I'm an atheist, yet I don't think science can answer why we exist and what is the meaning of life. I think those questions are syntactically valid but semantically invalid. We kind of (in the 'broad strokes' you say) think () we know how we got here, how life got started, etc. But why? How do you know that? It's an honest question because, again, I don't think that question makes sense so I'd love to know your take on it.
() I say we think we know because I'm actually agnostic (I typically say 'atheist' because it stops some conversion attempts I'm not looking for from even starting, judging by your two comments on this thread I reckoned I can give you the honest answer as you won't try to convert me into anything!) and I believe we can only know what we conclude from the information collected by our senses and our thinking process after that, but an error in either the information collection (think of how the first scientific estimates of the age of the planet were off by a long shot on account of choosing a poor thing to measure -- I'm thinking about the work of Halley here) or in the thought process would result in bad knowledge, and it seems to me there's a part of the scientific-minded population right now that has a blind spot for this: there's overconfidence in science.
A fair response to my blithe and confident answer. In general, though, we have figured enough out to understand our origin well enough to rule out religious theories in our existence. To reduce things the way you did is a denial of progress at some level, while couching it in caution against trusting science too far. Our first bridges sucked, now they are better. Our first stabs at cosmology were not much better than another religion, now they are better. Is there some bad knowledge kicking around in science? Of course. That is why I said in “broad strokes”.
To cut to the chase: our brains are just piles of chemistry. There is no meaning. We make it up, and that is ok. “Why” we exist is coincidence and millions of years of happy little evolutionary experiments blindly conducted by nature. Maybe there is a Deus ex Machina in there, but for our purposes does it really matter?
> “Why” we exist is coincidence and millions of years of happy little evolutionary experiments blindly conducted by nature.
I'm not religious either, but I always find this hard to believe. What are the odds nature happened to provide all the building blocks for us to be here to question our existence? It seems far more likely that (i) nothing would exist, (ii) the universe wouldn't have the right combination of properties and forces to maintain its own existence, or (iii) it would be a boring universe filled with a couple of basic elements capable of producing nothing of interest. Instead, we have complex life and we're here building iPhones and spaceships.
For that reason I can't believe there's a single universe and through coincidence it happened to contain everything needed for life. Even if we go with the multiverse theory and a near infinite number of universes, I still find it difficult to believe. You can argue the universe is filled with a bunch of garbage and we're assigning meaning and value to that garbage because it's us, and we want to feel important. However, I really don't feel like anything (and certainly not something as complex as us) should exist in the first place. I want to say it's too much of a coincidence to happen by chance, but at the same time, I don't have a better answer as to why we're here.
I think you are struggling with something I thought a lot about too. It is difficult for our brains to actually internalize the /immense/ amount of time evolutionary processes have been happening. It is so long and vast and our brains are barely good with comprehending hours and days. It is a mind bogglingly loooong time. Like really, really, really long. A lot can happen in a few billion years :)
I understand evolution and the time frame. I have no trouble with that concept. What I find difficult to believe is that a viable universe started in the first place to give evolution the opportunity to succeed.
Infinitesimally low probability doesn't imply impossibility. If the event is in the probability space then it can certainly happen, no matter how serendipitous we may find it.
What is so remarkable about the iPhone or the spaceship? Why is it worthy of note when compared to any other phenomena in the universe? What brings you to make a distinction between a live human body and an inanimate celestial body?
> What is so remarkable about the iPhone or the spaceship? What brings you to make a distinction between a "live" human body and an "inanimate" celestial body?
I'm not trying to say that humans are more important or meaningful than a rock. I agree with you that nothing inherently has meaning and it's an attribute we create and assign. I'm only saying that we're intelligent beings that are capable of some rather advanced tasks, such as creating a iPhone. In my opinion, it seems far less likely for us to exist than either nothing, or a simpler universe without us.
Yes, it's not impossible, just like I could throw a handful of sand in that air that falls to the ground and happens to write the story of my life. It's so unlikely though that I can't help but wonder if it wasn't just chance that we're here.
We agree on the meaning then! :)
This reminded me of the intro to “A universe from nothing”, where the author says (paraphrasing) “why is there life is the wrong question, but we can try to answer how is there life?”
It means (pun intended) that the meaning is not self sustaining term in our reality - there is no absolute meaning outside of our perception.
There is only relative meaning (as in what kind of meaning my perception assigns to things that can be observed by me - simply put - we create our own meaning).
It can be simplified further to there is no meaning or the meaning does not exist but in my opinion this is oversimplification and reeks of nihilism.
So if You look at things from the point of view described above the "why" question (which can be paraphrased to "what is the meaning") is wrong.
I also wanted to add that it's not that I think it is wrong to ask such questions, only that I think they're wrong when considered from within our system of knowledge, so I find them unanswerable.
Kind of how like "what kind of food does that digital computer like?" is a wrong question.
You're engaging with religion only as an explanatory mechanism for physical occurrences, whereas the weight of the argument for and against religion are on philosophical and logical grounds. It's not a strawman, as many people have used God to fill the gaps in our understanding of the physical world, but it's entirely irrelevant to the really interesting discussions on the subject. If you want to see what religious people are on about, and why some scientifically literate people continue to have faith you need to understand those arguments.
I mean, I grew up in a very religious environment and have met and had long discussions with religious scholars. You can couch it in as much sentimentalism and philosophy as you want, but to me it almost always falls apart when you dig to the real roots of religious scholarhsip and philosophy. Ultimately these people decide to have some level of faith in a thing that is contradictory to all evidence we have. It is an interesting thought experiment, but I can't find any principled reasoning behind it all at the bottom. Yes there are a lot of religious scholar types who will agree with all of science, and they continuously reform their belief system and philosophy around the scientific evidence. It is like having a belief system that wobbles and wiggles like Jello. Not to say that science has all the answers and is purely axiomatic, but at least that is its goal. Religious scholarship has a completely different agenda in my opinion and starts from a very different place when it tries to reason and I fundamentally disagree that it is a "really interesting discussion" beyond how people get sucked into believing it all. Without being dismissive, I do think I have a basic grasp of those arguments and I find them wholly lacking. A lot of it comes down to things their parents taught them and their inability to get rid of their deep seated beliefs about the nature of existence.
The meaning of life is to reproduce, which implies to survive until that age at least. Without this, there would be no continuous life and the "meaning" question cannot even be asked, as it's a question asked by living things. Or only one living thing that we know of.
The why question has no answer nor will it ever have an answer. Life doesn't need justification or orchestration. It's a freak accident of molecules. It could have never happened and it can end by means of a disaster and the universe will happily continue without it.
As to what a human can/should to with their life other than not dying and trying to reproduce, that's an entirely cultural question. Cultural is a fancy word for: we made it up.
