Has Dawkins bitten off more than he can chew?
According to Dawkins the question as to the purpose of the Universe is "STUPID". Why is the question stupid? Because Richard Dawkins can't answer it. Thus Dawkins belittles his customer. Children go through a phase where they play a little game called WHY? They badger their parents with ever increasingly diffcult "WHY"'s until they can no longer answer. At that point, the frustrated parent pulls rank. "Because I said so! Now go brush your teeth and get to bed!"
Thus Richard Dawkins' rather egotistical ambition to rid the world of religion has hit a wall. In his exuberance, he has ignored that science, philosophy and religion though interelated and sharing common characteristics are not interchangeable. No Dawkins appears not have thought far or deeply enough into this issue.
There is probably not a being on planet Earth who has not asked these questions. What is the purpose and meaning of life? Why are we here? So is everybody who has asked this question throughout history just been STUPID for asking? Has there been no intelligent life on Earth before the appearance of Richard Dawkins?
Science may one day explain the mechanism behind everything. But it won't explain WHY? Simply to bury your head in the sand and to ignore the question and worse yet, to label it as STUPID is guaranteed to lose you points even at the high school debate level.
Human beings want to know "WHY?" This idea that meaning and purpose is irrelevant is short-sighted and even somewhat dangerous. The U.S. has a culture of "doing" without higher purpose and with shallowness of meaning. The purpose of life for many is to make more money. Build more things. Produce more things. Buy more things. Consume! Consume! Consume! and then die.... Modern life keeps us busy doing, doing, doing, we scarcely have time to ask WHY? WHY do we need to be the greatest? WHY do we need to achieve the most? WHY do we have to have the most? What good is science, technology or progress if we don't know why? Doesn't anybody care WHY? Or is the question just STUPID and irrelevant?!!!
Whatever the external proclamations or public stances, each individual finds for themselves their own personal meaning. Science and philosophy are tools, but for the big questions, many turn toward religion. Religion for myself is based on intution. It is somehow finding relevance and meaning behind that which can't be proven but somehow seems to strike an inner chord and ring true.
Unless Dawkins can stop patronising his audience and give us some insight into the WHY of existance, he is unlikely to achieve his aims.
While I can't answer for Mr.
While I can't answer for Mr. Dawkins, I can explain why I think the question is stupid. Firstly, it implies that there must BE a purpose to begin with! This is separate and apart from a cause. We can ponder what caused the universe, and science can take us back to the first fraction of a second of its existence, but none of that implies that there was any purpose whatsoever. Looking out into the vast depths of space, with no evidence of any life other than our own (yet), there does seem to be a whole lot of stuff going on for the benefit of no one or nothing. Only our human, primate brains require an answer to "why am I here?" A better question might be, "Why not?"
We can see that stars are a very common phenomenon; a byproduct of a universe filled with abundant hydrogen coupled with a phenomenon of physical matter called gravity. We can also finally see that planets are a common occurrence, byproducts of said stars living, dying, and throwing-off massive amounts of elements created in their nuclear furnaces over billions of years.
So why are we here?
Well, we know that where there is a supply of liquid water and energy, there is likely to be life. Every example of such an environment that we know of confirms this hypothesis. This is why there's so much interest in Mars and its obvious wet past; if there was also energy and enough time, and we find no evidence of life, it would be a first.
If you take a slice of bread, spray it with some water, snap it into a Tupperware bowl and stash it on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator, you'll wind-up with some interesting life forms the next day. In essence, this is what happened with Earth; a clod of dirt (platform) having been pelted with organic compounds and water (comets), and being at a distance from the sun that allows the water to be liquid and to pool, life eventually arose and became life. There is no why, only how. That early life eventually lead to us, but again, it wasn't ordained. Any number of things could've sent evolution down another path, away from us homo sapiens. But it didn't, by chance alone. There is no why.
Science closes in on the "how" more and more every day. We can peer back through time via our genetics and see approximately where we diverged from the chimpanzees. We can point to incidents, such as the disappearance of the dinosaurs, and other factors that worked in our favor (as well as every currently living species), but there is no why.
You CAN find some "why" answers, but there's always a human attached to them. Why does Orville Redenbacher's popcorn taste so much better, look so much bigger and pop so much more evenly than other lines? Because it was BRED to do so by a human. It has an intelligent creator... at least in its final stages. It exists because we wanted fatter, better tasting, more evenly popping corn.
Why do we exist? Why not?
As for "the meaning of life," again, this isn't usually something given TO us. (Although I find the question far less stupid.) We give our own lives meaning. We're biological computers that self-program. We learn by trial-and-error, observation and reason. Unlike non-biological computers, we can change our minds and, hence, our programming. (Although man-made computers will no doubt learn that trick one day.) There are many goals to achieve, interests to pursue and gains to be made. We either choose which we will adopt, or accept one from someone else. Some humans have diluded themselves into thinking that THEIR meaning / life purpose is given to them by something "higher" than their fellow humans. Why this might be preferable, I'm at a loss to say. In the final analysis, though, we all choose. The source may be open to debate, but the final choice remains our own.
