Thursday, August 08, 2013

Pointless?


After talking with a rabbi friend of mine earlier today about the relationship between religion and science, I read this quote from Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless."

Certainly not all scientists are this nihilistic, nor does the fact that science cannot answer questions about morality and meaning (the lack of which is, I assume, why the universe seems pointless) prove there is no morality or meaning. It just “proves” that if you are looking for morality and meaning don’t use the tools of science, at least not the sciences Steven Weinberg uses to comprehend the universe.

My rabbi friend wants to make religion the antidote of pointlessness, but that may not help since religion yields a variety of moral and meaning systems without any way to objectively judge which is actually true.

Maybe the problem lies with Weinberg’s assumption. Let’s assume that life prior to the evolution of humans is intrinsically amoral and meaningless. Let’s further assume that humans are the way nature makes morality and meaning, and that religion and philosophy are the ways we do this. Since humans are part of nature, and since humans produce a variety of moralities and meanings it is wrong to say that nature is amoral or meaningless, and more accurate to say that nature is multi-moral and multi-meaning.

This, of course, leads us to relativism where no morality is better than any other, and no meaning is any more true than any other. And that can lead us back to nihilism. So maybe the only way we can assume a universal morality and meaning is to assume a force outside of nature that imposes such. Which leaves us pretty much were we are today: competing morality/meaning systems each claiming to be the one true standard of the one true God.

Your thoughts?

6 comments:

Charles Kinnaird said...

I like your idea that humans are how nature has evolved a sense of meaning and morality. I think it was Carl Sagan who said that human consciousness is the cosmos reflecting upon itself. Symphony of Science has put together an inspiring auto tune with the words of Carl Sagan, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Richard Feynman and Bill Nye:"We Are All Connected" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGK84Poeynk

Mordechai Ben Nathan said...

Rami:

It seems you are back to your adolescent musings as to the meaning if life?

eashtov said...

Shalom Rav,

Check out pages 107-108 of Rabbi Daniel Friedman's
wonderful book "Jews Without Judaism," for a concise discussion of the subject of your post.

http://amzn.to/e4Yrvu

Biv'racha,
Jordan

Fraser said...

Science seems to be on the offensive at the moment. I have been watching a few things by folks like Sam Harris and the like using scientific logic to beat up on any kind of God notion.
They usually use kindergarten level religion as their fodder so end up with the same level of come back it seems to me. Still it is an interesting thing to ponder. As soon as one begins to defend one's spiritual notions one is in trouble as I don't think scientific logic is what we are about. But I think the basic scientific assertion that"I know the facts and live in the real world" is a classic porker as well. Even if it all can be described down to the last loaf and Higgs crapping Boson it seems insufficient to address the wonder and mystery of it all. I'm sure any Steven Weinberg does not consider the love within his family pointless but would be hard pressed to scientifically prove it. I recall one Zen master being pushed on the subject of God and finally allowing that if the wave is conscious then one could assume the ocean is also conscious. So I agree with Rami that our desire for meaning and love suggests a universe with those qualities inherent in it. The problem of our refusal to extend love and compassion to one another is another question. If we manage somehow to get all the misogyny, racism and fear out of our religious lives we will have something to work with.

Fraser said...

Science seems to be on the offensive at the moment. I have been watching a few things by folks like Sam Harris and the like using scientific logic to beat up on any kind of God notion.
They usually use kindergarten level religion as their fodder so end up with the same level of come back it seems to me. Still it is an interesting thing to ponder. As soon as one begins to defend one's spiritual notions one is in trouble as I don't think scientific logic is what we are about. But I think the basic scientific assertion that"I know the facts and live in the real world" is a classic porker as well. Even if it all can be described down to the last loaf and Higgs crapping Boson it seems insufficient to address the wonder and mystery of it all. I'm sure any Steven Weinberg does not consider the love within his family pointless but would be hard pressed to scientifically prove it. I recall one Zen master being pushed on the subject of God and finally allowing that if the wave is conscious then one could assume the ocean is also conscious. So I agree with Rami that our desire for meaning and love suggests a universe with those qualities inherent in it. The problem of our refusal to extend love and compassion to one another is another question. If we manage somehow to get all the misogyny, racism and fear out of our religious lives we will have something to work with.

Erick Reynolds said...

Agree with Fraser.
Also, geometrically speaking a point is pointless in infinite space. Science strives to explain “how” the observable universe works in a systematic structure that allows PREDICTABLE meaning; but converts to its own belief system as it probes further into the unobservable, infinitely small and the infinitely vast. Symbols represent strings and multi-verses in the official mathematical language. Atoms are now seen as mostly empty space while space is filled with mysterious dark matter.

Religions strive to explain “why” things happen in a universe of infinite random complexity. People need a reason why random events occur to give “meaning” to disease, tragedy, evil acts, rich & poor, or death. Why does one person win the lottery and not the other 9 million ticket holders? If people come and people go, what is left; a soul or re-incarnation or nothing or a memory? Did the death of an Asian family in a flood 800 years ago matter? If it is not predictable, there should at least be a good story for why it happened so it had some purpose or reason.

Or we observe both scientifically and spiritually, and by observing we all give life infinite meanings.

BTW, in an infinite universe there could be an infinite number of planets with intelligent life. But they could be infinitely far apart such that one would never know the others existed. So, infinite souls connected to an infinite god would have no reason to hang around here. But we tend to be earth egocentric in our god constructs.