No, life cannot have meaning in a random universe. Next question?
| November 11, 2018 | Posted by News under Atheism, Intelligent Design, Science, theism |
In an excerpt from his recent book, Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If the Universe Doesn’t, a psychiatrist explains how we can have meaning even though we don’t:
People assume that our human sense of purpose is dependent on the universe having a purpose, and without such purpose they assume that life has no meaning. This is a wholly unsubstantiated assumption. Our purposeless universe has become infused with local pockets of purpose, and this has happened through entirely natural, spontaneous processes. Purpose emerged in the universe with life itself. Purpose and meaning (and morality too) can be entirely explained as natural phenomena, emergent from a random, material universe.
All living creatures are purposeful. Simple creatures are goal-directed in rudimentary and non-conscious ways. Highly evolved creatures like us are purpose driven in complex, elaborate, conscious ways. The fact that all this evolved out of the very same basic life-instinct for gene replication does not detract from our motivation in the slightest. We have evolved to be exceedingly adept at being purpose-driven and meaning-making. Our ability to do so is in no way dependent on the universe having inherent purpose.Ralph Lewis, M.D., “Can Life Have Meaning in a Random Universe?” at Psychology Today
This author’s approach doesn’t really make any sense because if the universe has no purpose, how could we evolve to have purpose? Unless, of course, the purpose came from the outside, which would make one either a theist or a mystic. But then there is no reason to think the universe as a whole has no purpose.
Anyway, if our consciousness is an evolved illusion, it is all illusory anyway and the despairing existentialist atheists are right (though their despair is an illusion too).
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See also: Science-based morality: 400 years of failure? One really interesting development is the rise of social justice science, where even right answers are no longer a form of morality but rather a tool of oppression. Sadly, they are losing what they once had..
79 Responses to No, life cannot have meaning in a random universe. Next question?
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This whole issue of “purpose” is hard for theists and atheists to discuss. It can be very difficult for a theist to understand the atheist’s perspective and vice-versa.
I have seen evidence of this in deconversion stories—when a person loses their faith in god, they seem to go through a period of disorientation, where a lot of what they knew before doesn’t make sense anymore.
Eventually, they understand that it’s not that bad. Even if they weren’t specially created by god, that’s not the end of the world. I enjoy my life and find purpose through helping others and pursuing my own interests. I have no worries about lacking a “higher” purpose that a god might have infused me with.
daveS,
That is true. And your post is Exhibit A for why that is true. It is hard to discuss a subject when one of the participants in the discussion insists on deluding themselves about it.
Barry,
And your post could be Exhibit B. It is hard to discuss a subject when one of the participants concludes the other is deluding himself.
On the other hand, you could be right. Would you elaborate on how you know I’m deluding myself?
“Unless, of course, the purpose came from the outside…”
Maybe the inside IS the outside.
daveS:
Sure, it is really quite simple. Either there is a God or there is not. If there is a God, meaning is possible. If there is no God, meaning is not possible.
Let us, therefore, assume for the sake of argument that an atheist such as yourself is correct. There is no God. Therefore, meaning is not possible. I don’t know what that is so hard to understand.
Of course, this is not to say that an atheist cannot insist that he has created a pocket of meaning for himself, just like Dr. Lewis in the OP and you in comment 1. What do you say to such people? They insist that meaning exists at the same time they insist on a universe in which meaning is impossible.
Well, you tell such people they are deluding themselves. They can have their atheism or they can have their meaning. But the cannot have both. Any attempt to have both is delusional.
The question for the theists is that if God is the eternal and necessary – in the philosophical sense – being they claim, if He is, by definition, not contingent on anything else, entirely self-sufficient then why bother to create a Universe at all? And given that He existed for an eternity before creating this Universe and will continue to exist for an eternity after why did He create this Universe when He did? A necessary God would have no unmet need which would require the creation of a Universe. If He did experience an unmet need then He becomes a contingent being and cannot fulfill the role that Christian theology requires of Him.
The next gambit A-Mats tend to employ after the deluding themselves is to try to change the subject so they don’t have to think about the meaninglessness inherent in their worldview.
We see Seversky employing this tactic in comment 6.
Barry,
Is it possible that you are wrong?
Meaning?
Purpose?
Could it be that there’s always meaning, but many times there’s no purpose? All our experiences have meaning, though in most cases we don’t look for it or don’t know it.
Is there subjective/relative meaning vs. objective/absolute meaning?
Can meaning be correct or incorrect?
Can meaning be conveyed and/or perceived only by conscious beings?
Can purpose be set/determined/established only by conscious beings?
Can purpose be relatively correct/incorrect or absolutely correct/incorrect?
Are there relative right/wrong and absolute right/wrong?
The meaning of life is that there is no meaning of life, there is no purpose, that every single human being on this planet has to find their own particular meaning, which is meaningless because you have no purpose and you have no meaning to begin with.
A scientist defining the meaning of existence, telling everybody else that there is no purpose or meaning, apparently doesn’t see the fact that what they are saying is no more purposeful and no more meaningful than anything else, if they are right.
