That’s the charmingly grandiose title of a talk I gave at The Amazing Meeting this past July, now available online. I hope that the basic message comes through, although the YouTube comments indicate that the nitpicking has already begun in earnest. There’s a rather lot of material to squeeze into half an hour, so some parts are going to be sketchy.
There are actually three points I try to hit here. The first is that the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood. There is an enormous amount that we don’t know about how the world works, but we actually do know the basic rules underlying atoms and their interactions — enough to rule out telekinesis, life after death, and so on. The second point is that those laws are dysteleological — they describe a universe without intrinsic meaning or purpose, just one that moves from moment to moment.
The third point — the important one, and the most subtle — is that the absence of meaning “out there in the universe” does not mean that people can’t live meaningful lives. Far from it. It simply means that whatever meaning our lives might have must be created by us, not given to us by the natural or supernatural world. There is one world that exists, but many ways to talk about; many stories we can imagine telling about that world and our place within it, without succumbing to the temptation to ignore the laws of nature. That’s the hard part of living life in a natural world, and we need to summon the courage to face up to the challenge.
Or at least, so you will hear me opine if you click on the link. Curious as to what people think.
“From People to Particles: What the future holds for high energy laser weaponry.”
It’s rather odd how crazy trolls like Muslim Takacs prefer to waste their time bloviating on this list instead of putting their efforts into more productive endeavors. It makes one think that Takacs must be on welfare as he has so much free time to spew his nonsense here. Notice that nothing he says is interesting or original. He seems to get his jollies by hurling insults at others here, Prof. Carroll in particular, blithely unaware that they have no effect on their targets but instead merely bounce back on him, making him even more contemptible. No one here with even half a brain assigns any importance to anything he says. Altho I totally agree with Meh’s criticisms of him – he’s definitely spot on – I think the best thing to do is just ignore him & others like him. The more people ignore trolls like him the less they’re apt to post. Of course there are other weirdos here that respond to him but they can be left to talk among themselves & leave the rest of us to move on to more important topics. That’s my take on it, in any case.
Why do you people love to argue??????
@Ernie,
My name is not my religion you dolt, any more than your name means you are a muppet who lives with Bert on Sesame Street. That you would attempt to mock me by making fun of my name puts your wit on the level of most six year olds. That you would play the word ‘Muslim’ off my name as an insult infers you might be bigoted. That you “totally agree with Meh’s criticisms of him” tells me you do not understand what the word ‘criticism’ means. Calling somone a ‘douche bag’ is not a criticism Ernie, it’s just a vulgar attempt at insult. That nothing I say is ‘interesting or original’ is almost an actual criticism, but you need to follow it with an argument of some kind that makes your point…and no, calling people names is not an argument anymore than it is a criticism. My critique of you Ernie, is that given your apparent lack of understanding of what words mean, or how to use them in an actual logical argument, I’m doubtful you understand why myself and others are critical of some of the things Professor Carroll says. If you wish to agree with everything Professor Carroll says… without understanding what that is, or why others might disagree with it, then that’s your right to do so, but it is not your right to tell others they must do the same as you.
If you want warm fuzzy agreement and ‘feelgood’ consensus, I don’t think science, philosophy, or physics is for you, it’s always been a pretty contentious debate of ideas fighting for recognition, prestige and limited funding.
@SunnyD,
Because it’s fun! Why do people arm wrestle or play chess? You might as well ask, why do people root for different teams then walk into sports bars where fans from the opposing team are and argue about who should win the game. Between classes and study, I find it relaxing to see what others have written, provided they have good arguments, and don’t use pointless potty language.
It was a very good lesson, I’ve seen it six times now.
You have shuch great flow when speaking and say so much in a very short time.
I think, and many with me that Sean is one of our time’s greatest thinkers.
You should take place as the 4th horseman to Dawkings Harris and Dennett.
Do not worry about the non- thinkers, they have read the same book 5000 times and think they understand something.
Sorry for bad english.
To each to his own. Those who believe in a God, have faith in an everlasting award for the life they live, even those who live a life of hatred get to live it afterwards, to each their choice, but to those who don’t believe, their death is a death to nothingness, a rather depressing viewpoint, but we shall see.
