{"id":34029,"date":"2021-07-29T00:01:56","date_gmt":"2021-07-29T07:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=34029"},"modified":"2026-06-06T12:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T12:39:11","slug":"pointless-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/pointless-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Do We Live in a Pointless Universe? I Need to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"pointless-universe<\/a>
Is this a pointless universe? Is there no lifeguard on duty? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Pointless?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Do we live in a pointless universe? A very smart, very famous physicist said, yes, we do.<\/p>\n

He’s a physicist, so he knows something about the universe, right? And we have to take him seriously, right? Which means we have to let go of our fantasies of a benevolent, intentional universe that cares about inconsequential us. Right?<\/p>\n

A Big Bang Theory<\/strong><\/h5>\n

The physicist in question is Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics who came up with the break-through Standard Model theory of subatomic physics. (Subatomic physics — think\u00a0 leptons, bosons.)<\/p>\n

Weinberg died last Friday at age 88, and he’s been very much in the news.<\/p>\n

A New York Times article relates that, after developing the Standard Model, Weinberg went on to think about cosmology and what happened to the universe right after the Big Bang.<\/p>\n

The First Three Minutes<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Everything of consequence happened in the first three minutes, Weinberg said. Atomic nuclei bonded together and after that, “nothing of any interest would happen in the history of the universe.”<\/p>\n

Nothing of interest?<\/p>\n

The pyramids? The Great Wall of China? The Buddha, Moses and Jesus? Steven Weinberg? Jon Newhall?<\/a> Me?<\/p>\n

Steven Weinberg is dead now. That’s what happens to people, sooner or later.<\/p>\n

But where is he?<\/p>\n

Where is Jon?<\/a><\/p>\n

Gone?\u00a0Irrelevant?\u00a0Pointless?<\/p>\n

Weinberg’s Life and Mine\u00a0<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Yes, the universe is pointless, Weinberg would say. And so are we. Human life is pointless, he’d say — Weinberg’s life, Jon’s life, mine.<\/p>\n

That’s what Weinberg wrote in his 1972 book, “The First Three Minutes.” The universe is basically hostile. and “the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”<\/p>\n

\"pointless-universe-<\/a>
In this life — bring your own ring buoy? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A smart guy, Weinberg. He knows — knew — about quantum mechanics. Which, try as I might, I can’t get my mind around.\u00a0So if Smart Guy, who has gazed upon the intricacies of subatomic particles, says that what he sees is pointless, who am I to assert otherwise?<\/p>\n

Who am I to hope that Jon is not really gone, extinguished, evaporated? Who am I to trust that my husband of forty-four years is more than the box of ashes sitting on his dresser in our bedroom?<\/p>\n

Where Is Jon?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Where is Jon? Is he somewhere safe?<\/p>\n

Or is that very question pointless?<\/p>\n

I need to know.<\/p>\n

Weinberg, I’ve decided, smart and scientific though he was, is not the person rely on for an answer to the pointlessness question.<\/p>\n

A closer look at his life and writing reveals that, yes, Weinberg got a good look at leptons and bosons, and his superb brain gave him a fresh glimmer of understanding of how they work. That glimmer was a powerful part of Weinberg’s life experience, of how he experienced the universe.<\/p>\n

But Weinberg’s life experience also included, apparently, some seriously negative exposures to religiosity, not the least of which was the loss of family members in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Religion Is Awful<\/strong><\/h5>\n

“On balance the moral influence of religion has been awful,” Weinberg said in a talk<\/a> before the Conference on Cosmic Design of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1999.<\/p>\n

“Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham,” Weinberg points out.<\/p>\n

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.”<\/p>\n

In other words, Weinberg had an animus toward religion. Justified and grounded in real events though his bias was, Weinberg’s hostility disqualifies him — for me — as a trustable resource on the “Do we live in a pointless universe?” question.<\/p>\n

The Comfort of Certitude<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Weinberg’s certitude about the nature of the universe — that it is pointless — echoes the certitude about God that I see in some (but by no means all) religious people.<\/p>\n

And I don’t trust certitude.<\/p>\n

I don’t have certitude.\u00a0I wish I did.<\/p>\n

I wish I knew for sure where Jon is.\u00a0I wish I knew for sure if Jon is<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I need to know.<\/p>\n

But I don’t.<\/p>\n

Not all Nobel laureate physicists are atheists. Read about Charles Townes in my book, “Wrestling with God.”<\/a>\u00a0 More encounters with the big questions at My Rocky Spiritual Journey<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Barbara
Circa 1975 — who needs a life guard when you’ve got each other? Photo by Ruth Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"no-lifeguard-on-duty\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The more comprehensible the universe seems, the more it seems a pointless universe, said Nobel laureate physicist, Steven Weinberg. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14],"tags":[1011,34,29,2454,2491,2492,2493,2419],"class_list":["post-34029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","category-widowed","tag-atheists","tag-dont-miss","tag-jon","tag-my-husband-died","tag-physicists","tag-pointless-universe","tag-steven-weinberg","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34029"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49486,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34029\/revisions\/49486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}