- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Whew ! This conversation is seeded with so many of Kauffman's linguistic inventions that it exhausts the meaning of meaning: "life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness (of the whole universe, no less), reductionism (sounds like the old deconstructionism from the academic literary scene), and the evolutionary emergence of the human heart". This last one is a real doozie ! Do we need a god to help us express our human "hearts" ? Dawkins' explanations are much more convincing. Read "The Selfish Gene" and the "Blind Watchmaker". No need for heavenly "explanations".
As is revealed in the writings of so many religious apologists like Kauffman, it seems rather clear that he is profoundly frightened and needs to conjure a verbal exposition for denying Weinberg's "meaninglessness". In contrast, Weinberg is sensible and brave enough to face what he sees as evident reality in so far as we can perceive it. And Dawkins, too, is far more cogent than any of the apologists for a god - - out there somewhere.
The universe may indeed ultimately be "meaningless" but our lives are not, and very large numbers of us do not need a god to give it meaning. We have our own meaning, even if it is illusory or temporary. We have each other, people who are real to us, not a lexicon of arcane words hoping to secure meaning. And we have the ineffable beauty of nature in all its manifestations and at all its levels. Any scientist who observes it up close is awed beyond words. And he does not perceive a god somewhere waving a wand to give it meaning - - unless, like Kauffman, he needs that supernatural crutch.
"God is enough for me ?" Most cosmologists prefer to say
"NATURE is enough for us. We do not DENY a god; we simply do not need to invoke one. And we do not need philosophical sophistry to explain nature. But the scientific explanation will take a great deal of time because we need to gather EVIDENCE - - and lots of it because our world and the universe are very complex.
"God" is just an easy way out - - and not a very convincing one.
