This article was published exclusively online in the Christian Research Journal, volume 48, number 01 (2025).
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On November 24, 2024, Elon Musk remarked that achieving interplanetary travel will be critical to the long-term survival of conscious life.1 Presumably, he considers such technology the first major step towards interstellar travel, which would (theoretically) grant humanity access to pristine exoplanets orbiting younger stars. Because of the life cycle of our Sun, Earth will become uninhabitable in about a billion years — that is, if it isn’t destroyed by one cataclysm or another in the meantime. All things being equal, hopping to another solar system would buy humanity some time, possibly an enormous amount of time relative to how long we’ve existed thus far. Contemporary futurists like Musk clearly believe that the longevity of our species is the highest goal of technological advancement. However, as difficult as it is to wrap one’s mind around a timescale involving billions of years, it must be recognized that this is still not the same thing as forever. Eventually, every star will die, and entropy will have the ultimate victory — the so-called heat death of the universe. Nothing will remain but a frozen and utterly dark desolation.
Perhaps Musk hasn’t yet contemplated the fact that no matter how much longer technology can extend the duration of conscious life, it cannot give us eternity. Yet eternity is something we humans intensely long for; even some who do not believe in any sort of afterlife express a deep existential angst over the finitude of humanity. Consider, for example, UNC Chapel Hill astrophysicist Katie Mack. In her book, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), she explains (in layman’s terms) the physics of the development of the cosmos and the scientific models that describe its inevitable demise. In her epilogue, she philosophizes about what this means in terms of human significance:
It’s impossible to seriously contemplate the end of the universe without ultimately coming to terms with what it means for humanity….there has to come a point in any timeline with a finite extent where our legacy as a species just […] stops. Whatever legacy-based rationalization we use to make peace with our own personal deaths (perhaps we leave behind children, or great works, or somehow make the world a better place), none of that can survive the ultimate destruction of all things. At some point, in a cosmic sense, it will not have mattered that we ever lived. The universe will, more likely than not, fade into a cold, dark, empty cosmos, and all that we’ve done will be utterly forgotten.2
When Mack asked University of Cambridge astrophysicist Hiranya Peiris about how she felt about this, Peiris said, “It’s very depressing…I don’t know what else to say about it. I give talks where I mention that this is probably the fate of the universe, and people have cried.”3 Mack, a naturalist, is honest about her deep-seated angst and how she tries to cope with the bleakness of this reality: “I admit it, I still care. I’m trying not to get hung up on it, on the ending, the last page, the end of this great experiment of existence. It’s the journey, I repeat to myself. It’s the journey.”4 Her words poignantly illustrate the quintessentially human desire for objective significance and reveal her intuition that the end of all things somehow negates the concept.
Why would naturalists philosophize, even lament, the demise of the cosmos itself? If, as they believe, they won’t be around to witness the decline and extinction of humankind and the death of the last star, why does any of that matter to them in the here and now? Perhaps it’s because we all, at least on some level, suspect that an ultimate end of all things renders meaning beyond our subjective or collective imaginings impossible. The problem is that a sense of genuine meaningfulness in one’s life is a necessary component of happiness — defined here as human flourishing — which is characterized by (among other things) a fundamental sense of wellbeing.
The Meaning Triad
To understand why naturalism, with its circumscribed metaphysical framework, excludes cosmic scale meaning and why this consequently impedes the particular kind of happiness we humans crave, we need to examine the concept of meaningfulness and determine how it fares within the architecture of naturalism versus the architecture of Christian theism. Philosopher Joshua Seachris uses a helpful set of criteria known as the meaning triad to approach questions about the meaning of life. This triad includes intelligibility, purpose, and significance.
