THE DOLL-HOUSE DELUSION

Atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, recounted reactions to this book:

·       “A foreign publisher of my first book confessed the he could not sleep for three nights after reading it, so troubled was he by what he saw as its cold, bleak message. Others have asked me how I can bear to get up in the mornings.

·       A teacher from a distant country wrote to me reproachfully that a pupil had come to him in tears after reading the same book, because it had persuaded her that life was empty and purposeless. He advised her not to show the book to any of her friends, for fear of contaminating them with the same nihilistic pessimism.”

These responses are appropriate. If life lacks meaning or purpose, then there is nothing to find and nothing to live for, apart from assigning meanings where none exist. It is playing in a make-believe doll-house where everything is lifeless, apart from our own temporary flight into fantasy.

And what about doing good for others? Isn’t there any meaning in this? Isn’t it right to increase the pleasure and reduce the pain for others? Doesn’t that make us feel good? In the short run, perhaps, but if this is a universe without a right and wrong, then our only reality is our temporary and meaningless feelings we embrace from playing in our doll-house.

In this regard, I appreciate Jon Casimir’s contribution:

·       “Here’s what I think. There is no meaning of life. The whole thing is a gyp, a never-ending corridor to nowhere. What is passed off as an all-important search is basically just a bunch of philosophers scrabbling about on their knees, trying to find a lost sock in the cosmic laundromat.” (Jon Casimir quoted by John Marsden in This I Believe (1995). p. 48)

If our universe is morally empty, then there is nothing to find, not in this cosmic laundromat.