society, to have children, to serve worthy goals, to reflect other aspects of the whole, to perform personal functions within larger systems, etc..
Is my life meaningful to me? Yes. Very much so.
Do I have values? Yes. Strong ones. Life, love, knowledge/ understanding/ learning/ teaching, honesty, joy, sharing, etc.
Do I have goals? Yes. One conscious aim is to understand what I am, what we are, what This is. One aim is to love, for love helps create beauty, harmony, and joy. One aim is to work for the well-being of myself and all around me. All these aims appear good for myself and for those around me. My smaller aims include finishing my college degree, maintaining good relationships with my closest friends, maintaining food, clothing, shelter, having joyful experiences, spreading knowledge/education, etc.
1.4.4. Meaning?
Here is something I have already written on the topic:
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Meaning, Will, Life
It seems that whether something is special or insignificant/meaningless depends on perspective, ... that something can actually be both. The terms seem relative to me, like most language. Meaning exists in one's mind; so if you assign meaning to something, it has it. The earth is a "pale blue dot" from one perspective; but it is larger, deeper, subtler, and more complex than most people can get their little minds around from other perspectives. Seeing things from different perspectives may give important insight. Even if it is impossible for the universe as a whole to have any meaning or purpose other than simply to be what it is, individuals within the web of existence may have relative goals, aims, purposes, or meanings within the smaller systems they live in or “games” they "play." Individuals which have an innate Will to live/participate, to whatever degree of consciousness, will continue to do so, just because that Will is there, even if that will is "merely" a natural feature of their chemical make-up.
I have such a Will. I feel it, sense it. And even if it originated as an ‘un-chosen’ aspect of myself, I embrace it. I ‘choose’ to embrace it. I relish it even. If it was ‘determined,’ then I embrace that determination, and relish it as well.
I could theoretically cease to participate [in (identification with) my present form], but the energy or atoms currently employed in this little system called “Matthew” would presumably continue to participate in the world after the Matthew system dissolves. I have a Will to continue to participate as "Matthew" while I can, and I have chosen to try to enjoy the whole thing as much as possible, to understand This/It/Myself/Us as much as I can with as much beneficent pleasure as possible. -- similarly to the old sat-chit-ananda being-knowledge-bliss trilogy/trinity of Hinduism.
1/30/2007 10:29 AM - 29 views - 7 comments (follow link to see comments)
Originally posted on a blog no longer available.
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I realize that i am part and manifestation of a Whole, the Universe, the All. What is called ‘Matthew,’ as a system, a persona, was born and changes and may well one day be dissolved, but what i am ultimately “grounded in” and am manifestation of is the eternal All. So each individual is in a sense both mortal and immortal, depending on whether “i” indicates the small ego (mortal) or the larger entirety/universe of which every ego is an inseparable part (eternal). We can view each other as individuals or as interconnected parts/aspects of the whole. As “individuals” we are not truly separate entities, but we are all interconnected and interrelated, a whole.
1.4.5. What are you? What am I?
Are you able to satisfactorily define yourself and say what it means to exist?
What were you and where were you before you were born?
You have no separate existence apart from the entirety. You are not truly separable from your environment, nor is your environment separable from you. From some perspective(s), there is no “you” or “i.” From some perspectives there is a you, from some perspectives there are many yous.
You are in some ways your body. And what is that? It is earth and sky; the plants and animals you have eaten are earth and sky too, and they have partly become you, and you in turn give back. You are wind and water and atoms and subatomic particles ever in flux, in systems comprising what is called by your name but simultaneously shared with your environment in interconnected systems, ultimately inseparable from the larger all-encompassing system, which is universe as a whole. Your individual atoms get replaced by different ones over time. You are not the same you from moment to moment. Was there ever a you that was the quintessential you? What year, what day in your life were you at your best?
“Most of the cells in your body are not your own, nor are they even human. They are bacterial. From the invisible strands of fungi waiting to sprout between our toes, to the kilogram of bacterial matter in our guts, we are best viewed as walking "superorganisms," highly complex conglomerations of human, fungal, bacterial and viral cells.”
“. . . individuals can have very different responses to drugs, depending on their microbial fauna.”
“More than 500 different species of bacteria exist in our bodies, making up more than 100 trillion cells. Because our bodies are made of only some several trillion human cells, we are somewhat outnumbered by the aliens. It follows that most of the genes in our bodies are from bacteria, too.”
