Meaning in the Multiverse? 

Theism not only presents a more reasonable and satisfying explanation for things like the existence of the universe and the origin of life, but also provides a foundation for meaning and purpose. Indeed, when Richard isn’t trying to make an argument for atheism, he seems to understand that, in an atheistic universe, life is ultimately meaningless: 

In our worldview, we are just another tiny byproduct of nature, special in no sense to anyone but among ourselves, subject to a plethora of random accidents and forces, and there is no perfect or supreme being at all, least of all us.[i] 

[E]ven in this very rare, habitable pond called earth, life has a really difficult time surviving—we barely struggle along on this tiny little planet, in brutal competition for scarce resources, on a microscopic island that will be melted by the sun in a relatively short time, if it isn’t wiped out by meteors or interstellar radiation before then. . . . Clearly, we are not made for this universe.[ii] 

Nevertheless, Richard can’t allow Christianity to have an advantage over atheism (“We have meaning but you don’t!”), so he distorts the Christian argument to make it easier to support his own view: 

Nor do we need to be some superbeing’s creation for our lives to have value. After all, believers seem comfortable with the fact that God was not created, yet his life has value.[iii] 

According to Richard, the Christian argument is that only created things have meaning. But since God is uncreated, Christians must acknowledge that uncreated things can also have meaning. Thus, life can be meaningful even if we aren’t created. 

The problem, of course, is that Richard’s supposedly Christian argument isn’t the Christian argument at all. Christians don’t argue that only created things have meaning; rather, they argue that since our deeds are significant to no one but ourselves, and since we will soon come to an end, everything we do is ultimately meaningless. An atheist is entirely justified if he asks, like King Solomon, “What advantage does man have in all his work Which he does under the sun?”[iv] The intellectually honest answer for atheists is that we gain no more than poor Sisyphus gained by rolling his meaningless stone. The fact that our world has more variety than that of Sisyphus doesn’t change the human predicament. Shakespeare summarized this position well:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.[v] 

According to Richard, our universe is one of an infinity of universes, with nothing significant about our own except that the laws turned out in such a way as to allow life. However, this only adds to our insignificance, for even in our own universe we don’t seem to matter much, let alone in the multiverse. The Milky Way is a mere drop of light in the great cosmic emptiness. Our sun is rightly labeled a “yellow dwarf,” for it is a pygmy in our runt of a galaxy. Earth is a speck of dust floating around a dwarf, and we humans are barely particles by comparison. Nothing we do will ever change anything in the grand scheme of things. We came and we will go, but the universe will never notice. Even if we spend our entire lives improving society, we will all soon be wiped out, and it will be as if we had never existed. Whether we feed the poor or eat them, whether we raise a family or murder a family, whether we fight crime or sell crack, the end result is the same. In the end, nothing will be any different just because humans were here. Though many atheist apologists do their best to avoid this line of reasoning, it is a completely rational and consistent way to look at the world if God isn’t part of our worldview. 

However, adding God to the picture changes things. While the universe does not notice us, God does. What we do in the present matters eternally, for there are eternal consequences for our actions, whether good or bad. Thus, my decision to feed a person instead of eating him really makes a difference. The Christian argument, then, is that for our lives to have any lasting meaning, there must be something that lasts. For our lives to have any permanent significance, there must be something permanent. Ironically, Richard’s position occasionally seems consistent with the Christian view: 

In my vocabulary, life has meaning to the degree that it has any significance or importance to anyone.[vi] 

It follows from this statement that since our lives will ultimately have significance to no one (once our world has perished), our lives are ultimately insignificant. Richard may claim that our lives can have meaning in some limited sense, and I wouldn’t disagree. But he must acknowledge that this limited meaning is, in the end, just as meaningless as anything else. Atheists shouldn’t be ashamed of this fact. Instead, they should embrace this inevitable outcome of their position. Richard, however, not only refuses to make this admission (in his section on meaning, that is), but also goes even further by arguing that humanity may be eternal after all: 

If we actually wish to live forever ourselves, or for our descendants to do so, our only prospect is a human technology of immortality.[vii] 

Your mind-pattern can in principle be formed out of many different materials, not just the one we happen to be made of, so it remains possible that we might be able one day to “transfer” our minds to a more durable, enduring medium, like an electronic brain, and thus achieve immortality that way. This would indeed be a life after death—the death of our original bodies and, to borrow a phrase from Christian theology, a resurrection in a new ‘more glorious’ body.[viii] 

We might even make immortality possible. It may even happen that, in the fullness of time, we will be able to transfer our minds, by transferring the patterns of our brains, into computer-simulated worlds that are in even more perfect regulation than the physical world, a true paradise. And this simulated universe, and the computers that produce it, would itself be a self-sustaining, self-maintaining, self-repairing, self-expanding artificial organism. It is possible it will never die.[ix] 

This idea, of course, is absurd, and it shows how far Richard is willing to go in order to match the arguments of Christianity. It is absurd because it could never work, even if we developed all the necessary technology (and I don’t think we can). Here’s why. Even if I could copy the pattern of my brain into a computer program, this would have nothing to do with a transfer of consciousness. Even if scientists were to make a clone identical to me in every way, with even the same memories and experiences, this would not be equivalent to transferring my mind to anything else. At best, it would be something identical to me, but it wouldn’t be me. From my perspective, I would still grow old and die, even if there were a million clones just like me. In short, a mind could only be transferable from one physical medium to another if the soul were some sort of spiritual substance that actually leaves one medium and goes to the other. Thus, while Richard strongly criticizes mind-body dualism[x], his theory of consciousness-transfer requires it. Unless he is willing to accept a radically different concept of the soul, he must acknowledge that atheism can offer no hope for immortality. 

