Thinkquote of the day: How can there be farce without a meaningful drama?

Recall that physicist Steven Weinberg asserted, first, that the universe "seems pointless" and that we are "a more or less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes [after the big bang]" and, second, that modern scientists "build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather." This drive, he concludes, "is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."
- from A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), p. 83 (quoting Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (New York: Basic, 1977), pp. 154-55.)

Rot detector: One way we can be sure Weinberg is talking rot is that, if we were really the outcome of such a chain of accidents, the terms "farce" and "farcical" would actually have no meaning for us. And if we are not, from what source did we get the idea that there could be a farcical chain of accidents or that there could be any escape from such a chain?

This is part of what I mean when I say that materialism is not adding up.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, which keeps tabs on the intelligent design controversy.

Toronto-based Canadian journalist Denyse O'Leary (www.designorchance.com) is the author of the multiple award-winning By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), an overview of the intelligent design controversy. She was named CBA Canada's Recommended Author of the Year in 2005 and is co-author, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard, of the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007).