Category: mortality

People weigh in on the meaning of life

March 22, 2025 • 12:00 pm

In 2013, I posed some questions to readers about the meaning of life, and there were a lot of responses (373 of them!). To quote part of my post:

Here’s survey I’m taking to see whether a theory I have, which is mine, bears any resemblance to reality. Here are two questions I’d like readers to answer in the comments. Here we go:

If a friend asked you these questions, how would you answer them?

1.) What do you consider the purpose of your life?

2.) What do you see as the meaning of your life?

There was general agreement that the meaning and purpose of life is self-made: there was no intrinsic meaning or purpose.  Only religious people think there’s a pre-made meaning and purpose, and it’s always to follow the dictates of one’s god or faith. And there aren’t too many believers around here.

Now the Guardian has an article posing the same question, but asking 15 different people, many of them notables. The answers vary, and I’ll give a few (click the screenshot below to see the article). As Reader Alan remarked after reading the Guardian piece and sending me the link,  “No one mentions God and none seem to have a God shaped hole in their lives.” 

So much for Ross Douthat and what I call “The New Believers” to go along with “The New Atheists.”  The New Believers I see as smart people who have thrown in their lot with superstition and unevidenced faith; they include Doubthat, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, and, apparently, the staff of The Free Press. 


Bailey’s intro:

Like any millennial, I turned to Google for the answers. I trawled through essays, newspaper articles, countless YouTube videos, various dictionary definitions and numerous references to the number 42, before I discovered an intriguing project carried out by the philosopher Will Durant during the 1930s. Durant had written to Ivy League presidents, Nobel prize winners, psychologists, novelists, professors, poets, scientists, artists and athletes to ask for their take on the meaning of life. His findings were collated in the book On the Meaning of Life, published in 1932.

I decided that I should recreate Durant’s experiment and seek my own answers. I scoured websites searching for contact details, and spent hours carefully writing the letters, neatly sealing them inside envelopes and licking the stamps. Then I dropped them all into the postbox and waited …

Days, and then weeks, passed with no responses. I began to worry that I’d blown what little money I had on stamps and stationery. Surely, at least one person would respond?

. . . . . What follows is a small selection of the responses, from philosophers to politicians, prisoners to playwrights. Some were handwritten, some typed, some emailed. Some were scrawled on scrap paper, some on parchment. Some are pithy one-liners, some are lengthy memoirs. I sincerely hope you can take something from these letters, just as I did.

And his question:

I am currently replicating Durant’s study, and I’d be most appreciative if you could tell me what you think the meaning of life is, and how you find meaning, purpose and fulfilment in your own life?

A selection of my favorites:

Hillary Mantel, author (I’m reading her Wolf Hall at the moment; it won the Booker Prize):

I’ve had your letter for a fortnight, but I had to think about it a bit. You use two terms interchangeably: “meaning” and “purpose”. I don’t think they’re the same. I’m not sure life has a meaning, in the abstract. But it can have a definite purpose if you decide so – and the carrying through, the effort to realise the purpose, makes the meaning for you.

It’s like alchemy. The alchemists were on a futile quest, we think. There wasn’t a philosopher’s stone, and they couldn’t make gold. But after many years of patience exercised, the alchemist saw he had developed tenacity, vision, patience, hope, precision – a range of subtle virtues. He had the spiritual gold, and he understood his life in the light of it. Meaning had emerged.

I’m not sure that many people decide to have a purpose, with the meaning emerging later, but some do. A doctor or nurse, for example, might see their purpose to save lives or help the ill.  I suppose I could say my purpose was to “do science,” but that’s only because that’s what I enjoyed, and I didn’t see doing evolutionary genetics it as a “purpose.”

Kathryn Mannix, palliative care specialist.  I always like to see what those who take care of the dying say about their patients, as I think I could learn about how to live from those at the end of their lives. Sadly, the lesson is always the same: “Live life to the fullest.” That is not so easy to do! Her words:

Every moment is precious – even the terrible moments. That’s what I’ve learned from spending 40 years caring for people with incurable illnesses, gleaning insights into what gives our lives meaning. Watching people living their dying has been an enormous privilege, especially as it’s shown me that it isn’t until we really grasp the truth of our own mortality that we awaken to the preciousness of being alive.

Every life is a journey from innocence to wisdom. Fairy stories and folk myths, philosophers and poets all tell us this. Our innocence is chipped away, often gently but sometimes brutally, by what happens to us. Gradually, innocence is transformed to experience, and we begin to understand who we are, how the world is, and what matters most to us.

The threat of having our very existence taken away by death brings a mighty focus to the idea of what matters most to us. I’ve seen it so many times, and even though it’s unique for everyone, there are some universal patterns. What matters most isn’t success, or wealth, or stuff. It’s connection and relationships and love. Reaching an understanding like this is the beginning of wisdom: a wisdom that recognises the pricelessness of this moment. Instead of yearning for the lost past, or leaning in to the unguaranteed future, we are most truly alive when we give our full attention to what is here, right now.