Everything inevitably will die, there is no point in any portion of existence other than measuring pleasure versus pain and that’s what it all really boils down to. We have evolved beyond replicating DNA and we only seek pleasure versus pain. If there is no meaning to existence then this is all that is important. And measuring how much pleasure you getting out of life versus how much pain can really lead you to some seriously dark places for yourself and others around you.
daveS
If you are asking is it possible that two mutually exclusive truth claims can be true at the same time, the answer is “no, that is not possible.”
Seversky:
Umm, that is a question for God, not theists.
Again, that is not a question for humans to answer.
Look, if you don’t dislike the God concept so much then get to work demonstrating your materialistic position has something more than denying the obvious.
AaronS1978 @ 10.
Every word you say is true IF there is not God.
Not only is what you say true, it is glaringly obviously true. Why is it so hard for the daveS’s and Seversky’s of the world to admit that truth? Well, the answer to that is pretty clear too. They are afraid and instead of facing the harsh conclusions compelled by their premises they try to whistle past the graveyard.
Barry,
My question is not about that, but rather your assertions that I am deluding myself and that if there is no God, then meaning is not possible.
Is it possible that either of those is wrong?
daveS
Why not just show where it is wrong?
Your proposal is based on a contradiction. It cannot possibly be correct.
SA,
I’m not trying to show that either statement is wrong. I’m asking Barry if he thinks it is possible either is wrong.
The wishing of “thoughts and prayers” after mass shootings is being mocked in some circles as simplistic to the point of being meaningless.
We have come to agree.
— SNIP–
So now we have the issue of mass shootings which have become a several-times a year occurrence.
Those who desire to disarm the sane and law-abiding cynically use them to advance their political cause.
We, however, think it is far more about culture than it is about having access to immaterial objects.
We have written several times about how school shootings started after abortion was declared a right. Correlation is not causation but correlations are something worth pointing out, and this correlation makes sense.
Teach that it is up to the individual to determine whether a human life exists, and, well, who is to judge if an individual chooses in a way other than you would?
How about the manner in which our society addresses the most important philosophical question: Why are we here?
We teach our young that our existence is but due to a mere sequence of random events. Our courts, in fact, forbid teaching that we are designed, despite the quite reasonable inference of it being so.
Imagine someone being on a moral fence and being inculcated by society that he is but an accident of nature and he should “do as thy will”. Now, imagine that someone being inculcated that he was created to love his neighbor. Which message is most likely to send him to the good side of the fence?
http://billlawrenceonline.com/.....s-prayers/
daveS
I take it you mean these two statements:
1. I am deluding myself
2. if there is no God, then meaning is not possible
As to 1, to the extent you assert there can be meaning in a meaningless universe, then you are wrong. The charitable inference is that you are wrong in good faith, which means you are deluding yourself. I admit I could be wrong. You might be lying.
As to 2, no, it is not possible.
Thank you, Barry.
Seversky: And given that He existed for an eternity before creating this Universe and will continue to exist for an eternity after why did He create this Universe when He did?
I’m no philosopher but how can there be a “before” when time doesn’t exist yet? But then, to correct myself, how can there be a “when” or a “yet” independent of time? (whoops caught myself almost saying “outside of”)
So Seversky remember when I linked to the scholarly books on mystical and religious experience instigated by psychedelics and you came back with the often repeated contention by A-mats that maybe the experiences are due to out-of-control electrical activity in the brain?
So my answer at that time would have been very pat: That the experiences occasionally elicited by psychedelic usage occasionally will parallel astoundingly those described throughout history by various mystics, saints and sages. So that you would have to make the sme assertion abou what was happening in their brains. And those experiences with psychedelics can involve encounters with powerful spirits and demigods sometimes with historical context or identification.
Well the answer is not so pat because as it turns out, people who have seizures, myself included, have those experiences during the so-called “aura”. And because of my past experiences with other psychological mosed I would allow the experience without interruption and would typically visit purgatory and encounter disturbed souls. Strangely enough I would maintain a dual consciousness and had the confidence of complete control of my days activity including driving a car (but pull over) and this feeling of leaving the world was a repeated experience.
Now before you guys think this is crazy you can read up on Dostoevsky and his seizures. His auras would give him the full blown mystical experience including ecstacy. He claimed that he would give up everything, fame, fortune, everything to be able to willfully enter this state.
So it turns out chaotic neuronal discharges in the brain can themselves invoke mystical experiences. However those chaotic discarges have never been indicated in the psychedelic research.
tribune7,
thanks
Seversky
Seversky always asks good questions. He really probes. Anyway, the answer to the question is that love is effusive, it wants to give itself away. A loving God, therefore, wants to give rather than take, which explains his creative act. He doesn’t need His creation because He is already a community of persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), but his creation needs him.
In the OP they claim:
The only wholly unsubstantiated assumption is his assumption that science somehow has proven the universe is purposeless.
From the fine tuning of the universe for life, to the overturning of the Copernican principle by both general relativity and quantum mechanics, as far as science itself is concerned, the universe literally oozes purpose.
