The Universe Has Order but No Meaning: How Does That Affect Ethics, Good, and Evil?

By Leandro Castelluccio

In our everyday moral reflections, we often rely on a consequentialist ethic—evaluating the goodness or wrongness of our actions based on their outcomes and frequently searching for some ultimate meaning behind our decisions and the world around us. But what happens when we face the possibility that the universe lacks any intrinsic meaning? This question challenges not only our understanding of the cosmos but also our approach to morality itself.

In studying morality, we encounter an intriguing paradox: on the one hand, we perceive apparent order in the universe, manifested in physical laws and cosmic patterns; on the other hand, the search for ultimate meaning seems to elude us. Faced with this duality, a fundamental question arises: How can we understand objective morality in a cosmos that shows order but no clear purpose? In this essay, we will explore how to approach morality in a universe where meaning is a subject of debate.

Let’s begin with a thought experiment. Imagine this scenario: someone kills a person named John. Instinctively, we might judge this act as morally wrong, an unforgivable crime. But let’s take a moment to reflect. Suppose John was destined to commit an even more atrocious act—say, the murder of millions. In this context, is the act of killing John still morally condemnable? The answer isn’t as clear-cut as it might first seem. If John’s death prevents such a genocide, would we still consider the original act morally reprehensible?

Now take the story further: the genocide’s prevention also stops a global war. Yet this war, despite its horrors, would have led to a crucial technological advancement that ultimately saves humanity from an imminent catastrophe. At this point, how do we judge the initial act of killing John? Is it still a moral crime when we weigh the consequences on an even broader scale?

This thought experiment forces us to confront a fundamental issue with consequentialist ethics and the search for meaning: as we expand the ramifications of an event, we find ourselves unable to determine whether it is ultimately good or bad, because we can never know the ultimate meaning (if there is one) or final consequences of anything.

This limitation of human knowledge was noted by philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who warned of the dangers of extreme rationalism and the belief in perfect solutions to complex human problems. In his defense of value pluralism, Berlin argued that human goals are multiple, often incompatible, and that trying to impose a single teleology leads to moral disaster. This supports the idea that even with the best intentions, our actions can result in unpredictable outcomes.

It’s important to emphasize that this mental exercise doesn’t seek to justify violence or trivialize the gravity of certain acts. Rather, it aims to illustrate the inherent difficulty of consequentialist ethics and the problem of meaning in the world. As limited beings, we cannot determine what is good or bad by trying to decipher the ultimate meaning of events, because such meaning (if it exists) lies beyond our capacity for prediction or comprehension. We simply don’t know the countless, inevitable consequences of our actions and how they might be measured.

Even if there is a meaning, we don’t know whether our actions contribute positively to it in the long run. As the thought experiment shows, something considered bad in the past might later be viewed as good. Clinging to a particular sense of meaning often proves incorrect and may distort a more objective perspective.

There might indeed be a higher order behind certain events, but that doesn’t mean we can perceive or comprehend it. Understanding this may not benefit us beyond accepting it and letting it be—trying to unravel it endlessly can lead to rumination and suffering.

This distinction between order and meaning recalls the notion of cosmos in Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, reflects: “Everything happens in accordance with universal nature; not by chance, but by reason.” For the Stoics, accepting the order of the world as it is—without demanding from it a purpose that justifies it—is an act of wisdom and serenity. Rumination arises when we resist the flow of this order and demand from it an ultimate “why.”

This often happens when people obsess over why evil exists, and this clashes with their belief in a benevolent God, leading to a loss of faith or even psychological distress. We constantly try to find meaning in everything, believing that events happen for a reason. But it’s impossible to determine that meaning from our limited perspective. In fact, I believe that thinking of the world as something with a fixed meaning—heading toward a particular destination—is harmful to our well-being. It encourages rumination and forces us to justify even atrocious actions under the illusion that they serve some future good.

There’s a more rational, objective, and even benevolent way to view the universe, especially if we believe in a divine creator: the universe has order, not a predetermined purpose. That order might be intelligently designed, but it doesn’t necessarily imply a final destination for everything.

In an ordered reality, adverse events are part of a vast cosmic balance. A child’s illness, tragic though it is, arises from biological processes essential to life. These processes, rooted in atomic structures, are indispensable to life as we know it.

From this perspective, illness and death are intrinsic to the same mechanisms that sustain life. Paradoxically, life itself is its own end, requiring no higher purpose. This view neither denies the possibility of divine order nor invalidates notions of good and evil—it simply reminds us that cosmic harmony operates independently of our interpretations.

Recognizing this, we can find peace in knowing that even adverse experiences are part of the universe’s order. The existence of evil doesn’t contradict a benevolent creator; rather, it reflects the necessary coexistence of opposites that make life possible.

Life, then, takes on a depth that transcends randomness and also the need for future-oriented meaning. Our presence in the universe is not mere accident, but part of an existing order. Yet this order does not imply a predetermined fate—it invites us to find fulfillment in the present.

