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Atheism and meaninglessness (view source)
Revision as of 17:35, July 15, 2019
, 17:35, July 15, 2019no edit summary
And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and [[black hole]]s. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.<ref>[http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god The Absurdity of Life without God] by William Lane Craig</ref>}}
And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and [[black hole]]s. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.<ref>[http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-absurdity-of-life-without-god The Absurdity of Life without God] by William Lane Craig</ref>}}
Craig also wrote:
{{Cquote|For example, the outspoken atheist and [[Nobel Prize]]–winning physicist Steven Weinberg, at the close of his much-acclaimed book ''The First Three Minutes'', writes,
:It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that somehow we were built in from the beginning.… It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
:But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.
There’s something strange about Weinberg’s moving description of the human predicament: Tragedy is not a neutral term. It expresses an evaluation of a situation. Weinberg evidently sees a life devoted to scientific pursuits as truly meaningful, and therefore it’s tragic that such a noble pursuit should be extinguished. But why, given atheism, should the pursuit of science be any different from slouching about doing nothing? Since there is no objective purpose to human life, none of our pursuits has any objective significance, however important and dear they may seem to us subjectively. They’re no more significant than shuffling deck chairs on the [[Titanic]].<ref>[The Practical Impossibility of Atheism] by William Lane Craig</ref>}}
The atheist [[Jerry Coyne]] admits the meaninglessness of the universe as an implication of an atheistic [[evolution]]ary worldview, but then insists that we can create our own subjective meaning and marvel at the intricacies of nature.<ref>[https://creation.com/review-coyne-why-evolution-is-true Why evolution need not be true]: A review of Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne Viking Penguin, New York, 2009, reviewed by John Woodmorappe</ref>
The atheist [[Jerry Coyne]] admits the meaninglessness of the universe as an implication of an atheistic [[evolution]]ary worldview, but then insists that we can create our own subjective meaning and marvel at the intricacies of nature.<ref>[https://creation.com/review-coyne-why-evolution-is-true Why evolution need not be true]: A review of Why Evolution is True by Jerry A. Coyne Viking Penguin, New York, 2009, reviewed by John Woodmorappe</ref>