John Templeton's Universe

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

[posted online on October 10, 2007]

What is the purpose of the universe, anyway? I hadn't started reading the Sunday papers with this question in mind, but after slogging through mass rapes in Congo, bombings in Baghdad and K-Fed's worthiness as a father, I could no longer dodge it. Then, in the middle of the New York Times Week in Review section--some of the priciest real estate in the print industry--I came across a two-full-page ad under the headline "Does the Universe Have a Purpose?"

The text of the ad was the responses of twelve scientist-and-philosopher-types, ranging from the purposeless (biochemist Christian de Duve) to the purpose-driven (Jane Goodall) and the just plain whiny, as in astronomer Owen Gingerich's "Frankly, I am psychologically incapable of believing that the universe is meaningless." (Suck it up, Owen, it's the only universe you've got.) I was miffed that I had not been asked to contribute my theory that this is a trial universe that has turned to be defective. But I was even more distracted by the sponsor of the ad--the John Templeton Foundation.