(“People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid,” by Rowan Hooper, Wired News, 02:00 AM Oct. 11, 2004 PT,
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65252,00.html.)
Do we know ourselves, really? Can we even see what we are made of? How well are we acquainted with the deep workings of our brain chemistry?
You are the mind part of your body, too. What is that? More of the same. To whatever extent you are your thoughts and senses, you are a reflection of your environment. What is in your mind is, in a sense, what is outside your mind. For example, if you are reading this sentence, the same words i am speak-writing are in your head at this moment, and we are This together. You are your thoughts that clash and flow. You are one and many. You sometimes fight yourself. You are capable of holding a conversation with different aspects of your own personality. You are light, electricity, chemistry, particles and space and time, bits of shifting interconnected systems. You are your struggles and triumphs, but these are not yours alone either; others are inextricably tied up with you. You are a system of systems, and you are within systems which, in turn, are within an all-encompassing System. You have no independent existence, but are a manifestation of something much larger and as eternal as eternal gets, the universe. It can be considered richly meaningful or pointless, depending on the individual, and at the same time words are not adequate to really describe it.
1.4.5. Amid such wonders, what do we really control?
You have control over certain things, right? However, you have no control over the part of you that has the control.
Did you choose this life? ... choose to be born? ... choose to be human, to have desires? Do we choose our nature, our instincts? Why are 6-month-old babies able to swim instinctively? How do ants know where to go on missions? How do insect colonies know how to cooperate and built complex hives and such? We do not even consciously control our own heart beat or our own breath the vast majority of the time. We do not control our own subconscious minds! What desires do you have? Did you choose them? People do not choose desires; people simply experience desires. All choices are merely between competing desires, yet the desires themselves are not ultimately chosen. Did you choose to be attracted to women, or did it simply happen to you? Did you choose your parents? Did you choose what ideas you were exposed to growing up? Did you choose to like or dislike chocolate, or did it just happen? Do you choose what to dream at night? Did the human children who were born into cannibal societies choose their fates? Do Muslims and Mormons and Jews and Catholics and Protestants choose to be born into families where they will be exposed to the “true religion”?
"Before we are conscious of wanting to do anything — wave at a friend, open a book — the brain regions needed to perform the activity are already ablaze. The notion that any of us is the Decider, the proactive plotter of our most lubricious desires, scientists say, may simply be a happy and perhaps necessary illusion."
(quoted from "Birds Do It. Bees Do It. People Seek the Keys to It," by Natalie Angier, NYTimes, April 10, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/10/science/10desi.html and posted on my blog, 2007-07-15, “Choices? Determinism” – no longer available. )
Consciousness seems but a beautiful shimmer on the surface of a great and deep sea of existence.
Every individual with a good brain is capable of creating meaning and developing his or her own concept(s) of purpose. Every individual has his/her own values. Some values are very common; some are practically ubiquitous. One does well to look from many perspectives. To the extent that meaning and purpose rest upon values, and values depend on the individual, meaning and purpose can be considered largely an individual interpretation of the world.
Often, to me, every flower, every petal, every ‘atom,’ every subatomic ‘particle,’ every person, every fraction of every second is deeply RICH, pregnant, full of meaning, valuable, serving a unique role in or manifesting a unique aspect of the entirety.
At other times I would prefer to practice non-thinking.
The silence of the mind, too, is priceless.
Still ...
* We conscious beings are all aspects of the universe knowing itself.
Either ...
1. There is/are no God/Gods. = We are all aspects of the universe knowing itself.
2. There is/are God/Gods within the universe. = In this case, both we and the God(s) are aspects of the universe knowing itself.
3. God IS the Universe. “God” and “universe” are both words to describe the entirety. The Gods (plural) are forces/aspects of/within the universe, manifestations of God. = We are all aspects of the God/Universe knowing itself.
#1 and #3 are really the same thing, only semantically different. Perhaps #3 is more poetic. I do not find worthy evidence for #2. But no matter which is true, the same statement follows.
Further, as we consciously participate in our world, we are altogether creating the world every moment. What is my society like? Part of that depends on what I say and do. I, along with every other person/thing, help to make the world what it is and will be. The power to consciously participate in the creation of the future can be both exciting and meaningful, despite how much seems beyond our control from many perspectives.
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1.5. Christians frequently pose the question of purpose/meaning to atheists, but typically with misguided assumptions.
