If It Is All Matter, Why Should It Matter?

[00:00:01] If it is all matter, why should it matter? [00:00:04] By Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth On Saturday I was sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a large window with a nice cup of coffee, watching the sun slowly rise. I was in a contemplative mood, not dwelling on the quotidian duties bound to occupy me in the hours ahead, but thinking about some of the big issues in life, or at least in my life. [00:00:26] I had two thoughts that I'd like to pass along at the time. I wondered if they were possibly, but not necessarily, standing at odds with each other. If so, so be it. The first had to do with the world all around and before me. At the time, the sunrise was glorious as the earth rotated and the sky slowly brightened, mixing colors in the scattered clouds above. [00:00:49] I started thinking about how amazing the natural world is and about how at the end of the day I. I think that all of it, every aspect of it, consists of material elements. [00:01:00] At heart, I'm a materialist. I think that matter and of course energy is all there is. Even me. I'm all matter. My body has organs made up of tissues, made up of cells made up of molecules made up of atoms. And it's atoms and molecules all the way down in my view, including my brain. 80 to 100 billion neurons, all of them made of molecules and nothing else. [00:01:29] I do not believe we have a soul within us somewhere, somehow, or that we have minds and personalities that are somehow independent of our brains and the brain is material naturally. The thought then occurred to me. If it's all matter, why should it matter? [00:01:46] For me, the most tangible way of thinking about the question is to reflect on how, in my limited understanding, it all started. And it will all end. [00:01:55] The sun, the clouds, the window, the chair, the coffee and me are all made up of molecules. We got here from a big bang 13.8 billion years ago or so. And the second law of thermodynamics is absolutely inexorable. [00:02:12] In trillions of years, none of this will be here. It's not just that the sun will explode and destroy whatever is left of life on Earth. [00:02:20] It's that all matter of every kind, everywhere will eventually dissipate and the only thing existing will be disconnected molecules floating around in inconceivably vast spaces. [00:02:32] For the entire universe, there will be nothing that we can reasonably think of as something. [00:02:38] So why should anything happening now matter? [00:02:41] There's no long term goal or destiny, just the vastness of the void and the molecules. [00:02:47] Some of you will have a better understanding of the end than this. But I think this simple perspective is basically right. [00:02:54] Whether it's right or not. It's what I think just now, and I'm concerned about what I'm thinking, not the actual state of reality, such as it will be in, say, a quadrillion years from now. [00:03:06] The thought occurred to me, though, and rather strongly, that life really does matter. [00:03:11] At least it matters to me in the here and now. I will not have a here and now when I no longer exist, just as I did not have a here and now before I existed. But I do exist now, so there is a here and now for me, and it really does matter. [00:03:27] Some people have told me that if there is nothing but the material world, then logically nothing should matter. In my view, that is nonsense. [00:03:36] Nonsense. [00:03:38] Why does mattering need to be logical? I'm not talking about a coherent syllogism here. I'm talking about what makes my life meaningful, and many thousands of things make it meaningful. I don't care what your logic is. [00:03:51] I have family that I hold dear, good friends, interesting conversations, goals in life, the satisfaction of meeting some of them. [00:03:59] I enjoy good food, good drink, exercise, meditation, reading novels, walking through the woods, petting my dog, sitting in front of the fire and thinking, watching sports, plowing through Greek, learning, writing books. [00:04:16] Sorry if that violates someone's logic, but why should it matter to my sense of enjoyment and importance? If what is here and now is all transient matter, I don't need to have an argument for it or evidence for it mattering. Who cares what the ultimate reasons are? [00:04:33] Things do matter to me, and I should put my time and effort into the things that matter to me the most. [00:04:39] And so I try to do. [00:04:42] That was my thought number one. [00:04:44] In the next post, I'll explain my thought number two.