It seems that so often the higher a persons intelligence the more likely they are to try and omit any possibility of a Creator.
Perhaps Sean believes that physics is a God, the creator of life and conciousness.
I think this was a great speech, but I notice that the venue was TAM. Aren’t they the ones who insanely refuse to adapt an anti-harassment policy?
@Doug Little & Meh,
You are all nothing but an empty pieces of atoms in the universe, however, you are a necessary chaos in our existence so the meaning of order will always be justified. Because of you, we are able to define what is “fine” netizen and what is not!
54. David Lau Says:
October 23rd, 2012 at 1:31 pm
@#51 again
Science flies people in an airplane, religion flies people into the building. That’s it!
>> What if your airplane will fly you to hell? You atheists really believe that only religion has killed people. You don’t exactly know about history. You did not think that atheist’s ideology has killed millions of people hundreds of times than people killed in the name of religion. That’s it!
People do not get killed by religion, science or atheism. People get killed by other people.
Filosofo Tazio @111
What? I gather English is not your first language but you will have to do better explaining yourself.
vmarko @112
People do get killed by other people but generally there is a motivation behind the killing. Religion can be a pretty strong motivation. Charles Manson never killed anybody (that we know of), but he was just as responsible for the murders he convinced other people to do.
Christian Takacs @97,
Wooosh.
Note that I haven’t read the latest dribblings from the Muslim (@104) & won’t be in the future either. Everything he says is nonsense so whenever I see his name I just skip over his ramblings, which I recommend everyone else do as well. But speaking of weirdos on the list, in addition to the Muslim, of course, we also have Tony, as can be seen from his offerings above. Tony & the Muslim should get together to discuss their nonsense while the rest of us move on.
@102 Ernie
Dude! You da man! Great job you did on that moose limb nutball (@104). I DID read his latest dribblings & as you suspected, it was just a buncha nonsense. Keep up the good work, man. Maybe I’ll start pestering this crazy troll for the next few weeks.
A flotsom of atoms in emptiness of space, but to view all that is and then to pass, a spark, but not remain, returns to that, that which was not. Ye fate of those who were, but are no longer, darkness enters, time stands still, and mind empties onto endless space. So not true.
@Doug Little,
Concerning what Filosofo said @111,
Estimates of how many Mao Zedong (‘Chairmain Mao’) killed due to his inept ‘cultural revolution’ are estimated around 75 million, Pol Pot around 1.7 million, Hitler around 12 million, Kim Il Sung around 1.6 million, Jozef Stalin around 6 million, and Leopold II estimated around 8 to 12 million.
You want to quibble about the numbers, google it yourself, there are lots of resources available.
Each of these ‘social reformers’ was ‘secular or atheist’ and claimed to be doing what they did ‘for the people’ and often cited that informed scientific opinion was on their side to justify their causes. Odd thing about socialists, communists, secularists, and atheists, they decry the evils of religion and faith, then quite successfully try to do much worse. Each of the people I mention also tried to do away with religious influences in their respective socieities because it resisted their control of the population.
The later half of the 19th century, and the entire 20th century have been a series of secular bloodbaths, that quite frankly, make the relgious wars of the previous 2000 years look tame in comparison. Science has helped extend the reach, efficiency, and magnitude of killing more than any other belief system, as it seems incredibly well suited to do so in the hands of people who don’t know the difference between having the technological ability to do a thing versus the wisdom of doing such a thing. Anything at all can be used as a strong motivation for killing, obviously, if people want to kill, they find a way, rational or not.
Filosofo Tazio @111 would seem to be correct and I agree with him in this; You don’t seem to know your history, which explains much.
P.S. ‘Wooosh’ indeed, but “you will have to do better explaining yourself.” as you put it.
@113. Doug Little:
“People do get killed by other people but generally there is a motivation behind the killing. Religion can be a pretty strong motivation. Charles Manson never killed anybody (that we know of), but he was just as responsible for the murders he convinced other people to do.”
Religion can almost never be a motivation for killing. It can only be an *excuse* for killing, which is a very different thing. There are very few religions (satanism being the only one coming to mind) that encourage killing other people in their teaching. Such religions are very rare and have very few followers, AFAIK. None of the most common religions in the world have any teaching that would encourage or motivate killing other people.