Often, not necessarily always, the assumption underlying the question is something like this:
“Because Christians believe God created the universe and every individual, this gives unique purpose, meaning, and/or value to their life. The purpose of every Christian’s life is to ‘serve God.’ Atheists’ lives must be meaningless, because without a creator there would be no meaning/purpose.”
This assumption is misguided. Those who think life is meaningless without a creator would do well to note that their God’s life would then be meaningless, since he is not said to have a creator himself.
1.6. Atheists who are excited about life.
Contrary to what plenty of average religious fundamentalists erroneously think, neither atheism nor a scientific view inevitably lead to sadness.
The following is cut and pasted from the blog of Mano Singham, January 2, 2009. He is a theoretical physicist and Director of UCITE (University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education) at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of two books, including Quest for Truth: Scientific Progress and Religious Beliefs (2000). URL – http://blog.case.edu/singham/2009/01/02/atheism_and_meaning .
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That search for meaning in the absence of god can produce wonderful results. In the British TV program The Root of All Evil, the writer Ian McEwan says:
We are the very privileged owners of a brief spark of consciousness and we therefore have to take responsibility for it. We cannot rely, as Christians or Muslims do, on a world elsewhere, a paradise to which one can work towards and maybe make sacrifices, or crucially make sacrifices of other people. We have a marvelous gift, and you see it develop in children, this ability to become aware that other people have minds just like your own and feelings that are just as important as your own. And this gift of empathy seems to me to be the building block of our moral system.
If you have a sacred text that tells you how the world began or what the relationship is between this sky god and you, it [often] does curtail your curiosity. It cuts off a source of wonder. The loveliness of the world in its wondrousness is not apparent to me in Islam or Christianity or the other major religions.
Richard Dawkins adds:
By disclaiming the idea of a next life we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life affirming in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life." But how much more do you want?
Atheists have one huge advantage over religious people that more than compensates for the fact that they are not handed a philosophy of life by religion. Because they do not have to deal with all the intractable logical problems that belief in god entails and for which religious believers have to repeatedly invoke the 'mysterious ways clause' and shut down further investigations, they are free to pursue intellectual inquiry with no restrictions. Unlike religious believers, on the road to increased knowledge they do not have to obey signs that cordon off some areas saying "No admittance by order of religion." They are free to go anywhere and explore and investigate anything. The world is wide open for them.
And that is a wonderfully liberating feeling.
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Here are some other good examples of positive atheist scientists and their sense of awe and/or even reverence in view of the amazing nature of the universe:
“Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival,” a science conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, November 5 - 7, 2006. I was often inspired by the lectures given by various famous scientists and their frequent sense of awe at the nature of the universe and life. - http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival .
Richard Dawkins. “The universe is queerer than we can suppose.” Video. Lecture. 22 minutes. July 2005. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6308228560462155344#. This is probably a distillation of a previous lecture, "Queerer than We Can Suppose: The Strangeness of Science," the First Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, March 11, 2003.
www.ted.com posts 20 minute lectures by famous people. Many of the lectures on biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, psychology, etc. are fascinating and inspiring.
1.7 Negative Aspects of Life, or Things Which Render Life Meaningless for Some:
Of course, there are also plenty of negative aspects of life in this world that a person could dwell on, whether Christian or atheist or other, and there are plenty of things or aspects of life that anyone could call “meaningless,” depending on one’s perspective. I will explore some ideas that depress people, and then I will suggest that one is certainly able to find meaning, love, joy, and purpose despite all these things, even embracing the knowledge of them with streams of tears or times of deep sadness, but it is an individual matter within each psyche.
I will ask LOTS of questions. They may seem rhetorical, and most readers would skim and skip, and that is fine, but each question may really be worth something if pondered on its own, genuinely, if or when there is “time.”
Looking at the future of the universe and the fate of the human species scientifically, here is an interesting little excerpt from the current (January 13, 2009) wikipedia.com article, “Meaning of Life,” the section on “The Big Bang and humanity's fate in this universe:”
“However, no matter how the universe came into existence, humanity's fate in this universe appears to be doomed as —even if humanity would survive that long— biological life will eventually become unsustainable, be it through a Big Freeze, Big Rip or Big Crunch. It would seem that the only way to survive indefinitely, would be by directing the flow of energy on a cosmic scale and altering the fate of the universe.” (from Nikos Prantzos; Stephen Lyle (2000). Our Cosmic Future: Humanity's Fate in the Universe. Cambridge University Press. )
If all recognizable life forms in the universe will eventually die, does that render life meaningless?
