Purposeful universe

Fernando Kaskais

Dec 1

A kind of perfection; Berbers of the Ait Addidou tribe, Imilchil, High Atlas, Morocco (1986) by Harry Gruyaert. Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Neither atheism nor theism adequately explains reality. That is why we must consider the middle ground between the two

Philip Goff is professor in philosophy at Durham University, UK. He blogs at Conscience and Consciousness, and his work has been published in The Guardian and Philosophy Now, among others. He is the author of Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (2017), Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness (2019) and Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023), and the co-editor of Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism (2022).

If you're interested in the themes of this essay, join us at Sophia Club London on 3 December 2023 to explore quantum cosmology and the origins of reality.

If you don't believe in the God of the Bible or the Quran, then you must think we live in a meaningless universe, right? People get stuck in dichotomies of thought. If you don't like Soviet communism, then you must be in favour of US-style capitalism. Well, not if there are political opinions other than those two (which of course there are). Another dichotomy is between traditional religion and secular atheism. Whose team are you on, Richard Dawkins's or the Pope's? Over a long period of time, I've come to think that both these worldviews are inadequate, that both have things about reality that they can't explain. In my book Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023), I explore the much-neglected middle ground between God and atheism.

I was raised religiously, although the Catholicism of my parents was more about getting the community together than accepting dogmas. From an early age, the secular world all around me was much more of an influence than Sunday school, and by the age of 14 I self-identified as an atheist. It never occurred to me that there was a credible option between these identities: the religious and the secular. Of course, I was aware of the 'spiritual but not religious' category, but I was socialised to think this option was unserious and essentially 'fluffy thinking'. And thus I remained a happy atheist for the next 25 years.

This all changed a mere five years ago when I arrived as a faculty member at Durham University, where I was asked to teach philosophy of religion. It was a standard undergraduate course: you teach the arguments against God, and you teach the arguments for God, and then the students are invited to decide which case was stronger and write an essay accordingly. So I taught the arguments against God, based on the difficulty of reconciling the existence of a loving and all-powerful God with the terrible suffering we find in the world. As previously, I found them incredibly compelling and was reconfirmed in my conviction that there is almost certainly no God. Then I taught the arguments for God's existence. To my surprise, I found them incredibly compelling too! In particular, the argument from the fine-tuning of physics for life couldn't be responded to as easily as I had previously thought (more on this below).

This left me in quite a pickle. For me, philosophy isn't just an abstract exercise. I live out my worldview, and so I find it unsettling when I don't know what my worldview is. Fundamentally, I want the truth, and so I don't mind changing my mind if the evidence changes. But here I was with seemingly compelling evidence pointed in two opposing directions! I lost a lot of sleep during this time.

A few weeks into this existential morass I was peacefully watching some ducks quack in a nearby nature reserve, when I suddenly realised there was a startingly simple and obvious solution to my dilemma. The two arguments I was finding compelling – the fine-tuning argument for 'God', and the argument from evil and suffering against 'God' – were not actually opposed to each other. The argument from evil and suffering targets a very specific kind of God, namely the Omni-God: all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good creator of the universe. Meanwhile, the fine-tuning argument supports something much more generic, some kind of cosmic purpose or goal-directedness towards life that might not be attached to a supernatural designer. So if you go for cosmic purpose but not one rooted in the desires of an Omni-God, then you can have your cake and eat it by accepting both arguments.

And thus my worldview was radically changed.

One of the most fascinating developments in modern science is the surprising discovery of recent decades that the laws of physics are fine tuned for life. This means that, for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall within an incredibly narrow range. Like Goldilocks's porridge, these numbers had to be just right, not too big and not too small...

more...

https://aeon.co/essays/why-our-universe-can-have-cosmic-purpose-without-god