Do atheists really never stop asking ‘why?’
The 2012 Global Atheist convention began with a video suggesting that ‘why’ was possibly the most powerful force in all existence. It claimed that atheists were never content with answers such as ‘because that’s how God made them’ (Ironically they quote Galileo, but he wasn’t actually an atheist!). The video claims that atheists refused such narrow answers to such complex questions, the reason because ‘we never stop asking, why?’
I found this video presentation fascinating because it came in the context of Richard Dawkins’ appearance earlier that week on Q&A where he claimed that the ‘why’ question was ‘not a meaningful question’. He event claimed that the ‘why’ question can be silly. Here are two quotes (for the source click here)…
RICHARD DAWKINS: Science is working on the problem of the antecedent factors that lead to our existence. Now, “why” in any further sense than that, why in the sense of purpose is, in my opinion, not a meaningful question. You cannot ask a question like “Why do mountains exist?” as though mountains have some kind of purpose.
And again…
RICHARD DAWKINS: “Why?” is a silly question. “Why?” is a silly question. You can ask, “What are the factors that led to something coming into existence?” That’s a sensible question. But “What is the purpose of the universe?” is a silly question. It has no meaning.
It appears that to Richard Dawkins, the silly ‘why’ questions were the philosophical ones rather than the purely scientific questions.
I was further puzzled when I was at the Global Atheist Convention itself and I heard the presentation from Lawrence Krauss. His presentation was entitled ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’, which is certainly a profound and deeply important question and has entertained philosophers for centuries. In attempting to answer this question in a fast paced and deeply thought provoking presentation Krauss concluded that the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ is not the interesting question! He suggested that there were more interesting questions such as, ‘how did the universe evolve?’ To Krauss the philosophical question wasn’t interesting, to him only scientific questions were interesting.
I find it ironic that these two major atheist thinkers had actually stopped asking ‘why’. This prompted me to think, was that video accurate? Do atheists really never stop asking why?
Or perhaps it might be that if they ask the questions ‘what is the purpose of the universe’, or ‘why is there something rather than nothing’, the answer could be something that they don’t want to hear?