Also, the world is full of tragedy, heartache, sickness, death, suffering. A huge amount of apparently senseless pain marks life on earth. Children are born maimed or mentally handicapped or disfigured, and through no possible moral fault of their own. Some of the most beloved people in history were murdered before their time. Natural disasters alone have killed who knows how many people in history. Babies are born dead. Babies are born with two heads, babies with eight appendages, babies as Siamese twins, babies with hair all over their bodies and faces – innocent babies. Parents accidentally run over their children. Soldiers may kill or rape innocent people. How many women in history endured unwanted marriages or loveless marriages? Psychopaths may torture people for fun. How many humans, whether kind people or cruel, have died slowly of starvation? Any account of the meaning of life must take all these things into consideration. See Haught’s essay, “Meaning and Nothingness: A Personal Journey,” link below, for a few other examples of sufferings/atrocities that challenge our ability to claim life has any inherent fairness or justice: e.g. Was Thomas Jefferson’s verbiage realistic when he wrote of the “inalienable rights” with which “all men are endowed by their creator”? What God-given rights were assured the six million Jews sent to Nazi death camps? What purpose did they serve?
Words do not adequately convey the reality of these questions. To give just a fraction of reality to them, one would do better to watch “Schindler’s List” (1993, Steven Spielberg), “Life is Beautiful” (Italian: La vita è bella, 1997, Roberto Benigni), or another truly gut-wrenching movie and THEN read and address these questions, and probably actually discuss them with another human being.
“As we learn scientific facts we realize that both the cosmos and our biosphere seem utterly indifferent to humanity, and care not a whit whether we live or die” (Haught).
No matter what religion anyone is, one admits that the vast majority of all humans who ever lived went through life in ignorance of any ultimate truth, knowing no real facts of the origin of the universe, god or gods, or their own species, usually laboring not only under ignorance, but under outright falsehood. The vast majority of people, if not all, in recording history have labored under false religion/philosophy or no religion/philosophy. How sad is this fact? Can life as a whole or “truth” or “justice” have real and deep meaning if this is the case? Did a god knock an anti-Christian Paul down in the road in order to convert him and reveal the “ultimate truth” to him, yet not bother knocking down every other theoretically precious man, woman, child on the face of the earth to reveal “the truth” to them? Did a god reveal himself to Muhammed, but not bother revealing himself to everyone else? What could be the fairness, justice, meaning, or purpose of such?
Even within many religious views, the vast majority of humans will have lived and suffered pointless lives in ignorance of, or opposition to, the “truth,” only to then go to hell and suffer again, perhaps indefinitely. Such is the case in Christianity, in which “Many are called but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14), or “Wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter on it” (Mt 7:13). If it were true that many are called yet few are chosen, could any god have been a “good” steward of his own work? Especially given the fact that regardless of any gods' existence or absence, the entirety (including divinity itself) cannot have even been created with any ultimate purpose or meaning? Anyway, even if Islam or Baptist Christianity were "the truth," how many people would be one of the few to get into Allah’s heaven, or the American Southern Baptist Yahweh’s Christian heaven? Only a few. That would render life meaningless for the vast majority of all sentient life that ever existed, at least from their individual perspectives.
What was the purpose of each one of the dinosaurs? Why did any individual pterodactyl ever exist? The dinosaurs and countless species have gone extinct. Does anyone truly mourn their demise? Does anyone cry all night? Who would mourn for us should we all be gone in 200 years? Who mourns my/our great, great, great, great grandfather? Does anyone even miss him? Was his life in vain? Is mine? Is my writing futile? Silly?
What is the purpose of a cow? Pick a real cow and ask yourself, what is that cow’s purpose? Is there meaning in spending a few years of days and nights doing nothing but chewing grass in the pasture, sleeping, maybe occasionally having a sexual encounter? . . . Is the purpose of E. coli bacteria to glorify god or reflect the intrinsic beauty of the entirety?
Was life meaningful for the little ant someone squished 3 years ago? Was life meaningful or rich with purpose for the kitten that was tortured by a troubled little boy? Was it meaningful for the boy?
If the whole of life includes such violence and senseless, useless pain as all these paragraphs barely hint at, can the universe, gods or no gods, be said to be good, fair, loving, caring, compassionate, meaningful or purposeful as a whole?
Was life meaningful for the miserable slave who eventually gained his freedom and was converted to a false religion in which he rejoiced greatly and to which he devoted himself wholeheartedly?