Intelligibility refers to sense-making and coherence — things make sense to us when they fit together appropriately within a unified whole. Seachris explains:
Meaning is about intelligibility within a wider frame. Dissonance results when there is lack of such intelligibility. It is much the same with life’s meaning. We can plausibly view our requests for the meaning of life as attempts to secure the overarching framework or context through which to make sense of our lives in this universe. Our focus is on existentially weighty matters that define and depict the human condition: questions and concerns surrounding origins, purpose, significance, value, suffering, and death and destiny. We want answers to our questions about these matters, and want these answers to fit together in an existentially satisfying way. We want life to make sense, and when it does not, we are haunted by the specter of meaninglessness.5
The key question here is whether our understanding of the “existentially weighty matters” makes sense within our worldview — the grand narrative of human existence in which we situate ourselves. The answer to this necessarily involves evaluation of the rest of the triad.
The second element of the triad, purpose, pertains to those things around which we structure our lives. This is often the focus of naturalistic approaches to creating a subjective form of meaning. The assertion is that humans can simply create our own purpose and thereby generate a sense of meaning in our lives. Contributing to “something greater than ourselves” is how this is typically articulated — actively pursuing goals that improve the human condition for someone else or for humanity in general. However, judgments about things like the moral virtue of selfless work are unintelligible in the absence of transcendent standards. The reason we “should” do such things is reduced to “because it helps me feel good about my life.” Moreover, the pursuit of purposefulness within what Seachris calls the “terrestrial framework” (naturalism) cannot remedy the existential anxiety that arises from the realization that, no matter how grand our humanitarian accomplishments, they will eventually come to nothing. As Bertrand Russell puts it, “all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system…the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.”6 Russell accepts that his naturalistic cosmic narrative cannot accommodate the transcendentals that are necessary for any ultimate purpose for humanity. Yet knowing that we cannot move through life without any semblance of motivation, inspiration, or contentment, he exhorts us to boldly and defiantly “preserve our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of perfection….to live constantly in the vision of the good.”7 Russell was fully aware that a silent universe does not bestow such things, but in his view, we can at least assert our freedom from the shackles of religion by courageously pursuing the ideals that we wish had cosmic meaning.
The third element of the meaning triad, significance, is what someone has in mind when they talk about the notion of mattering — something or someone having real importance and worth. In some cases, significance can be entirely subjective, but when it comes to life’s meaningfulness, significance in an objective sense is usually in view. Unfortunately for the naturalist, this is unavailable. As Stewart Goetz and Seachris explain:
If naturalism is true, in the end there is nothing but silence concerning the human condition, because the universe is the ultimate reality. The cosmos does not care because it cannot care. We cannot matter from the sub specie aeternitatis [eternal] perspective because that perspective is not occupied by a mind or person to whom we could matter. At the cosmic level, there is no one who cares for us, no one who is concerned with us and our deepest joys and sorrows….despite some real terrestrial significance, there is a salient undercurrent of tragedy to the human condition if naturalism is true.8
If dissolution into eternal oblivion is humanity’s fate, significance beyond what we fabricate is impossible. Humans desperately want to matter in a higher, eternal sense, but naturalism rules this out.
The naturalistic worldview lacks coherence and will never fully satisfy. “Why?” Seachris asks, “Because deep human longings, especially along significance, value, and purpose axes, and deep hopes for…a lasting place for love and felicity are stubborn. These shalom-esque longings do not fit (or at least do so in a thinner form) within a naturalistic universe.”9 We can certainly go to great lengths to cultivate a subjective sense of meaning in life, but what we all truly crave is a bestowed meaning of life, because there is what Seachris calls an “ineliminable cosmic element” in our quest for meaning.10 Russell felt this in his bones; in his early mid-life he reflected: “The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain — a curious wild pain — a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite — the beatific vision — God — I do not find it, I do not think it is to be found — but the love of it is my life — it’s like passionate love for a ghost.”11
More than a decade later, he was still writing about his existential struggles: “My activities continue from force of habit, and in the company of others I forget the despair which underlies my daily pursuits and pleasure. But when I am alone and idle, I cannot conceal for myself that my life had no purpose, and that I know of no new purpose to which to devote my remaining years. I find myself involved in a vast mist of solitude both emotional and metaphysical.”12 There is a piercing pathos in Russell’s candid admission.
