{"id":44002,"date":"2022-12-01T09:43:50","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T17:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=44002"},"modified":"2025-05-28T07:39:21","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T13:39:21","slug":"if-i-didnt-believe-part-ivmeaning-purpose-and-life-in-the-void","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/12\/if-i-didnt-believe-part-ivmeaning-purpose-and-life-in-the-void\/","title":{"rendered":"If I Didn\u2019t Believe, Part IV: Meaning, Purpose, and Life in the Void"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dying Universe<\/em><\/p>\n

Morality<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In the absence of a faith I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have very strong opinions about abstract or moral concepts. This isn\u2019t one of those \u201cif you don\u2019t believe why don\u2019t you kill your grandma?\u201d arguments that make good-hearted atheists roll their eyes. I have no desire to kill grandmas regardless of my beliefs, but if I was somehow convinced that it was all just atoms bouncing against each other I\u2019d have a hard time articulating to a psychopath why he shouldn\u2019t (and it\u2019s not just me, read a graduate school-level meta-ethics text to see how hard it is).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This doesn’t necessarily mean that I hold to \u201cDivine Command Theory,\u201d which is the idea that something is good because God says so. (As an aside, Alma 42\u2019s \u201cGod would cease to be God\u201d is a strong anti-divine-command theory scripture. It\u2019s clear that there are some moral principles embedded in the universe that God Himself has to adhere to). But rather, that there is some moral, metaphysical scaffolding to the universe, which is a framework that is hard to get to if, again, everything can be reduced to atoms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If it\u2019s all chemistry then in theory the fundamental difference between Jeffrey Dahmer and Mother Theresa could be a potassium molecule in the brain that didn\u2019t quite make a complete electromagnetic connection. Of course, it\u2019s more complicated than that, but the additional complexity doesn\u2019t change the point. If it\u2019s not free will but mechanics, it makes as much sense to be upset at Jeffrey Dahmer as it does to be upset at a boulder that fell down and crushed somebody.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, if you ask <\/span>why<\/span><\/i> that metaphysical moral scaffolding is itself justified, then I\u2019m in trouble, but literally every belief system is in trouble from infinite regress<\/a><\/span>\u00a0if you continually ask for the whys of the whys of the whys, so at some point we just have to act according to feeling, and that\u2019s okay, but it does limit the extent to which we can be judgey about other people\u2019s intuitions. Logic can help us be consistent in our moral frameworks, but I\u2019m generally skeptical about reason\u2019s ability to construct a moral and meaning-making system from whole cloth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I noted before, as a believer in moral \u201cwriting in the sky\u201d but not in the Church, I\u2019d be fuzzy on how morality applies to my life beyond the basics of not hurting people, since the \u201churting people is wrong\u201d instinct is so visceral. (That being said, there are contexts in which hurting people is the most natural thing in the world for <\/span>Homo Sapiens<\/span><\/i>)<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019d try to be a nice dude, but I wouldn\u2019t exactly give my body to be burned or live in some hut so as to maximize my ability to donate to anti-malaria bed nets<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Meaning<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

In my family growing up we had a saying that \u201cthat which isn\u2019t infinite is too small, and that which isn\u2019t eternal is too short,\u201d saying that the only things we should really be concerned about are things that in some way or another tie into the eternal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his book <\/span>Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe <\/span><\/i>Columbia University physicist Brian Greene quotes an interesting thought experiment (paraphrasing, since it\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve read it) where they ask how what we think is meaningful would change if the universe were ending tomorrow. He then asks whether it makes a difference whether the universe was ending in a year, 10 years, 100 years, or a million years and then drives home the point that, since those increments are really basically the same compared to the eternal blackness afterwards, the end of the universe raises uncomfortable questions about why anything matters.\u00a0(Contrast this with the very Latter-day Saint cosmological point made by non-Latter-day Saint scientist Freeman Dyson that \u201cno matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory.\u201d) <\/span><\/p>\n

A similar note is struck by PD James\u2019 fictional book <\/span>Children of Men<\/span><\/i>, that takes place in a world where a disease causing mass sterilization is causing humanity to amble towards oblivion. If there is no future, how much would our strivings change? These thought experiments make one realize how much of our meaning making is pinned onto something continuing indefinitely into the future, even things we wouldn\u2019t immediately think of that being true for.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On that note, I\u2019m still kind of surprised when some of my friends and colleagues in academia leave religious belief and then continue to be really preoccupied with their impact factor or what such and such top scholar thought of their work. If you think it\u2019s all consigned to eternal black oblivion then it seems like the ozymondian nature of such clear artificial constructs as the honors of men should be obvious. With faith there\u2019s at least the idea that such constructs are still attached to eternal verities and virtues that will continue after we\u2019re all maggot\u00a0<\/span>food. I get that people need meaning in some form or another, but with just a little bit of introspection people would realize how hollow sacrificing for abstractions based on artificial constructs is.<\/span>To be honest, I feel like my fellow millennials kind of grasp this, which is why older generations pull their hair out about us turning our back on the deal where we work hard for a half century with two weeks a year off for the pyramid-scheme chance at the C-suite and a well manicured lawn in a nice neighborhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of specifics, all of this is to say that if I left belief in an afterlife or some other eternal meaning, I would basically strive to have a fun life (again, without hurting anybody). I score pretty high in sensation seeking, so for me personally I would to stuff as many unique and novel sensation experiences as possible into life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n



<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dying Universe Morality In the absence of a faith I don\u2019t think I\u2019d have very strong opinions about abstract or moral concepts. This isn\u2019t one of those \u201cif you don\u2019t believe why don\u2019t you kill your grandma?\u201d arguments that make good-hearted atheists roll their eyes. I have no desire to kill grandmas regardless of my beliefs, but if I was somehow convinced that it was all just atoms bouncing against each other I\u2019d have a hard time articulating to a psychopath why he shouldn\u2019t (and it\u2019s not just me, read a graduate school-level meta-ethics text to see how hard it is).\u00a0 This doesn’t necessarily mean that I hold to \u201cDivine Command Theory,\u201d which is the idea that something is good because God says so. (As an aside, Alma 42\u2019s \u201cGod would cease to be God\u201d is a strong anti-divine-command theory scripture. It\u2019s clear that there are some moral principles embedded in the universe that God Himself has to adhere to). But rather, that there is some moral, metaphysical scaffolding to the universe, which is a framework that is hard to get to if, again, everything can be reduced to atoms.\u00a0 If it\u2019s all chemistry then in theory the fundamental difference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":44003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy-and-theology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/Unknown-1.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44002"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50169,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44002\/revisions\/50169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}