Is life meaningful for chimpanzees? Was it in the old days, when the jungles were bigger? What has been the individual purpose of each precious chimp? What was the meaning, purpose, or value in the brief existence of each Australopithecus africanus, each Homo habilis, each Homo erectus walking around about 1.75 million years ago, each Homo ergaster, each Homo heidelbergensis, each Neanderthal (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) that lived a brief life 50,000 years ago, each Cro-Magnon human 30,000 years ago? Were their lives rich, beautiful, deeply spiritual? Did they glorify God? Did they look forward with eager anticipation and prophesy the eventual revelation of Re, Osiris, Isis, Inana, Baal, Sargon, Marduk, Hammurabi, Dionysos, Zeus, Zarathustra, Yahweh, Moses, Cyrus, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Christ, Peter and the glorious papacy to represent Christ on earth, the eternal blessed Virgin Mary, Muhammed and the final revelation of God, Joseph Smith, David Koresh? Are the meanings and purposes of humans over various times and cultures easily comparable – the Homo sapiens sapiens living in Borneo in the 1800’s, the Australian aborigine, a native American, a Thai girl sold as a prostitute, an American CEO, a crack baby, an American Pentecostal evangelist, a toothless withered Tibetan widow, a retarded boy in Pittsburg, an ignorant 1st century Palestinian Jew, an ancient Mongolian warrior, Steven Weinberg, Adolf Hitler, a poor Egyptian in 4500 BCE? Have you ever in your life seen another human who seemed to you to belong to a species other than your own?
Think about the most hurtful, grotesque, evil, painful, torturous, ugly things you have ever experienced, seen, heard, read of. Are they full of meaning, purpose, value? Are they precious? Are they worthless, insignificant?
Funny?
And what if any wish were possible? What if we could all evolve into an omnipotent super persona who decided to revisit all history of all life in a fantasy and “redeem” every moment of suffering of every sentient organism from post-human artificial intelligences on distant planets by 2810 to rats, roaches, plants, and microbes? Would there be any meaning in this? If everything that anyone considered negative could all be erased, would that make it better? What if every single animal and plant were given individual eternal life and all its desires? Would that have meaning? If every suffering dog were rescued and given a palace, and if even the mean primates were forgiven their harmful actions and were given estates and gardens for ever, with parties everyday, and the best food and play? And what would people do in paradise every day? Would it be meaningful in paradise?
Life, God, the Universe is “willing” to sacrifice countless 'individual' human, animal, plant lives in vast, intertwined games of competition. Constant slaughter. Yet despite it all, life always renews itself, it finds ways to thrive. It strives to overcome itself. It dies and is reborn always. Life feeds off of life. Conscious and unconscious. And this, it all simply is.
Even if we embrace suffering and evil, the question of whether life affords meaning, purpose, value, love, joy, etc. is a matter relative to each individual consciousness. For myself, I find both meaning and meaninglessness in life. I find purpose, value, love, joy, as well as their opposites or absence. Another feature of life is that not everyone even needs meaning or purpose consciously to be happy. Give a dog food, sleep, protection, and loving attention from yourself or another animal, and watch it thrive. Humans can be the same at times. Getting “lost” (or found?) in work, or play, or meditation can be a very healthy experience. Another quirk: I personally find meaning in meaninglessness, when I understand it. I can find purpose for myself amid purposelessness. I can even “choose” to embrace and enthusiastically, passionately participate in an un-caused, determined world. As I said above,
As we consciously participate in our world, we are creating the world every moment. What is my society like? Part of that depends on what I say and do. I, along with every other person/thing, help to make the world what it is and will be. The power to consciously participate in the creation of the future can be both exciting and meaningful.
No matter what things were like in the past, what is to prevent us from creating the best possible future for ourselves, our offspring, our world?
Every action has a consequence. This gives meaning to every action as it creates the new present.
Do you feel the Will to Life inside you? Do you feel the power, the heat, the energy? Can you almost hear the faint rumbling beneath the surface of all? Is it not silent yet louder than anything you have ever heard? I love to feel life coursing through me.
