In one of Stephen Jones' posts, after I made the following
remark,
CC>Non-naturalism's functions are *not*
cognitive.
They are *psychological*. They provide
thought-free pseudo-solutions to various kinds
of intellectual problems, such as whether and
how the Universe came to be, what life is and
how it came to be, the meaning of life, etc.
. . . Stephen said this:
Sounds to me like Chris is admitting that he has
no good explanation for "how the Universe
came to be, what life is and how it came to be,
the meaning of life", so he is trying to declare it
a "pseudo-"*problem*?
If not, maybe Chris can tell us: 1. "how the
Universe came to be"; 2. "what life is and how
it came to be"; and 3. "the meaning of life"?
Now, I'm not sure why Stephen has apparently inadvertently
taken up providing me with questions on some of my
favorite topics, but I'm certainly not going to complain,
especially since at least the first two of these questions are
relevant to the issue of whether life fits naturalistic
evolutionary theory. I'm throwing in my core answer to the
meaning-of-life question as a freebie, and because it may
help some readers find their way to a better life.
Regarding "How the Universe came to be":
Let's distinguish between different modern meanings of
"Universe":
1. Everything there is, period, *except* for any supposed
non-natural realm and God.
2. What astronomers and such see as the Universe, a
space-time some *few* tens of billions of light-years
across with a bit of matter here and there in it.
Now let's also distinguish what we may take as the Universe
since the Big Bang (if any) from whatever ultimate material
or "Dumb Stuff" that it is made of, or is otherwise somehow
an expression of. This distinction is important because it
might be claimed that the Universe had a beginning (at the
time of the Big Bang, for example) without requiring that
whatever the Universe is ultimately made of has had a
beginning.
What this means is that there can easily be an eternally
existing basic "stuff" that exhibits universes from time to
time (perhaps an endless series of big bangs).
My answer to "how the Universe came to be" *could* be:
"Exactly the same way Stephen Jones says, *except* with a
naturalistic cause." Thus, if Stephen says, "God created the
Universe out of nothing at all," I *could* say, "A
naturalistically occurring species of being made the Universe
out of nothing at all, or out of already-existing materials."
Note that this serves all the same legitimate *cognitive*
purposes as does the God theory, but without the
superfluous metaphysical baggage. It is *more*
parsimonious than the God theory because it doesn't need
the supernaturalism. It is even, in principle, ultimately the
kind of theory that might be empirically testable (for
example, we might actually meet the beings who did it, learn
about their history, and even learn how to create universes
ourselves).
I don't, for even a moment, think that this theory is true,
*but* it has a better chance of being true than *theism*
does, as well as having a chance of being *scientific* (as
well as not requiring cognitively unjustifiable metaphysical
claims).
But, what I do think is that there *is* some sort of "Dumb
Stuff" and that what we take as the Universe (sense 2 of
"Universe" above) is either made out of this stuff (perhaps
several "layers" deep, via ordinary matter, superstrings, and
whatever else) or is *in* this stuff in a manner very roughly
analogous to the way in which different molecular structures
and arrangements occur in a block of ice or steel, or to the
way in which waves may exist within a solid (the waves,
like light reflecting from the underside of the surface of a
swimming pool, may even "see" the boundary between this
"stuff" and the external void as a solid surface).
I also see no reason, philosophical or otherwise to believe
that the Universe (sense 1 above) is limited to the Universe
as scientists see it (sense 2). I don't believe it *isn't* so
limited, either, but there is no cognitive basis claiming to
know that it *is* so limited. Scientists, philosophers, and
Stephen Jones have not been able to find any.
In short, I don't think that the Universe (sense 1) *did* come
to be. I think it always was, just as Stephen probably claims
his God always was. I think the Universe (sense 2)
*probably* did come to be, and that, in any case, this is a
scientific question unless it is established that the Universe
(sense 2) *is* all the Universe there is and that there was
absolutely no Universe (sense 1) prior to the coming to be of
the Universe (sense 2).
In any case, the question, as Stephen asks it, is seriously
loaded, because it *assumes* that the Universe came to be,
and there is certainly no proof that the Universe (sense 1)
*did* come to be, or that it *could* come to be.
Stephen offers mythology as philosophy and cosmology, but
there is nothing about such mythology to recommend it,
because any questions that might be asked about my "Dumb
Stuff" must be asked, in spades, regarding his mythological
God. How did *God* come to be, etc.? Postulating God
does two things, *neither* of which is cognitively valuable:
1. It *relocates* the questions we would ask regarding the
Universe and/or "Dumb Stuff" into a realm where there
is no known possibility of scientifically searching for
answers to them. It *absolutely* does not *answer*
them in any *rational* sense. It is simply *assumed*
that God's baldly-asserted-but-undemonstrated magical
powers explain all without any need for further real
thought. Indeed, one of the *purposes* of the God
theory is to forestall all that damn *questioning*. The
arbitrary assertion that "God did it" is supposed to be
accepted *in place* of a real answer. *How* did God
do it? What are His internal causal processes that
enable Him to do these things? What is God's anatomy
and physiology (or their theistic equivalents)? Etc.