In an even more futile attempt to assert the eternality of our actions, Richard goes so far as to appeal to God’s point of view as a defense of his own: 

[F]rom a point of view outside of time, everything—past, present, and future—exists eternally: our lives sit forever like pearls on a string of time. What we do with our life, what we make of it, how we enjoy it, can never be taken away. It becomes a part of what exists, adding to its value, like gems in a purse.[xi] 

Notice that Richard appeals to “a point of view outside of time.” From such a point of view, where all of history is visible at once, our lives would be forever present and valuable, “like pearls on a string” or “gems in a purse.” But Richard doesn’t believe in a point of view outside of time, so his argument becomes: “If there were a timeless observer, which there isn’t, our lives would have meaning.” Just as Richard’s desire for immortality demands mind-body dualism, so also his desire for meaning demands a point of view that only God could ever hold. 

Richard attempts to rescue his groundless position with a volley of indefensible arguments and poetic language meant to stir up the emotions (recall his “gems in a purse”) rather than compel the mind: 

By existing, and making of ourselves something good, we give ourselves and each other value, we create purpose and meaning.[xii] 

Just as theists understand God’s love as giving God himself and the universe value, so naturalists understand our love as giving ourselves and the universe value.[xiii] 

Our being here, to acknowledge it, to study it, to know it, and to love it, gives the universe meaning, not the other way around.[xiv] 

And for us, the sages have said it for millennia: it really is love that is key—love of learning, love of doing, love of others, love of ideals, love of country or cause, anything, everything, is the foundation of meaning.[xv] 

Even when I look at something magnificent in nature—the stars, the wilds, the physique of a sea lion, the beauty of a nebula—I think to myself “How fantastic!” How pointless that beauty would be if I didn’t notice and appreciate it. How valuable I am because I can.[xvi] 

Putting all this together, we find that love is the foundation of meaning. Our love for things gives the universe meaning, and since we create meaning for the universe, our lives have meaning as well. Just as God’s love gives him meaning, so our love gives us meaning. 

Richard is grasping at straws, and using them to build more straw men. First, theists don’t argue that God’s existence has meaning because he loves; however, we might argue that God’s love has meaning because he exists—eternally. Second, if atheism is true, then I respond to Richard’s “Argument from Love” with the words of Tina Turner: “What’s love got to do with it? What’s love, but a secondhand emotion?” Why should an emotion that was programmed into us during our evolutionary development because it aided our survival be a foundation for meaning? We could just as reasonably say that the foundation of meaning is power, or big breasts, or loyalty, or selfishness, or puppies. It seems as if Richard is appealing to people’s admiration for love (brought about largely by the spread of Christianity) in order to conceal the fact that he doesn’t have a logical argument for meaning. Third, using Richard’s method of argumentation, anything could be used to suggest that our lives have meaning. Let’s call this my “Argument from Lucky Charms”: 

Think about a box of Lucky Charms. Without me, there would be no one to eat this cereal. The orange stars, yellow moons, pink hearts, and green clovers would all be meaningless without me! To think that so many flavored marshmallow bits depend upon me for their meaning! How important I am! How pointless cereal would be without me! 

Fourth, let us not forget that these arguments supposedly come from a skeptic, who tells us that we shouldn’t believe anything until it’s been proven. If Richard would turn on his skepticism for even a second in the presence of his own arguments, they would melt like ice cream. Therefore, Richard’s defense of meaning in an atheistic universe fails miserably. It’s not surprising that his chapter on the meaning of life is among the shortest in his book (three pages), and that it ends with three paragraphs on how to deal with depression. As it turns out, despair flows naturally from the spring of atheism. This doesn’t mean, of course, that all atheists are depressed, for many aren’t. But it does mean that a reasonable, intelligent atheist can logically conclude, based on his worldview, that life is meaningless, that neither love nor happiness make an iota’s difference in the cosmos, and that suicide is perhaps a rational alternative to meaningless living. Even Richard acknowledges the rationality of suicide when one is overcome by despair: 

When we have exhausted all options, and still conclude there is no longer any prospect of happiness, death becomes an acceptable alternative.[xvii] 

This is the crucial difference between atheism and Christianity when it comes to meaning. While both Christians and atheists are free to believe that life is meaningful, only the atheist is free to believe that life is meaningless. Despair thus makes perfect sense for an atheist, but it makes no sense at all for a Christian. The rational atheist is consistent with his beliefs when he flings himself from a bridge; the rational Christian may only do so while bungee-jumping. .

Go to chapter 6