The evil and suffering that have occurred and do and will occur do not prevent me from aiming for the highest goals I can conceive. I do and will work for love, for knowledge, wisdom, understanding, truth, joy, peace, harmony, education, the well-being of myself and the world in which I live. Sometimes I do not even need hope; I will switch off my silly hopeless thinker, or not, and I will WORK, I will live, and hope can follow me like a fawning puppy if it wants to, as I lead the way. Further, I even realize that the evil and suffering are part of ME and I am part of them; neither does this have the power to crush the Will to Life that is inside me. Nor has it the power to crush goodness or the love and beauty I sense in This moment. (Greetings Tralfamadorians!) And the Will to Life is not even “mine.” It belongs to the universe. So I need not fear losing it. It cannot be lost. My cousin shot himself. Did he lose the Will to Life? Or did he exercise his will to a different kind of life? Craig is gone, yet Craig is here still in different ways (see my journal entry for 2008, August 28, “Dreams, PawPaw, Resurrection, Spirituality”). I need not fear the dissolution of this body called “Matt.” Matthew K. did not exist in this recognizable way 100 years ago, yet that did not hurt myself or the universe. The same will be true if no “Matt” is recognizably present tomorrow or 5,000 years from now. Matthew K. is a temporal manifestation of the entirety. Does this trivialize an individual life? Not in the slightest.
Back to evil: If evil killed all goodness, evil would become goodness, and then there would be only goodness. Do you understand the lesson of the joke? I need not fear evil. “Good” and “evil” are words, relative descriptive terms applied by individual minds which see from a specific temporal perspective. Does that mean good and evil are not real? No. Everything is real in some sense. Perspectives are very real, and good and evil are matters of perspective. Things are what they are. What we call them changes not what they are. To continue, from a perspective of racial justice, for example, the meaningless unjust world in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated is the same meaningful world into which he was born and did great things, and in which Barack Obama is becoming president of the U.S.A. next Tuesday.
So, . . . I need fear no evil, no death, no pain, no suffering, no failure. The Will to Life always wins. It is the universe. Now, even given all this, . . . I do despair, I do get depressed, I do feel sadness, cry, wrench my gut for the suffering of myself and my loved ones and even those I do not know, I do shun evil, I do fear pain, suffering, failure and try to avoid them even as I embrace their reality consciously. I do fail. I do despise this world for being so petty and limited and smaller than the greatness of the dreams within my little head. Yes, I fail. I die, too. But so what? I am ever crucified and ever resurrected. This Will to Life is ever within me, or rather I within It, and It is the universe. The entirety is beyond life and death, beyond love and hate, beyond good and evil, beyond knowledge or ignorance, beyond pleasure or pain, beyond why, meaning, and purpose. It is even beyond being and nothingness.
The end. ;)
1.8. Side Issue: Is the Universe God?:
I think it is an acceptable statement to say, “The universe is God,” as long as people understand that this is merely a semantic issue, a matter of definition, and is not even falsifiable. This linguistic move makes God demonstrably real, but this real God, i.e. the universe, is far more than a personality, although inclusive of all personalities as well as the apparently larger impersonal, and is far beyond the crude concepts of god(s) to be found in literal interpretations of ancient world literature, including the literal interpretation of much of the Bible – e.g. the personal author of the Mosaic law or the angry Yahweh who cannot forgive sins without blood sacrifice and who will cast into hell all who do not believe the stories about Jesus. God defined as "the Universe" is not “supernatural;” rather, God is Nature. Calling the universe God is logical enough if one removes all the old religious baggage; it becomes, as I said, merely a matter of semantics. What we have, then, is a scientific pantheism. A pantheism like Spinoza’s is acceptable to plenty of non-theists, even scientists, because it is based on reason and a choice of language, not superstition and private revelation. Others avoid it mainly because the word “God” is too easily associated with false religious ideas. (My De-conversion From Christianity: A Narrative, scroll down to the section on the “thought experiment.”) I personally consider it acceptable, even fun, poetic, or naturalistically reverential, but in no way necessary, and I acknowledge that it is potentially confusing.
1.9. These are some links to a few other essays or posts.
* A really great TED lecture by Richard Dawkins. “The universe is queerer than we can suppose.” Video. Lecture. 22 minutes. July 2005. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6308228560462155344#. This is, I think, a distillation of a previous lecture, "Queerer than We Can Suppose: The Strangeness of Science," the First Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, March 11, 2003..
“Meaning and Nothingness: A personal journey.” by James A. Haught. -- (scroll down)
A Cambridge site’s essay on “Atheism and Meaning” in recent history – http://www.investigatingatheism.info/meaning.html .
“Meaning, Will, Life.” A short blog post. (Re: Meaning – relative and absolute; Determinism; Will; Desire; Positing a God doesn’t add meaning). 2007-01-30. http://www.xanga.com/WindOnReed2/566736448/meaning-will-life.html