In his article, the psychiatrist also claimed that,
That claim is false. Contrary to what the psychiatrist claimed, there is a tremendous difference in mental and physical health that is found between Atheists and Theists.
As Professor Andrew Sims, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, states, “The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally.”,,, “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life;,,”
In fact, in the following study it was found that, “those middle-aged adults who go to church, synagogues, mosques or other houses of worship reduce their mortality risk by 55%.”
Thus, it is readily apparent that the Atheist’s attempt to create illusory meaning and purposes for his life, minus belief in God and a afterlife, falls short in a rather dramatic fashion on both the mental and physical level.
Verse and video:
Of related note, it is found that learning and reading about the afterlife and/or about Near Death Experiences is ‘generally quite successful not only in reducing suicidal thoughts but also in preventing the deed altogether.,,,’
I found Dr. Mary Neal’s NDE entirely credible:
Even Nietzsche well understood the ramifications of this misguided view. If God does not exist, then there is no meaning of any kind, no basis for truth since there is no truth worth speaking of:
“Where has God gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning?
If God does not exist, then is it not true that God does not exist?
Oh good grief. These two sentences together. A trained psychiatrist wrote this, and is actually pleased to share it with others. Apparently anything whatsoever can pass for intelligent reasoning as long as it comes to the pop conclusion.
–Our purposeless universe has become infused with local pockets of purpose, and this has happened through entirely natural, spontaneous processes.–
This is a statement of faith.
The only atheist writer I know of who tells it like it is, is Alex Rosenberg, author of ‘The Atheist’s Guide to Reality’.
Rosenberg has gone a very long way down the rabbit hole and concludes that a strict atheist-materialist should ‘man up’ and accept the purposelessness of existence.
He has harsh words to say about certain of his fellow atheists like Dawkins who endeavour to insert ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ into their lives. In Rosenberg’s view, such people are spineless pussies who simply cannot face up to the Awful Truth.
He concludes his book by reminding atheists that if they can’t psychologically cope with the reality of the situation, they should seek help from the wonders of modern science in the form of whichever pharmaceutical antidepressant works best for them.
I like Rosenberg; he has the courage of his convictions and is facing up to the meaninglessness of his life.
It is, of course, quite possible for an atheist-materialist to seek a ‘purpose’ in life as long as he or she as aware that it is just a coping strategy and has no reality beyond that.
If I were to change my current idealist-theist (but non-‘religious’) views because of new and overwhelming evidence supporting materialism, the above is the mindset I would have to adopt as best I could.
Charles Birch,
I have suggested this type of thought experiment in past discussions.
Suppose you came to believe that there is no god. How would that change your behavior?
Specifically, would you no longer seek to share your gifts and good fortune with others so as to help improve their lives?
daveS @29
I don’t think my behaviour would change. I think my ‘moral’ views would remain the same.
However:
1) I think I would be very aware that this moral mindset is a result of my former beliefs – the belief that, for example, Ultimate Reality has as its goal the maximisation of love, compassion and the maximal realisation of potential. I think these former beliefs would be so ingrained that I would find it difficult to change them.
2) I would also be aware that, even if I decide that my personal existence should be as loving and compassionate as possible, just for its own sake ……I would nevertheless have no grounds for suggesting that someone whose life goal is to defraud old folk of their life savings is somehow living a less worthwhile life than myself.
Charles Birch,
Thanks for the response. Your view is consistent with those of many other theists, I believe. A deconversion would not lead to any radical changes in behavior. And I suspect it would not diminish one’s love for one’s spouse and family, and the desire to try and enrich their lives.
An atheist once told me that “if you have no meaning without God, then you have no meaning with God”. I am curious as to whether any of the atheists here can find the obvious flaw in that logic. DaveS? Seversky?
That was not my experience as I had a deconversion back in 2013, I will not go into details, but I fell into a deep depression, my behaviors changed so drastically my wife and I separated (we are working on things now) I honestly stopped caring about anything.
There is a lot to my story, and a lot of which I’m not comfortable to share here.
My point though is how a person reacts to as you put it a “deconversion” depends on them. It will not be the same for everyone else.
I believe again, but I’m constantly afraid I’ll loose my faith again, because of that 4 year stint
I’m sorry to hear that, AaronS1978.
DaveS – Regarding someone who once believed that God exist loosing that belief and the effect it would have on their behaviour can only really be judged over time and under pressure.
In the short term and under no financial ,moral or other pressure then behaviour may not change too much but given perhaps years and outside pressure people will do things they would have never thought they would .
But removing God now is not the same as knowing God does not and has never existed we can never really run that exersize because if God exists what influence has he had on mans behaviour ,re making us in his image, giving us a conscience, telling man from day one how we should behave.
I cannot find the meaning in this thread, its purpose seems inscrutable to me. 😉
If deconversion doesn’t impact a person there are a number of possible implications:
1. Belief in God is irrelevant for behavior
2. The person did not base their behavior on their belief in the first place
3. The person is not behaving consistently with their claimed unbelief
Not sure why #1 is the only valid implication, as it seems people are assuming here. We have numerous historical examples where people do atrocious things and claim they are consistently living out their atheism.
