Does the Universe Have a Purpose?

The following link has their complete essays to the question posed by the John Templeton Foundation:

Professor Laurence Krauss. Unlikely

Professor David Galernter. Yes

Professor Peter Atkins. No

Senior Fellow John F. Haught. Yes

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Not Sure.

Professor Nancy Murphey. Indeed.

Nobelist Christian de Duve. No.

Jane Goodall. Certainly.

Professor Owen Gingerich. Yes.

Astrobiologist Paul Davis. Perhaps.

Astrophysicist Bruno Guiderdoni. Very Likely.

Professor Eli Wiesel. I Hope So.

What do you think?

The implications of the question presupposes that if there is a "purpose" to this universe, something determines the purpose that would not be part of the universe. Some like to call this purpose giver God.

I think you put your finger on the problem. On one hand, the question presupposes that the universe has intentionality apart from the animal intelligences that inhabit it. But, framed as a question of ethics, the questions becomes clearer. The purpose of the universe becomes nothing more or less than the purpose that you find as you walk life's journey. Bertrand Russell's purpose as he saw it was to act so as to produce harmonious rather than discordant desires, and that the good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge. Thus, while there may not be Platonic purpose as such, we can still find for ourselves purpose by aspiring for harmony and the good life.

Dawkins makes some interesting comments about the Templeton Foundation in The God Delusion. Broadly about the way their money can cause some scientists to compromise their principles.

If I gave you a million dollars, would your compromise your principles? If the answer is yes, then I submit they were never your principles in the first place. On the other hand, I do agree that money can corrupt scientists and intellectuals no less effectively as it can politicans and businessmen. I hope Dawkins can cite examples.

The mutability of principles reminds of British playwright George Bernard Shaw's quip who found himself at a dinner party beside an attractive woman. "Madame," he said. "Would you go to bed with me for a fifty thousand pounds?"

She coyly replied: "Perhaps."

"And if I were to offer you five pounds?" Shaw asked.

"Mr. Shaw!" said the woman. "What do you take me for?"

"We have already established what you are," Shaw replied. "Now we are merely haggling over the price."

Regarding the Templeton Foundation....there is considerable disagreement among scientists concerning whether accepting Templeton funding taints a scientific project, considering that the foundation has as its semi-overt objective the reconciliation of science and religion.

Richard Dawkins: "Freeman Dyson, by accepting the Templeton Prize, sent a powerful signal to the world which, whether he likes it or not, will be taken as an endorsement of religion by one of the world's most distinguished physicists."

Of course, money can have a warping effect on principle. The same is true with the awarding of prizes, the granting of professorships or any kind of employment, celebrity or fame, or the proximity to celebrities and the famous. I think it was Walter Lippman who said journalists might as well throw away their pencil the moment they accept an invitation to give the president their advice. I must admit a bias to philosophers who are work outside of institutions such as churches, think tanks, and universities. These institutions compromise people who do their thinking, protestations to the contrary. These institutions are gateways. They let in certain people—the elites-- and keep out other people—the great unwashed. And, when institutions filter people, they also filter ideas, including conflicting ideas. I wonder what would have happened if they had called Jesus rabbi and had welcomed Paul to the academy. The thinking that emerges from that experience seems to me to be more authentic and applicable than scribblings made in the sterility of a university garret. As much as I admire, for example, Saul Kripke’s theories on semantics, I consider his work inferior to, say, Eric Hoffer, the itinerant longshoreman and migratory field laborer. Kripke, who has spent his professional life on college campuses, may generate more theses, but Hoffer has shaped more minds. And, at the end of the day, that is the acid test of an enduring philosophy.

It may be that the Tempelton prize is corrupting, but that is only because they who have received it are corruptable. And Dawkins' contention that the acceptance of the prize should be taken as an endorsement of relgion leaves me less than aghast. Horrors at the thought that religion might be something other than an unqualified evil and surely undeserving of reconcilition with the august discipline of Science.

That's a little disingenuous of you. Surely you are aware that many are trying to pervert science to dignify certain articles of religious dogma with a veneer of scientific support?

I don't think that's Templeton's aim, however. It appears that his goal is to see if there is common ground between two disciplines, given the assumption of good will and rationality. I don't think his goal is to butress creedal claims with science. Perhaps it's a middle child inclination, but I think I can find middle ground between virtually any two centers of thought. Paganism? I also love nature. Mormonism? I also love family. Catholicism? I also love tradition. Atheism? I also love skepticism. Islam? I also love terrorism. (joking)

My view generally is too much hate is engendered from supposed differences of world views when many but not all of those differences are more apparant than real.

Endurance and popular appeal seems to me a rather lousy test of philosophical quality.

What would you regard as a good test of philosophical quality?

Logical consistency, novel perspective, scientific insight, functional integration.

Those are good tests of scientific utility, but unless you assume that science and utility is the ground and end of philosophy, I don't see how they are the basis for discriminating between poor philosophy (mine, say) and great philosophy ( Plato or Kant, say). While argumentum ad popularum is a fallacy, the staying power of an idea isn't, unless you make yet another assumption: that truth and coherence are somehow independent of the judgment of others over space and time. Needless to say, those two sets of assumptions that are the bedrock of scientism in the first instance and solipsism in the second instance fail the tests of logical consistency, novel perspective, scientific insight, and functional integration.