Whatever is happening, experiencing it fully means both being present and being aware of being present. The only moment in our lives that we can ever have any choice about is this one. Even then, we cannot choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond: we can rejoice in the good things, relax into the delightful, be intrigued by the unexpected, and we can inhabit our own emotions, from joy to fear to sorrow, as part of our experience of being fully alive.

I’ve observed that serenity is both precious and evanescent. It’s a state of flow that comes from relaxing into what is, without becoming distracted by what might follow. It’s a state of mind that rests in appreciation of what we have, rather than resisting it or disparaging it. The wisest people I have met have often been those who live the most simply, whose serenity radiates loving kindness to those around them, who have understood that all they have is this present moment.

That’s what I’ve learned so far, but it’s still a work in progress. Because it turns out that every moment of our lives is still a work in progress, right to our final  breath.

This is more or less what Sam Harris has to say in many of his meditation “moments.”  Sadly, living each day to the fullest is hard to do, at least for me.

Gretchen Rubin, author and happiness expert.  She’s written and studied a lot about happiness, so she should know:

In my study of happiness and human nature, and in my own experiences, I have found that the meaning of life comes through love. In the end, it is love – all kinds of love – that makes meaning.

In my own life, I find meaning, purpose and fulfilment by connecting to other people – my family, my friends, my community, the world. In some cases, I make these connections face-to-face, and in others, I do it through reading. Reading is my cubicle and my treehouse; reading allows me better to understand both myself and other people.

I agree with her 100% on reading, and there are many times that I’d rather be curled up with a good book than socializing. However, we evolved in small groups of people and clearly are meant to be comfortable in these groups and bereft without them. Though we can overcome that, evolution tells us a bit about what kinds of things we should find fulfilling.

Matt Ridley, science writer.

There never has been and never will be a scientific discovery as surprising, unexpected and significant as that which happened on 28 February 1953 in Cambridge, when James Watson and Francis Crick found the double-helix structure of DNA and realised that the secret of life is actually a very simple thing: it’s infinite possibilities of information spelled out in a four-letter alphabet in a form that copies itself.

I think he fluffed the question, which is given above.  He says nothing about how he finds meaning, fulfillment, and purpose in his own life. Nothing!

One more:

Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit:

What is the meaning of life? I can honestly say: I have no idea. But I write this in London, where I am visiting with my wife and two boys. And they are healthy and safe, and (mostly) happy, and there’s joy in watching their delights: a clothing stall with a jacket they’ve long wanted; the way the double-decker bus carries us above the fray; a monument to scientific discoveries beside a flower garden and goats.

I’m surrounded by evidence – of the blitz, D-day, colonies despoiled, JFK and MLK and 9/11 – that all could be otherwise. I hear about bombs falling on innocents, an uncertain election, a faltering climate, and many of us lacking the will (or charity) to change.

Yet still I marvel that we flew here in under 12 hours – while my ancestors required months and tragedies to transit in reverse – and that I will send this note simply by hitting a button, and we can love whomever we want, and see and speak to them at any hour, and a pandemic did not end my life, did not kill my children’s dreams, did not make society selfish and cruel.

And, for now, that’s enough. I do not need to know the meaning of life. I do not need to know the purpose of it all. Simply breathing while healthy and safe, and (mostly) happy is such a surprising, awe-inducing, humbling gift that I have no right to question it. I won’t tempt fate. I won’t look that gift horse in the mouth. I’ll simply hope my good fortune continues, work hard to share it with others, and pray I will remember this day, this moment, if my luck fades .

 This is an edited extract from The Meaning of Life: Letters from Extraordinary People and their Answer to Life’s Biggest Question, edited by James Bailey and published by Robinson on 3 April.

He finds meaning and purpose, as I’ve said myself, in simply doing what gives you pleasure, but Duhigg adds on that he extracts extra meaning from being amazed at what humans can do, and that he is not suffering like others.

Now is your chance to weigh in. How would you answer Bailey’s question? I would, as I said, say that there is no intrinsic meaning and purpose in life; I do what brings me pleasure or satisfaction, and then, post facto, pretend that that is my meaning and purpose.

Reader’s wildlife photos

April 8, 2023 • 8:15 am

Today we have another text-and-photo odyssey from reader Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. His text is indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The long dead speak to us

The Ancient Greeks and Romans shaped Western culture with their philosophy, laws, plays, poetry, treatises, historical narratives and memories. By and large, these texts were the works of the elite: educated white men high up in the pecking order (naturally, then, the Church of Woke loathes the Classics). But women, soldiers, slaves, ordinary citizens and assorted hoi polloi left their impressions on a few texts, clay and wood tablets (such as the ones in the Vindolanda museum), and epitaphs. Some of latter sound surprisingly contemporary and touching, considering how odd, cruel and violent the Ancients often seem to us.

