A recurrent question among those who consider the nature of human existence is "What is the purpose of life?", or "What is the meaning of the Universe?". The evidence gives us no reason to suppose that there is a purpose to life or meaning in the Universe. The real problem, however, is not with the answers to such questions, but with the questions themselves.

To show why that is so consider the results of studies of social primate behavior. Those studies have repeatedly demonstrated that the great apes and most monkeys constantly monitor the behavior of the other members of their band. And they are quite capable of anticipating the behavior of other band members, and though they are not always right, most of the time they are. In fact, they are clearly considering the motives and goals of other members of the band so that they can use social situations to their own best advantage. For each individual in the band the behaviors of the other members has "meaning". This attribution of motives and goals to others is a skill at which humans are the supreme masters. We are from birth so highly attuned to interpreting and anticipating the behavior of important people in our lives that our tendency to attribute purpose spills over onto non-human animals or even inanimate objects. We relentlessly anthropomorphize the world around us, interpreting the behavior of many things as though they were human. Thus a tornado is "savage", or a river is "lazy", and we swear at a tool that fails to do the job. And most pet owners speak to their animals as though they understood human speech and are convinced that their animals believe themselves to be human.

Given this human tendency to see things in the world as having human attributes like motivation, goals, and purpose it should not be surprising that humans have considered such things as the universe or the series of events constituting the flow of life as having human attributes such as "purpose" or "meaning". And where purpose exists in the world, there must be some quasi-human agency from which that "purpose" springs and which gives human life "meaning". Thus, "gods".

I am inclined to see "meaning" in the fact that I am the product of a line of ancestors at least a billion years long, every one of which were in a biological sense "winners". I see purpose in accepting that humans have a limited time to find and realize their potential for achievement, to find and enjoy the great pleasures afforded by life, and to find the mental strength to deal with the pains and the sad end of our being. I see the great sweep of the formation of the universe and the unique development of intelligent life on this planet as an enormous epic poem ringing with the music of the spheres and singing of a lullaby. The existence of humanity is in itself sufficient and indeed complete "meaning".

In 1959 C P Snow gave an influential lecture in which he spoke of the existence in the modern world of two cultures. He perceived the cultures of the humanities on the one hand and of science on the other as failing to share much in the way of common ground. He felt that this was an impediment to the establishment of a general culture suitable for modern life.

I would like to take his concept and rephrase it to encompass the increasing gulf between the cultures of scientifically and technologically literate people and those who are either ignorant of science or who reject it on religious grounds. The world is moving steadily toward more and more need for scientific understanding and applications. In such a world scientifically literate people will play an increasingly important and dominant role. Those ignorant of science and technology for whatever reason will be increasingly marginalized and left behind. Furthermore, they will constitute a serious danger to the world because they will not understand the necessity for behaviors needed to preserve the Earth in its most productive and desireable state. We see that sort of ignorance even in many politicians in technologically advanced societies.

This makes it necessary to consider whether it is wise for non-religious people to "engage" Christians and other religious types in order to pursuade them of the need for considering scientific data in their decisions affecting the preservation of the planet. The latest issue of Reports of the National Center for Science Education supports the view that it is. I am not pursuaded. To urge Christians and other Abrahamic religions to make an effort to understand science and the scientific method is to ask them to entertain two mutually exclusive ways of seeing the world. I do not agree at all with the notion that religion as practiced by Christians is compatible with science. The two modes of thinking are poles apart, and the evidence provided by science gives no support whatever to the existence of any kind of supernaturals, let alone an omnipotent "god". For non-believers to "engage" Christians with the aim of educating them about science is merely to play their game, in which they demand that their fantasies receive some kind of respect by virtue of being "holy". It seems to me better to simply have as little as possible to do with religious behavior and let religious people fall farther and farther behind the manifest course of modern culture. To try to deal in an amicable way with their delusions is simply to fortify them and to waste time and effort.

An article in the newspaper by Kathleen Parker reports that a geneticist named Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian, asserts that one can believe in both God and science. He's wrong. First of all, one does not "believe" in science the way one "believes" in "God". In the latter case one undertakes to assume the existence of a "God" without any requirement that the assumption be based on evidence. That is, in fact, the definition of "faith" as it is strenuously prescribed by religionists. On the other hand, science consists not of a philosophy or plan for living but rather a technique for making and testing hypotheses about how nature works.

Francis Collins claims that "God" is both outside of nature and outside of time. He also claims that science tends to "prove" the existence of "God". However, since science deals only with the testing of hypotheses about nature, I don't see how Collins can claim that science proves the existence of a god as he conceives it.

In fact, Collins definition of "God" shows that he is a deist rather than a Christian as he claims to be. The Bible makes it very clear that the Jewish and Christian "God" is in and of this world, and in fact is a very parochial being, limited mainly to the Near East.

