The Search for Meaning

[iambiguous]

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

Cosmic Confusions

If we look beyond human life to life in general, conscious purpose appears singularly absent from the most authoritative account of the transition from single cell organisms to exotic megafauna like you and me, namely neo-Darwinism.

That might be the most important distinction for philosophers and scientists to make...between an ontological understanding of the Cosmos and then, having discovered that, exploring the extent to which existence itself has a teleological component. God or No God.

The goals of individual organisms conflict with those of other organisms, either as competitors or simply living side-by-side, pursuing unrelated aims in parallel. It is hard to see prey and predators participating in a shared purpose.

Here, I always come back to this: https://youtu.be/hxhL-mDbQGM?si=NyO7oCOWRKakid78

In other words, all the variables in our lives interwined in ways that we are never really fully aware of at all. Let alone ever been able to fully control.

And even here we have to assume that we possess free will.

And nature is such that, by and large, the only point of being born at all is to feed the predators. And, no, not just in regard to sea turtles, where only between one in a thousand and one in ten thousand hatchlings survive to adulthood.

What, all part of Mother Nature's very own "mysterious ways".

Furthermore, the differentiation of what-is into organisms and (their) environments seems to localize purposes in the former rather than the latter – which is at odds with the idea of the equitable distribution of purpose throughout the universe.

So, the bottom line [one of them] seems to be that all this speculation revolves around what we mere mortals on planet Earth have come to conclude about the Cosmos. But what of other possible civilizations "out there"...civilizations far more advanced scientifically? Of course, chances are we will all be well on the way back to star stuff before that's nailed down. If it even can be.

As for the passage from atoms to minerals, and thence to the first stirrings of life, randomness and nonconscious mechanisms seem more evident than purpose. In short, the vision of a universe whose goal is expressed in the emergence of life and of rational organisms, appears counterfactual.

Randomness is something -- click -- I can never quite wrap ny head around. The mutations that swamp the evolution of biological life here on Earth are either wholly in sync with the laws of matter or, re God or Mother Nature, there actually is a reason for everything being exactly as it must be. It's just that from our frame of mind it might be construed as entirely out of the blue...even God or Mother Nature are knocked for a loop when they happen.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“For reasons that are not well understood, war's codes are safer for most of us than love's.” David Foster Wallace

Was that the reason?

The death of a person is not some number. Everyone’s lives must have meaning. What’s written here is something you could never feel from the words ‘four dead.’ It’s their breath" Kafka Asagiri

Next up: six million dead.

“The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it....
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
The point of being an artist is that you may live....
You won't arrive. It is an endless search.” Sherwood Anderson

Next up: the object of, well, forget about it.

One must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible. I'm alive and it's not my fault, which means I must somehow go on living the best I can, without bothering anybody, until I die.'
'But what makes you live? With such thoughts, you'll sit without moving, without undertaking anything...'
'Life won't leave one alone as it is.” Leo Tolstoy

My guess: and all that it's ever going to be.

“Wickedness was like beauty: in the eye of the beholder.” Alix E. Harrow

Not only that, but in the mind too.

“The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty...not to reassure him, but to upset him.” Lev Shestov

Sound like anyone here?

[iambiguous]

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

The point is this: the very idea of cosmic purpose uproots the notion of purpose from the places where the idea of purpose could have clear, or indeed any, meaning. Purposes as usually understood are anchored in lives, or parts of lives.

Not sure what the point is then. If there is an overarching ontological meaning and purpose embedded "somewhere" in the Cosmos, then each of us as individuals either becomes aware of it or we don't. And there either are or there are not particular consequences -- i.e. judgment Days -- if we do or if we don't.

Now, if this cosmological purpose is not in sync with any specific local purposes...what then? Especially if those local purposes are embraced and emobodied introspectively with utter sincerity and devotion.

They exist primarily insofar as they are entertained by conscious subjects or communities of such subjects, even though they may be ‘sedimented’ (to borrow Max Scheler’s term) in social institutions, or in the vast landscape of artefacts that humans create to support their lives.

And then here, of course, this frame of mind had been, is now and probably always will be accepted "in general" by any number of communities down through the ages and across the globe. But then, as the say, in reality, "the rest is history". And then, some suggest, this means that "those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

In other words, back to, among others, Marx and Engels.

Purposes have intentional objects, however ill-defined. Nothing of this is preserved in the idea of a cosmic purpose – unless, that is, such a purpose is curated in the consciousness of the kind of deity that Goff rejects. This means that ‘purpose’ cannot be appropriated to refer to the totality of things without loss of meaning.