All but two of the following images are mine, but most of the information comes from their respective museums (in parenthesis).

This thin marble plaque with a Greek alphabet inscription must have been secured to a wall, as indicated by traces of studs in the corners. There are also traces of the original red colour in the first and fourth lines. 3rd century AD (Cyprus Museum, Nicosia – CM).

This grave belongs to Evodia who enjoyed a happy life; the immortal fame of her modest nature is shining. But the sweet end of life has been decreed by the gods for all mortals and this nobody can ever avoid.

This lyrical funerary epigram in Greek consists of five elegiac couplets, but the last three verses are illegible. It was placed on the grave of Sostratis by her father, who expresses his grief for the premature loss of his daughter, before he could see her married. It is written in the first person singular as if the deceased girl is speaking. 1st c. BC (CM).

I, Sostratis, like a tender olive tree branch, was cut off by the wind from my father’s chambers. My wedding is like a meaningless name to you because the girl you have so caringly raised will remain unmarried. Yes, but since god has divorced me from such things, you should now enjoy your children who are still alive while I pray to the gods of the underworld….

This Cypro-syllabic inscription on limestone, possibly from 6th c. BC, is not completely legible because of some unidentified script. So we will never know the objective of this funerary stele; was it to celebrate Nikanor the brave? Nikanor the influencer? Forever the mystery of Nikanor (CM).

Nikanor the… who fell in battle.

If you ever studied Latin from a textbook, you may have come across this famous transcript from a tablet or pillar found in Rome, now lost, from 135-120 BC (image © Clauss et al. EDCS-Journal).

Stranger, what I say is brief. Stand still and read it. Here is the scarcely beautiful tomb of a beautiful woman. Her parents named her Claudia. She loved her husband with her whole heart. She bore two sons; of these she leaves one on earth; under the earth she has placed the other. She was charming in conversation, yet proper in bearing. She kept house, she made wool. I have spoken. Go your way.

Here’s the original, with its faulty syntax:

Hospes quod deico paullum est asta ac pellege / h(e)ic est sepulcrum hau(d) pulc(h)rum pulc(h)rai feminae / nomen parentes nominarunt Claudiam / su(ou)m mareitum corde deilexit s(o)uo / gnatos duos creavit horunc alterum / in terra linquit alium sub terra locat / sermone lepido tum autem incessu commodo / domum servavit lanam fecit dixi ab(e)i:

A plaque from 2nd c. AD (Capitoline Museums, Rome).

In this respectable tomb Glyconis lies serenely: sweet in name, but even sweeter in her soul. She never cared for splendid honours for her (too?) austere, but rather she preferred to be wild and pleasant, to be inebriated by wine (Bacchus) and to perform songs with simplicity. She often amused herself by weaving beautiful wreaths of flowers with sweet love for herself and for her children, who she left in puberty (the sons) she created were brothers in the likeness of Castor and Pollux. Worthy to enjoy a blessed and eternal life (lux), she hurried to where the good fates call (us). Publius Mattius Chariton saw to (the making of this tomb) for his well-deserving wife.

The original reads:

Hoc iacet in tumulo secura Glyconis honesto. / Dulcis nomine erat, anima quoque dulcior usque / que nucquam tetricos egit sibi lucis honores, / set magi(s) lascivos suabes, Bacchoq(ue) madere, / simplicitate sequi cantus. Mollesq(ue) coronas / lusibus ipsa suis generabat saepe et amore / dulce sibi natisque suis quos reliquit. / Castorea fratres sub imagine quos generavit. / Digna quidem frui perpetua de luce benigna. / set celerat quo nos fata benigna vocant. / P(ublius) Mattius toit Chariton coniugi b(ene) m(erenti) f(ecit):

The funerary stele of a Roman soldier who died naturally or was killed in Cyprus during Roman rule, 2nd c. AD. The Latin inscription speaks of a soldiers’ fate: to die before his time, away from home (CM).

Erected in memory of the centurion Caius Decimius, son of Titus from the tribe Stellatina.

A limestone funerary stele from the 5th c. BC. The middle-aged bearded man – the deceased – offered his right hand for a handshake, a sign of farewell. The parchment in the hand of the standing man suggests that the deceased was a man of letters (CM).

A marble funerary stele from Plakalona (Aptera), Crete, 3rd-4th c. AD (Heraklion Archaeological Museum).

Here I lie, Sympherousa, aged thirty, a foreigner of Libyan origin. Through prudence and affection in all my affairs I joined the dwelling of the gods and greatly for [my] attitude valued, in this valued city, among the people of Aptera, who too rewarded me with their grief at my sudden death, simply sending me off to Hades, [having laid me] in a grave. Farewell to all, you, passers-by, and you, people of Aptera, who with no hesitation laid me to rest in this great urn, with passion and honour. I, Nikon, wrote this. Her onetime husband. Now no more: a victim of the evil eye… the woman that I desired so much, for her prudence, as I wrote above, and I am helpless. I shout, but she does not hear. To hold on to [this] love, I will continue to be, who I was, but I can do nothing; she flew straight away like the wind.