As it is, atheists have a hard time arguing the right to life begins at conception, and thus has just the same rights as a more developed human life. But without the ability to clearly identify what qualifies as human life, our most fundamental right to life is up in the air. Can we only kill preborn people? What if we kill them right after they are born? Is it more morally justifiable if they are poor or disabled? What if someone is killed without any suffering and without bothering those around them, why is that so different from killing the preborn? If it is ok to kill the preborn because they are dependent on the mother, is it ok to kill children or elderly grandparents because they are dependent on the parents? If so, why is it so wrong for the state to kill its citizens, since the citizens are dependent on the state, especially if most people in the state don’t like the particular citizens because they seem to be a drain on society? If a particular atheist gets really upset with those around him, what’s wrong with him wiping them out and then himself, since he’ll face no further consequences once he’s dead? And so on. In short, it is hard to see why a totalitarian state and these mass killings are not logically consistent with atheist inability to justify a right to life from conception. It might feel uncomfortable to admit, but I see no hard logical line.
On the other hand, it is easy to come up with responses to my questions if humans have immortal souls and God is a just lawgiver that deals out eternal reward and punishment in the afterlife, and finite term reward and punishment in the present life, and if our own justice system is meant to emulate the divine justice system.
If conversion can be life altering, as I think both atheists and theists would agree, why would anyone thing that decinversion wouldn’t be equally as life altering?
Marfin,
Yes, I agree.
I think Charles Birch’s post accurately describes how a typical person would respond to a significant change in worldview in the short term. Eventually a person will ask himself, how ought I to live given that I no longer believe in a god? So in the longer term, there could be some changes.
@daveS, it is unclear how an atheist rationally justifies ethical behavior beyond “it feels good”. Can you clarify?
As a theist, I can do something good, and it “feels good,” but it also makes sense why it feels good, because my actions correspond to the objective way things are meant to be. Additionally, because there is an objective way things should be, I can continue telling myself why I should do good even if it does not “feel good.” And furthermore, if I “feel bad” I can follow the objective order to learn what I must do in order to “feel good” again. The acceptance of an objective order of justice is in itself a consoling thought, especially in light of my own powerlessness and the extreme (and seemingly ever growing) injustice in the world.
Being ethical for “feel good” reasons in an atheist universe reminds me of looking at a brightly decked out and attractive costume, but when I look inside it is empty.
daveS asks:
The bible answered that question thousands of years ago:
The trouble with these ’empty calories’ of hedonistic pleasure seeking, instead of noble pleasure seeking, is that, number one, it is physically harmful since ‘living hedonistically’ is not the way we were designed and meant to live by God,,
The following study is very interesting in that, (since Darwinian evolution can’t even explain the origin of a single gene/protein by unguided material processes), it shows that objective morality is built/designed, in a very nuanced fashion, into the way our the gene expression of our bodies differentiate between ‘hedonic’ and ‘noble’ moral happiness:
,, and, number two, those empty calories of hedonistic pleasure seeking, although they may give a fleeting sense of happiness for a short time,,
,,, although they may give a fleeting sense of happiness for a short time, the fact of the matter is that those empty calories of hedonistic pleasure seeking only mask the fact that, without God, life truly is pointless and without any real meaning and purpose. And therefore those ’empty calories’ cannot sustain a ‘true’ happiness that has a sure foundation. i.e. Cannot give us a everlasting happiness that is ‘built on the rock’.
A particularly crystal clear example of this ‘building a house on sand’ hedonistic lifestyle was played out in the recent suicide of Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain was an atheist who once stated this:
What was truly tragic about Anthony Bourdain’s suicide was that Anthony Bourdain was paid handsomely, by CNN, to try to find as much happiness in this world as he possibly could. His popular TV series was called “Parts Unknown”.
Despite having the ‘dream job’ of getting paid handsomely to ‘eat and drink’, i.e. to find as much happiness in this world as he possibly could, Anthony Bourdain was apparently left empty in that quest and ended up committing suicide. If there is any lesson to be learned in his tragic death it is that all the pleasures of this world will not bring us true fulfillment and that we must look ‘higher’ than this temporal realm in order to find true happiness:
Some atheists may try to claim that Anthony Bourdain’s suicide was a fluke and that atheists by and large do not commit more suicides that Christians. Yet they would, once again, be wrong in their claim. As the following study found, “Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation.”
As well, although Atheists, with their hedonistic lifestyle, may pretend they are happier than Christians, the fact of the matter is that “the more frequently people attended religious events, the happier they were; 47% of people who attended several types a week reported that they were ‘very happy’, as opposed to 28% who attended less than monthly.”
,,, Seems those ‘party all the time’ empty calories of hedonistic happiness are not nearly as fulfilling and meaningful as many people tend to believe.
But all this evidence should be no surprise to anyone.
Pretending to have meaning and happiness in a meaningless universe, as atheists try to do, is self evidently a practice in self delusion. There is nothing controversial about it. It is ‘whistling in the dark’ plain and simple.
