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Wednesday, November 19, 2008 12:00 AM

God enough

We should see the ceaseless creativity of nature as sacred, argues biologist Stuart Kauffman, despite what Richard Dawkins might say.

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  • Wednesday, November 19, 2008 10:49 AM

    Mistaken About Meaninglessness

    Kauffman is mistaken in his conception of the problem of meaninglessness. To Kauffman and those who think like him, that existence is meaningless is equivalent to saying that it can't be made meaningful. It's a deeply paranoid belief in the meaning of my existence being guaranteed by some Big Other (if not God, then Nature or History), without which life is unbearable. My objection to Kauffman's pessimism is that we are responsible for the meaning of our universe, of our lives---not the other way around. Meaninglessness does not preclude meaning. Kauffman suffers from what Sartre called "bad faith."

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