An inscription by Philon dedicated to the goddess Nemesis, who punishes mortals for their sin of hubris (nemesis and hubris are much in vogue in the age of Putin). This limestone plaque may have been at the base of a statue or built into a wall of a temenos (a portion of land assigned as an official domain, or dedicated to a god). 1st c. AD (CM).

Philon, the son of Tryphon, made and erected me, the powerful goddess Nemesis and the personification of Justice, born to punish the irreverent and to bring, on the other hand, fortune to those who know how to be just, in the holy temenos, thus fulfilling a wish:

A Funerary stele of a hoplite (a citizen-soldier of Ancient Greek), who typically was kitted out with a helmet, a spear, a shield and a sword. The inscription mentions the name and the hoplite’s hometown: Kardia, in Thrace. This stele may have been dedicated to a soldier who fought on Cyprus during the Persian wars. ~400 BC (CM).

Dionysio(s) Kardiano(s)

Cypro-syllabic understatement on a funerary stele from 5th c. BC (CM).

[This stele belongs to] Divina, who has no life:

A wall graffito in cursive Latin found in Pompeii in 1913 but lost two years later when the wall fell after torrential rains. The graffito’s image survived thanks to a line drawing by the Italian archaeologist and epigraphist Matteo Della Corte (1875-1962) (image from Della Corte, 1965. Case ed abitanti di Pompei. Faustino Fiorentino, Naples). The poem has several versions; here are two of them:

Nothing is able to endure forever;
Once the sun has shone brightly, it returns to the ocean;
The moon grows smaller, who just now was full;
The savagery of winds often becomes a light breeze.

Or:

Nothing can last forever:
the sun, when its course is complete,
hides itself behind the sea; the moon, once full, now wanes.
Thus, love’s wounds shall heal and fresh breezes will blow once more.

And the original:

nihil durare potest tempore perpetuo
cum bene sol nituit redditur oceano
decrescit phoebe quae modo plena fui
ventorum feritas saepe fit aura l[e]vis:

This one is not about the dead, rather those hanging by a thread. This structure is a 5th c. alms box at the Congregation of St Michelle in Fano, Italy. This hole in the wall is a gateway to a tale of etymological evolution for word geeks. The expositorum part is straightforward: from the Latin verb exponere, it means abandoned, exposed: the pauper, in other words. But here’s the journey of Eleemosynis: from Ancient Greek ἔλεος (éleos, pity) and ἐλεημοσύνη (eleēmosúnē, alms, charity, mercy), it jumped to Latin as eleemosyna(alms); it then morphed into eleemosynarius in Medieval Latin before being shortened by natural selection and becoming almes in Old German and ælmesse in Old English. From there it mutated into ‘alms’, ‘almonry’ and ‘almoner’. But the word’s ancestral English branch did not go extinct, so today we also have the rare and endangered ‘eleemosynary’. The eleemosyna that did not migrate to Anglo-Saxon territories metamorphosed into the Italian elemosina and the Portuguese esmola for ‘alms’:

Death is not all about doom & gloom. This 3rd to 2nd c. BC double-sided votive relief depicts the head of Dionysus on the front side. On the reverse, a couple is engaged in the oldest of all couple’s games (CM).

A world survey: Do we need God to be moral?

July 24, 2020 • 8:45 am

A new study by the Pew organization (click on screenshot below or get full pdf here) surveyed 38,436 people in 34 countries across the globe, asking them questions about how important God or religion is to them and—today’s topic)—do you really need God to be moral.  The methods included both face to face and phone surveys.

The overall results aren’t that surprising: more religious countries and more religious people within countries think that “belief in God is necessary to be moral and have good values”, while richer countries (which are also less religious countries) tend to harbor respondents who don’t think faith is necessary for morality. And the proportion of those who see God as important in this respect is waning in most of Western Europe over time, though growing in Russia, Bulgaria, Japan and Ukraine).

The overall results show a pretty even division across the globe, though religion plays an important role in most people’s lives. But these results aren’t that informative given the observed variation across countries (see below):

Below is a plot showing the variation across the surveyed countries. Look at the first two lines showing a substantial difference between the U.S. and the more secular Canada.

Overall, I would have thought that even religious people wouldn’t assert that you need God to be moral, mainly because there’s so much evidence that nonbelievers are moral. In fact, the most secular countries in the world—those in Scandinavia—could be construed as being more moral than many of the more religious countries, like Islamic countries of the Middle East. Further, the Euthyphro argument, which shows that our sense of morality must be prior to belief in God (unless you believe in Divine Command theory), disposes of the we-need-God-to-be-moral claim. But of course few people have thought the issue through that far.

Muslim and Catholic (or devout Christian) countries show the strongest belief in God as a necessity for morality. 90% or above ratings are seen in the Philippines, Indonesia, Kenya, and Nigeria.

