Chapter Three

All is vanity and a chasing after wind?

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.

Hamlet Act II, Scene 2

Whether humans are created by God or evolution or both they are a thing of beauty and wonder; well, some of the time anyway. The most astonishing thing about them is the phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness is a mystery - no one knows how it comes about - yet we all know what it is since we experience it. Throw a rock off a cliff and it has no choice but to fall as the Law of Gravity dictates. It knows nothing. Humans still have to obey the Law of Gravity, and all the other laws of physics; but they are conscious beings. They know things, which means they have a choice about what they do. A human can choose to create the parachute.

When humans choose to act, it’s usually with some purpose in mind. By purpose I mean the intended end result of an action. They can design objects with a purpose. By design I mean the intelligent planning that lies behind an action or the creation of an object. They can also design things without a purpose; they can create things for their own sake.

But do human beings themselves have a purpose? Is the universe we live in designed for a purpose, and are humans part of that purpose? That can only be so if there is a God: a supreme consciousness which decided to create the universe with a purpose in mind. There can be no design without a designer.

Is there a meaning to life? If we are going to ask this question, we need to start by defining what we mean by the word meaning! In my experience, when discussing the meaning of life, people tend to use the phrases ‘purpose of life’ and ‘meaning of life’ more or less interchangeably, and I will do so too. Often when people say they find meaning in life, they are talking about the things they value, or a lasting feeling of satisfaction, fulfilment and purpose. Clearly, we can all find ‘meaning’ in this sense, whatever our beliefs about God might be; and it is important, essential even, that we do. So, to pre-empt any confusion, let me emphasise that when I say life is meaningless or purposeless, I am not referring to purpose and meaning of this kind, but rather of the ultimate kind.

As we noted, the theory of evolution by natural selection tells us, plausibly, that human life came about through a process, natural selection, which is, in itself, purposeless and meaningless, and acts with blind, pitiless, indifference. Thus, it lends support to the idea that human life is, in an ultimate sense, purposeless and meaningless.

Natural selection does not necessarily produce life forms which are faster, stronger, more intelligent, or indeed more complicated than what went before. It produces life forms which are better adapted to their environment. It may produce life forms which are faster, stronger, more intelligent, or indeed more complicated if that makes them better adapted, but this is not a logical necessity. Being uncomplicated can be, and often is, an advantage. Some of the most successful and enduring species on earth are very simple compared with human beings. For example, ferns have existed for 400 million years and are abundant on the earth in spite of the fact that they don’t move very fast and are not obviously capable of intelligent thought. Tigers, on the other hand, which evolved a mere three million years ago, and are faster, stronger, more intelligent, and indeed more complicated than ferns, are in danger of extinction. As for our species, how long will we last? My money’s on the ferns! There was nothing inevitable about the evolution of human beings, or beings such as ourselves, if life on earth was produced by natural selection alone. Of course it is possible, given enough time and enough variation in the environment, that natural selection, acting on its own, would eventually produce life forms who write War and Peace, build the Hubble Space Telescope, paint the Sistine Chapel or their equivalents, and wonder what it’s all about; but this is not obviously so.

It is in this sense that evolution by natural selection can be described as random. It is not like a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 by chance; that is, it’s not just dumb luck. Neither is it like the proverbial large number of monkeys with typewriters eventually reproducing the complete works of Shakespeare by random typing; that is, it’s not just a matter of enough time and sheer weight of numbers either; although that’s clearly part of it. It is random in the sense that, as far we can tell, there are many different ways that evolution on earth could have turned out. It just so happens that the way it turned out produced us.

Evolution by natural selection gives us a reason to believe that human life is purposeless and meaningless. We can now add to that the fact that natural selection also gives us a reason to believe that the existence of human life is random. So, the existence of human life: random, no design, no purpose, no meaning. If atheism is true then this is what you would expect to see, so the idea of natural selection lends support to atheism. This situation certainly appears to be incompatible with Christianity, but then one would have to say, it’s not obviously compatible with any philosophy of life!

