Need for Meaning
By: Navin (March 9th, 2010) 
Respected Teacher,
Yesterday’s science class still echoes in my mind because it has shaken up the foundations of my life. My parents always told me that God created the universe and that we are built for immortality or an eternal life if we fall in line with God’s plan for our life. But yesterday you said that the universe came in to existence through a big bang which took place some 15 billion years ago and that it expands every day, the galaxies go further and further from each other, till one day when all the energy will be used up, the stars will burn out and all the matter will eventually fall into a black hole bringing down the curtains to the existence of the universe. Which means that there is no God and hence no immortality that I dreamt about?
If there is no immortality then doesn’t it mean that all we do here on earth has only relative meaning within the time ordained for the universe and the life of human beings? Because eventually if this universe will float in the dark recesses of the space then what ultimate meaning can we attach to the things that man does every day including the time that I am spending in your class trying to understand science and how the nature works. If there is no immortality then all the time that we intellectuals spend in the schools and universities trying to come up with new concepts through research, the scientists who work in the laboratories trying to discover new things, the doctors who come up with cures for sickness and disease and everything else that we do is just a way to pass time and nothing more because they have no ultimate meaning. After all if we have lost eternity then a few years and a few centuries spent here and there makes no difference. I cannot even imagine that I who am here today will be no more tomorrow.
All this time, I felt as if I was built for an eternal existence and therefore it gave me meaning for the things that I did today. And now if you propose that I will be gone tomorrow and my life has no eternal meaning then why should I work towards a better world for tomorrow? I would rather live my life only for myself and not for anybody else because the way I become a good neighbour, a good friend, a good citizen and a good human being have no ultimate meaning. Rather if I become like one of those then I think there is no one more foolish that myself. I just want to enjoy my time till I am alive because it calls for no accountability after my life is over and the good things that I do today have no meaning beyond certain time. Once a great novelist said that “Men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver”.
Now that you have killed this law giver and replaced him with this Big Bang, you have not only rendered our existence meaningless but left me here like a cosmic orphan. I had such nightmares last night about this whole thing that I want you to consider the same. I still remember going around in outer space on a barren chunk of rock with two viles in my hand. One vile was to kill myself and the other to make me an immortal being in that godless universe. And then I decided that I would much rather kill myself if there was no God and no ultimate meaning to life, so I drank the vile of poison. By after a while I realised to my horror that I had drunk the wrong vile. I had drunk the vile of immortality which made me an immortal being in a godless world. I was shattered because what meaning does life hold even if you told me that the end of the universe was millions of years away, as good as immortality, because without God our lives go on and on with no meaning at all.
Am I just time plus matter plus chance? Am I an impersonal and material being with nobody beyond me to give me meaning to life? So that means if I have to make some sense of my life then I need to manufacture a meaning for my life? But isn’t that self delusion when we are on the one side saying that life is objectively meaningless and on the other trying to create meaning by taking up tasks and endeavours which are eventually meaningless. Well that is indeed what we are trying to do because science can only answer the ‘what’ of life and not the ‘why’ of life. It can address the nature and matter but it cannot give me the purpose of that matter. They both are bound together and cannot exist without each other, yet science tries to reduce everything to just the matter. That is why, after explaining the “what” of our universe, Stephen Hawking ends his book ‘A Brief History of Time’ with these words: “Now if we only knew why, [then] we would have the mind of God.” It means that the answer to the ‘why’ has to come from somebody who transcends our material universe. Only the mind of God can infuse our world with meaning.
Think about it before you brush it away as an irrational attempt to restore faith in God.
Yours sincerely,
George.
March 9th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Thre shoots two answers to the blog above.
1) mortality of universe - This again is partly searched subject because when people on earth believed that earth is flat at that point in time earth was believed to be endless having fairy tale about the end! similarly since the present science may be at stage similar to time of Flat earth let explore more !!!!!!!!
2) Reason for living - Whatever great work done ever on earth a better work will be followed so it your choice to live the way you want pass your time but since it a society we also need to take care of people live around because only these pleople have contributed for whatever we are enjoying to live our life according to our wish
March 9th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Hi Parit,
I appreciate your response on the blog. Here is a response to your feedback:
1) The mortality of the universe is pretty well documented and proven. It is not a hypothesis or a theory rather derived from the Second Law of thermodynamics. This law states that the universe is running out of its useful energy and cannot be reversed. The universe is cooling off or running out of gas.There are places where stars are formed that have energy but whenever that happens the rest of the universe looses more energy than what is gained by the star.The net effect is always negative.
The second law of thermodynamics states that the amount of energy in a system that is available to do work is decreasing. Entropy increases as available energy decreases. In other words, the purely natural tendency of things is to move toward chaos, not order, and available energy necessary for work is lost (mostly as heat) in this process. Eventually, the universe will run down and all life and motion will cease. This is the natural tendency of all things. Batteries run down, machines break, buildings crumble, roads decay, living things die, etc. Left to the natural state, all things would eventually cease to function.
2) I totally agree that whatever good work has happened has been for the general good of humanity and we all need to move forward. But again all the good work and it’s utility remains restricted to the time that we have in the universe. But if God exists and there is the promised eternity then all those good works stand a chance to draw meaning,which is beyond the limited space and time of the universe. So without God these good works have only relative meaning and no ultimate meaning.
Hope this was helpful.
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