Three more plots. The first one shows the familiar pattern of richer countries adhering less to religious dicta than poorer ones. In this case there are multiple confounding factors, for “belief in God is important for morality” is surely itself highly correlated with simple “belief in God.” The relationship here is very strong. My own view is that of Marx: countries where you are in bad shape and can’t get help from the government tend to be those where people find hope and solace in religion.

This is also true within countries: there’s a consistent pattern in the surveyed nations of people with higher income being less likely to see God as necessary for morality (and of course the higher-income people are less likely to be religious in general).

As expected, people with more education tend to connect morality with God to a lesser extent. Again, this is probably because of a negative relationship between education and religiosity:

In the comments below, reader Eric said I may have “buried the lede” by neglecting the rather large drop between 2002 and 2019, in the proportion of Americans who think God is necessary for morality. This is part of the increasing secularization of the U.S:

 

Finally, there’s a plot showing the variation among countries on the general importance of religion. Western Europe, Australia, South Korea, and Japan lead the pack for secularism, while Catholic, Muslim, and African Christian countries are those seeing religion as more important. That’s no surprise:

In truth, the failure of nearly half the world’s people to see that atheists can be moral, which should dispose of the “God-is-necessary” hypothesis, is depressing. But one could argue that for many religious people, “morality” consists largely of religious dictates: what you eat, who you sleep with and how, how you feel about gays and women, and so on. So, for example, Catholics and Muslims might see the free-loving and egalitarian Scandinavians as immoral.

Snide believer says atheists make up fairy tales to find meaning in life

March 29, 2018 • 12:30 pm

There’s a new piece in The Federalist that tries to take down atheists because, says author Richard Weikart, we have no better grounding for the “purpose and meaning” of our lives than do religionists. In fact, we’re worse in that endeavor than are religionists who find purpose and meaning from their faith. Here’s Weikart’s sorry piece (click on the screenshot):

I didn’t know what the Federalist was or who this dude Weikart is, so I looked them up. According to Wikipedia, The Federalist is “an American English-language online magazine that covers politics, policy, culture, and religion. The site was co-founded by Ben Domenech and Sean Davis and launched in September 2013.  Domenech serves as publisher of The Federalist. According to Domenech, the site is dedicated to discussing ‘the philosophical underpinnings of the day’s debate’ instead of focusing on what he calls ‘the horserace or the personalities. The Federalist has been described as influential in conservative and libertarian circles.”

Okay, so the conservatism explains the atheist-bashing. But who is Weikart? The Federalist describes him as “professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and author of The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life and Hitler’s Religion.” It conspicuously omits that Weikart is also a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s [DI’s] Center for Science & Culture, a creationist think tank, that he’s a Christian creationist, and that his books have been criticized by genuine scholars. The Hitler book, for instance, was funded by the Discovery Institute and has the thesis that Darwinism gave rise to the Holocaust. That idea, and Weikart’s views, were handily rebutted by my colleague Bob Richards in his excellent and well-researched essay “Was Hitler a Darwinian?” (Richards’ answer was “a very loud and unequivocal No!”)

Well, that’s Weikart’s background, which does explain his strong animus towards atheists. But what about his arguments? First, I’ll preen a little because he puts me in august company, even though I don’t deserve it. And that is the company of those who deny an external purpose and “transcendent meaning” for our lives. But, say I and others, we can and do have self-created meanings of our lives:

Atheists portray themselves as arch-rationalists who embrace reality without flinching. As I explain in my recent book, “The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life,” many prominent atheist thinkers, such as Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, have insisted that because there is no God, there is also no cosmic purpose, no objective morality, and no transcendent meaning to life. The atheistic Duke University philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg dismissed meaning and morality as an illusion in a 2003 article, “Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life.”

. . . The prominent atheistic evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has also expressed dismay that anyone would dare suggest that atheists don’t have any meaning in their lives. But if you dig deeper—for example, by actually reading the empirical study—you find that atheists who insist that non-religious people can find meaning in life have changed the meaning of the word “meaning.”

Okay, so what is this “empirical study” he touts, and how have we changed the meaning of “meaning” as it applies to our lives? Here’s how Weikart describes the study, which actually supports the notion that atheists don’t lead lives of nihilism and anomie:

The 2018 study in question by David Speed, et al, “What Do You Mean, ‘What Does It All Mean?’ Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning,” [JAC: reference and link at bottom, free pdf here] used surveys to try to figure out if atheists find meaning in life or are nihilistic. This survey defined someone as nihilistic if he or she upheld the position: “In my opinion, life does not serve any purpose.”

This study found that atheists and non-religious people are not nihilistic, because they claimed that they did have a purpose in life. This is an interesting finding that seems to refute the oft-repeated charge (levied by religious folks) that atheists are nihilistic.