The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up the situation as he saw it at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins--all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. (Russell, ‘The Free Man’s Worship’)

It’s a famous quote, and a nice turn of phrase, but unfortunately unyielding despair is not a firm foundation and you can’t build anything on it, let alone the soul’s habitation.

Russell was a very logical man but sometimes he took it too far. When his first child was born, he was asked: ‘is it a boy or a girl?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered. True, but not helpful!

Actually, on the subject of logic, there is further bad news. As Professor David Horrobin points out, the theory of evolution by natural selection, undermines our faith in the reliability of human reasoning. This is because, according to the theory, our minds evolved not to discover the truth as such, but rather to cause our ancestors to behave in ways which led to success in survival and reproduction. We have reason to doubt, then, that our thought processes can be relied on in matters which go beyond our ability to survive and reproduce (Horrobin, 17-18). Even Darwin himself worried about this. In a letter to William Graham in 1881 he wrote: ‘with me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy’ (Darwin, ‘Letter to William Graham’).

So, is the theory of evolution by natural selection sawing of the branch it’s sitting on? It relies, like all scientific theories, and indeed any search for truth, on the faith we have in the reliability of human reason. And yet the theory casts doubt on that very thing.

Some would argue that if you ruthlessly follow through atheism to its logical conclusion, what you end up with is nihilism or absurdism or some other similar ‘ism’. There is no purpose to life, no meaning, no beauty, no truth, no reality, no good and evil (Craig, 65-92).

Some find this a relief, or even liberating. If you are a nihilist, either by conscious choice or by default, that doesn’t mean you have to be nasty or unhappy. You don’t have to be anything. And perhaps that’s the attraction.

In practice though, most people, even nihilists, need some idea of what their life is for, some idea of what they think is real, some idea of what they think is of value, in order to exist.

There are various ways in which you might respond to this situation. In my experience, the most common response from my atheist friends is that they agree with me that atheism implies that human life has no ultimate meaning or purpose, but take the view that it’s all rather academic, or words to that effect. In practice people who are atheists do find meaning in life in all sorts of ways, they say. I return the compliment by agreeing with them - also with a but. Can atheists find meaning and purpose in life without believing in God? Of course they can. That is just an observed fact … up to a point.

Even the most mundane things we do can have a purpose. If I go down to shops to buy a pint of milk and newspaper, that has a purpose: so that I can have milk in my tea and read about the news. Does the fact that this has no ultimate purpose really matter? I still feel a sense of satisfaction that I have achieved something by my little outing. I don’t feel that I need to worry that it was not serving some higher end. I went to work as a science teacher in order to earn a living, which certainly has a purpose. I also, hopefully, succeed in teaching science to the students, which is I believe worthwhile in itself, as well as being useful to them in their future lives.

Is this not enough of a purpose for anyone, one might ask. It’s a tough one to call. Most of the time it is enough of a purpose, but the question ‘in the end, what’s it all about?’ isn’t going away. It haunts us, even if most of the time we are too busy living our lives to notice. It tends to push its way into the foreground in our darkest moments. Perhaps the answer is: ‘in the end, it’s not about anything’. As always, the Bard puts it best.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

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.

Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17–28)

If the answer is, in the end, it’s not about anything, then there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s no good saying, let’s believe in Christianity - that will give us a meaning. It won’t if it is false. The only reason for believing in Christianity is that you think it’s true. If it is not, and what Professor Russell says is correct, I think we would all rather embrace the ‘unyielding despair’ than pretend. We would want to face the truth because we believe in the truth. Our question in this book is not ‘can Christianity give us meaning?’ but ‘is Christianity true?’ However, perhaps considering the issue of meaning further can help us answer that question.

People, atheist or otherwise, find meaning in the love of family and friends – if they are blessed with that. They find satisfaction in their work. They find satisfaction in making things. They find meaning in giving and in serving others.