Here, again, however, I come back to translating what you think he means into a description, an assessment and a judgment of your own behaviors given what you think the purpose of everything is.

As for the actual historical and cultural intertwining of meaning and purpose, one thing certainly hasn't changed: whose meaning? whose purpose?

And, in particular, once we go beyond "the idea" of them.

[puto]

Rod Stewart sings it best, "Ooh lah lah."

[iambiguous]

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

Even if the notion were accepted of a fine-tuned universe fulfilling a pre-ordained purpose in the transition from elementary particles to readers of Philosophy Now, the question of the execution of said purpose cannot be side-stepped.

Isn't this perhaps the most mind-boggling part of all this? Taking God out of the narrative, we are expected to believe the existence of Philosophy Now was "somehow" built right into the laws of matter?

In fact, there are times when I find myself wondering if the world I live in now might possibly be a Sim world...or a matrix concoction. Think about it. I'm going to post this to the PN forum. One click and these words will end up at your end and those of many others around the globe. Like immediately.

Huh?

How is that even possible? Especially as there are no wires it can all traverse on. In fact, for most of us, it might just as well be magic. Then the part where we have to factor all of that into a narrative that includes a teleological component?

Goff seems aware of this and embraces pan-agentialism, according to which purpose is manifested through agency and “the roots of agency are present at the fundamental level of physical reality.” This, however, only exacerbates the problem of unifying localised, transient, conflicting individual purposes into an overall point for the universe.

Yet isn't that basically the whole point of objectivism? And even the fact that they are competing with hundreds of other One True Paths, all insisting it is their own way or the highway, they simply have too much invested in the comfort and consoltion that comes with having convinced themselves that how they understand the world is really how the world is. Then it's just a matter of distinguishing here between those attach "or else" in regard to others and those content with just sustaining how it makes themselves feel.

And there is, of course, the implausibility of ascribing to the fundamental constituents of the material world not only an awareness of themselves, and of (in some sense) what they are about, but of what’s happening to them so that they can purposefully manipulate their direction of travel.

And then how far some will take this:

For Goff, however, there is no such problem: he envisages even elementary particles as being infused with ‘conscious inclinations’ by the pilot waves David Bohm proposed to make sense of quantum indeterminacy.

But then back to the part [for some of us] where these elementary particles interact in the either/or world as opposed to the is/ought world.

As if this were not ludicrous enough, Goff embraces a ‘teleological cosmopsychism’, arguing that “If, during the first split-second the universe fine-tuned itself in order to allow for the emergence of life billions of years in the future, the universe must have in some sense been aware of this possibility, in order to act in such a way as to bring it about.” It seems unlikely that proto particles becoming an expanding universe could have had the bandwidth and foresight to envision that possibility.

Well, let's just say it is one thing to propose such a thing and another thing altogeter substantiating it in such a way that -- click -- it can't possibly be disputed other than by those who are, among other things, ignorant or irrational.

[iambiguous]

Does the Cosmos Have a Purpose?
Raymond Tallis argues intently against universal intention.

Goff believes that the evidence for cosmic purpose “can give us hope that…the meaning our lives appear to have is not an illusion.” Unfortunately, any crumbs of comfort offered by a fine-tuned universe do not seem entirely convincing.

On the other hand, if you start with my own assumption that feeling comforted and consoled is often the whole point of embracing one or another cosmic purpose, then all you're left with is the task of going back in time in order track down the existential components rooted in dasein in order to explain further how you first came to encounter this particular One True Path rather than one of the many, many others.

After all, the vast majority of what exists is not only uninhabited in fact, but uninhabitable in principle, and thus void of purpose as usually understood.

More mind-boggling still [for some of us] is the utter enormity of the universe. Or the fact that some argue that "our universe" is but one of an infinite number of additional universes in the "multi-verse". So, to speak of the cosmos "as usually understood"...?

More damning still for Goff’s cosmic good cheer, recent advances in physics (as discussed in an authoritative paper by Fred Adams, ‘The Degree of Fine-Tuning in Our Universe – and Others’, Physics Reports, 2019), have suggested that “the universe is surprisingly resilient in its fundamental parameters” and “it is not fully optimized for the emergence of life.”

Whatever that might possibly mean "for all practical purposes" when factoring in your own personal meaning regarding, well, you tell me? Then the part where most are going to anchor their own cosmogony to one or another God or ideology or school of philosophy. "I" in the context of "all there is"? No sweat, they've got that covered.

So perhaps the cosmos didn’t have us in mind after all, and we are not unwitting contributors to the realization of its purpose. And even if we were, it would hardly be a source of comfort if we didn’t know what that purpose was.