However, there is a problem with this finding. The survey admitted the meaning that atheists and non-religious people found in their lives is entirely self-invented. According to the survey, they embraced the position: “Life is only meaningful if you provide the meaning yourself.”

Thus, when religious people say non-religious people have no basis for finding meaning in life, and when non-religious people object, saying they do indeed find meaning in life, they are not talking about the same thing. If one can find meaning in life by creating one’s own meaning, then one is only “finding” the product of one’s own imagination. One has complete freedom to invent whatever meaning one wants.

This makes “meaning” on par with myths and fairy tales. It may make the non-religious person feel good, but it has no objective existence.

Yes, Weikart thinks that religion (read: his Christianity) imparts an objective purpose in life, and when we atheists criticize that as purpose coming from a “fairy tale”, well, at least religious people’s “purposes” are objective!:

. . . apparently many atheists and non-religious people have a hunger for meaning and a sense of moral rectitude that their worldview cannot satisfy. Sure, they are free to invent their own meaning and morality, but then they should be honest and admit that their meaning and morality has no advantage over the meaning or morality religious people put forward —or for that matter, it has no advantage over the meaning and purpose evil people invent. Their self-created meanings are every bit as much “fairy stories” as the religious ones they like to lampoon.

First of all, Weikart doesn’t recognize the irony of his implication that “See? Atheists believe in fairy tales. They’re just as bad as we are!” Well, he might respond that his Christianity is certainly not a fairy tale, because it’s not only based on empirical truths like Jesus Man being resurrected, but also gives us an objective morality and an objective purpose in our lives. But why is his Christianity true and Islam and Hinduism, which inspire different purposes, false?

But step back and consider the question: what is that meaning and purpose? As we know, one can discern an infinite number of meanings and life-purposes from just the Bible alone, for its “objective” lessons are debatable. Is the lesson to do what God tells us to do? In that case, let us stone adulterers and kids who curse their parents, and let us forsake our families and homes to follow Jesus. And how do we follow Jesus? Does our purpose include fighting against abortion and gay marriage, not to mention the Evil Materialism of Evolution? (To my mind, any purpose that makes its adherents tell lies about science, as does the Discovery Institute and Weikart himself, is a nefarious purpose.)  Discerning purpose from the Bible is at best an act of pure subjectivity, and one that comports, as Plato realized, with a pre-existing and non-Goddy set of values.

And which scripture should the faithful pick to give them purpose, and which faith should they follow? What about Muslims? The Qur’an and its interpretations can lead to purposes completely different from those of Christians, and include exterminating unbelievers and scrupulously following the dictates of the Holy Book itself—something that Christians have learned to turn into malleable metaphors.

Any atheist can tell you that a self-constructed meaning of life is infinitely preferable to one depending on fictitious books. For the main error that Weikart makes is thinking that there’s something fictitious, something “fairy-tale-ish”, about divining one’s own meaning and purpose from our individual preferences, tastes, and secular beliefs. The bases for our “meanings” are, I’ve maintained, based on our preferences—preferences themselves grounded on secular reason and one’s personal set of emotions and pleasures. If these are the things that give us meaning, then what does it mean to say that they “have no objective existence”? They certainly do—just as objective an existence as the religious delusions (by this I mean thoughts and beliefs) of credulous believers like Weikart.

Steve Pinker’s latest book, Enlightenment Now, makes a persuasive case that progress in human welfare over the last centuries has been promoted not by religious faith, but by reason, humanism, and science. If we depended purely on faith and revelation to solve our problems, we’d have gotten nowhere. Those same virtues apply when an atheist discerns whatever meaning in life he or she finds.

And, in the end, yes, the invented meanings and purposes of those atheists who are humanists—most of us—are superior to a blind adherence to ancient dogma that brooks no dissent or reason.

Many readers have denied that they have any meaning or purpose in life, even self-created ones. That’s okay with me, for I think that while they can’t declare a purpose, they enact one by doing what they find fulfilling.

h/t: Larry

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Speed, D., I. Thomas J. Coleman, and J. Langston. 2018. What Do You Mean, “What Does It All Mean?” Atheism, Nonreligion, and Life Meaning. SAGE Open 8:2158244017754238.

A neurosurgeon on medicine, euthanasia, and God

July 20, 2017 • 11:00 am

I’m off to my GP as I injured my shoulder, most likely acquiring bursitis, and will probably get a cortisone shot, which a friend just informed me “really hurts!” Now what was the point of telling me that? It adds no value to my day except a soupçon of fear (I’m not afraid of needles, but I don’t like pain).

As we age, our bodies gradually accumulate infirmities and scars: now I have two crooked fingers and a ruined toenail. (The day I moved into my office, the building manager and I had to move my huge and heavy oak desk out of the elevator, since the movers would only take it to the building entrance. It dropped onto my foot, completely severing the bone of the left big toe, causing me to faint, and then to visit the hospital where they pulled off the toenail with pliers, causing me to faint again. The doctor said the nailbed was screwed, and the toenail would always be deformed. True!)

