The Meaning of Life

SI Sept/Oct pgs_SI MJ 2010 7/22/10 4:42 PM Page 61 B O O K R E V I E W S found to have published false data a covered high-temperature superconduc- act: faking or fabricating data or plagiar - number of times. tivity. Their discovery was first greeted ism” (132). The last case Goodstein considers is with some disbelief but then accepted This book is accessible to the general that of Karl Alexander Muller and J. when replicated by others. reading public, although some readers Georg Bednorz, who in 1986 were Goodstein says the “take-home les- may not be very interested in the working in a field about which most son in all of this is that scientific fraud descriptions of some subjects, like high- researchers had given up hope; they dis- consists of an explicit and well-defined temperature superconductivity. ! wrote the popular underground book Sense and Goodness without God, in which The Meaning of Life I confront the meaning of life from a god- less perspective and advocate constant RICHARD CARRIER questioning, exploration, and answering of the big questions, from which Nygard’s The Nature of Existence. Roger Nygard, director. Roger film takes a cue. My book takes a scien- Nygard and Paul Tarantino, producers. Walking Shadows. tific and philosophical approach that is 93 minutes. systematic and comprehensive. Nygard’s film takes the ap proach most people actu- he Nature of Existence (whose that it doesn’t explore why anyone believes ally take: asking the self-proclaimed tagline is “Every mystery of what they assert in the movie (more on experts of different views what they think. human existence . explained in that below), it’s evident from what is pre- That’s not to say that many actually travel T the world to do this (as Nygard astonish- one movie!”) is a new documentary by sented that most of these people (which Roger Nygard, who brought us the means most people) pay little attention to ingly does—pay close attention to how charming documentaries Trekkies and evidence and logic when deciding what global this film is and ponder what it took Trekkies II (both of which I highly recom- the answers are. I also wanted to hear for Nygard to make it). But most people mend). He has a reputation for treating more about how he found and chose the do something similar, on a local level, via his subjects respectfully but with kind- people he interviewed. The collection is the Internet and multicultural reading. hearted humor, and he lives up to that surprising, ranging from Mormon sci-fi Their experience is likely to be as shallow reputation in this film. He traveled all author Orson Scott Card to unheard-of as this film. But like this film, there is a over the earth posing to wildly diverse gurus in India to nuclear physicists at great deal of depth under the surface people the question “What’s the meaning Oxford and wildly beyond. But clearly waiting to be explored. After you know of life?” along with various other ques- with so much to show, elements of back- other views are out there, you can never tions that came up, from the purpose of story had to be sacrificed. go back to thinking yours is the only way sex to the basis of morality. This film has Now the good: The Nature of Existence of thinking. pleased some and disappointed others. I is more intelligent than Religulous and And that’s this film’s biggest asset. can say that while it has its flaws, it also nicer than The God Who Wasn’t There with You will see and hear more opinions has its virtues and uses. dryer, kinder humor. It’s also more from more diverse people on the big First, the bad: I found his trek com- respectful of its subjects and their faiths questions of life than you likely ever pletely disorganized and random. Though (with some well-deserving exceptions). would have otherwise, even by copious after a second viewing (and rethinking This film is tailor-made to be enjoyed by reading. And most seem as sane (or as conversations I had with him when he believers as much as nonbelievers and crazy) as everyone else. You’ll often see interviewed me for the documentary a thus won’t please religion-bashers. Nygard yourself in these others who think few years ago) I realized that was partly lets people of a dozen different faiths sim- entirely different things. It will force you the point; what he found was completely ply speak for themselves without any to ask: are you just like them? If all these disorganized and random. The movie Michael Moore “gotcha” tactics, and he people are wrong (and because they dis- reflects humanity. Also, no conclusions leaves the audience to draw their own agree, almost all of them have to be), are drawn and no loose ends tied up. It’s a conclusions. Nygard captures the views of odds are, you are wrong too. So how do film without a resolution or any coherent religious fanatics, scientists, and even a theme other than the obvious: there is so seven-year-old girl. And not just Richard Carrier (www.richardcarrier.info) is an much overconfident disagreement on the Westerners—he travels to India and expert in Greco-Roman intellectual history, editor most fundamental issues of life that China, too. It’s a snapshot of humanity. emeritus of The Secular Web (www.infidels.org), humans clearly need to get a clue. I am quoted once in the film (very and author of Sense and Goodness without God: Though one major defect of the film is briefly). Nygard found me because I A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism. SKEPTICAL INQUIRER Se pte mbe r / Octobe r 2 0 1 0 61 SI Sept/Oct pgs_SI MJ 2010 7/23/10 12:32 PM Page 62 you really know you’re the lone excep- something different. You thus need a do they believe that? I know he has tion, the only one who just happens to method that can tell the difference, and answers in the can (he has several hundred be right? That’s exactly the question you need to apply it. Nygard doesn’t do hours of footage that include answers to posed by The Chris tian Delusion, a new that. He just puts a mirror up to that very question). There is some addi- book from Pro metheus Books edited by humanity and reveals the problem. tional footage available on the film’s Web John Loftus (and to which I contributed Hence it’s a movie I would feel comfort- site (www.thenatureofexistence.com), two chapters), which came out just in able recommending to religious friends which may become extras in the eventual time for The Nature of Existence to prove and family. They won’t be put off by it. its point: you have to seriously question They’ll even like it. Yet it will haunt DVD release. But the movie doesn’t tackle whether you are that exception or just them for years. the why. Nygard says that if this film is another human in error. And you can’t After I saw the film, I asked Nygard successful, a sequel will explore that next answer that by simply asking experts why The Nature of Existence didn’t ask the level. For now, The Nature of Existence just what they think because they all think question I kept asking as I watched it: why looks in the window to see what’s there. ! L E T T E R S T O T H E E D I T O R of ways that humans have found to deal with life. It was to promote the abundance of the uncertainties of life. Hope for an afterlife game, survival from illness, human fertility, is just one of those ways. Furthermore, noth- and later the fertility of the fields and the ingness isn’t a malady but a solution to a cooperation of the weather. In times when problem for many people: the problem of men lived at the mercy of nature, these things living a few more years without hope of were more important than what happens recovery from the torments of injury, disease, after death. Indeed, many primitive people or the ravages of old age. There is no reason have rituals to insure that the dead stay dead. to believe that religion’s promise of an after- The historically new religions such as life won’t one day be seen as an obstacle to Christianity and Islam used the idea of the solving the most pressing problem humans afterlife as a recruitment tool. Only the have ever faced: the problem of living in a adherents had a chance at a rewarding after- body for dozens of years beyond the point life; all others were to be punished in where life can be said to have any meaning. Hell. At the same time, Judaism also adopted The part of the article I found interest- some of these ideas, although the Jewish reli- ing was the part that discussed the various gion does not condemn all nonbelievers to physiological effects of positive socialization. Hell or reserve Heaven for believers alone. Again, however, the authors fail to establish Jerry Hershberg any necessary connection between these Torrance, California effects and religion. Our Brains and Beliefs Bob Carroll I enjoyed the interesting but poorly argued Davis, California McGuire and Tiger summarized the evolu- piece by Michael McGuire and Lionel Tiger tionary pressures that maintain religious belief on why religion endures (“Brain Science, in the absence of empirical evidence.

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