Consider music. What is the purpose of playing a song? To reach the final note? If that were the case, we’d start with the last note and be done. The beauty of music lies in the process, the performance. Similarly, enjoying a bike ride isn’t about reaching a destination, but the act of riding itself.

This is the core idea behind the claim that humans are ends in themselves. The meaning of life isn’t to reach a goal, but to live—fully and presently. This living, like everything in the universe, follows an order—possibly divine—but not necessarily directed toward a final outcome. In fact, to fixate on an end destroys the experience, just as skipping to the final note ruins a song.

Living well, in the human sense, means developing our essential qualities: moral virtue, rationality, productivity (through the arts, sciences, philosophy, etc.), spiritual depth, physical and mental health, and healthy relationships.

This echoes the ancient Greek concepts of arete and agathos. Arete refers to excellence or virtue across various aspects of life—moral, intellectual, physical. Agathos means “good” or “noble,” particularly in moral character. Together, they form the ideal of cultivating virtues that lead to human flourishing.

One might object that suffering is also part of the human condition. Should we then live to suffer? But what defines human life—and all life—is the desire to avoid suffering and pursue well-being. As Buddhist philosophy emphasizes, we live to be free from suffering, to experience peace and happiness.

Now, how do we reconcile this with Aristotle’s concept of the final cause, the idea of a purpose or goal inherent in all things?

Aristotle’s four causes—material, formal, efficient, and final—offer a comprehensive framework for understanding reality. If we consider God as the final cause, the one who resolves the question of why there is something rather than nothing, then God is the reason the universe exists and has the form it does. But does that mean the universe exists for something?

If the universe has a design, then perhaps it has a purpose. But that purpose could simply be the universe itself—a harmonious order as an end in itself. In this view, the laws of nature don’t exist to produce life; rather, life is just another element within that harmonious system.

This view resonates with Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, where he urges us to imagine Sisyphus happy. For Camus, the universe may have order but no inherent meaning—meaning arises from our lucid, creative response to the absurd. Living without final purpose is not despair—it is freedom.

In this view, life is not justified by some future outcome. If bad things happen, they happen because they’re part of the universe’s order—not because they serve a hidden goal. Life is to be lived—not used as a means to something else. This, I believe, is the most benevolent and rational conception of the universe.

Some of these themes are developed more deeply in my new book This Is It. From my perspective, life—whether or not one believes in an intelligent creator—reveals itself as an end in itself. In either scenario, we find solid foundations for ethics and morality, though with different nuances. Life, understood in this way, invites us to be fully present, in tune with our essential nature.

Whether or not we consider a transcendent dimension, life has no purpose beyond itself—its fullness lies in being lived completely. The moral values that emerge from this perspective emphasize the cultivation of joy and personal fulfillment.

Now, one could reason in the following way. Let’s consider the case of a Creator God. This God simply exists. As such, we might say that if God exists, then God is the ultimate reason behind morality and ethics, as religious traditions like Christianity have long claimed. But that reason—God—is the final criterion. There’s no “reason behind” it.

In the same way, in the tangible world of human experience, the ultimate criterion by which we judge morality is the greatest possible well-being. There are objective criteria that guide us toward what is good or bad, because there are natural aspects of reality that lead us either toward or away from well-being. There’s no need for a deeper reason within the human domain to pursue what leads to maximum well-being—because well-being, happiness, and the enjoyment of life are themselves the final criteria for moral action and for life itself. Just like a piece of music, life is an end in itself. The point is to play—to live and enjoy it.

This conception aligns with the ethics of well-being defended by contemporary philosophers like Sam Harris, who in The Moral Landscape argues that objective morality can be grounded in the conscious well-being of sentient beings. For Harris, suffering and flourishing are not mere cultural constructs but real states of the nervous system—measurable and comparable. Thus, what contributes to well-being does not require a further justification: it is good in and of itself.

Paradoxically, recognizing that there is no ultimate purpose in the universe—but rather, order—means that an objective meaning emerges: simply living and existing. Think of it this way: there is no reason why God exists. God simply is, beyond the physical. Just as there is no reason “beyond” why well-being is good, there is no reason beyond the divine will or the cosmic order. This absence of a “further reason” establishes the objective meaning of existence: living. This existence has an objective order, and when we stray from it, we suffer instead of flourishing.

It’s not my intent to expand further here on the issue of causality and meaning, but I delve into this in Chapter 10 of my latest book This Is It, where I explore in more depth why the physical universe would have a cause, but why this logic doesn’t apply to God—and what God’s necessary qualities would be.

Returning to the previous point: well-being must be cultivated because it reflects the order of existence created by the divine. To live means to cultivate the happiness that God has woven into the fabric of the world. This is part of objective meaning. And naturally, it is what we seek—because we deeply desire to be free from suffering.

When people ask, “But why is it right to pursue human well-being and not something else?”, they often overlook the fact that the “right” referred to in the question is actually the very well-being we already take as our final standard. In other words, the question becomes circular: “Why is it beneficial to pursue what is beneficial?”—which makes little sense.

