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Start giftingA Meaning to Life
This audiobook uses AI narration.
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Learn moreDoes human life have any meaning? Does the question even make sense today? For centuries, the question of the meaning or purpose of human life was assumed by scholars and theologians to have a religious answer: life has meaning because humans were made in the image of a good god. In the 19th century, however, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution changed everything—and the human organism was seen to be more machine than spirit. Ever since, with the rise of science and decline of religious belief, there has been growing interest—and growing doubt—about whether human life really does have meaning. If it does, where might we find it?
The historian and philosopher of science Michael Ruse investigates this question, and wonders whether we can find a new meaning to life within Darwinian views of human nature. If God no longer exists—or if God no longer cares—rather than promoting a bleak nihilism, many Darwinians think we can convert Darwin into a form of secular humanism. Ruse explains that, in a tradition going back to the time of Darwin himself, and represented today by the evolutionist E. O. Wilson, evolution is seen as progress—"from monad to man."
Michael Ruse, born (in 1940) in England, taught philosophy for thirty-five years at the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, and then for twenty years at Florida State University. He is an expert on the history and philosophy of evolutionary biology and has written or edited over sixty books. He is particularly interested in the relationship between science and religion, and was a witness for the ACLU in 1981 in its successful attempt to overturn a law mandating the compulsory teaching of Creationism in Arkansas. He has been awarded a Guggenheim fellowship (USA) and a Killam fellowship (Canada). A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he has been a Gifford Lecturer and is the recipient of four honorary degrees.
British narrator John Lee has read audiobooks in almost every conceivable genre, from Charles Dickens to Patrick O'Brian, and from the very real life of Napoleon to the entirely imagined lives of sorcerers and swashbucklers. He has won numerous Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile in 2009. Lee is also an accomplished stage actor and wrote and coproduced the feature films Breathing Hard and Forfeit.