"The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom. The weakness of God is stronger than men's
strength."St. Paul, I Corinthians 2:25 NIVYou are right to criticize people who reject reality because they are waiting for everything to be made
OK in the sweet by-and-by. There's nothing in the Bible to suggest that a good explanation will ever be
offered for toddlers who die of cancer. I can't imagine hearing anything from any source that would make
me say of a toddler's agony, "Oh, OK; now I get it. I see how little Johnny's pain made the world better."
But what's even worse is to see the door shut on Johnny's life and then to walk away from it saying that,
in the end, everything-the life, the joy, the pain, the death-was meaningless except in a very limited sense.
People know that some story is being worked out somehow and that, sadly, the story includes much pain. I
want to know where this sense of things comes from. If it were just an idea passed on from generation to
generation-if it didn't correspond to something inherent in people-it would have burned out, the way belief
in Thor and Minerva has burned out.
So absurdity accompanies metaphysical meaning. This is a theme of Ecclesiastes and also of
Brideshead Revisited. Resigned, skeptical, cynical and world-weary Charles Ryder goes through all that
craziness-what he calls his "fierce little human tragedy"-but finds in the end that there was something to it:
"I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones."
It's easy to see how one would then go on to say that it's all also basically meaningless, that the only
meaning to squeeze from life comes in day-to-day events and, one hopes, a sense at the end that one has
done one's best. But I think that life is both absurd and meaningful. These two concepts aren't obvious
chums, but there's tons of serious reflection on, and experience of, this phenomenon out there to suggest
that today's ridiculous event is the precursor to tomorrow's big thing. I don't even think absurdity and
meaning are paradoxical.
Now, I'm just a history teacher, so maybe what I'm going to write in the next few lines is bad theory, but
it seems to me that the logic of any discussion of meaning has to start with the idea of extra-ordinary
meaning. I notice that you, Albert Camus and John Kekes follow the same route: (1) You acknowledge that
people have a desire for meaning, (2) for various reasons, you reject the idea of extra-ordinary meaning,
and (3) all that's left is proximate meaning.
I don't know anyone who has consciously made the jump from (1) to (3) without pausing at (2)-as in, "I
have a sense of purpose, and this can be satisfied by attending only to things I can see, touch, taste, smell
or hear." Practically speaking, people live (1) and (3) livesthat is, they want to fit into some great and
meaningful scheme; they want to be part of something worthwhile that's bigger than themselves. Even
when a person decides that there is no ultimate meaning, the decision itself shows that thoughts about such
a thing come naturally. This says something about the way people are wired.
I notice that you say in your dissertation (in the interview transcripts) and in some of your lyrics that
you want evolution to become an epic or myth to replace the myths of old. So this is evolution as the
Grand Story, the Answer. This certainly seems to be a reach for something beyond the mundane.
And I was struck by the many scientists you interviewed who were reluctant to dismiss the idea of
things being beyond the reach of science. This quote from James Crow is fascinating: