Self-Creating Universe: 1. The Cosmic Riddle

Can there be meaning in the universe without God? Modern science has seemed to invalidate the notion of God as the creator and minder of the universe; it has increased knowledge about the universe enormously, but it has not achieved much in explaining the meaning of life. Many people have tried and are trying to rectify this problem.

It is difficult not to be amazed at the creativity of the universe, how a "seed that can produce in a few weeks a beautiful flower." How human children "can develop complex capacities... without much drilling from... parents."

But is this miracle the work of a "divine creator" or something that arises "at a lower level from nature's own innate powers"? And if it comes out of nature, then how?

Clarke proposes a worldview he calls the

naturalist presumption... that we are situated within a real, natural world from which we have evolved... yet are able to use our evolved intelligence to make (some) sense of it and (some) sense of our lives.

The old way is the

 eternalist presumption which... locates the source of values and meaning in an eternal reality beyond nature, beyond the world that we can experience through our sense.

But Clarke is not proposing mere materialism, for the the materialism that dominated in the Enlightenment has not seemed to work out so well.

More recently, the terrible wars and human suffering and the perpetuation of poverty, inequality, injustice, and prejudice into and beyond the twentieth century have led to an increasing sense of disillusionment in spite of the enormous social and political benefits that the Enlightenment has bestowed on the modern world.

So his naturalist presumption

gives a key role to mind and to spiritual values, not as echoes from a higher world, but as... nature's irresistible urge to create.

The encounter between naturalism and eternalism has spawned the idea of emergentism; it asks the question

how is it that out of the simple emerges the complex, whether it be molecules, viruses, plants, animals, the human brain, the conscious mind, human society, or the works of science, art, and literature?... How does order come out of chaos?

Traditionally, humans have answered this question with "God." But Clarke proposes to answer it with a naturalist presumption. But the problem is that if "God is dead" as advertised by Nietzsche, how do we recover meaning, from the materialist worldview that replaced the God-centered world?

In Clarke's emergentism there is something else. For instance, in biology. A "living organism" is made out of chemical elements, to "complex constituents... cells... organs... living beings... living communities."

At each level , new properties and laws emerge that cannot be understood or predicted from a full knowledge of the lower levels.

 Clarke experiences this as a paradigm of self-organization. Thus, according to Stuart Kauffman,

the creative power of nature and of the universe around us is 'so overwhelming, so worthy of awe, gratitude, and respect, that it is God enough for many of us.'

It is as if the "'sacred' can be brought down from heaven to earth.. without projecting the source of this creativity on to... [an] eternal realm of being."

Next:In the Beginning.