The Meaning of Facts

In his highly entertaining book, The Seven Types of Atheism, released in October in the U.S., philosopher John Gray puts it this way: “Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.” It exists because we humans are the only species, so far as we can know, who have evolved to know explicitly that, one day in the future, we will die. And this existential fact requires some way of reconciling us to it while we are alive.   Andrew Sullivan in The Intelligencer.

The obvious question is, how can an event be meaningful if you don’t believe there is any meaning to all events– to the random conglomeration of events and things and ideas make up the universe?  If you can’t explain the universe, what meaning could an individual event have?  Other than, as some agnostics would have it, part of a life that is no less wonderful and amazing because it is limited to our lived experiences?

If you see an ant crawling along a box car, you could say that it is trying to get to a certain location.  Does that matter if the boxcar is going somewhere else?  Is the ant’s purposeful journey meaningful, if he can never possibly get back to his nest, or the food he is looking for?

Conversely, if an event is meaningful because it is part of a narrative of your relationship with an almighty creator, then how can you not draw conclusions about the nature of the universe from the meaning that you give your life?