So asking why we're here can understandably be seen as stupid, just as religionists find the question, "Where did god come from?" stupid. In a universe where the laws of physics rule, everything has a beginning and an end, so it is a logical question to ask of god believers. Yet the believer has been taught that god is, was and always will be, so the question is a non-sequitur. Stupid, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Interesting view
That's an interesting view. I understand are brains are designed to look for meaning. I don't see the evolutionary purpose behind it though I concede there may be one. I also concede that religion and belief may itself have evolved out of evolutionary necessity. These things which compell us toward belief in inherent meaning and purpose do seem to be hard wired into the brain. This is even reflected in our enjoyment of music.
Humans seem to prefer the classic l,lV,V ratio of chrod progressions with a resolution back at the l. This is reflected in most popular music and also in art, architecture, poetry, writings, etc.
l - the tonic chord - homebase, safety, security, earth
lV- the subdominant chord - slight dissonance
V - the dominant chord - harmony, relaxation, an oasis, home away from home, sanctuary
l - the tonic chord - back home
The formula starts at home base, journeys to an area of discomfort, alternates between varying places of varying degrees of comfort and discomfort, finally ending up back at home. (Unless you take ecstasy, then you enjoy reptitive music that goes nowhere, but so do lab rats enjoy repetitive meaningless activity while on ecstasy!) This is the formula of the Golden section or Golden Triangle or Golden Mean.
We see these patterns in books and plays, in all art. We enjoy the journey more if there is dissonance or danger, but we also like to come home. The ratio of the planets in the solar system also mirror the harmony and dissonance of the musical scale. So do the classic works of architecture and even nature herself.
There is a screensaver on the internet called Organic Art.
http://www.freesaver.com/organic.htm
Apparently it is based around mathematics which are related to fractals and the golden section.
Why do I bring this up? Because the human brain does appear to be hard wired to enjoy the natural algorithms of the universe. The old saying "As above, so below" does seem to ring true.
Blake talks about seeing the Universe in a grain of sand. Like the cells in our own bodies, perhaps we are cells too in a larger organism which are in turn cells in a larger organism and so on...I can't get into this idea of randomness and lack of design. It seems to me the Universe is full of design and quite obviously intelligent. If meaning is merely a construct of the human mind, then why would the mind be constructed so? What is the point? If there is no point, why do we feel so compelled to seek a point? Atheists have taught themselves not to require meaning, but as a child didn't you really hunger to know?
I will address this idea of intelligence in a further article.
Of course!
One of the most popular kid questions is, "Why?" I admit that it still is in my top ten as well. :)
Yet I don't see merely asking the question implying that there's been any "construction" going on (as in our brains) or intelligence within the universe (beyond that of living creatures). Just one look at the moon shows a brutal, violent past, yet does it imply anger? Not to me. In a similar sense, just because quartz crystals grow with six sides doesn't imply any intelligence at work. It is simply an inherent quirk of their chemistry.
Music is a product of the human mind, so it comes as no surprise that our music is geared toward pleasing other human minds. Remember back in the '70s and '80s when synthesizers were combined with early computers, generating "computer music?" I have albums (yes, good ol' vinyl records) FULL of the stuff. One might wonder why a song composed and performed by a computer never became a huge hit! Yet the reason is simple: it wasn't writing to please us. It wrote songs according to mathematical principles and algorithms which are alien to our primate brains. (Our brains aren't digital, nor will they be.) I guess you could write a set of rules for the computer to adopt, such as your observations above, and the computer might be tweaked to produce something incredible. But then... would it really BE the composer, or simply a tool?
The universe employs chemistry that is the same throughout. It again should come as no surprise that our brains, being totally in and of such chemistry is en sympatico with the universe at large. There's no magic about it; nor intelligence (aside from the final product).
Now, I guess that how one defines "intelligence" might morph our discussion a bit. After all, when the first single-celled organisms adopted the trick of forming colonies to increase their survival, that wasn't a stupid thing to do! But did they actually "decide" to do it, or did they simply develop a quirk, by mutation or environmental pressure, that promoted the practice? Without anything approximating a brain, I'm skeptical of the idea that they chose anything.
Another thing I was going to toss out earlier was Chaos theory. Some observers of CT experiments are surprised to see apparent patterns and order springing up out of nothing, or due to simple actions, such as stirring a fluid or vibrating a membrane. Yet such order does appear. Also, chemicals are predisposed to bond with other chemicals, or repel bonding with others. Given a simple set of rules, complex dynamics can quickly play out. There are some computer programs that demonstrate this phenomenon.
So imagine, if you will, such simple rules playing out in unlimited number over the course of incomprehensible time! Even while stars explode and comets, meteors and the planets themselves collide, crumble, get blown to dust or condense into another orb, order repeatedly appears from the chaos. Is it really any wonder why we see patterns? Or that we're fooled by our own tendency to see ourselves in everything to believe in some external intelligence at work? Not to me; it explains the nearly universal belief in things like gods and spirits.
In similar fashion, many philosophers have conjured-up the image of our universe being akin to an atom, perhaps part of a larger being in a larger universe -- a precise example of our human inability to think beyond ourselves and what we're familiar with! Of course we're a fleck of pollen on a policemen's jacket in another, much greater universe! Far easier to posit than the true strangeness that may well be beyond our comprehension. To paraphrase the old saying; the truth is far stranger than anything in your philosophy.