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The Purpose of Life By G. David Hurd Revised as a sermon in July 2002
Every person wonders why they exist. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wondered about the purpose of life. For years it never occurred to me that there would be life without purpose. But finally that question occurred and my thought was “no”, there wasn’t life without purpose and “yes” life had purpose. That conclusion came from a growing understanding of the complexity of life forms and their interrelationships, and my belief these intricate designs and interrelations could not be formed without purpose.
So, then, the first question for me became what signals purpose of life? Does the current behavior of the life form show one or more of its purposes? For example, Barn Swallows are heavy eaters of insects. Is one of their purposes to keep down insect populations?
Or does the cumulative effect of a life form’s existence over time show purpose? In a few minutes I’ll give a possible example from prairie grass.
Or, if neither of those, how does one divine purpose? I think both current behavior, and the impact of a species over time show purpose, but that leads to some unpleasant conclusions
For this sermon, the word “life” means all forms of life. Some would say human life is more important than other life forms. Others would say that all other forms of life were put here to serve humans. I reject both these views. Their only proponents are humans. No other forms of life argue that humans have more importance or purpose. The Plant community could well argue they are far more important than humans, because humans can’t exist without them, and plants, in the aggregate, can get along just fine without humans.
Further, as one becomes aware of the web of life, all its forms, and all its complexity, it is difficult for me to see a role for humans more important than for other species, other than the human capacity to destroy the web of life. Humans have been responsible for wiping out many species of other forms of life, and we continue to do so today. While it is hard for me to imagine that the human purpose of life is to destroy other forms of life, what does their behavior and impact reveal if not purpose? Does behavior reveal purpose?
The human view that humans are more important than other life forms is as well thought out as race prejudice. For example, in the 1960s and 70s in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) 250,000 white humans held sway over 6.5 million black humans, the Bantus, where the whites felt they were more important than blacks. Perceived self-interest created that view. It is a similar distortion for humans to think three billion years of development of life forms have gone on mostly to nurture humans.
There was life on Earth for billions of years before humans developed. I believe other forms of life will continue on Earth for hundreds of millions of years after humans have disappeared (unless through nuclear explosions we blow up Earth and nothing continues). Humans will eventually disappear though the mechanism isn’t clear. We humans have a penchant for self-destruction. When one examines human behavior, one ongoing constant is that we kill each other in large numbers, and work assiduously to improve the killing mechanisms. If we don’t wipe out all humans via military action, there remains the route that we’ll degrade Earth’s atmosphere, water and land till they won’t support humans. Or, a third route is that humans will simply fall prey to a more successful species such as staph infections. If one accepts a scenario where life develops on Earth a few billion years ago, then humans appear on Earth a few million years ago, survive a few million more years, and then become extinct, (which is what happens to other life forms – with no visible indicator we are exempt from the extinction process), that is support for the belief that other forms of life carry at least as much value and purpose as humans. Of course, one may choose to believe that humans will survive forever and therefore are more important.
So, in these comments, the question of purpose of life is explored for all forms of life.
1 - What is purpose for dinosaurs extinct, lo, these several hundred million years? 2 - What is purpose for the numberless plankton of today’s oceans? They are the first step in the ocean’s food chain. One liter of water holds 500 million plankton. 3 -What is the purpose for species not yet in being which will develop in the future?
The frame of reference in which we search for purpose of life is a key. The frame varies by length of time: 10 minutes, 10 years, 10 millennia. The frame varies whether the time period falls in the past, or present, or future. The frame varies by its geographic extent, such as a few square feet in your backyard, or an island in the Pacific, or all of the Northern Hemisphere. The frame may include one individual of one species, several individuals of one species, several species and their relationships, or all living things that ever existed or will ever exist.
Within a given frame of reference, I believe the purpose of the living creature within that frame can be determined, at least to a degree, by examining its behavior and the effect it has on its surroundings, and its interplay with other lives. (This is to the degree we can understand what we are observing, when often we don’t understand).
As an example, let’s choose a sunny, August afternoon, 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, and focus our frame on one plant of Big Bluestem prairie grass growing on a hill in what would later be called Polk County, Iowa. One effect of the prairie grass plant was to shade the soil beneath creating relative coolness to allow many tiny forms of life to go about their daily affairs. Also, a grub was using a portion of the grass’s root for food. Then, a buffalo wandered by and nipped some of the stem for sustenance. Unseen, Big Bluestem (in combination with all other prairie plants) also removed carbon dioxide from the air, and replaced it with oxygen so animals could breathe. Does this examination uncover all the purposes of that grass plant? Yes, within that time frame of just one afternoon. Let’s enlarge the time frame for the entire lifetime of this particular Big Bluestem plant. It is a perennial living several years. Do other purposes emerge over that longer period? Yes, this Big Bluestem produces seed that produces additional Big Bluestem plants, providing for continuation of the species, allowing it to continue to serve others in the ways described.
But suppose the frame is further enlarged. Time is increased from one afternoon or one plant’s lifetime to 10,000 years. Individuals within the frame are expanded to cover all Big Bluestem plants. Geography is expanded to include all the vast spread of land on which Bluestem grew. But even that expansion excludes much that is pertinent. A small area of prairie easily holds 100 different species of plants, and over the prairie’s range several hundred species are involved. Big Bluestem did not grow in a monoculture. The prairie was a multiculture of plants and animals thriving together. The health of Big Bluestem was dependent on the health of the whole, and vice versa. Thus, a purpose of mutual symbiosis.
In search of purpose beyond the simplest, it becomes apparent that relationships amongst living things disclose other purposes, and those relationships over time disclose still more possible purposes.
