The Meaning of Life. Or, do theists ever even talk to atheists?

The above video is an advert for the Alpha Course (A course taught by churches that aims to introduce people to Christianity), that has recently been showing on UK television. It features a man and a woman traveling along a conveyor belt from birth to death, and ends abruptly with their being buried in a coffin. A tag line of "Is there more to life than this?" appears, with the obvious implication that no, this isn't all there is - come along and we'll tell you about all this other great stuff that will add meaning and joy to your life.

This has always been something that's confused me about theists - the view that without God there can be no meaning, and its corollary that all atheists go around in a perpetual depressed state, despairing at the pointlessness of existence, and wishing there was some way to add meaning to their lives. Where do they get this idea from? Have they ever actually talked to any atheists about this? I don't know a single atheist who has such a depressing view of life. The view that a life without God is pointless seems to only be held, funnily enough, by those who hold that God is the point of life.

So this argument cannot be taken directly from their experience of atheists, but where does it come from? It seems to me that there are two main strands of reasoning theists use to come to this conclusion. The first is that God, as an absolute omnipotent being, is the only source of an absolute meaning for the universe, and by his action our lives are given meaning. What meaning? Well, whatever he wants - to 'give greater glory to God' seems to be a fairly standard Christian answer when confronted with the question of meaning. This view, that meaning can only ever be imposed from the outside, seems to me to be a pessimistic, limiting, and (dare I say it) depressing conclusion. We make our own meaning in this life - we can choose what we are here for, and I find this far more worthy of celebrating than the forced imposal of another's will on our life. I certainly do not find it depressing. Look on it as a choice between admiring the works of another painter, or being given an easel, a canvas and a palette and told to paint what you want - I know which I would find the more liberating.

The second argument concerns death, and follows the lines of "Well, if you're just going to die at the end and that's it, what's the point of doing anything anyway?". I've been in churches where the preacher has stated he can't "understand why atheists grieve when someone dies, if that's all there is to life?". This approach confuses me even more. I cannot understand why theists can't realise that if once you die, you are gone completely, then that is even more of a reason to a) mourn someone's passing, and b) value both your and other people's lives more while you and they can live them, as opposed to how you would feel if you treated life as just a rest stop on the way to eternal bliss. The second part of the argument appears to be based on the assertion that if life has no permanence, then nothing we do can last, and things that do not last are worthless. I find this statement frankly bizarre. What has permanence to do with meaning, with emotion, with joy? I'll leave it to Tennyson to sum up my objections to this one:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson. In Memoriam, 1850

Thanks Alf.

Finally, and on the subject of death, I'd like to give another great 19th century figure, Thomas Huxley, the final word and reproduce an extract from his letter to Charles Kingsley, written 147 years ago, almost to the day, after the death of his son from scarlet fever. Before theists start preaching on the meaningless and nihilism of atheism, this passage at least should be required reading - I defy you to read this extract and tell me that it requires God to feel sorrow and joy, and to give life meaning. Over to Huxley:

As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as a part of his duty, the words, "If the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child, or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality ? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.

Kicked into the world a boy without guide or training, or with worse than none, I confess to my shame that few men have drunk deeper of all kinds of sin than I. Happily, my course was arrested in time–before I had earned absolute destruction – and for long years I have been slowly and painfully climbing, with many a fall, towards better things. And when I look back, what do I find to have been the agents of my redemption? The hope of immortality or of future reward? I can honestly say that for these fourteen years such a consideration has not entered my head. No, I can tell you exactly what has been at work. Sartor Resartus led me to know that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology. Secondly, science and her methods gave me a resting-place independent of authority and tradition. Thirdly, love opened up to me a view of the sanctity of human nature, and impressed me with a deep sense of responsibility.

If at this moment I am not a worn-out, debauched, useless carcass of a man, if it has been or will be my fate to advance the cause of science, if I feel that I have a shadow of a claim on the love of those about me, if in the supreme moment when I looked down into my boy's grave my sorrow was full of submission and without bitterness, it is because these agencies have worked upon me, and not because I have ever cared whether my poor personality shall remain distinct for ever from the All from whence it came and whither it goes.

And thus, my dear Kingsley, you will understand what my position is. I may be quite wrong, and in that case I know I shall have to pay the penalty for being wrong. But I can only say with Luther, "Gott helfe mir, Ich kann nichts anders."

I know right well that 99 out of 100 of my fellows would call me atheist, infidel, and all the other usual hard names. As our laws stand, if the lowest thief steals my coat, my evidence (my opinions being known) would not be received against him. But I cannot help it. One thing people shall not call me with justice and that is – a liar. As you say of yourself, I too feel that I lack courage; but if ever the occasion arises when I am bound to speak, I will not shame my boy.

- Thomas Huxley, September 23rd, 1860

The Meaning of Life? Or, Why Definitions Are Important...

Larry Moran points to a new article by Carl Zimmer that's up over at Seed, on the search for definitions of life. A lot of space in it is devoted to Carol Cleland, a philosopher, and Christopher Chyba, an astronomer, who argue that

the search for a definition of life is beyond problematic, and we should simply stop looking for one. The quest could either be impossible or scientifically trivial.

They compare the search for definitions of life to alchemy in the middle ages:

Cleland and Chyba also determined that there was an even bigger problem with the pursuit of a definition of life—one that lies in the nature of definitions themselves. "If you really understand what a definition is," says Chyba, "it's not up to handling the problem... ...scientists who try to define life today make the same mistake that alchemists did in the Middle Ages. Alchemists tried to define substances by their properties, without any understanding of the underlying chemistry. Water, for example, was defined according to its ability to dissolve different solids. This definition led alchemists into confusion. Since ice couldn't dissolve anything, it couldn't be water. Alchemists gave the name "water" to things that we know now are nothing of the sort. They called nitric acid aqua fortis, or strong water, because it could dissolve most metals. Aqua regia, or noble water, was actually a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid that was powerful enough to dissolve even gold and platinum, the so-called noble metals.