Moreover, it is not as if Christians are trying to push some ‘pie in the sky’ belief in God and in life after death.
Christians, (unlike self delusional atheists who, besides denying the reality of meaning and purpose for life, deny the reality of their very own mind and free will), literally are preaching “The Truth” about reality. i.e. There truly is a God, Jesus truly did rise from the grave, and there truly is life after death.
And again, unlike the claims from atheists, modern science clearly backs these claims up. For example, Quantum Mechanics shows that God sustains this universe in its continual existence:
Moreover, special relativity shows us that there is a heavenly eternal dimension above this temporal dimension.
As well, general relativity, besides showing us that there was definitely a beginning to this universe,,,
,,, general relativity, besides showing us that there was definitely a beginning to this universe, also shows us, (as was illustrated in the “Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity” video), that there truly is a eternal, hellish, dimension below this temporal dimension.
Moreover, Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides a very plausible solution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ which seeks to unify Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity, i.e. Quantum Electrodynamics, with General Relativity:
Moreover, recent advances in quantum biology also strongly support the Christian’s belief that we do indeed have a transcendent, eternal, soul that is capable of living past the death of our material, temporal, bodies:
As to life after death, we have far more observational evidence for the reality of of life after death than we do for Darwinian claims that unguided material processes can generate the immaterial information that is ubiquitous within biological life.
Bottom line, as far as modern science is concerned, The Christian has ample reason to be extremely confident that his beliefs are true and can therefore live his life happily, and consistently, as if his life truly did have meaning and purpose because, as far as our best science can tell us, his life truly is meaningful and purposeful. Whereas, on the other hand, the atheist, as usual, has nothing but self deception to try to convince himself that his life is somehow meaningful in what he falsely claims is a meaningless universe.
Verses and article:
EricMH,
I think it’s extremely unlikely I could rationally justify ethical behavior to your satisfaction. Our worldviews seem to be very different.
A quick suggestion, however: if you replace “it feels good” with “it is in my long-term best interest”, then that’s a start.
Keep in mind I have a conscience and therefore it causes me distress to see those close to me (and even those not closely related to me) suffer. Therefore my long-term best interest is connected to the welfare of others.
BA77
If someone doesn’t believe in God, does anyone think that they will resort to the bible for an answer to their questions? Doesn’t it make more sense to allow them to come to this conclusion without it being pushed down their throat?
@daveS, long term best interest is certainly a better justification than feels good. And living according to conscience can be good too. But they seem to presuppose some kind of interest that extends beyond death, because conscience can be silenced and for an atheist there is nothing beyond death so no truly long term best interest. So, if one’s conscience is too noisy, one can learn to ignore it, and not worry that it is a warning because there is nothing beyond death and everything will eventually die in the universe’s heat death.
EricMH,
I can’t ignore my conscience (and wouldn’t want to). I prefer to live under the guidance of my conscience.
People who are able to ignore their conscience (sociopaths, I guess) also sometimes punished by society as well. Severe cases can end up in prison.
And by “long-term interest”, I mean on the scale of a typical human lifetime. I’m not simply thinking about the next week, for example.
as to:
“Doesn’t it make more sense to allow them to come to this conclusion without it being pushed down their throat?”
LOL, Take it you how you like it, but ‘pushing it down their throat’ was certainly not how I meant it.
That intent was imparted entirely by your own preconception, not by me.
I simply made a statement of fact.,,, The Bible, the best selling book of all time, certainly has far more wisdom in it than atheists presuppose.
PS to this:
In fact, I do feel I have interests which extend beyond my death (but certainly not past the heat death of the universe). I hope that my actions do not harm those who are here after I’m gone, so this is a matter of conscience. Therefore I try to conserve resources such as fuel, water, forest products, etc.
Eric @ 45:
Case in point, the Vox co-founder who made a conscious decision to suppress his empathy for a woman being terrorized in her home by a mob.
daveS
There you go deluding yourself again. If your atheism is true, then you know for a certain fact that you do not have any interest in anything whatsoever beyond your death. But you allow your FEELING to overpower your knowledge. In other words, you delude yourself. And the delusion is so powerful you cannot overcome it even when you are aware of it.
Barry,
When I waste resources, I feel guilty because I understand that my actions might end up harming future generations.
I don’t like to feel guilty. Therefore I try not to waste resources.
I don’t think this has anything to do with atheism. Just about all of us are concerned about the welfare of our descendants, whether atheism is true or not.
@daveS, like Barry said, while it feels right to want what is best for people beyond our death, it doesn’t make sense if atheism is correct.
My general perspective in all this is why believe something (atheism) that is at odds with our strongest moral intuitions and does not have rational support when the alternative (theism) both matches our moral intuitions and is consistent with our best reason? That doesn’t make sense to me. There is a modern prejudice that religious ideas are a science blocker and atheism is necessary for science and human progress, but that seems both historically and logically false.
One of the main, if not the main, supposed intellectual atheist’s arguments that we live in a ‘seemingly meaningless world’ is the argument from evil.