The fool! Right? You know exactly what this all means. Tell us about it.

[iambiguous]

Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Many people assume, in the face of a virtually infinite universe, that we are insignificant beings. This assumption arises from our comparative extreme smallness. After all, our planet is nothing but a ‘blue dot’ in a vast solar system, a grain of dust lost in a second-rate suburb of a vast galaxy, which in turn dwells among another three hundred billion galaxies or more in the known universe alone. We’re negligible and peripheral – they say – and the universe is completely blind and indifferent towards us.

Given free will, I've always seen the paradox here as revolving around the fact that some of us [me for example] have no problem at all thinking of themselves from both perspectives. In the context of all there is, only someone very naive would not construe him or herself as insignificant. And yet at the same time they may well construe themselves as the center of the universe. After all, reality to them comes from their own accumulated experiences. And if it does come down to it and their very survival itself comes at the cost of everyone else dying...?

Quora:

"How do we reconcile the paradox of being both insignificant in the grand scheme of the universe and infinitely valuable as individuals?

https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-reconci ... ndividuals

I think this common assumption of our insignificance might be challenged in eight arguments:

First: Relative size alone cannot be a measure for the absolute significance of a thing. Comparisons don’t tell us anything about one’s value in absolute terms, or a whale would be more significant than a human being merely because of its size. The same with certain dinosaurs, space rocks, planets, even galaxies. Complexity may tell us something about significance, but not size alone.

Size?! Not many people I know would put much stock in that. Perhaps the size on someone's bank account or someone's army or someone's ego can make all the difference in the world here, but physical size alone seems to be of little significance at all.

As for complexity, the universe itself may well be so complex that the human brain is not even able to grasp it. Either ontologically or teleologically.

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“When you put together deep knowledge about a subject that intensely matters to you, charisma happens. You gain courage to share your passion, and when you do that, folks follow.” Jerry Porras

Indeed! Just look at my following here!

“...when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” Voltaire

Any farmers here?

“What does this beauty or this music mean to you? You cannot see the waves rolling up the beach or hear their roar. What do they mean to you?' In the most evident sense they mean everything. I cannot fathom or define their meaning any more than I can fathom or define love or religion or goodness.” Helen Keller

On the other hand...

“All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach them.” Roberto Bolaño

You tell me.

“She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory.” Elizabeth Bowen

Ah, the good old days!

“Is Death important? No. Everything that happens before Death is what counts.” Ray Bradbury

Actually, it's still rather important to some of us.

[iambiguous]

Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Second: Our alleged insignificance is not some law or definitive statement given by a universal judge with a privileged insight into the very marrow of universe – that is, into its absolute nature. Therefore, our alleged insignificance cannot be an absolute, objective or universal value.

Well, if God is booted out of the picture, the universal judge with a privileged insight becomes, what, a manifestation of the universe itself?

Though I've never really understood how anyone can connect the dots between "I" and the universe. Let alone divinely. Some argue that we must all become at one with the universe. Like we are expected to, what, just know what that means?

And how could we ourselves, being nothing and knowing nothing, issue such an objective universal truth – thus contradicting our own petty nature and infinitely tiny intellect?

How can we do it? That's easy enough. You simply become at one with one or another of these folks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy

Meaning, morality and metaphysics all collapsing together into any number of dogmatic slumbers. After all, how else to explain objectivism's wide-spread appeal.

Third: Consciousness is the ability of a being, and indeed of nature, to know itself from the inside. We humans are well endowed with this ability. Other animals have it too – though to a lesser degree than us, for we have metacognition, which means that we can know that we know, or think that we think.

Consciousness, of course is hard-wired into us at birth. But obviously how it has ended up being embodied by each of us as individuals makes it rather clear that biological imperatives only go so far. Ever evolving "rules of behavior" in a world of contingency chance and change down through time speak volumes regarding the role that memes can play.

[iambiguous]

Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

In other words we can be conscious of consciousness. In fact, we are consciousnesses, for consciousness makes us individuals, or, as Immanuel Kant put it, ‘unities of apperception’ – in short, subjects.

Each of us can read the words above, and then put our own particular philosophical spin on them. But sooner or later, we have to get around to particular things [and the particular relationships between them] that we actually do become conscious of. Then the part where in regard to any number of things and relationships in the either/or world, we all describe them basically the same.

Subjectivity is not a negligible illusion, but an objective reality in its own right. Any one of us can immediately perceive and experience it as such from a personal point of view.

That certainly seems to be true. But some see the subjective self in ways that do come much closer to an illusion than an objective reality. It just comes down to particular contexts.

