An article here entitled ‘What if the cosmos is all there is?’ challenges atheists, materialists, pantheists, and naturalists to answer 11 questions. To me the questions show a misunderstanding of the views they seek to challenge. I’m a humanist which means I am also an atheist. I haven’t come across the other terms much, but according to the definitions on the site, I’m also a materialist and a naturalist. Here are the questions and my answers:
1. “If all of life is meaningless, and ultimately absurd , why bother to march straight forward, why stand in the queue as though life as a whole makes sense?” —Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There
Life is not necessarily meaningless or absurd from an atheist perspective. There may be no externally-imposed purpose, but we can create our own – decide as individuals how we want to spend the time we have. Life does not have to make sense, or include a God in order to be meaningful.
2. If everyone completely passes out of existence when they die, what ultimate meaning has life? Even if a man’s life is important because of his influence on others or by his effect on the course of history, of what ultimate significance is that if there is no immortality and all other lives, events, and even history itself is ultimately meaningless?
Life has no ultimate meaning. Must it? In the very long term individual lives may have no significance but this does not lessen the effect they have in the present, whenever that may be. If everyone is immortal, wouldn’t life lose its wonder, its value?
3. Suppose the universe had never existed. Apart form God, what ultimate difference would that make?
This seems obvious: the difference between the universe existing and not existing is a universe: a universe of wonder, beauty, achievement, happiness and friendship as well as pain, fear and injustice. These things may be temporary, but they are real. No matter what happens to the universe, these things will have been real.
4. In a universe without God or immortality, how is mankind ultimately different from a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs?
We are no different in the sense of being inherently ‘special’ or marked out for some particular destiny. There is no reason why we should be. And there is nothing wrong with this. It may be natural to feel that we are superior, higher, better, intrinsically wonderful beings, but it is not reasonable.
5. What viable basis exists for justice or law if man is nothing but a sophisticated, programmed machine?
I suggest doing some research. I’m sure there are many philosophers who have considered such bases and can explain them much better than I can. Since you don’t find atheists denouncing justice and law en masse, presumably we find some value in them. I consider laws valid when they keep me safe and free to pursue my goals, when they promote happiness, equality, truth, justice and other ideals I value.
6. Why does research, discovery, diplomacy, art, music, sacrifice, compassion, feelings of love, or affectionate and caring relationships mean anything if it all ultimately comes to naught anyway?
Why try not to commit minor sins when you know you can be forgiven them and still be saved? Presumably because even if you are genuinely repentant, the sin has still caused pain. Just because something will not be ultimately important, it doesn’t follow that it has no significance in the meantime.
7. Without absolute morals, what ultimate difference is there between Saddam Hussein and Billy Graham?
Who said there were no absolute morals? There are other ways to derive morality than from divine command. And I expect that by most, if not all of them, Saddam Hussein would come off pretty badly. I won’t attempt to explain it here, but I have found a combination of act- and rule-utilitarianism the most compassionate and reasonable moral theory that I’ve learned about so far.
8. If there is no immortality, why shouldn’t all things be permitted? (Dostoyevsky)
If there is immortality, why shouldn’t all things be permitted? When you believe you only have one short life to live, you don’t want to ruin it by allowing things like rape and murder. Mortality makes trying to live the best life possible all the more important.
Perhaps there are a few people who would truly like to spend there lives raping and torturing, but how many are there who would want others to be permitted to rape and torture them? It is in every mortal’s interests not to permit these things.
9. If morality is only a relative social construct, on what basis could or should anyone ever move to interfere with cultures that practice apartheid, female circumcision, cannibalism, or ethnic cleansing?
The idea of culturally relative morality is not a tenet of the world-views being challenged here. I do not subscribe to it and think that such practices should be interfered with where they cause suffering for no rationally defensible purpose. Incidentally, I think you will find that female circumcision is generally justified on theistic, not atheistic grounds.
10. If there is no God, on what basis is there any meaning or hope for fairness, comfort, or better times?
Simple. I hope for fairness, comfort and better times because I know they are possible. I hope for starving children to be fed because I know they can be-when I was hungry I was fed. I know that human efforts can achieve this. If it is up to God to provide better times, what has he been doing all this time? And why are there so many Christian aid organisations?
11. Without a personal Creator-God, how are you anything other than the coincidental, purposeless miscarriage of nature, spinning round and round on a lonely planet in the blackness of space for just a little while before you and all memory of your futile, pointless, meaningless life finally blinks out forever in the endless darkness?
I am the coincidental, purposeless product of nature, spinning round and round on a lonely planet in the blackness of space for just a little while before you and all memory of my life finally blinks out forever.
I am not a miscarriage of nature – this would imply a purpose to be miscarried. My life is not futile, pointless, or meaningless – I can feel and create happiness, make goals and achieve them, have fun, and help others do the same.
To return to the original question, what if the cosmos is all there is? Just look at the pictures. The cosmos is all there is and for me that’s wonderful enough.
And yes, I did email these answers to the website that proposed the questions. I’d love to get comments from any other atheist/materialist/naturalists out there who have different answers. If I’m wrong about something, persuade me! I actually have found one other set of answers to the same questions here.
As a sign of my appreciation for your having read this far, here are a totally unrelated quote and joke…
Q: What’s green and sits in a corner?
Nobody made a greater mistake in life than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.
(Edmund Burke)