The problem with the argument from evil for atheists is the fact that the argument from evil presupposes the existence of objective morality and thus presupposes the existence of God.
Specifically, in the argument from evil atheists hold that “There exist a large number of horrible forms of evil and suffering for which we can see no greater purpose or compensating good.”
And yet this is, once again, a self defeating position for the atheist to be in.
Specifically on the one hand, Atheistic materialists hold that morality is subjective and illusory.
And yet on the other hand, as David Wood puts it in the following article, “By declaring that suffering is evil, atheists have admitted that there is an objective moral standard by which we distinguish good and evil.”
Thus the atheist’s main argument that we live in a ‘seemingly meaningless world’, i.e. the argument from evil, actually presupposes the existence of objective morality and therefore presupposes the existence of God and therefore, in the end, actually presupposes that we live in a meaningful world.
In fact, as CS Lewis has noted, “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning”. ,,, That is to say, ANY argument that tries to argue that the universe is meaningless must necessarily presuppose the existence of meaning, and our ability to discern meaning, in order for the atheist to be able to make his argument in the first place, and therefore ANY argument an atheist may try to use to argue for a meaningless universe is self-refuting in its basic presuppositions.
In fact, science itself would be completely impossible if meaning and/or goal directed teleological purpose were not a priorily present within the universe and even within our own immaterial minds, via intentionality, on a deep foundational level.
Dr. Egnor articulates the necessity of teleological purpose and intentionality of mind, for science to even be possible in the first place, like this:
And indeed, the presupposition of teleological, goal directed, purpose, and the intentionality of our own immaterial minds, lay at the founding of modern science.
As Dr. Koons states, “Without the (Judeo-Christian) faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible.”
Moreover, due to advances in modern science, especially due to advances in Quantum Mechanics, the Christian Theist can now empirically prove that the Mind of God lays behind the goal directed teleology of the universe as well as laying behind the origin of our own ‘intentional’ mind.
Specifically, in what is termed the ‘instrumentalist approach’ to quantum mechanics, the free will of the human mind, i.e. the intentionality of the human mind, is brought into the laws of nature at their most foundational level.
As Steven Weinberg states, (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
And the instrumentalist approach in quantum mechanics, (as opposed to the ‘realist approach’ in quantum mechanics), has now been empirically confirmed.
Specifically, the final ‘free will’ loophole in quantum mechanics has now been closed. Specifically, the “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility that the “physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting” and that “a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure”,,,
,,, that “creepy” and “far-fetched” possibility has now been closed.
Anton Zeilinger and company have now pushed the “free-will loophole” back to 7.8 billion years ago using quasars to determine measurement settings.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of measurement settings in a Bell test from the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a physical randomizer determine measurement settings.
As well, Contexuality and/or the Kochen-Speckter Theorem, now confirm the reality of free will within quantum mechanics.
With contextuality we find, “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation” and “Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment. Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. ”
And with the Kochen-Speckter Theorem we find, as leading experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
And since free will is a entirely Theistic presupposition,,,
,,, And since free will is a entirely Theistic presupposition, then, of course, verifying the reality of free will at such a fundamental level of reality empirically verifies the Christians’ contention that the Mind of God created, and sustains, this universe.
Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands, provides a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into that quote unquote ‘Theory of Everything”
Besides the empirical verification of ‘free will’ and/or Agent causality within quantum theory bringing that rather startling solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’, there is also a fairly drastic implication for individual people being “brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” as well.
Although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. Lewis states the situation as such:
And exactly as would be a priori expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Again, the implications for individual humans are fairly drastic, i.e. you are literally choosing between eternal life life with God or eternal death separated from God:
Verse:
Because of such dire consequences for our eternal souls, I can only plead for atheists to seriously reconsider their choice to reject God, and to now choose life, even eternal life with God, instead of eternal death.
Barry,
PS to my #51,
After some more thought, you are correct in that since I believe I will not exist after my death, I’m not concerned about my own welfare after that point. My own best interests also cease to exist after that point.
What I meant is that simply that, like most of us, I am concerned about future generations, so I adjust my own behavior depending on how I anticipate it will affect them.
But yes, after I am gone, my interests will no longer exist.
EricMH,
I don’t follow this.
I am married, and according to the statistics, there’s a good chance I will die before my wife. Of course I would want her to have a comfortable and enjoyable life when I am gone, so I take specific actions now in order to help ensure that would be the case.
I don’t have children, but I have close relatives and friends who do. I watch them grow up and I care that they have comfortable and enjoyable lives, god or not. For many people, having children and seeing them thrive is an important and fulfilling part of life, so I would want my relatives’ and friends’ children to be able to have their own families if they choose.
Therefore, I wish that all the people in this chain of generations experience a comfortable and enjoyable life.
I’m not saying I can derive my feelings about this matter from an axiomatic system of course. But I’m human, and humans tend to care about these things. I don’t think that believing in a god or not has much or anything to do with it.
