Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even If the Universe Doesn't

Description

Drawing on years of wide-ranging, intensive clinical experience, and his own family experience with cancer, the author helps the reader to understand how people cope with random adversity without recourse to supernatural belief. In fact, as he explains, coming to terms with randomness, while initially frightening, can be liberating and empowering. Realizing that the universe is fundamentally random is not usually the cause of nihilism, apathy, or feelings of pointlessness about life. Written for those seeking a scientifically sound yet humanistic worldview, the book examines science's inroads into the big questions claimed by religion and philosophy. Dr. Lewis shows how our mistaken intuitions about purpose are entangled with assumptions that life events happen for an intended reason and that the universe has inherent purpose. Integrating disparate scientific fields, he shows how not only the universe, life, and consciousness could have emerged and evolved spontaneously and unguided - so too could purpose, morality, and meaning. There is persuasive evidence that these qualities evolved naturally and unmysteriously in humans, as conscious, goal-directed social animals. While acknowledging the social and psychological value of progressive forms of religion, the author respectfully deconstructs even the most sophisticated theistic arguments for a purposeful universe. Instead, he offers an evidence-based, realistic yet optimistic, compassionate worldview.

Ralph Lewis, MD, is a psychiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada; an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto; and a psycho-oncology consultant at the Odette Cancer Centre in Toronto. Dr. Lewis writes a popular blog series, Finding Purpose, hosted and promoted by his hospital (http-//health.sunnybrook.ca/finding-purpose/). He has published articles on a psychiatric understanding of belief and purpose in Skeptic magazine and The Human Prospect, and delivered presentations on these topics at the James Randi Educational Foundation's TAM conference, Institute for Science and Human Values, and Canadian Association for Spiritual Care. Dr. Lewis helps people seeking meaning in the face of severe and tragic adversity, in addition to extensive experience with complex and subtle psychiatric and psychological conditions. He is interested in the unreliability of intuition and subjective perception in shaping our explanations and beliefs, and the neural basis of motivation and purposiveness.

""Ralph Lewis asks and then answers some very big questions in this fine book. How are we to understand the world as it is, and how have we arrived at these insights in our long journey from the primordial swamp? Drawing from disparate disciplines, he skillfully weighs up competing scientific and religious theories. The result is an informative, highly readable tour de force, the modern person's guide for the perplexed." --Anthony Feinstein, professor of psychiatry, University of Toronto "In Finding Purpose in a Godless World, psychiatrist Ralph Lewis presents an interdisciplinary view of how our purpose, morality and meaning evolved. With recent ethno-sectarian conflicts seemingly on the rise throughout the world, whether for religious or other ideological reasons, a more global, humanistic vision is sorely needed. This is where the richness of his book shines through, since Dr. Lewis exemplifies an abiding respect for humans in their individual, complicated journeys through life, but is never patronizing. On behalf of reason--and purpose--secular humanists, too, would do well to become emissaries for compassion and understanding." --Toni Van Pelt, president of the Institute for Science and Human Values, and president of the National Organization for Women "This book is a brilliant refutation of transcendence. Ralph Lewis convincingly shows that since we are biological organisms in a natural environment, purpose simply cannot fall from 'on high.' Purpose is bottom-up, not top-down; evolved, not bestowed." --Dan Barker, author of Life Driven Purpose: How an Atheist Finds Meaning "Lewis's personal life experiences, combined with his professional career as a psychiatrist, have given us a unique insight into the wonder, beauty, and splendor that comes from an indifferent but truly magnificent universe. Drawing heavily upon evolutionary science and psychiatry, Dr. Lewis provides a pragmatically sound argument demonstrating how, precisely, humans have evolved to develop values, care, and purpose in a universe that does not." --Christopher DiCarlo, PhD, philosopher, past visiting research scholar at Harvard University, principal of Critical Thinking Solutions, and author of How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Asking the Right Questions "The question of life's purpose is probably the main reason believers cannot bring themselves to reevaluate and reject the antiquated religions they've been indoctrinated to believe. Prompted by a personal crisis, Dr. Lewis has written a definitive answer to this question, one that I hope gains a substantial audience." --John W. Loftus, author of Why I Became an Atheist and editor of The Christian Delusion "All my life, I've been torn between the burning pull of great purpose and the gnawing angst of demythologizing doubt. Finding Purpose in a Godless World is for all so troubled. I've hoped for transcendence, my PhD is in anatomy/brain research, and still I find in this book a sweeping journey of ultimate discovery and a hidden mirror for intimate self-reflection. I remain passionately agnostic." --Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host, Closer to Truth "In an age where medicine, neuroscience and psychiatry have become increasingly more narrow and reductionistic, Dr. Lewis is one of those few 'renaissance psychiatrists' who engages the reader by integrating his rich clinical experience, neurobiology and philosophy in order to take on the really big question: How do we as humans create meaning in a time when religion is no longer the dominant force that it once was?" --Ari Zaretsky, MD, FRCPC, Chief of the Department of Psychiatry and Vice President of Education, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto. FROM THE FOREWORD: "Like other grand synthesizers and interdisciplinary thinkers--Jared Diamond, Steven Pinker, and Yuval Noah Harari come to mind--Lewis employs evolutionary theory, complexity theory, cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and other fields to review the best evidence we have for why consciousness evolved out of primitive brains; where goal-directedness and will come from and how they drive us to strive for more meaning than other animals; and where our moral sense comes from and why we care about others, even those not related to us." --MICHAEL SHERMER