From Darwin to today: making sense of who we are and why we matter
Charles Darwin helped us understand ourselves as part of a grand evolutionary history: one branch on an expansive tree of life, rooted in the same soil as every other living creature and shaped by the same fundamental process of natural selection. While Darwin declared, “there is grandeur in this view of life,” others have drawn a much darker conclusion: once knocked from our pedestal high above all other forms of life—“made in the image of God”—we are just one among millions of species, products of chance, ultimately doomed to extinction.
This awareness can evoke a profound sense of existential dread: since everyone and everything we care about will eventually be erased by death, life seems meaningless. To reject these conclusions, some argue, is to refuse to face reality and to live in denial. But there is another perspective: the search for a singular, overarching “meaning of life” may be futile. From a scientific standpoint, such a quest is a misguided remnant of pre-modern thinking. We do not need life to have inherent meaning; what matters is finding meaning in life.
Skeptical realists may scoff at this, but there is substantial empirical evidence—from both psychology and biology—that meaning-making, broadly understood, is fundamental to life and always has been. While natural selection favors individuals and species that survive and reproduce, the ultimate biological imperative is to make sense of one’s world.
Dr. John Teehan is a Professor of Religion at Hofstra University and the Director of the Cognitive Science Program. He is the author of In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Ethics and Violence and has written extensively on the intersection of science, philosophy, and religion. His current research explores the “pragmatic turn” in cognitive science and what it reveals about religious thought and practice. In addition to his academic work, he serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Evolutionary Psychological Science and the Editorial Board of the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science.
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