But enough of these infirmities: this is by way of saying that this is the last post for today unless Grania is kind enough to start an open discussion thread.  I simply call your attention, via reader Paul, to an interview in the Guardian with neurosurgeon and author Henry Marsh, who wrote a highly acclaimed memoir called Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery . Has anyone read it?

It’s a nice interview and I’ll just excerpt two bits:

There has been a slew of books about that old-fashioned idea of what makes “a good death” recently. Do you welcome them?
I think Atul Gawande is a very good writer, but I didn’t get on with his book Being Mortal that much. He only very grudgingly says that maybe doctor-assisted suicide is a good idea. I am a great proponent, to the extent I feel I would take it up myself – though you never know, when push comes to shove, what you will decide. But it does seem to me increasingly that the two markers of a civilised society are bicycles and doctor-assisted suicide. It is not about licensing doctors to kill people. It is about allowing everyone with mental capacity to make a choice about how they would like to end.

I guess religion still partly gets in the way of that idea
It seems to me that the only rational case for theism is that God is a complete bastard. I have seen a lot of children die with inoperable brain tumours, particularly one horrible one called a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, for which there is no treatment. When I go out to Ukraine their parents are lining up to see me in the hope of a miracle. It just seems the proof for God is so very thin. “There’s a friend for little children above the bright blue sky.” I mean, really?

. . . You clearly left the NHS [National Health Service] dispirited. Can you see grounds for optimism?
I am afraid I don’t. Politicians seem unable to stand up to the public and say: if you want better health care you are going to have to pay for it. Instead they still say it is all about management and reorganisation. The evidence is clearly out there in the other wealthy European countries, though: we spend far less on healthcare in both absolute and per capita terms than they do, and almost across the board you see that in the relative outcomes.

Marsh has a newish book, Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery. 

A disproof of objective or “scientifically based” morality

November 27, 2015 • 10:45 am

I’ve made this point before, but have revisited it after my recent post on animal suffering and how we shouldn’t ignore it. When thinking about how to judge human versus animal suffering, I realized that there’s no objective way to do this, and that when trying to figure out how to treat animals, we must ultimately rely on subjective judgment. While science can help us make such judgments, it cannot give us objective answers, even in principle.

For example, is it right to do animal experimentation on primates? In so doing, primates and other mammals are injured or suffer, and yet there may be some ultimate benefit for humanity (this, of course, isn’t guaranteed). How many mouse lives or monkey lives are worth one human life, especially when animal testing doesn’t always provide cures? We think it’s okay to swat mosquitoes or kill a nonvenomous snake that’s simply annoying or scaring us, but we don’t think it’s right to kill a dog who’s barking at us. Where do you draw the line?

Or if, like Sam Harris, you think that “well being” is the objective criterion for morality, so that the most moral act is the one that maximizes overall well being, then your difficulty becomes this: how do you determine the relative weights of animal well being versus human well being? Science can’t answer such a question because we have no idea how to quantify well being among species, which depends on knowing how an animal subjectively perceives and values its existence. (I also question how science can judge the relative weights of different kinds of human well being, but I’ll leave that aside.) Is it immoral to swat a fly only because it’s annoying you with its buzzing? Is it immoral to kill a harmless spider simply because you don’t like spiders?

I am still traumatized at having seen a golf-course employee, several decades ago, flooding mole tunnels with water, and then killing the moles who came out by whacking them with a wrench. I’ll never forget that sight, which made me weep. Is the increased well-being of golfers worth more than the reduced well being of the whacked moles?

But it gets more serious when you come to food animals. Is it immoral to eat animals? How do you measure their reduced well being at losing their lives versus our increased well being when we eat a nice chicken or steak? Is it immoral to eat eggs from battery chickens? If so— because you weigh their suffering as heavier than our increased well being—then what about humanely raised animals? They may have a nicer life and be killed more humanely, too, but don’t they value their own lives? They’ve evolved, after all, to avoid death, and yet we kill them. To me that means that they don’t want to die, but we don’t know what “want” really means in an animal whose brains we can’t fathom.

I see no way to arrive at objective answers to these questions, for even in principle I can’t see how one can give relative values to the well being of different species. Of course one could punt and say that morality applies only to humans, but we know that’s untrue. We prosecute people who torture cats and dogs, and we have, by and large, stopped using animal testing for cosmetics. The latter is an explicit judgment that animal suffering outweighs the increased well being produced by applying blush or mascara.

Now I admit that I’m not a trained philosopher (though I do have one paper in a real journal to my credit), and perhaps others have considered this question in light of the notion that we can have objective moral truths. I’ve read Peter Singer, who’s told me personally that he thinks there are such truths, but I’ve never asked him to tell me how one can objectively arrive at his notion (which I share) that “animal liberation” is a very important cause.

