On Questions About the Origins, if any, of the Universe, the Nature and Origin of Life, and the "Meaning" of Life

From: Chris Cogan (ccogan@telepath.com)
Date: Mon Jul 03 2000 - 00:57:49 EDT

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    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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