Thomas Nagel on Cosmic Authority
The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 130-1.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition
and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism
of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse
of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including
everything about the human mind. Darwin enable modern secular culture
to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a
way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and desiring as fundamental features
of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally
by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the
nonteleogical laws of physics on the material of which we and our
environments are all composed. There might still be thought to be a
religious threat in the existence of the laws of physics themselves,
and indeed the existence of anything at all, but it seems to be less
alarming to most atheists.
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