Replies

Thank you for your thoughtful and informative post. I'd like to comment on its last paragrpah:

I really think the conflict has to do with first premises. If we take as our first premise, the materialist reductionist approach, it will be nearly impossible to find any 'meaning' in the universe. Why is that? To the contrary, it there is meaning, surely it should be possible to uncover some of it.

But that materialist reductionist approach is an article of faith to no less an extent than the first premise that the universe has been created by an intelligent, loving designer. I think these two are different issues: what the source is a question undependent of whether creation was meaningful. The third question (if the second is answered in the positive) is what that meaning is.

I read Wienberg's observation as a statement of rather considerable experience --- and there few people who know about the universe as much as he does: even after obtaining that knowledge and that experience it is hard to find any trace of purpose. He did not say that this purpose is nonexistent.

Good questions.

"If there is meaning, surely it should be possible to uncover some of it."

If we are talking about meaning in a limited sense, such as Aristotle's 'virtue', there is no doubt that we can uncover meaning. But if we are talking about a truly larger sense of meaning, such as the purpose (telos?) for the whole enchilada, it is difficult if not impossible, to derive that from the accidental and random nature of the universe as materialist reductionism would imply. But you are right, even in that case it should be possible to uncover some meaning. Or at least hints of meaning. Perhaps the creator left fingerprints on his creation?

'...what the source is (is) a question independent of whether creation was meaningful.'

That could be true, but it doesn't seem to be a necessary distinction. I would think 'source' in the materialist reductionist scenario would simply be matter and energy plus time (oversimplified, I'm sure). (And you might have to argue for the 'eternity' or at least preexistence of acouple of those.) Here there would either be no meaning, or perhaps only limited, parochial meanings. The meaning of a sperm cell is to carry genetic material for the impregnation of an egg. If by a happy accident that occurs, the species continues. If it doesn't happen, oh well.

But it strikes me that for there to be an overarching meaning (apart from saying that there is no meaning which, in itself, is a kind of meaning) there must be something or someone from outside the system to which things within the system refer for meaning.

Wouldn't the question of what meaning is be prior to whether creation is meaningful? (And I have to admit that defining meaning is a very, very difficult task.)

Yes, Weinberg knows a lot. But there is much more to be known and it would perhaps require an infinite mind to take Everything into account. (Hmmm?) So to take only one's own finite understanding (however broad it may be) and draw the ultimate conclusion of meaninglessness strikes me as making unfounded and probably unprovable assumptions about the rest of the universe beyond one's own knowledge base.

It can be argued that coming to the opposite conclusion (that there is meaning to the universe) based on that same set of data is subject to the same criticism. Hence, our conclusion must be a matter of faith. At this point we could raise the question of revelation, but in deference to Ockham, I will refrain. ;-)