2. It introduces a raft of *new* questions that are even
*more* peculiar than the question about whether the
Universe came to be (and, if so, how) questions such
as the one above about how God came to be, and
questions about His alleged nature. There is some faint
chance of grasping an infinite natural universe, but how
do we make sense of claims that some being is
infinitely powerful, absolutely all-knowing, and able to
create universes out of absolutely nothing? *NONE* of
these questions arise on the assumption that some sort
of "Dumb Stuff" has always existed.
Jones' challenge shows what many of us atheists have
claimed all along: That theism has no *real* answers to
questions like "How did life come to be and evolve"?
Theism's answer is the "Santa Claus" answer: Unanalyzed
mythological *magic.* He is utterly unable to give one good
reason (but only evasions) as to why design, if it is found to
be real, must be supernatural, because he is unable to show,
even if life on Earth did not originate naturally, why life
might not have originated elsewhere and/or elsewhen, and
then have created our Universe (sense 2) as a toy or research
project (or whatever) and then gone on to create life on
Earth and manipulate it along the way. I don't think any such
theory is true, but it is vastly superior, both philosophically
and *scientifically* to his "Santa Claus" story.
Obviously, I've nearly covered Jone's second question
concerning the origin of life (and, implicitly, the question
concerning what it is), but there are some further points to
be made explicit:
1. I think life arose naturally on Earth, as a product of
autocatalytic molecules or sets of molecules, via a
process of *pre*life evolution.
2. I think life is essentially the process whereby some
entity (i.e., roughly, "organism") uses information
and/or energy and/or materials in/from an environment
in such a way as to sustain it's own existence or secure
its recurrence.
3. Life itself may be regarded as a *means* whereby
information stored via the structuring or patterning of
some "media" (such as, but not necessarily only, DNA).
Thus, while life is a great evolutionary advancement in
many ways (because active use of information or
energy or material can be a far better means of ensuring
information-replication than merely passively "waiting"
for replication to occur), it is no more "peculiar" in
essence than is a candle-flame or other self-
perpetuating process. There is no reason to think that it
is *metaphysically* different from any other physical
process.
This view, while it has the advantage of metaphysical
minimalism while according with what science has so far
determined about life, will not satisfy some, who view life as
something mystical, despite the lack of any empirical or
philosophical reason to do so. Such people want a much
more complicated view: They want to preserve (we may
hope) what science has uncovered about life while
nevertheless postulating (for
religious/philosophical/psychological reasons/motives) that
life *is* something metaphysically peculiar and thus in need
of divine creation.
As to the third question, though it is really irrelevant to the
question of whether there is or is not a designer, is either a
pseudo-problem (as Jones hints) or is a *trivial* problem,
depending on what is meant by the question.
Usually, the question is intended to mean something like:
What is the purpose of life as determined by some outside
source or force or being or thing? This is the pseudo-
problem version of the question. Obviously, it's also a
*loaded* question because it *assumes* that there is such a
meaning of life.
But, we can ask the question in a more rational way, also:
What ultimate value should we pursue in life? In this case,
the *basic* answer is trivially easy: One's own
happiness/wellbeing/satisfaction. The "unpacking" and
explication of this answer, of course, is *not* trivially easy,
since we need to determine what real human nature is and
what *objective* needs are implied by that nature in the
context of the universe we find ourselves in.
Am I going to bother to prove that my view is correct? No,
not at the moment, because I'm getting tired and want to go
spend some time with my wife. However, I will urge the
reader to consider these propositions:
1. We have a built-in good-feeling/bad-feeling response
mechanism that motivates our actions on the basis of
what we believe (at least at an emotional level) about
the situation we are in and what we take to be our
purpose.
2. We don't have any *basic* choice about this (and, on
what basis would we actually make and act on such a
choice, if we did?).
3. The means whereby we can *succeed* in achieving and
sustaining happiness as well as we can are fairly broad
but nevertheless limited. Some things work, others do
not. A person may think, for example, that a life of
theft will make him happier, but such a view is based
on a corrupted view of human nature and human needs.
4. Even if some philosopher provides some abstract,
Rationalistic "proof" that our purpose is something else
other than our own deepest satisfaction in life, if that
purpose does not *somehow* serve to promote such
satisfaction, why should we care about it even in the
slightest except as a bizarre philosophical argument? In
other words, even if we suppose that Kant was, in some
bizarre sense, *right* about adherence to duty, why
should we give a damn about such disconnected-from-
life "rightness"?
5. "One's *own* happiness? But that's *selfishness*, isn't
it?" Answer: No, at least not in the ordinary sense of
"selfishness." In a technical and philosophical sense of
selfishness, in which it means the rational and long-
term pursuit of what one actually needs as a human
being in order to life a deeply satisfying life, the answer
would be "yes," but that's *not* what people normally
mean by "selfishness." *Human* life is deeply social
and relationships are extremely important to long-term
deep satisfaction in life. Acting in destructively
"selfish" ways is also *self-destructive* and thus *not*
in one's *actual* objective interests. We should all
*want* other people to rationally seek their own
happiness, because human self-interests are *primarily*
mutual. Conflicts of the interests of different people are
normally superficial. The old Hobbesian view of self-
interest is simply false; it stands up neither to
philosophical nor scientific examination of human
nature and human needs.
Enough already. Next question?
Chris Cogan
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