Meaning

Right, so a self-contained universe.

Even excusing the (current) inability of science to explain the nature or purpose of consciousness or the cause of the creation of the universe¹ science also cannot give any justification for any action.  If the universe is self-contained and there is no afterlife, no action we take can be said to be positive or negative.  Eventually either the universe will freeze or recontract and either way all life will be extinguished.  The only exemption is if we find a way to escape the corporeal universe.  Even if we become beings of energy in some far flung future, energy exists within the universe and within the laws governing the universe.  We must find a way to exist outside the universe for any action to have any meaning; for anything to be good, bad, valuable, noble, laudable, loving, or lasting.  Far before we wrestled with these quandaries, God proposed a way for us to exist outside of the universe through Jesus Christ.  This fact (the fact that it is claimed) gives Christianity an underpinning for any further moral propositions.  Other religions and spiritualities propose it too, so it isn't an exclusive claim, but it is a position that hard natural science cannot answer.  If we all came from nothing, and we are all returning to nothing, what possible point could there be to taking any action over any alternative given that neither choice will have any significance whatsoever in 10 billion years?  Nihilism is the only possible conclusion of the closed-system universe.

-J 



1 I used to think that perhaps after expanding as much as it could expand², gravity³ took over and caused the universe to contract back into a single point which then re-big-banged into a new universe.  Which is fine, but still falls prey to the old "turtles all the way down" problem.

2 Into what, exactly, is the universe expanding?  If the universe is getting bigger, what exists outside it?

3 Yeah, this doesn't make a lot of sense either.  Why do all particles attract all other particles?