Can Life Be Meaningless?
By DONALD DeMARCO
Susan Blackmore (born 1951) is a British writer, lecturer, atheist, and skeptic. She is currently a visiting professor at the University of Plymouth. In 1991 the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry granted her the Distinguished Skeptic Award. She is twice married, once divorced, and has two children.
In a 2018 debate with Jordan Peterson, she made her extreme skepticism abundantly clear. “Nothing matters,” she exclaimed, “It’s all empty and meaningless. This is how the world is. Get used to it”! She went on to say that her view constitutes a “very positive” way of living because it accepts the meaninglessness and emptiness of life.
All our daily activities, she contends — waking up in the morning, getting dressed, eating, shopping, writing, returning to bed at night are all utterly meaningless. Therefore, life as a whole, being nothing more than a collection of meaningless activities, is also meaningless.
The fundamental notion of meaning has been a stumbling block for many. Nonetheless the problem is hardly invincible. A dictionary is chockfull of meaning. Each word has a meaning. The word “bird,” for example, refers to that feathered, egg-laying vertebrate that can fly. Words have meaning because they refer to something beyond themselves. We say that actions have meaning if they are productive. The work of farmers is meaningful because it produces food. Food is meaningful because it is necessary to sustain life. We have no difficulty in understanding the notion of “meaning” in these two contexts. We can also say, on a theological level, that our actions have meaning when they are in agreement with the Will of God.
It is difficult to agree with Blackmore that nothing is meaningful. She is the beneficiary on a continuing basis of a countless number of meaningful activities. Food, clothing, housing, employment, and financial remuneration are provided for her by people who indisputably involve themselves in meaningful activities. To deny that such activities are meaningful appears to be an extreme act of ingratitude.
Skepticism can deny only so much. Its reach is extremely limited. In fact, it cannot doubt even the meaningfulness of being skeptical. No doubt her Distinguished Skeptic Award must have been meaningful for her. And what about her two children?
On September 15, 2010, Susan Blackmore, together with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter which was published in the Guardian stating her opposition to Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to the UK. Is it not a glaring contradiction for her to find meaning in opposing the Pontiff’s arrival because he was inevitably going to talk about, in one way or another, the meaning of life? Inevitably, she must have regarded her opposition as a meaningful act.
But it was an act designed to negate a meaningful presentation by the Pope. She pitted meaning against meaning, an act concerning which one would have a right to be skeptical. Blackmore could be a little more skeptical about her own skepticism.
In a chapter entitled, “The Meaning of Contemporary Atheism,” from his book, The Range of Reason (1952), Jacques Maritain refers to “positive atheism” as a “desperate, I would even say heroic, effort to recast and reconstruct the whole human universe of thought and the whole human scale of values in accordance with that state of war against God.”
This form of atheism has become fashionable in certain types of existentialism and in the revolutionary atheism of dialectical materialism. Blackmore’s atheism belongs to this positive type and, in spite of her declarations of meaninglessness, is actually apostolic. She wants to convert theists to atheism, or more accurately, to anti-theism. The low voltage atheist, on the other hand, has no interest in changing the world. He is content merely to disbelieve.
In their 2018 debate, Jordan Peterson made the remark that “the atheist types act out a religious structure and criticize it.” Here, Peterson is reiterating what Maritain stated when he referred to positive atheism as “a refusal of God, a fight against God, a challenge to God.” Maritain went further, however, when he said: “The absolute atheist is delivered over to an inner dialectic which obliges him ceaselessly to destroy any resurgence in himself of what he has buried.”
Absolute atheism, together with the contention that everything is meaningless and empty, is both an affirmation of God and simultaneously a war against Him. Edna O’Brien epitomizes this contradictory notion in her novel, Girls in Their Married Bliss (1964), when she has one of her characters say, “Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you’d have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more.” Positive atheism is really anti-atheism.
This form of atheism is not an emancipation from God and the achievement of personal autonomy. Rather, it is an affirmation of God, though repressed, and the sacrifice of personal wholeness. For Maritain, debate does not seem to be the answer. The positive atheist appears to be entrenched in his ways. It is rather by the living witness of the true Christian that an atheist may come to accept God and to believe in His Mercy.
“This has become clear to everyone,” Maritain writes, “That from now onwards a decorative Christianity is not enough, even for our existence in this world. To believe in God must mean to live in such a manner that life could not possibly be lived if God did not exist.” The Christian must offer this better witness to atheists.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review and is the author of 39 books. He is a former corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy of Life. Some of his latest books, The 12 Supporting Pillars of the Culture of Life and Why They Are Crumbling, and Glimmers of Hope in a Darkening World, are posted on amazon.com. He and his wife, Mary, have five children and thirteen grandchildren. Restoring Philosophy and Returning to Common Sense will soon be published.)