In the end, like all morality, animal “rights” comes down to issues of preference and subjective judgment. Science and empirical observation can feed into those issues, but at bottom it’s still subjective.  I agree with Sam that in general our moral judgments, at least in our own species, correspond to utilitarian notions of overall well being, but I don’t agree that one can make such judgments objectively.

My title may reflect a bit of hubris, but I invite readers to tell me where I’m wrong.

“Heaven vs. hospital”: dying 5-year-old given a Hobson’s Choice by Christian parents

October 29, 2015 • 8:30 am

Here’s a short but ineffably sad piece at PuffHo about a five-year old girl from Oregon, Juliana Snow, who has a horrible and terminal neurological disease that will end her life her very soon:

Juliana Snow has suffered from an incurable neurodegenerative illness called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, or CMT, since birth. [JAC: description of the illness here.] The child can’t move or eat, wears a breathing mask at all times, and is confined to the four walls of her family’s Portland home.

Juliana is sick of repeated visits to the hospital, and so her Christian parents have had a conversation with her about whether she wants to prolong the largely fruitless treatment, which buys her a few more weeks of misery, or simply stay at home and die in the presence of her family. The sticking point for me is that they’re telling her what I see as a lie: that she’ll go to Heaven, where she’ll some day be reunited with her family.

On her own website, Juliana’s mother Michelle recounts a conversation she had with her daughter:

Mom: You don’t want to go to the hospital, right, J?

Juliana: I don’t like NT [naso-tracheal suction, the thing she hated the most from the hospital].

M: I know. So if you get sick again, you want to stay home?

J: I hate NT. I hate the hospital.

M: Right. So if you get sick again, you want to stay home. But you know that probably means you will go to heaven, right?

J: (nods)

M: And it probably means that you will go to heaven by yourself, and Mommy will join you later.

J: But I won’t be alone.

M: That’s right. You will not be alone.

J: Do some people go to heaven soon?

M: Yes. We just don’t know when we go to heaven. Sometimes babies go to heaven. Sometimes really old people go to heaven.

J: Will Alex [her 6-year-old brother] go to heaven with me?

M: Probably not. Sometimes people go to heaven together at the same time, but most of the time, they go alone. Does that scare you?

J: No, heaven is good. But I don’t like dying.

M: I know. That’s the hard part. We don’t have to be afraid of dying because we believe we go to heaven. But it’s sad because I will miss you so much.

In a later post, Michelle recounts what she told Juliana about Heaven:

We had taught Julianna our belief that there is a better place for her. In heaven, she will be able to walk, jump and play. She will not need machines to help her breathe, and she will be able to eat real food. There will be no hospitals. Very clearly, my 4-year-old daughter was telling me that getting more time at home with her family was not worth the pain of going to the hospital again. I made sure she understood that going to heaven meant dying and leaving this Earth. And I told her that it also meant leaving her family for a while, but we would join her later. Did she still want to skip the hospital and go to heaven? She did.

PuffHo recounts how the parents’ wish to give Juliana the choice is controversial among medical ethicists:

In response to the mom’s blog posts, some have praised the family’s decision, while others have been vehement in their criticism. The issue has even divided the medical ethics community.

“This doesn’t sit well with me. It makes me nervous,” Dr. Art Caplan, head of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, told CNN. “I think a 4-year-old might be capable of deciding what music to hear or what picture book they might want to read. But I think there’s zero chance a 4-year-old can understand the concept of death. That kind of thinking doesn’t really develop until around age 9 or 10.”

Dr. Chris Feudtner, another renowned bioethicist and pediatrician at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, disagreed with this sentiment, however.

“To say [Juliana’s] experience is irrelevant doesn’t make any sense. She knows more than anyone what it’s like to be not a theoretical girl with a progressive neuromuscular disorder, but to be Julianna,” he said.

In general I agree with Feudtner. What harm is being done here, even if we’re pretty sure that Juliana isn’t going to go to Heaven after she dies? How much of the child’s decision really rests on her notion that she’ll have a nice afterlife, versus on the reality of the medical torture she’s enduring now? This is a tough question, but I can’t bring myself to urge the parents (who, as Christians, wouldn’t do it anyway) to tell the child that when she dies, that’s it. This may be one of those rare cases where faith-based delusion is actually helpful.

When I was young, my 13-year-old cousin had liver cancer, and we all knew he was going to die. But he was told he had “pleurisy” and would eventually recover. Whenever I visited him in the hospital, I felt horrible, as if we were all participating in some hideous charade, and that my cousin really should be told that he was going to die. But he was 13, not 5.

As a nonbeliever, I think that Juliana’s parents are deluding her with false promises of her fate after death. But I see no way to prevent them from doing so, and, in truth, little harm in it. Would she seek more medical care if she knew death was final? Can a five-year-old make any kind of responsible decision about this? Should the parents have decided for her, without deluding her about Heaven?

These are difficult questions, and I have no answer, though I lean towards accepting the parents’ wishes. Reader are invited to weigh in below.

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Juliana and her dad. (Credit: CNN)