They find beauty in things created by nature and things created by human beings. They walk through meadow or moor or climb a hill or mountain and feel a sense of peace, connection, and a sense of awe. Humans have always looked up at the stars and felt a sense of wonder. The discoveries of science have increased our appreciation of how wondrous it all is, whether we look up to the skies or down here on the earth. We can also be moved by the beauty of a song or symphony, a great building or indeed a poem.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me prov'd,

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd. Sonnet 116.

Shakespeare leaves some people cold I know, but my reaction to this is wow, just wow! Atheists are moved by this as much as a religious person.

Even our old friend Bertrand Russell gets in on the act.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty, a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry (Russell, ‘Study of Mathematics’).

Mathematics leaves some even colder than Shakespeare. Try telling the bottom set, year 11 class, that mathematics in beautiful in the final period on a Friday afternoon, and see how far you get. Yet the beauty is there for those with eyes to see.

You can believe in truth, reason, good and evil without bringing God into it. Of course you can.

You can cultivate ‘faith, hope, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control’ without reading the Bible (Galatians 5:22,23; 1 Corinthians 13:13).

Likewise, you can avoid ‘adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these’ without being a church goer (Galatians 5:19-21).

In the first list there is meaning and goodness and in the second emptiness and destruction. You don’t have to be a Christian to see that.

You can do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus wasn’t the first to say this. Although it is possible to get hold of the wrong end of the stick. A boy once misheard the commandment as: do unto others before they do unto you.

Unfortunately, not everyone has a good experience of family life. For some, home is where the hatred is, as one song puts it. Not everyone has friendships. Some do not know the joy of human love. Loneliness has been described as the great plague of the age. Not everyone lives in the Lake District; many live surrounded by relentless urban ugliness in places where you cannot even see the stars. For some work is not rewarding, but endless, inescapable drudgery or even slavery. Not everyone understands that the first list above is good and the second evil. How would they learn such wisdom without a teacher? Prime minister Clement Attlee famously said that he believed in ‘the ethics of Christianity’ but not ‘the mumbo-jumbo’; but he had the advantage of a Christian upbringing which many people do not. If you grew up in a historically Christian culture, you will be influenced by Christian ethics, and the two lists above therefore might seem obvious to you; but they are not obvious to everyone. For some, finding meaning in life is not so easy; and yet even in the most difficult of circumstances people do. There is goodness and kindness to be found in the most unpromising of places.

People do not find meaning in serving themselves, in an excess of material possessions, or in seeking hedonistic pleasure. These things please for a while, but only for a while. At best they end in boredom, ennui. They can also end in emptiness, bitterness, loneliness and worse. As my dad used to say ‘if it wasn’t for our pleasures, we’d be happy’. People can work this out for themselves, although it does seem that this is one lesson every generation insists on learning for itself all over again. As George Bernard Shaw wrote: ‘A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a fool from his own’. The human race seems to be more fool than wise in this instance. Nevertheless, through experience, their own and that of others, atheists and Christians alike, can discover for themselves where the meaning of life is not found as much as where it is.

Certainly, you don’t have to believe in God to find meaning in life. But if we find meaning, goodness and beauty in a world where we have no right to find any, doesn’t this very fact suggest that there is more to this world than what we see? You don’t have to climb a hill or mountain to see that the world is beautiful, although it does help. From the top, we see that the world is indeed beautiful. It inspires a sense of awe. Atheists and believers have the same view and see the same beauty. A believer might think of the scriptures.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

    The expanse shows his handiwork.

Day after day they pour out speech,

    and night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech nor language,

    where their voice is not heard.

Their voice has gone out through all the earth,

    their words to the end of the world.

Psalm 19

Or perhaps even St Paul:

For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse.

Romans 1:20

I suspect no atheist ever has thought along the following lines in this situation:

I find this view beautiful and awe inspiring. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder or to be more technically correct, in the brain of the beholder. It makes no sense to say that what I see is beautiful in itself. In itself, it is just there. I find it beautiful and awe inspiring because natural selection caused me to evolve a sense of beauty and awe. This is because having a sense of beauty and awe gave my ancestors an evolutionary advantage. I know that having a sense of beauty and awe gave my ancestors an evolutionary advantage because they evolved a sense of beauty and awe. This means that beauty and awe don’t actually exist in any objective sense. They are things we enjoy but they are not real, only illusions produced by natural selection – a meaningless, purposeless process.