Searching for a better definition of water would have not gotten alchemists out of this mire. A solution only came in the 18th century, as scientists formulated a theory of chemistry. The behavior of water and other substances suddenly makes a lot of sense when you realize that they are all composed of atoms, which are in turn composed of smaller particles. Chemists can now say water is H2O. However, "'Water is H2O' isn't a definition," says Cleland. "It's a discovery."

So what's the remedy? To forget about definitions and build a 'theory' of life, apparently. How will we do that?

For Cleland, the most promising way to build a theory of life is to look for alien life. In 2013, the European Space Agency plans to put a rover back on Mars. Called Exomars, it will drill into the Martian crust to seek out signs of life. NASA has plans of its own on the drawing board, including one possible mission that would bring Martian soil back to Earth for intense study. Meanwhile, other promising habitats for life, such as some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, beckon. Cleland argues that finding alien life would allow us to start figuring out what is truly universal about life, rather than just generalizing from life as we know it. Only when we have more data, she reasons, will we have a basis for comparison. As it stands now, says Cleland, "we have no grist for the theoretical mill."

I agree more data is vital, but to me their trivialising of the need for a definition is entirely the wrong way round. Looking for alien life to gather more information on what life is is all well and good, but it presumes that we will be able to recognise it as life. And how will we do that? Either we will simply look at it and say 'That's life', in which case we already have an implicit definition, or we will have an explicit definition we compare it to to decide whether it is life or not. And this is where their analogy with the discovery of H20 falls down. Alchemists had another 'alien' form of water right in front of them: ice. They couldn't recognise it, however, as their definition of water was faulty - they had defined it as something that could dissolve things. How was progress made? Well, they looked further into the matter and realised everything is composed of atoms - they then applied this knowledge to water as defined by the old definition, realised ice was identical to it and subsumed both substances within a new definition referring to H20.

I submit that science progresses by defining things, examining them, applying this new knowledge to the old definition to make a better definition, and so on, ad infinitum - a 'virtuous circle', if you will. But the vital point is to make any headway, you need to kick start the circle - you need some kind of definition, no matter how bad, to decide what it is you're actually talking about. So to say 'the whole definition project is worthless.' is far from the truth. The definition project is of imperative importance: however, we don't need to have a perfect definition at the first try. Let's not agonise for ages for it. Let's just grab the most reasonable one we have now off the shelf, plug it in to science's 'virtuous circle', and sit back and admire the results.

Why Parsimony?

Let’s kick things off with an old philosophical argument, first put forward by Descartes in ‘Meditationes de prima philosophia’, and now updated into a more modern form. Here it is:

The Brain in a Vat (BIV) Argument:

(1) It is possible that I am in fact a BIV, kept there by a mad scientist who systematically deceives me about the truth of most of what I believe, feeding me my perceptions of the external world through cables attached to my brain.
(2) It is impossible for me to definitely rule out the possibility that I am a BIV.
(3) If I cannot know that I am not a BIV, then my beliefs about an external, non-mental reality cannot constitute knowledge.

Therefore:

Conclusion: My beliefs about an external, non-mental reality do not constitute knowledge.

In other words: logically we have no proof that there is any external reality whatsoever – the only thing that we can ever know for sure is that we personally exist (Cogito ergo sum and all that). Now let’s add in another argument, the problem of induction, which states that there is no logical reason for supposing the past is a good guide to the future.

You would think that conclusive proof that no one can be certain there is an external world out there, and that even if there is one we can’t in fact draw any conclusions on it based on previous experience, would present a problem. To the best of my knowledge however, despite the logical impeccability of these arguments, no one actually lives in a manner consistent with them. People do not sit on chairs as gibbering wrecks, afraid to move in case the world spontaneously explodes – neither do people confidently walk out in front of buses because they cannot possibly have any knowledge that doing so will be harmful.

So, how do most of us get through the day? Well, most of us simply ignore these problems: we implicitly trust the evidence of our senses, and in a nice piece of circular reasoning, figure that if reasoning based on past experience has always worked in our past experience, it will work in the future. We will continue to act in a manner consistent with, and make predictions about, a genuine external reality, even after it is shown to us that there is no possible good reason to do so. The answer to getting through the day seems to be faith - a belief, not resting on logical proof or material evidence, that not only is there a) a genuine external world present outside of our minds, but b) our past experience is a good guide to the future. I’ll repeat – these are beliefs that we have no good reason to believe, and yet everyone acts as if they do believe them.

So we all rely on faith to some extent, but by its very nature it is a difficult thing to judge. How much faith should we have? We’ve made the step to believing there is an external world out there, having no reason to do so. Why then draw the line there? What about fairies? Or teapots in orbit outside of Mars? Or in fact anything anyone may choose to mention? After all, the cognitive step is the same. There is no more evidence for the first statement than any of the others. This is a problem if we want to have any hope at all of discriminating true knowledge from false.

For my part, the answer lies in the principle of parsimony – "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." If we postulate the minimum necessary principle to make contact with the outside world – the principle that it does indeed exist - and that in addition we can use the past as a good guide to the future, then all other possible claims can be investigated using only these two unsupported beliefs. The scientific method can then be applied, and a reasoned conclusion reached on any other statements we may care to make regarding the external world, say that fairies are real, or that objects accelerate with F=ma. Thus through parsimony there is the luxury of allowing oneself an outside world to relate to and make predictive claims about, whilst retaining the right to examine any further claims with a sceptical eye, keeping, as the saying goes, “an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.”

Which is nice.