Starting of course with how each of us has come to think about the brain itself. In other words, autonomous or not?

So, unless we consider the panpsychic possibility that any given body, even one of immense size such as a galaxy or a cluster of galaxies, is a conscious individual endowed with its own subjectivity (just like one of us humans), how can such things be more significant or valuable that any conscious being?

No, really, imagine if one day it's determined that the universe itself, along with every thing in it, embodies consciousness. It seems preposterous to me. But then what I post here seems preposterous to lots of others as well.

That's why when I come back to philosophical assessments of things like this, I ask those who do believe in them to note how they go about demonstrating it to themselves.

For without its own consciousness, what is a galaxy but a thousands-light-years-wide set of billions of scattered stars and dust bonded by gravity? On the other hand, a human consciousness knows that it is, and also that being is.

How can assumptions like this not be as mind-boggling to others as they are to me? Not only that, but those here who seem to dismiss The Gap and Rummy's Rule as, it seems, hardly pertinent at all.

Also, what is the most significant point to be made about a conscious galaxy that pummels us with these things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

Sure, as with God, Mother Nature herself might work in mysterious ways. But given the world as it is, why bot construe the universe itself as a sadistic monster.

[iambiguous]

Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Fourth: The molecules of life are, as far as we know, the most complex chemistry that exists. Proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), even carbohydrates, are the result of the fourteen-billion-year evolution of the universe.

A lot can happen in 14,000,000,000 years. So, given all that can be -- must be? -- known about the universe and all that you think you know about it right now?

I know, I know: let's not go there, that's a trivial pursuit.

It may be that other even more complex molecules exist somewhere, but our experience on Earth tells us that chemical complexity at this level implies life, and life has led to consciousness. Perhaps this situation is no different elsewhere in the universe.

Even in regard to this, however, we are "stuck" here on planet Earth. We don't really know how many other intelligent life forms there are "out there" with perspectives on these things far in advance of our own. We don't even know if the chemical complexity resulting in human consciousness itself means that "somehow" we did acquire autonomy.

How then can such complexity be considered inferior or less significant in relation to any other body structurally less complex, even though unfathomably bigger? How can human beings be insignificant and negligible, if we are at such a level of biochemical development that it includes consciousness?

Well, there's clearly significance here in regard to human interactions on Earth. Indeed, here in America the direction of that significance is about to shift dramatically to the right politically. But is that itself significant in the context of "all there is".

[iambiguous]

Meaning

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal." Chris Hedges

Pick one:
https://youtu.be/Tc4O2Y3xQtE?si=N5LeJH2PChTHI7I2
https://youtu.be/AdpL74HuHR8?si=5NFl_EL54qGwk2e8

“If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.” Albert Camus

Let's run that by iambiguous.

“A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales
Acts like a sick god, but like a god.
Because even though he affirms that what doesn’t exist exists,
He knows things exist, that he exists,
He knows existing exists and doesn’t explain itself,
And he knows there’s no reason at all for anything to exist.
He knows being is the point.
All he doesn’t know is that thought isn’t the point. Alberto Caeiro

See, I told you.

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.
The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.” Vera Nazarian

Wanna bet it's not the other way around?

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point. . . . The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it. And we can make it very wonderful indeed.” Richard Dawkins

The blasted fool, let's call him.

“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No'.” Aaron Copland

Uh, maybe?

[iambiguous]

Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Fifth: If, as considered above, life molecules are the acme of chemical complexity, a question arises about the apparent close relation between the physical complexification of matter and the emergence of life.

Then the part where some confront the complexities here by insisting that, actually, there is one and only one way in which to grasp them. Also, the part where they may well have confronted the complexities here by insisting only what their brains compelled them to insist.

For, if everywhere in the universe, whenever matter achieves a specific high degree of complex organisation, life may emerge, even conscious life, doesn´t this suggest that conscious life is the goal of the evolution of universe?

Suggesting things here -- technically? theoretically? logically? epistemologically? -- is basically where it all begins. What really counts however is taking those suggestions out into the world and connecting the dots between words and worlds. Otherwise, it's just speculation. Fascinating speculation at times, of course, but the bottom line always remains the same: that believing something here is hardly the same thing as demonstrating it. And that includes all of my own conjectures here as well. But at least I always come back to the profound mystery embedded in the existence of existence itself. Connecting "I" to that?

(The process is this: physics to chemistry, chemistry to biology, biology to consciousness.) If so, that means consciousness is the highest, most significant, and most precious expression of being, the universe’s most consummate development. And you stand at this summit.

Uh, prove it? Though, sure, if, in the staggering vastness of all there is, you are yourself able to take some comfort in at least the possibility of being at the "summit" of material existence...? Well, good for you.

