Living without God

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Friday, September 26. 2008

Jim Manzil at NRO writes, about Weinberg's Without God in the NY Review of Books:

Steven Weinberg (Nobelist in physics) says this in the recent essay �Without God� in the New York Review of Books:
[T]he worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions.
Really � why not?

Indeed, the materialistic, "scientific," and utilitarian views of life are cold as ice. But real scientists aren't cold. They are as emotional and "spiritual" as everybody else.

Posted by The Barrister in Religion, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 11:22 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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"And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions."

Correct. We still have life to live. Your choice as to how you want to live it: Happily or as a Stepford person.

Is this not obvious?
`

#1 Meta on 2008-09-26 12:33 (Reply)

Yeah, even if one want to follow a 'cold' perspective, scientifically, those chemical processes are the result of successful generations of creatures that succeeded in reproducing.

If it is all random, then I'm sure there were variants that had no emotional reaction to their children or themselves. And when they were threatened, those people did nothing. Their DNA trail ended inside the belly of an animal or at the tip of a spear.

My dad used to say this;
"There are no real pacifists. Do you know why? BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL DEAD! THAT'S WHY!"
-- and he was right.

#2 _Jon (Link) on 2008-09-26 13:09 (Reply)

Thomas Nagel wrote a good essay about this once. It was called "the absurd".

"An impersonal perspective doesn't necessarily lead to nihilism. It may fail to discover independent reasons to care about what subjectively concerns us, but much that is of value and significance in the world can be understood directly only from within the perspective of a particular form of life, and this can be recognized from an external standpoint. The fact that the point of something can't be understood from the objective standpoint alone doesn't mean it must be regarded objectively as pointless. "

"If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism* or despair. "

In other words, care about what you care about and do what needs doing. But don't take yourself too seriously.

Sounds like good advice to me.

* "heroism" - this isn't an argument against heroism in the normal sense of the word. He's using the term to refer to an attitude toward life recomended by the existentialist philosoper Camus.

#3 random passerby on 2008-09-26 14:08 (Reply)

CS Lewis noted that if you wished to look at Pointillist painting in a reductionist way, it would never be more than just dots of color. No one can prove there is an actual picture there, just blobs of paint. He then extended it to all paintings, which could all be reduced to mere blobs of paint if one chose, with no one able to prove you wrong.

Sure, you can have that world if you want it.

#4 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2008-09-26 14:45 (Reply)

Paul F. Schmidt, author of Religious Knowledge, pointed out that while drugs can induce religious experience, only the genuine article is free of hangovers.

#5 Ron Hardin (Link) on 2008-09-26 15:09 (Reply)

For those interested in shifting paradigms, try this--

http://www.mindbodysymposium.com/.

Took place at the UN of all places. If you have a few free hours I believe you will find it interesting.

#6 Bob on 2008-09-27 03:15 (Reply)

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Friday, September 26. 2008

Living without God