Collins also says that he was once an atheist but encountered questions that science could not answer and thus renewed his religious faith. The problem with that is that science does not undertake to answer all questions since one can pose any number of non-sensical questions such as "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin"? Many of the questions that Christians claim science cannot answer assume the existence of a directive mind - one that is suspiciously like a human mind. Questions such as "What is the purpose of the universe, or my life, or the tornado that destroyed a school?" are addressed to nature as though nature had a personality and motives like a human being. This is simply the sort of projection of human attributes onto nature that has been the basis of so many religions such as that of the ancient Greeks. In fact, nature has no purpose, plan, personality or motives. It simply is. It cares nothing for our human concerns which is why the tornado destroys the good with the bad. Unless you wish to believe in an evil and destructive "God" you must accept that.

All of the major Abrahamic religions claim that if only all humanity would switch over to their brand of deliberate self-delusion then we would all wallow in peace and plenty, at least until the end of the world, which is nigh. I find that message difficult to reconcile with the very clear evidence that proseletyzing religions are in fact catastrophically divisive.
They all claim to have a book that is the exact and definitive word of "God". The trouble with that is that the books of Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all different. And the strongest adherents of these several books will enthusiastically kill one another to prove that their book is the authentic word of "God". One needn't read too deeply in history to see that not only is a Christian prepared to kill Jews and Muslims kill Christians and so forth, but Christians will energetically slay one another over questions of church organization and biblical interpretation. And Muslims have shown that they will with equal zeal shed blood over a hadith.
Even within a particular sect there is the question of who is in "God's" favor and who is not. If you are among the elect then it's hard not to view those who are in bad odor with the "Almighty" as people who are a little less than fully human and who should probably get a taste of what they're in for in the "afterlife". Since religions are the product of human minds it's no surprise that one person's notions of "God" and "godly" behavior is going to be different from another persons. And these differences, fortunately for non-believers, will constantly spin off heresies and reformations, to the detriment of the final immersion of humanity in the bliss of the true faith. And worst of all for the unification of humanity (which is a grim thought anyway) is the fact that organized religion is actually about gaining power over people. Priests, ministers, rabbis and mullahs use their "God" as a whip to cow their followers into obedience. And, of course, struggles between those seeking power are the most divisive of all.

I've spent the last few days doing a bit of research concerning the possibility of a society being moral without religion. What I've found pretty solidly supports the idea that it is indeed possible. This, of course, refutes the frequently and shrilly spouted assertion of religious fanatics that a moral and orderly society is impossible unless everyone thinks "God" will send them down to be toasted like a marshmallow in "Hell" if they don't behave. Solid facts show that only a small minority of people in countries like Denmark and Sweden actively participate in religious rituals and few people there admit to even thinking much about religion. Yet these countries are among the most moral and content societies on Earth. And this is not just a trait peculiar to the descendants of Vikings. In much of western Europe religion has lost its hold on the minds of the general populace with no discernable loss of morality. In Asia, Japan and China are by no means religious in the sense that Christians and Muslims recognize, yet, in Japan for instance, there is much less violent crime than there is in the ostensibly Christian United States. Australia and Canada both show steady decline in religious practice and steady growth (to around 20%) in the number of people who profess no religion. If the religious types were right about the need for religion to make moral societies there should be a commensurate rise in crime and depravity in these increasingly secular countries. Such is clearly not the case, and there could be no more telling evidence than these widespread and diverse experiments in human society all decisively supporting the idea that morality need not spring from religion. Indeed, I would maintain that rational morality is far better for a society than one based on an ideology assuming a fictional being and Medieval concepts.

One of the best hopes for the rational as opposed to the religious lies in the innate conservatism of religion. Or at least what religious types suppose is conservatism. In fact, religions are constantly changing, which is why we have so many different sects and schisms. But religions need to imagine that they are conservative since they all claim to be the unique and true message of "God". One can't go around changing the word of "God". Yet somehow, nearly every priest, rabbi and mullah seems to know exactly what "God" wants us to do, and they are quick to claim they know the thoughts of an entity that they otherwise claim is beyond the understanding of mortals. Indeed, Christian religious leaders in particular are often "quoting" "God" on billboards, the radio or the pulpit. Although nowhere in the Bible does "God" say "We need to talk", some religious zany with more money than scholarship will blithely plaster that sort of homey message on the largest sign they can afford. Any number of such invented "quotes", usually appearing on T-shirts, could be cited. Apparently religious leaders suppose that "God's" message needs to be reduced to modern colloquialisms or the poor average Christian won't understand.
Nevertheless, religious types are usually eager to oppose any change that challenges what they suppose is the message of their religion even though they may fail utterly to understand what the original message was. As science and society move forward on their intricate paths we can hope and expect that the stubbornly dogmatic types will be left behind in benighted backwaters, reduced to enclaves like the Amish and the Hutterites. That's OK with me so long as they don't jump the reservation.