Is the universe meaningless?

Influential scientists, like Lawrence M. Krauss, insist that the universe is meaningless, or as Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg put it, “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”1 Furthermore, scientists have drawn an arbitrary line between the living and the inanimate roughly at the level of the virus, the principal characteristic of a living thing being that it reproduces itself.

These ideas have entered Western consciousness to such a degree that most people now take for granted that the universe is indeed meaningless and mostly inanimate. In other words, there is no room for God and thus the rational person must become an atheist.

Alternatively, one may become a fundamentalist and accept that a traditional God miraculously placed life into his inanimate world exactly as written by the ancients who subsequently sanctified their own words, which requires one to deny much of modern thought. These are the two poles of the Christian West and both maintain that the universe is inanimate.

A third option, to which I subscribe, is to reject unsupported extrapolations of the scientific narrative and approach sacred texts from a metaphorical perspective with the understanding that our ancestors were not rigid, literal-minded people, but were highly imaginative in their attempt to describe their own human experience of reality. This implies that sacred texts should be read metaphorically because the authors had to use a great deal of metaphor in order to convey the meaning of the literal events included in those same texts. Our ancestors lived a life rich in meaning and their imaginations were perhaps less shackled than the modern western mind by presumptions about how the universe “must be.”

Meaning

Alan Watts insisted that you are the universe experiencing itself, which is both poetic and literally true.

Is this universe meaningless? Is humanity meaningless? Is your existence pointless?

If humanity is meaningful, can a meaningful being declare that the body to which it belongs – the universe – is meaningless? Can a universe that contains meaningful beings be, itself, meaningless?

These questions cannot be addressed within the paradigm of the scientific method; not even the aggregate of all scientific theory can help us decide whether or not the universe is meaningful. One can say, “my life has no meaning,” but even this statement must be doubted because meaning emerges unbidden by virtue of one's relationship(s). One's life has meaning as soon as one interacts with the world, even if you don't know what that meaning is. Furthermore every living thing interacts with the world – there are no exceptions because even conception involves interaction with the world – thus every living thing has meaning. Meaning does not suddenly spring into existence when you discover it anymore than did the atom. Neither does one's ignorance make meaning go away, thus meaning stands transcendent to the objects that carry it.

The question of meaning strikes at the heart of the human condition and the psychoanalytical theory of Object Relation is concerned with uncovering the nature of one's relationships with the world in order to relieve the suffering caused by erroneous beliefs that one has attached to these relationships. In other words our relationships have meaning with real world consequences, and everyone has a relationship with “reality” — which is the secular equivalent of the word “God” — a relationship that I believe is damaged by the sterilized view of the universe as lifeless and meaningless.

A modern branch of philosophy called absurdism does broach the topic and its proponents argue that life has no meaning. Many of their arguments seem to hinge on the fact that the meaning of something must stand in relation to something else that is meaningful. Thus when it comes to the universe, that “something else” must be God, itself a contentious topic, but there we must go.

For the science-minded, the photon serves as a useful simile to conceptualize the nature of meaning: just as a photon is the carrier of the electromagnetic force, so are we carriers of meaning. And since we carry meaning, the universe has meaning. But what meaning or purpose might the universe have?

Immanent God

The second profoundly damaging presumption is that the universe is inanimate and not, itself, a being. How can we be fully alive if our extended body, the universe, is not alive? This conundrum sets the stage for a fracture in the psyche.

For convenience, we have separated the universe into two broad categories – animated and everything else (the inanimate) – which allows us to focus on things immediately relevant to our survival: other animated things. This is a very useful division but at the same time, it is arbitrary.

Living things are continuous with the non-living universe, in fact we are entirely made of “inanimate” matter – the atoms which form our molecules, bones, teeth etc. Some argue that life is an emergent property of the inanimate universe, but this is hand-waving of the same nature as the claim that consciousness is an emergent property of life, which is currently under question.

In his essay, “What Makes Us Human?” Harvard psychologist Dr. Robert Brooks suggests that our humanity is defined by consciousness – more specifically, consciousness, empathy, creativity, resilience and the pursuit of meaning and purpose – and yet scientists cannot get a grip on what consciousness is. To make matters worse, a new theory suggests that consciousness may have preceded life and directed evolution. Thus the most valued characteristic of humanity, namely our consciousness, existed before primordial life emerged. What does that make of our division between life and the inanimate universe?

This is only a theory of course, but it must be emphasized: the characteristic that makes us most human, consciousness, may have existed before primordial, single-celled living organisms appeared on Earth! Not only did consciousness exist prior to life but the theory also claims that it called life into existence, which is exactly the opposite of our present presumption that consciousness is an emergent property of life. This is an extraordinary claim, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand and some of the greatest minds on the planet take it seriously.

If we take the universe to be conscious, capable of calling life into existence and directing evolution, then in relation to humanity it is, at a minimum, the immanent knowable dimension of God. I say “at a minimum” because conceptually, an entity worthy of the term “God” must be, in part, unknowable by more limited beings such as ourselves – he must have a transcendent dimension.

The immediate value of this new model of consciousness and God lies in its ability to break our minds free of the nihilistic presumption that the universe is inanimate and meaningless, and open our minds to revel in awe at the miracle of existence itself.

Aristotle claimed that, “happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence,” and further rationalized the central position of happiness thusly:

“And of this nature happiness is mostly thought to be, for this we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further: whereas honour, pleasure, intellect, in fact every excellence we choose for their own sakes, it is true, but we choose them also with a view to happiness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy: but no man chooses happiness with a view to them, nor in fact with a view to any other thing whatsoever.” [link here]

To paraphrase: every endeavor has happiness as an implicit consequence of success, but happiness itself needs no other goal, and is its own justification. Happiness, or joy, is unique in this manner.

With the above in mind, the Universe can best be understood as immanent God in the process of being born, rather than God's finished product as posited by traditional religion, and it brought forth life in order to experience joy through us. In this model, consciousness, living things and inanimate matter together form one experiential being with differentiated parts, not unlike our own bodies.

In their book, “The Universe Story,” cultural historian Thomas Berry and mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme described the universe as having three properties: differentiation, community, and subjectivity. As differentiated parts of the universe we exist in relationship – in community – with one another, the ultimate purpose of which is simply to experience the subjective joy of existence. We can see this joy emerge spontaneously in every child, but it is too often crushed in a world made blind by its own nihilistic hallucinations.

Convinced by our own presumption that the world is meaningless and inanimate, the birth of God goes unnoticed and the soul goes unnurtured. The child that goes unrecognized as a carrier of meaning and joy, itself grows blind to its own true nature. All too often the soul within withers, and by adulthood becomes impossible to rescue. This is an immense tragedy and amounts to a form of neglect, which I will expand upon in a future essay.

If our joy is the joy of the universe then it is incumbent upon us – it is our purpose – to remove all stumbling blocks to its full experience, both in the world and in our own minds. Joy is both the purpose and birthright of every living thing and its absence is an indication that the soul has been bound and gagged within. The absence of joy should be seen as a symptom of an underlying illness with social, intellectual and psychological components, and approached with an eye to curing it as one would cure any other disease. 

The opportunity to experience joy makes the universe meaningful.

Steve Brule