My case on science and the Big Questions

Hah. I know, right, I feel that some people are already sick of it.

First of all, before anything else though, realize that it's important to be clear about the distinction between "meaning" as it is used in connections with questions about the meaning of life and "meaning" as scientists use it. You can also use this before having to learn the secrets of the initiates and their strange beliefs about history -- I would recommend you people to read about that, it's truly fascinating.

A boy arranges to meet his girlfriend for a date, but she stands him up. He's hurt and angry. He wants to understand the painful thing that's happened to him. When he tracks her down, he interrogates her. His repeated question is WHY?
... because I missed my bus, she says,
... because I was late leaving work
... because I was distracted and didn't notice the time
... because I'm unhappy about something.
And so he presses and presses until he gets what he's after for (sort of):
... because I don't want to see you anymore.

When we ask WHY, it can be taken in two ways: either as in the girl's first, evasive answers, as meaning the same as HOW, that is to say requiring answers which give an account of a sequence of cause and effect, of atom knocking against atom; -- or, alternatively, WHY can be taken in the way the boy wanted to be answered, which is a matter of trying to winkle out INTENTION.

Similarly when we ask about the meaning of life and the universe we're not really asking HOW it came about in the cause-and-effect sense of how the right elements and conditions came together to form matters, stars, planets, organic matter and so on. We're asking about the intention behind it all.

So the big WHY questions -- WHY life? WHY the universe? -- as a matter of quite elementary philosophical distinction, cannot be answered by scientists, or more accurately not by scientists acting in their capacity as scientists. If we ask "WHY are we here?" we may be fobbed off with answers which -- like the girl's early answers -- are perfectly valid, int he sense of being grammatically correct answers to the question, but which leave a twist of disappointment in the pit of the stomach, because they don't answer the quetsion in the way that deep down we want it answered. The fact is that we all have a deep-seated, perhaps ineradicable longing for such questions to be answered at the level of INTENTION. The scientists who don't grasp this distinction, however brilliant they are as scientists, are philosophical morons.

Obviously we can choose to give parts of our lives purpose and meaning. If I choose to play football, then kicking the ball into the back of the net means goal. But our lives as a whole, from birth to death, cannot have meaning without a mind that existed beforehand to give it meaning.

The same is true of the universe.

So when we hear scientists talk about the universe as "meaningful", "wonderful" or "mysterious", we should bear in mind that they may be using these words with a certain amount of intellectual dishonesty. An atheistic universe can only be meaningful, wonderful or mysterious in a secondary and rather disappointing sense -- in the same sense that a stage conjuror is said to be "magic". And, really, when it comes to considering the great questionsof life and death, all the equations of science are little more than difficult and long-winded ways of saying "We don't know."