[iambiguous]

Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Sixth: Our universe, as has often been noted, is mind-bogglingly big.

How big:

"The stars are non-collisional," says Conselice. "The gap between the stars inside a galaxy is typically hundreds of billions to tens of trillions of kilometres. The chances of two stars colliding in a typical galaxy merger are less likely than you tossing a coin 27 times and them all coming down heads." BBC

On the other hand, how exactly are things like this actually calculated?

Then the world of the very, very small:

In the phenomenon called quantum entanglement, groups of particles, such as two photons or two electrons can be ‘entangled’ in such a way that if we spin one the other will instantly follow, no matter how distant they are from each other (in theory they can be billions of light years apart)...added to the fact that nothing is being exchanged between them, seems to me to suggest that these vastly-physically-separated entities are in fact one, or at least that they’re pervaded by the same absolute reality, beyond space and time as we perceive it.

Uh, theoretically perhaps? Or are there members here who can go into great detail regarding how a proton or electron billions of light years apart from its entangled mate might actually go about this. God's will perhaps?

We're stuck here of course. Or the vast majority of us are likely to be. Stuck trying to make sense of things that sometimes seem preposterous. We have little or no choice but to take "the experts" word for it.

If we begin to consider the nature of reality beyond the fabric of spacetime, we are pointed to the intuition that reality as a whole is one: the idea that a certain unity envelops all and is rooted in all, and therefore that the true nature of reality is an absolute intimacy, in contrast to mediation of any kind (which is pretty much like consciousness, by the way).

Is that what we are really all about? We're here to provide the universe itself with a way in which to understand the universe itself? And, perhaps, that our exchanges here are [incredibly yet true] but one more manifestation of that "intimacy"?

If this is true, then physical extension – and thus distance or size – is not an absolute measure for the significance of beings. Much more important in that assessment is the deepness and intimacy of being, manifest most fully as consciousness: a consciousness such as yours.

Okay, here we go: one more thing that philosophers can speculate about until scientists actually provide them with...the objective truth?

Click, of course.

[iambiguous]

Significance
Ruben David Azevedo tells us why, in a limitless universe, we’re not insignificant.

Seventh: The Anthropic Principle. The strong version of the anthropic principle states that the fundamental physical constants and parameters of our universe seem to have values specifically fine-tuned for the emergence of life.

If the values of those constants had been even slightly different, it is claimed, then the universe would have been very different, to the extent that no life like ours could have possibly emerged.

Here of course some will bring this -- the universe -- around to God. Others to Pantheism. But there was once a time when the lines on Mars seemed to indicate a vast system of canals indicating an advanced civilization. Turns out they were "an optical illusion caused by the alignment of natural surface features".

And if the universe was primed from the very beginning to bring about the emergence of biological life leading to us, it was also primed [at least here on Earth] to sustain a ghastly slaughterhouse of predator and prey throughout much of the "animal kingdom". Not to mention all of the "natural disasters" that have sustained enormous pain and suffering among our own species.

So, what is the significance of that?

If the values of those constants had been even slightly different, it is claimed, then the universe would have been very different, to the extent that no life like ours could have possibly emerged. Some interpret this as evidence for the existence of a divine Creator.

Which, from my frame of mind, is why in regard to either God as the Creator or the Big Bang as the Creator, what I almost always come back to is not so much whether they exist but how to reconcile the existence of either one with this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

However, one theory based in quantum physics (see for example The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinov, 2012), suggests that the existence of the physical universe can only be determined by consciousness, in the sort of way that the conscious measurement of a subatomic particle causes its ‘collapse’ into a specific ‘story’, from among a cloud of multiple possibilities existing simultaneously in its unobserved wavefunction.

Same thing though for me. If scientists and philosophers are able to discover that elusive -- illusive? -- Theory Of Everything, enabling them to explain both the ontological and teleological nature of "all there is" [and our place in it] it still seems rather clear to me that this Creator, however He/She/It went about creating creation itself, does not give a shit about the extent to which terrible things can happen to us. Well, if only from the cradle to the grave, so far.

If so, then in fact consciousness ‘chooses’ a specific universe with its specific set of laws fine-tuned for its own arising. In any case, the Anthropic Principle challenges the assumption of our insignificance in the face of an infinite universe indifferent to our existence, for it puts consciousness at the very center of the cosmic plot.

And, again, that's the beauty of having beliefs like this. You are either indoctrinated by others to believe something or your life unfolds such that you come existentially to accept one narrative rather than another.

Then this part: beliefs = actual consequences.