(I think Barry’s point was a little different, so I addressed it in a separate post).
daveS,
This is a little bit amusing, but also sad.
OP: Life has no meaning in a random universe.
dave: But I FEEL like I have meaning.
Barry: No doubt, but that is just a feeling, and if your premises are correct you are fooling yourself.
dave: Is it possible you are wrong? Maybe I can have my atheism and meaning too.
Barry: No, that is not possible.
dave: It causes me distress to see those close to me suffer. Therefore my long-term best interest is connected to the welfare of others.
Barry: That’s just another way of saying it feels like you have meaning.
Eric: An atheist has no long term interest past death.
dave: But I FEEL like I do. I’m not saying I can derive my feelings about this matter from an axiomatic system of course.
OK dave. No one can argue with your feelings. They are what they are. You seem to be managing the cognitive dissonance caused by believing (as Eric aptly put it) something (atheism) that is at odds with your strongest moral intuitions and does not have rational support.
There is none so blind as he who will not see.
Barry,
I’m sorry I have caused you to feel sadness. 😛
But neither of us has access to the others’ life experience. It’s difficult to communicate across this divide.
Obviously you are not convinced by what I say. I find some of your premises unconvincing as well, as they are at odds with my life experience. You claim to understand my own thought processes well enough to psychoanalyze me. I, on the other hand, will not make corresponding claims about your thoughts.
daveS,
Justice is not a scientific concept. Why are you devoted to the idea of it, when your worldview (Atheism) says nothing about justice anyway?
Andrew
asauber,
I don’t think this has anything to do with atheism vs. theism.
I care about those close to me, their children, and their descendants. As well as their future well-being. Who doesn’t?
I don’t make a conscious choice to love my fellow (hu)man. It seems to come naturally.
How about you? Did you have to decide to love your children, nieces, or nephews, if you have any?
daveS,
Atheism is definitely relevant to a position like yours. I think your definition of love (an emotional state) is erroneous. I suspect that the same voices that taught you Atheism gave you a bad definition of love.
Andrew
asauber,
You can’t determine my complete understanding or definition(s) of “love” from a single post here. Perhaps you could lay out a good definition of “love”?
Here’s one that I’m guessing might be more in line with your usage:
That’s how I’m using the word “love” in my post above.
daveS,
This definition still fails. It still identifies love as an emotional state.
Love is more than that.
Andrew
daveS claims:
Can you, as an atheistic materialist, please explain exactly where love “naturally” comes from?
What caused Jennifer Fulwiler to question her atheism to begin with? It was the birth of her first child. She says that when she looked at her child, the only way her atheist mind could explain the love that she had for him was to assume it was the result of nothing more than chemical reactions in her brain. However, in the video I linked above, she says:
“And I looked down at him, and I realized that’s not true.”
And indeed it is not true. As Jennifer Fulwiler realized when she looked at her child for the first time, love has a far deeper origin than mere physics and chemistry can ever possibly explain.
So daveS, do you, as a atheist, believe your love for your wife and children is nothing but mere chemistry and physics?
i.e. Do you look at your family as if they actually were genetically determined meat robots or do you love them unconditionally as real persons?
If you lived your life according to the presuppositions inherent within your atheistic materialism, you would, in fact, be a psychopath, not a loving father and husband.
Your inability to be able live your life, consistently, as if atheism were actually true, is a knock down proof that your atheism cannot possibly be true but is instead a false, delusional, worldview:
That is to say, if it is impossible for you to live as if your worldview were actually true then your worldview cannot possibly reflect reality as it really is but your worldview must instead be based on a delusion.
asauber,
Yes, I agree.
daveS:
Nonsense. You affirm mutually exclusive propositions at the same time. Anyone who does that has deluded themselves about one or the other proposition. I merely pointed that out.
Barry,
I was referring to the part where you spoke of my “managing cognitive dissonance”.
Edit: Do you really think our differences on this issue are due to trivial logic errors on my part? (And delusion, I guess…)
daveS
You have stated that loving your fellow humans ‘seems to come naturally’.
I think that’s hugely important.
I have come to my (provisional, pending further evidence) theistic beliefs without subscribing to any organised religion.
My beliefs are based mainly on science, philosophy and the accounts of mystics throughout the ages.
It’s that third category – mystical experience – which is relevant to ‘love coming naturally’.
I understand ‘mysticism’ to be a state of expanded consciousness, where the brain’s ‘filtering’ of reality is bypassed and a far greater awareness supervenes.
Mystics achieve this state via different means – fasting, deep meditation and entheogenic drugs are deliberate methods; stress, crisis and trauma – such as that which triggers NDEs – are involuntary. Mystics have been with us throughout the ages, and their accounts are remarkably consistent.
Here, for example, is the formerly-atheistic Buddhist academic Dr Martin Ball describing his experience with DMT. The relevant section is from 14.20 – 18.40:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PQctOMSmBuk
Yet Ball’s experience is nothing new – the awareness of God/All That Is/Ultimate Reality/Vast Active Living Intelligent System (whatever you want to call it) as Infinite Love is universal in mystical experience.
