Words of encouragement from scientism

For those who are stressed/ feel anguish in these difficult times, I have found some words of encouragement from our leading elite intellectuals. This is what science (or scientism) and atheism say about mankind, meaning, purpose and spirit:

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant…”
Stephen Hawking

The universe and life are pointless…
In a YouTube video he states that evolution “says that there is no special purpose for your life, because it is a naturalistic philosophy. We have no more extrinsic purpose than a squirrel or an armadillo.”
Jerry Coyne, biologist

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life…life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins

That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave. . . Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.
Bertrand Russell

“Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.”
Jean-Paul Sartre

Enjoy.

Thanks, that does rather put the current unpleasantness in its due perspective.

A good dose of sober reality.

A good dose of sober reality.

Reality ? And the evidence for that is ?

Thanks, that does rather put the current unpleasantness in its due perspective.

You've got nothing to worry about, Malf. Stoicism will carry you through to the finish line.

So where does that leave someone who understands the reality of the situation but also recognizes that humans crave "meaning"?

You've just put faith in something that hasn't actually answered the question (science).

Again, you should be agnostic as a starting point since you really only have a partial "understand the reality of the situation".  This should give you some room to hope that an answer, and possibly a deeply satisfying one, to the meaning question might yet emerge.

You can call it a God of the Gaps type of hope, but I find it intellectually dishonest to dismiss it out of hand.  Science simply hasn't proven an atheistic case.  There's lots (understatement) that we have left to learn.

So where does that leave someone who understands the reality of the situation

Linda

Your post presupposes that atheist materialists understand the reality of the situation and as you are one of them, this comes across as obscenely arrogant.

While I understand where you were going with this, I am personally unable to take comfort from mere wishful thinking, either. So where does that leave someone who understands the reality of the situation but also recognizes that humans crave "meaning"?

Linda

I thought so too, that opening post was someone else's dreams, not mine. I guess we all have to make our own choices. There are many philosophers to choose from, Bertrand Russell has never been one of my favourites either.