The Table

Conversation Meeting Place, Date & Time: Sunday, 10/20/2024 @ 6:30 PM – Black Walnut Cafe, Coppell, TX.

We are all born into a world not of our making. Unlike Thomas in the last post, rather than being plunged into it all at once, we become aware of it over time and accustomed to it, as, “…that’s just the way things are.”

At the same time, however, things happen that challenge our beliefs. We experience dissonance between what we thought things were like and the ways they really are, and this dissonance can be unsettling.

The Truman Show, a 1998 movie staring Jim Carrey, illustrates this dissonance. Truman Burbank lives what seems to be a normal life in a small seaside town. But he actually lives in an artificial world, a giant domed television set with hidden cameras broadcasting his daily life for all the world to see (see links below for more on the movie). In one of the opening scenes, Truman is startled by his first experience of dissonance.

As the plot unfolds, Truman begins to suspect that things aren’t they way they seem. In this scene, Truman approaches Lauren, his love interest in the movie. (He fell in love with her accidentally when she caught his eye and is not part of the script.) They avoid the cameras and temporarily escape to a beach. While everyone is watching and before she is taken away, she tries to tell him that she is an actor and this is all a show.

Instances of dissonance begin to pile up and Truman becomes more suspicious and determined to get at the truth — what is behind his world? In the climax of the film, Truman is about to step out into the real world through a doorway at the edge of his domed set when he is confronted by a voice from heaven, Christof, the show’s creator and director.

Note the symbolism in the movie. Christof (Christ) is the “creator”. Truman (True-man) is the created. (Get it?) Truman makes his choice and the credits roll. But what happens next? What does Truman encounter in the real world? (There hasn’t been a sequel.)

One suspects that Truman would have to start over and ask the same questions we do. What lies beyond our reality? Is there a Christof or a god behind the horizon in the real world? 

The secular or materialist view of the world says no. There is nothing beyond. So says Richard Dawkins, the famous British evolutionary biologist, author and atheist in River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life.

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

Here is Dawkins emphasizing his point with a group of schoolchildren,

The real question the children are asking (they seem unconvinced with Dawkin’s answer) is “why is what’s here here?”, a paraphrase of the the age-old philosophical question, “why is there something rather than nothing?” Dawkins side-steps it insisting that the universe is here, well…just because. The “meanings” he suggests we create for ourselves (within the universe?) seem pointless if the universe itself has no purpose or meaning.

Dawkins views are empty and unsatisfying, but his is not the only alternative. Stephen Meyer is a philosopher of science and the Director of the Discovery Institute, a think tank advocating Intelligent Design. In this video, Meyer outlines three scientific arguments that counter Dawkins, The Big Bang, fine tuning and the complexity of life (and irreducible complexity). 

Looking at nature, there seems to be evidence to both sides. On one hand, the mountains and rivers and other landmasses seem to be random. The animal world seems to have no rhyme or reason to it. And yet, there is also order. The sun rises and sets. The seasons come and go. There seems to purpose to it all — there must be(?).

The choice is binary. The materialist worldview that Dawkins and others advocate says there is nothing but matter — no purpose, no meaning, nothing beyond what is here. The non-materialist worldview says otherwise, there is something beyond, a mind behind the design. In a word, God (or something like it).

Which is it?

For next time, what does your worldview of the past have to do with now?…Worldview Present.

Conversation Starters

• Put yourself in Truman’s shoes. Do you recall any instances of changes in your worldview, dissonance between what you thought things were like and what they were really like? Take a silly example, if you ever believed in Santa Claus, do you remember when you found out there wasn’t?
• In the movie, Truman begins to suspect that people are hiding the truth and suspects people are lying to him. Did you ever have such thoughts? Do you or have you ever had a sense that you were being misled? Or, lied to?
• What do you think of Dawkin’s thoughts about creating or finding our own meaning? Does this make sense to you? Do you think that works? Why or why not?
• Taken at face value, do either Dawkin’s or Meyer’s arguments more persuasive? Why or why not?
• Does anything presented here in this article convince you to change your views one way or the other? Is more detail needed?

References For Further Inquiry

Truman Show Official Trailer

Truman Show Opening Scene

More on Richard Dawkins

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins

More on Steven Meyers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer

Other Notes

Wikipedia link on the metaphysical question that philosophers have asked for centuries, Why is there anything at all?