I can’t imagine a rambler taking a bracing and exhilarating walk up a hill, sitting down at the top to eat their lunch and enjoy the view, and then thinking anything like this. They would think this if they were following their atheism through to its logical conclusion, but they don’t. They will see the beauty and awesomeness and as real qualities that the hills, valleys and skies around possess just like their believing friends do. Perhaps, in spite of themselves, they are right to do so.

If the theory of evolution by natural selection is the explanation of life on earth, it is only the explanation up to the point where humans or proto humans acquired self-awareness, the capacity for independent reasoning, and a moral sense. Once this occurred, natural selection remained an important and unavoidable fact, but the evolution of humans started an entirely new and unpredictable phase.

It seems that since that time humans have transcended natural selection. Natural selection is a process without meaning, purpose or design. Yet humans find meaning, purpose, beauty, goodness and truth. They create, they destroy. They have become like gods, knowing good and evil. Perhaps these things came into being through some random but momentous accident. On the other hand, perhaps meaning, good, evil, beauty and truth already existed long before humans came along in the mind of God, and humans have reached the stage where they could sense and perceive them. These things seem to speak to our souls. That can only happen if we have souls.

This might lead you to consider the following argument:

1. If atheism is true then the beauty of nature is not objectively real
2. Therefore, if the beauty of nature is objectively real then atheism is false
3. The beauty of nature is objectively real
4. Atheism is false

The correctness of the conclusion in 4 in this argument depends on what you think of 3 of course. By objectively real I mean that the beauty of nature exists whether or not we are there to see it.  We discover or perceive the beauty that is already there. The alternative is to say things only seem beautiful to us; or not as the case may be. Atheists can say the later but not the former.

This thought was important to me in my journey of faith. It is the thing which tipped the balance for me. Until the age of nineteen I would have called myself an atheist. I was culturally Christian, in fact I regularly went to church since I was a member of the church choir; but I did not believe that God existed. It was the beauty of music that pushed me from being from nearly a Christian into taking the first actual step into faith. This for me led immediately to what I consider an experience of God’s presence with me and a powerful sense of joy. A sceptic would see this experience as an illusion of course. I wanted God to be real, they would say, so I took my feelings to be signs of God’s presence, but I misinterpreted them. In reality, they were just feelings, and feelings can be mistaken. I interpreted my feelings as an experience of the Christian God because I grew up in a Christian country and went to church. Had I been brought up in a county with a different religion I would have interpreted them as an experience of the God of that religion. These are fair points. Perhaps I did want the Christian God to be real, and humans can be very good and persuading themselves that the things they want to believe are true; but at what point does scepticism become unreasonable?

Here is a variation on the same theme.

1. If atheism is true then good and evil are not objectively real
2. Therefore, if good and evil are objectively real then atheism is false
3. Good and evil are objectively real
4. Atheism is false

Once again, the argument depends on what you think of 3.

I am not saying that atheists cannot be moral. That would be absurd. As a matter of fact, I am saying the exact opposite. Whatever our beliefs, and whether we are good or evil, we are moral beings. We can’t help it.

Some say that our sense of good and evil can be explained by the theory of evolution from natural selection (Poole, 106). It evolved from the need of humans to cooperate, they say. Humans evolved cooperation because that made them better able to survive and reproduce. There are behaviours in other types of animal which cooperate which resemble things that we might call moral behaviour in humans. I don’t doubt that this is how our sense of morality started out, but the behaviour of animals only resembles that of humans. Animals are not moral beings in the way that humans are. Problem solving behaviours and the use of tools in animals resemble human problem solving in some ways, but animals have yet to come up with a theory of cosmology or invent the computer, so there is a rather large gulf between the two. The same applies to our sense of right and wrong, good and evil. It is not reducible to the patterns of behaviour found in pack animals such as wolves or herding animals such as cattle, or even those of our closer relatives such as the other great apes. This is not just because, unlike them, we can apply reason to problems of morality. It is a long way from the kind of in group cooperation/out group hostility seen an animal behaviour to something like:

for I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me (Matthew 25: 35,36).

