Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why the Universe (most likely) doesn’t have a purpose

It’s hard to tell who makes just about anything sound cooler, Morgan Freeman or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Here’s the latter as he explains away our delusions about an anthropocentric universe:

Transcript: (click the [+/-] to open/close →)

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NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: Does the Universe have a purpose?

I’m not sure. But anyone who expresses a more definitive response to the question is claiming access to knowledge not based in empirical foundations. This remarkably persistent way of thinking, common to most religions and some branches of philosophy, has failed badly in past efforts to understand, and thereby predict, the operations of the Universe and our place within it.

To assert that the Universe has a purpose implies a desired outcome. But who would do the designing, and what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable, or that sentient primates are life’s neurological pinnacle?

Of course, humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So, if the purpose of the Universe was to create humans, the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it. And if a further purpose of the Universe was to create a fertile cradle for life, then our cosmic environment has got an odd way of showing it.

Life on Earth, during more than 3½ billion years of existence, has been persistently assaulted by natural sources of mayhem, death and destruction. Ecological devastation exacted by volcanoes, climate change, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, and especially killer asteroids, have left extinct 99.9% of all species that have ever lived here.

How about human life, itself? If you’re religious, you might declare that the purpose of life is to serve God. But if you’re one of the hundred billion bacteria living and working in a single centimeter of your lower intestine, you might instead say that the purpose of human life is to provide you with a dark but idyllic, anaerobic habitat of fecal matter.

So, in the absence of human hubris, the Universe looks more and more random. Whenever events that are purported to occur in our best interests are as numerous as other events that would just as soon kill us, then intent is hard, if not impossible, to assert. So, while I cannot claim to know for sure whether or not the Universe has a purpose, the case against it is strong and visible to anyone who sees the Universe as it is, rather than as they wish it to be.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson. I was asked by the Templeton Foundation to respond to a question: “Does the Universe have a purpose?”

Human hubris, indeed.

(via Friendly Atheist)