"Unweaving the Rainbow" specifically attacks the idea that a materialist, mechanist, naturalistic worldview makes life seem meaningless. Quite the contrary, the scientific worldview is a poetic worldview, it is almost a transcendental worldview. We are amazingly privileged to be born at all and to be granted a few decades -- before we die forever -- in which we can understand, appreciate and enjoy the universe.... That's what gives my life meaning. And the fact that my life is finite, and that it's the only life I've got, makes me all the more eager to get up each morning and set about the business of understanding more about the world into which I am so privileged to have been born.The interview's on Salon, you'll have to get a DayPass to read the whole thing, but go. Go. What are you waiting around here for?
Monday, May 02, 2005
Voice of Sanity
In these times where babbling, overheated idiots jabber at us from every side, Richard Dawkins is just so freakin' sane. I'm rather offended by the way the interview's couched, by the way. Pretty damned unsympathetic to what he actually says, which is more like this:
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3 comments:
It's maddening to me that folks consider the materialist scientific perspective as implying nihilism and existential meaninglessness. This perspective has no particular moral or existential implications whatsoever, and it is not necessary to deny science to find meaning. Dawkins has the courage to embrace a meaning that he gleans from his view of the universe, but his meaning, as beautiful as it is, is by no means the only one that can be constructed or adopted while adhering to a materialist perspective.
Dawkins is a hero for our times. In addition to "Unweaving the Rainbow" I can personally recommend "The Devil's Chaplain" which is a collection of essays and "The Blind Watchmaker," which explains evolution in an easy-to-read entertaining fashion.
I found these people because of him: http://www.the-brights.net/
Favorite line:
"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one."
Great stuff. Thanks for the recommendation, Ned.
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