Our role as conservators of life gives us a very important purpose. It is inspiring to recognize that the basic properties of our universe enabled the emergence of life and that life resulted in the development of intelligence sufficient to instantiate a great depth of experience through which the universe can know itself.
Life, the most rare of all entities in the known universe, can experience the warmth of the sun, the cold of the ocean, the sweetness of nectar, and the wetness of rain. Intelligent life, the most rare of the rare, brings the universe’s experience of itself to an entirely new and unparalleled level.
We are a conscious part of the universe experiencing itself and contemplating its own origin. Our human intelligence enables the universe to have an increasingly richer, more dynamic, subtle and complex experience of itself.
As the American cosmologist Carl Sagan put it:
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
and:
We have begun to contemplate our origins: star stuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.
In addition to the level of conscious experience that humans facilitate we are now at the verge of deploying a full range of robotics and artificial intelligence that will interface with humans and make possible a depth of experience beyond what most of us can imagine.
When we consider the unique role that life and intelligence play in our vast universe it seems objectively reasonable that humans value life and intelligence. Still, it could be argued that our enthusiasm for how we offer the universe an opportunity to know itself is entirely self-referential and subjective. We value experience so therefore we value our ability to provide the universe with an experience of itself. And because we are alive and intelligent, it is natural that we think of life and intelligence as being worthy of preserving. But doing so is a purpose contingent on our subjective values.
While having a purpose that is self-assigned may be satisfying to many, there are some who would find the subjectivity to be unsatisfying. The desire for an “objective” purpose, one not dependent on what humans deem to be valuable, is understandable.
Supernatural and faith-based worldviews offer narratives in which human purpose is not determined by humans but by a Supreme Being, or gods, or other supernatural entities or forces. Western religions portray humans as being part of an epic struggle between good and evil, or god and satin, and many preach that our purpose is to repent so that a messianic age can begin.
An objective purpose that transcends human preference can be found within a naturalistic context. Consistent with a naturalistic worldview, such a narrative does not require inventing facts, nor accepting ideas for which no evidence exists, it does, however, require applying a poetic license that we might associate with a myth or a fable.