If naturalism is a true understanding of reality, then we are cosmic orphans muddling along, doing our best to create cheap reproductions of furnishings that are exclusive to a theistic framework. To the questions “Who are we and why are we here?” there is no answer, and so it is absurd to even ask. Yet the human soul yearns ever upward. In his book, A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe, Clemson University philosophy professor Todd May reflects on this human predicament:
We would have preferred our humanity to be etched into the nature of things as an imprimatur that gives it — and us — significance. Barring that, we would at least have liked a little cosmic support: a God or a telos that assures us of meaningfulness of the years that we spend here. But things are not like that. The universe is silent. We are not anointed, we are not awaited, and we are not welcomed….We are cosmic accidents.13
May endorses the existential therapy of developing a life narrative to overcome the profound sense of meaninglessness this situation inspires. He writes, “Since human lives unfold over time, perhaps what gives them meaning is their narrativity. Lives can be conceived as stories, with beginnings, middles, and ends.”14 We should ask: what kind of deep meaning or genuine fulfillment can result from thinking of our lifespan as a story that we subject to narrative analysis? If nothing is everlasting about our stories, what is their actual worth? Even the most elaborate life narrative can never fully alleviate the undercurrent of cosmic emptiness. The inevitability and finality of death casts its shadow backwards; like it or not, the ending determines the meaning of the whole.
Perhaps we glean a simulacrum of meaning and, therefore, happiness from life’s obvious joys; but what about its sorrows? On naturalism, human suffering is ultimately pointless, and death marks the termination of each person’s existence. Suffering and death are existentially-inflicted wounds, and healing is out of reach. There is no hope for a world made right, for the redemption of humanity’s brokenness, or for any semblance of cosmic-scale justice for the rampant evil in the world. There is no escaping the fact that all is a pointless cosmic farce. As Shakespeare’s Macbeth soliloquized:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.15
How All Sad Things Can Become Untrue
When it comes to the question of life having meaning in the cosmic sense, which is what we desire and what is needed for authentic happiness, metaphysical architecture makes all the difference. In contrast with naturalism, Christianity offers intelligibility, purpose, and significance — all three elements of the meaning triad. It is only within a meaning-saturated universe, with intentionality and significance woven into the very fabric of reality by a transcendent creator who offers us the opportunity for an eternity in communion with Him, that there can eventually be complete satisfaction of our human longings. This is part of the abundant life Christ offers (John 10:10), which begins in this life when we surrender ourselves to Him and thereby secure our eternal hope. It will reach culmination when all things are made right, when (to paraphrase J. R. R. Tolkien) all sad things will become untrue and we are in full communion with the Lord, as foretold in the Revelation of John:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:1–5 ESV)
Melissa Cain Travis, PhD is a Fellow of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture. She is the author of Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Cosmic Comprehensibility (Roman Roads Press, 2022) and Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God (Harvest House Publishers, 2018).
NOTES
- Elon Musk, post on X, November 24, 2024.
- Katie Mack, The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) (Scribner, 2020), 206.
- Mack, The End of Everything, 206.
- Mack, The End of Everything, 209.
- Joshua Seachris, “From the Meaning Triad to Meaning Holism: Unifying Life’s Meaning,” Human Affairs 29, no. 4 (2019): 365.
- Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship” in Selections from the Writings of Bertrand Russell, ed. Louis Greenspan and Stefan Andersson (Routledge, 1999), 32.
- Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” 34.
- Stewart Goetz and Joshua Seachris, What Is This Thing Called the Meaning of Life? (Routledge, 2020), 86–87.
- Seachris, “From the Meaning Triad to Meaning Holism,” 366.
- Seachris, “From the Meaning Triad to Meaning Holism,” 377.
- Bertrand Russell, Autobiography (Routledge, 1998), 303.
- Russell, Autobiography, 395.
- Todd May, A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 175.
- May, A Significant Life, 63.
- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V Scene V.