If we were to derive some principles of morality from our evolutionary past, we might base it on enlightened self-interest and the resultant principles would frequently resemble moral behaviour. For example, we might be kind to others in the hope that they will be kind to us in return. We might obey the law because we want to have the benefits of living in a law-abiding society, and a law-abiding society might punish us if we did not. But humans know perfectly well the difference between morality and self-interest, enlightened or otherwise. Sometimes doing the right thing goes against our self-interest.

If we explained the existence of morality using the idea of natural selection, we would not be explaining it but we would rather be explaining it away. This would suggest that like our belief in beauty, our belief in good and evil is some form of illusion, a product of a meaningless, purposeless process. Morality is important to us, central to us in fact. The logical implication of atheism, supported by the idea of natural selection, is that goodness is in the eye of the beholder, a matter of opinion. Yet the belief that good and evil are objectively real is a stubborn one.

For example, most people would consider sexual child abuse to be wrong. It’s evil. It doesn’t depend on which culture you come from. It doesn’t depend on your opinion. It is not in the eye of the beholder. Moral philosophers did not put vast amounts of time and effort into working out that it was wrong. They didn’t need to. It just is. Objectively, really wrong.

Does the persistence of our belief in the reality of good and evil point us to their actual objective reality? Perhaps they are not random by products of a meaningless and purposeless process after all. Perhaps goodness was there from the very beginning and therefore it’s shadow, evil, too.

St Paul writes that throughout the world there are people who know what good and evil are regardless of whether they know God or not.

For it isn’t the hearers of the [moral] law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law will be justified; for when Gentiles who don’t have the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying with them, and their thoughts among themselves accusing or else excusing them (Romans 2:13-15).

St Paul provides an alternative explanation for the fact that moral behaviour is found in human beings everywhere. Is he right? What do you think?

Summary

Often when people say they find meaning in life, they are talking about the things they value, or a lasting feeling of satisfaction, fulfilment and purpose. Clearly, we can all find ‘meaning’ in this sense, whatever our beliefs about God might be; and it is important, essential even, that we do. But do human beings themselves have a purpose? Is the universe we live in designed for a purpose, and are humans part of that purpose? That can only be so if there is a God: a supreme consciousness which decided to create the universe with a purpose in mind.

The theory of evolution by natural selection tells us, plausibly, that human life came about through a process, natural selection, which is purposeless and meaningless, and acts with blind, pitiless, indifference. Thus, it lends support to the idea that human life is, in an ultimate sense, purposeless and meaningless. This situation is certainly appears to be incompatible with Christianity, but then one would have to say, it’s not obviously compatible with any philosophy of life!

But if we find meaning, goodness and beauty in a world where we have no right to find any, doesn’t this very fact suggest that there is more to this world than what we see?

Does the persistence of our belief in the reality of good and evil point us to their actual objective reality? Perhaps they are not random by products of a meaningless and purposeless process after all. Perhaps goodness was there from the very beginning and therefore it’s shadow, evil, too.

 

Works Cited

Craig, William Lane. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. 3^rd ed., Crossway, 2008.

Darwin, Charles. ‘Letter to William Graham’, 1881. Darwin Correspondence Project https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-13230.xml accessed 31 May 2024.

Poole, Michael. User’s Guide to Science and Belief. 3^rd ed., Lion Hudson plc 2007

Russell, Bertrand. ‘The Free Man’s Worship’, The Independent Review, 1 (Dec 1903), 415-24. https://users.drew.edu/jlenz/br-fmw.pdf. Accessed 17^th May 2024

Russell, Bertrand. ‘The Study of Mathematics’, The New Quarterly 1 (Nov 1907). https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/br-ml-ch4.html, Accessed 17 May 2024.