Maurice Bucke’s account, recorded early last century is of experiencing reality as a “living Presence” and “the foundation principle of all the worlds” as Love. (Bucke’s mystical event took place while travelling home in a hansom cab after a night of music and poetry reading with friends.)
The same themes recur again and again. ‘God’ is a Being of infinite love, and we (and the whole of reality) are all emanations of God; part of God; outflowings from God.
If mysticism is giving us a true reflection of the ultimate nature of reality, then love for our fellows is part of our divine genetics.
One day the space bar on a computer was talking to a human atheist:
SB: The purpose of my existence is to provide a space between words so that writers can craft comprehensible sentences. What is your purpose?
HA: I have no purpose. However, I can create my own purpose and meaning where none exists.
SB: But that makes no sense. A thing cannot create its own purpose or its own meaning. Someone on the outside of the thing must do that. My designer, for example, equipped me to help writers express their ideas. Given my features, I am fit for nothing else. If I do not perform those functions, then I am useless and my life has no meaning. I cannot just assert myself and find meaning as a can opener.
HA: Humans are different. We evolved in a purposeless, meaningless universe, so life has no inherent meaning for us. Since our existence has no inherent meaning, we must contrive some artificial meaning by setting temporal goals for ourselves, which normally consists of publicizing the idea that life has no meaning.
SB: So the purpose of your life is to say that life has no purpose?
HA: In part, yes. I know that it sounds like a contradiction, but that is not the whole of it. I am also saying that humans can “find” meaning in the hot pursuit of a goal. It has meaning *for them.*
SB: But how can you find meaning in a temporal goal that isn’t informed by some ultimate goal. If it doesn’t serve some higher purpose, then by definition, there is nothing to find and it has no meaning. If you say it has meaning for you, you are simply using words to create an illusion. If I didn’t help writers, for example, then my existence would have no meaning. I could claim that I find meaning in the number of keystrokes involved in my activity, but it would be an illusion.
HA: You are right. If meaning isn’t there, you can’t create it.
Charles Birch,
Thanks for that, I’ll take a look at it.
Barry to daveS
daveS responds:
Barry:
daveS
Well dave, I admit I made some assumptions there:
1. I assumed that you know that you are affirming mutually exclusive propositions.
2. I assumed that trying to believe mutually exclusive things at the same time was causing you some level of dissonance.
3. I assumed based on your comments in this thread, that you are more or less comfortable with trying to believe mutually exclusive things at the same time.
And that led me to conclude that you seem to be managing the cognitive dissonance caused by trying to believe mutually exclusive things at the same time.
I readily admit that I could be wrong. Maybe your efforts to hold contradictory beliefs causes you great anguish. If that is the case, you certainly hide it well.
daveS
Affirming that you believe mutually exclusive propositions at the same time is certainly a logic error. The error is most certainly not trivial. It is about as basic and fundamental as you can get.
Barry,
By “trivial” I don’t mean inconsequential or not worthy of being pointed out. I do mean elementary (or basic or fundamental).
So you do conclude I literally believe (and assert) P and not-P. It could not be because I doubt some of your premises.
Well dave, under any definition one cares to use, affirming mutually exclusive propositions is not a trivial logic error.
dave
It is not a matter of what I think. You have indisputably affirmed p and not p.
It is not a matter of doubting my premises. It is a matter of you running from the facts that you yourself have affirmed.
Look at what you are doing here. If you think I am wrong, demonstrate it. Don’t whine about how I may be wrong and should admit that. Show me.
Show me how there can be meaning in meaningless universe dave.
BTW, “I feel like there is meaning even when I know that feeling is belied by the facts I postulate” is a non-starter.
Barry,
I’m afraid that’s exactly what it is.
You have the burden to support your own premises. I don’t have to prove to your satisfaction that you are wrong.
daveS
Which I and others have done repeatedly.
But you do have the burden of proving that you are right if you want to demonstrate that you are right. And that you have failed to do.
Barry,
One of your premises:
It might be true, for all I know (hence I’m not trying to demonstrate that my position is correct). But I have doubts about it. It seems to be at odds with my life experience.
How can you demonstrate to someone that it is true?
You can probably show that it follows from other (equally questionable) premises. But at some point, I suspect one would have to assert that certain of these premises are self-evident and claim that anyone who does not accept that is mentally defective in some way. (Deluded, aggressively stupid, etc.)
daveS
Indeed. There is something wrong with anyone who would deny a self-evident truth. Deluded and aggressively stupid are certainly possibilities. Is there a point in there somewhere?
BA77, I see atheists are still trying to resurrect the dead problem of evils post Plantinga. Actually, the first fatal blow was struck by Boethius, in pondering if God why evil, but if not God whence good. In the above, the atheistical argument clearly fails to ground its recognition and rejection of evil (beyond yucky stuff I currently don’t like but wait for the next PC partyline shift). It then needs to ask, whence the moral government of mind that I appeal to, i.e. duties to truth, right reason, fairness etc. Also, these objectors to God need to differentiate between their perception and actuality. KF