Also, I don’t know who Charles Manson is. I glanced shortly at the wikipedia article about him, but couldn’t find anything obviously related to any religion in there. He just appears to be some conspiracy-murderer, or such.
Christian Takacs.
Hitler was a Catholic. This is well known, I don’t know why people like you keep inferring that he was an atheist. Furthermore, the rest of those people that you cited were motivated by their own early religious experiences, they were not bought up in a vacuum of atheism but were rather molded by religion in their early years and still exhibited some form of mysticism throughout their adult lives. They saw the church as the enemy to their own despotic power, this does not necessary mean that they were atheist.
vmarko,
What I was alluding to with Charles Manson is that he got others to do his bidding, but was held just as culpable when convictions were handed out.
There is plenty of religious motivated killing in the Bible and Koran, and plenty passages that can be used to motivate others to hate and kill.
hello 8th grade…
@121. Doug Little:
“There is plenty of religious motivated killing in the Bible and Koran, and plenty passages that can be used to motivate others to hate and kill.”
The Bible also contains the “thou shall not kill” and the “love your enemy”, which are fairly explicit, regarding any motivation to kill. Any passage that is used to “motivate” killing is really just used for excuses. If one understands religious teaching and the proper interpretation of the words written in the Bible, there is no room for ambiguity. I am fairly certain that the same holds for Koran as well.
Of course, everything can be misinterpreted, if people want to have an excuse for killing others.
vmarko,
Here is a line out of Exodus 21.
21:17 And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.
There is plenty more where that came from.
@Doug Little,
Please give the relgion bashing a rest, if you knew anything about history you would know that anything can be used and abused to motivate others to hate and kill such as: Money, Sex, Jealousy, Shame, Greed, Envy, Desperation, Depression, Men, Women, The Other Woman, The Other Other Woman, The Other Man, Children, Bad Romance Novels, Burnt Dinner, Reaction to Burnt Dinner, Erectile Dysfunction, ‘That Dress Makes You Look Fat’ Comment, The Kitchen Sink, and the oldy but goody, ‘Yo Mama’,. . . So please quit harping on religion and faith as the root of all the world’s misery, it just isn’t so. With your line of reasoning you should be jumping up and down about Karl Marx’s ‘The Communist Manifesto’ written in 1848 which has been responsible for far more death and misery than the Bible in the last two thousand years, so PLEASE get some perspective.
As for your ‘Hitler was a Catholic’ argument, oh please. Just being born into a faith is not the same as practicing it as an adult, you know that, so ditch the sophomoric non sequitor.
Hitler may have been born into a Catholic family and was christened Catholic, but he didn’t really have any say in the matter, and he certainly didn’t practice its doctrines anywhere during his adult political career, though he did pay lip service to something toxic called ‘positive christianity’ for obvious political reasons while ramping up Nazism. Hitler liked to lie… a lot, and often told the crowd he was speaking to whatever he thought would persuade them the most, he even bragged about how he did it in Mein Kampf. Underneath the surface of what Hitler showed the world, there were other things bubbling away however…
If you want to bring up powerful influences on Hitler and his beliefs, pehaps you should bring up the dirty little secret that the Nazi party was in a round about way started by Hans Blueher, who advocated a hypermasculine (and agressive) form of homosexuality in the ‘naturalist’ young men’s youth movement called Wandervogel. This youth movement gained followers and eventually became the basis of the first brownshirts, and later evolved into the Nazi Socialist Party, continuing all the way up to Ernst Rohm, who for a time was the second most powerful Nazi in the party next to Hitler…until they had a spat and a slight falling out in the ‘night of long knives’. I would say young Hitler’s bedfellows and friends had more to do with his conflicted identity and hateful outlook than his Catholic upbringing. Strangely enough, in contradiction to what most people think, it wasn’t that the Nazi Party didn’t like homosexuals (since many of the inner circle were), they just didn’t like effeminate homosexuals since the Nazis worldview worshipped the youthful dominate hypermasculine homosexual ideal.
Read up on who Hitler’s friends and early acquaintances were if think this sounds farfetched, it certainly explains a lot more about the man’s life knowing who he surrounded himself with than the fact he was born into the catholic faith. It always amazes me how much stranger the truth is than fiction.