10,000 years of multiculture prairie (with all the life forms, living, dying, creating their successors) produced the rich soil the Europeans found when they arrived here. Was the end purpose of prairie over 10,000 years to create that soil? Those Europeans (over a period just 1 and ½% of the time it took to create the soil) have developed row crop production agriculture in Iowa, with world importance. Perhaps the 150 years of present day land use was the purpose of 10,000 years of Big Bluestem and its allies. Of course, although the prairie is almost completely gone, the tale has not ended, and perhaps there are future purposes for the prairie soil that have not yet occurred.
For a moment, think of one human and one plant of Big Bluestem. Then think of many humans and many Big Bluestems. Then watch both groups for 10,000 years. Bluestem makes prairie soil and oxygenates the atmosphere. What have humans contributed over 10,000 years?
One friend says the purpose of life for a species is the evolution of the gene pool of that species, which helps the species adapt and survive. He also says the purpose of human life is the survival of the species – not the individual.
I’m proposing that examining use and behavior of the life under examination will disclose purpose, that it isn’t possible to find purpose absent behavior and use. Further, purpose is distinguishable not only for the individual life in isolation – such as a grass stem shading soil – but purpose is also evident for two or more individuals who breed to continue the species – and, purpose is evident for a species as a whole in terms of the effects it has on other species and on the planet generally.
Notice this line of thought establishes layers of purpose depending on the size of the frame.
Let’s turn to dead-end species, those that no longer exist. The dinosaurs are gone. They have been gone a long time -roughly 200 million years. The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is another, apparently extinct within the last 50 years. What are (or were) the purposes of these two dead-end species? I would try to argue that today they might be serving an educational purpose that humans might absorb through study of these lost creatures. What other purposes are they currently serving? My eyes see none; except possibly each was a building block to the future in some way we don’t understand, such as leading to the development of other species.
Let’s go further and look at dead-end species that we humans don’t know about. Species that existed, but now are gone, and we have no record, no fossils, and no knowledge they ever existed. Well, they, too, may serve a building block purpose, an experiment in survival that led to newer species coming into being. Anything else, now that they are gone forever? I don’t think so.
Recently, I stood in Olduvai Gorge in Northern Tanzania at the spot where Louis and Mary Leakey in the 1960s found a skeleton of Zinjathropic man, about 1.7 million years old. By their discovery, this dead end species came out of oblivion into human awareness. I think back across that span of time and imagine Zinjathropic man standing on the Serengeti Plain, sniffing the breeze, and I thrill to the thought. Him we found, him we remember. Perhaps this extinct species can educate us as a continuing purpose of its life long gone.
We humans probe for knowledge and understanding on many fronts with increasingly sophisticated tools. This probing turns up much we didn’t know before. This constant unfolding of new discovery should be driving home to us that there is much we don’t understand now. One discovery, first found long ago, and being constantly reconfirmed, is that everything is linked to everything else. Chief Seattle, a Native American, expressed this in 1850 “The Earth does not belong to Man – man belongs to earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it – whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Two more explorations looking for purpose:
First, expand the frame to include all of Earth and the entire universe. Expand it to include all humankind and all other life forms on Earth. Expand it to all of the past and all of the future. What is the purpose of Earth and all this activity? I don’t know. Maybe it is an experiment. Maybe it is an artifact for some other creatures to find millions of years hence and wonder who we were and why we existed. Maybe we are playing a role in some larger activity that we’ll never know about. I don’t know.
Second, contract the frame to just my human life for the period that I live and the things I do. What are my purposes? To sustain my own life, to sire and raise children to continue our species, to serve as host to a lot of other organisms such as bacteria, and to try to be the best human I can and also help continue satisfying life for other humans and other forms of life.
Is there more purpose for me? I don’t think so.
It would be flattering to think that some elements of my life would be of long-term impact over the remainder of human existence, but also clearly silly. When my mind starts down that track, the counter argument appears. How many individuals are there? There are now 6 billion humans on Earth. 50 years from now there will be 9 billion. From the beginning of human emergence on Earth there have been a few billion more. There were billions of Passenger Pigeons – now extinct by human hand. The krill of the oceans are shrimp- like crustaceans, food for some whales. There are so many krill that on any given day they are beyond our ability to count, quadrillions and more much less how many krill existed over all time. These are just three forms of life. Roll up all the forms of life, and count all the individuals of all the species that ever existed, or will exist in the future. It is a staggering list. It is hard to conceive what ongoing purpose any one of these individuals has or is serving beyond continuing their species and carrying out their interactions with other species. In this context, I’ve served some temporary purposes and to a small degree may be a building block for the future, but I don’t see more purpose for me at the individual level.
Therefore, the purpose, the importance, does not lie at the individual level, other than in the sense all the individuals are needed to make up the whole. Rather, purpose lies in the overall arrangement of all life over all time. Historically, we can see Earth plus all its living populations and its blanket of air changing over time. We are learning to see these relationships and arrangements. I reject the idea that these complicated relationships have been created for no purpose. However, I don’t know what their purpose is. It is not yet revealed.
So, I’ll try to be the best person I can, and to help my species, and a few other species, to survive and to build for the future, and that’s that. The more I think about this question, the more I conclude that in the tiny frame of my life, these are my purposes. This conclusion helps me manage my existence.
As for the giant question of the purpose of all life over all time, I walk out into the night and look at the stars and wonder and go on wondering.
I close with this 16-word rebuttal from Emily Dickinson
This world is not conclusion A sequel stands beyond Invisible as music And positive as sound.
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