Why Are We Here?

WHY NOT? –

1/19/2024 – This conversation is a combination of two discussions, one on November 9th 2023 at the event of Philip Pullman receiving the Bodley Medal at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the other on November 10th 2023 at a launch event for Philip Goff’s book Why? The Purpose of the Universe at Blackwells bookshop. Nigel Warburton: Let’s begin with the obvious question. Philip’s book is called “Why?” I’d like to ask why did you write it? And what’s it all about?

Philip Goff: Good question! It’s not a book I would have imagined myself writing five years ago; it’s been quite a journey. So many people, in the West at least, feel they have to fit into the dichotomy of either you believe in the God of traditional Western religion, or you’re a secular atheist. I was raised Catholic, actually, but I gave that up when I was 14, when I decided I didn’t believe in God. And I was quite happily on Team Secular for over twenty years. I didn’t have a god shaped hole in my life as far, as I was aware. However, gradually, over the last five years, I’ve come to think that both of these worldviews are inadequate, that both of them have things they can’t explain about reality. I now believe the evidence points to what I call ‘cosmic purpose,’ that is to say, some kind of goal directness at the fundamental level of reality, but existing in the absence of the traditional God of Western religion. And that’s what I argue for in this book, as well as discussing its implications for human meaning and purpose.