So, when critics claim that without God there’s no objective reason to consider well-being as something good, they may fall into a conceptual trap.

Now, not everyone equates “the good” strictly with well-being. When someone questions why it is “good” to pursue human flourishing, they may be asking why we should follow that criterion and not another—seeking a deeper foundation for why flourishing is the final standard.

This echoes the idea of an ultimate, uncaused origin of the universe and of reality itself. We might call this God. Ultimately, there must be a final value—an anchor for all others—that doesn’t require a further justification, because it is the final reason. Its moral analogue is the ultimate goal of ethical behavior: happiness, well-being, life, flourishing.

God would then be the reason and foundation for morality—for why well-being is “good” and worth pursuing. It is good because it aligns with the created order of the world, where we are beings who play, walk, live—as ends in ourselves. God would thus be the foundation in a subtle sense, as the sustainer of the world he created, where the practical and tangible moral criterion is the highest state of personal flourishing.

So, the classic question—“Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?”—misses a deeper reality: if there is something that is objectively good, independent of anything else, that means it is a metaphysically necessary principle—part of what we might call God, just as logical conclusions necessarily follow from sound premises.

What, then, are these principles at their core? They are neither physical nor bound by time, and yet they make sense—they are meaningful within the framework of the cosmos and existence. Therefore, the Good, in its ultimate and transcendent sense, just like other principles, simply is and is part of what we might call God or his non-material, transcendent dimension.

The Good is integrated with human (or sentient) well-being, but it goes beyond that—it reflects the transcendent order of the world. As human beings—ends in ourselves, who live and play—that is the “point” of our existence, if we can speak of a point at all. Consciousness, and the subjective experience of happiness and flourishing, are part of the world because they were created by that divinity—and so they are part of the cosmic order.

There is a rationality, an order, that transcends us and becomes evident and necessary. When we follow it, it leads us toward well-being. Just as natural selection shapes organisms through a non-material principle, so too can we be guided by rational principles that lead to happiness in a life where the end is living itself.

What makes the pursuit of well-being good? The fact that it follows the rational principles of the ordered world in which we live. After all, if we simply say we should pursue happiness and flourishing “just because,” it leaves a kind of explanatory gap. In the end, the ultimate reason lies on the plane of final cause—a non-physical, transcendent, and divine dimension. This dimension commands what is good. But because the good is a final cause, there is no reason beyond it for why we should follow it.

This notion aligns with Plato’s theory of Forms, in which objective values like Justice or the Good exist as non-physical, immutable realities—independent of our perception or empirical circumstances. In this framework, the Good doesn’t need to be justified by consequences; it is the standard against which all moral actions are measured, just as mathematical truths form the basis of logical thought.

And here lies the final key: we can choose not to follow the Good, just as we can choose to claim that two plus two equals five. The problem is—it equals four. That is, when we stray from the Good, given by the rational and transcendent order, we distort that order—grounded in non-material principles—and we suffer the consequences. It’s the difference between building bridges and buildings with arithmetic in which 2 + 2 = 4, and trying to do so with an arithmetic where we want it to equal 5. In the first case, the structure holds; in the second, it collapses.

This analogy echoes C.S. Lewis’s proposal in Mere Christianity, where he argues that human morality is not arbitrary, but points to an objective and universal law—comparable to gravity or the laws of logic. Violating this law isn’t just “wrong” in a moralistic sense—it is self-destructive. Lewis contends that ignoring moral law is like ignoring the rules of chess: it leads to incoherence and internal chaos.

All of this leads us to an important conclusion: there is no incompatibility between a natural understanding of morality—one that helps us ground it in practical, real-world terms—and the idea that, like everything else in the universe, morality has its ultimate foundation in a Creator and in an order governed by necessary and transcendent principles that shape the world.

Thus, to reason morally, we must return to a notion of fundamental principles, rather than relying on consequentialist ethics that hinge on the future and the meaning of events—especially since we cannot determine the countless ramifications of human actions. We should instead establish values that support a kind of deontological morality—one that uses reason to grasp the necessary principles of the natural or divine order of things, and from there, justify what we deem to be good or evil.

Because, in the end, we cannot deceive this order. If we act with malice, if we are dishonest, if we use others as mere means to satisfy irrationally selfish ends, reality will hit us hard—we will suffer. On the other hand, there is a natural order for reward and happiness. There are things that open the door to flourishing, and they are part of the world’s order. If we act with compassion, honesty, and rationality—grounding our actions in objective reality—we open the doors to happiness.

But how can we know that a divine order truly exists? That’s perhaps the hardest thing to conceive. For instance, what explains the perfect order found in the geometry of triangles, circles, squares, or other mathematical objects?

The question of whether there is a perfect underlying order in mathematical geometry is not only fascinating, but it raises fundamental issues about the very nature of reality. In a universe that often appears chaotic, how can we discern the presence of intrinsic order? And what does that tell us about the origin and structure of the cosmos?

First, it’s essential to understand what order is and how it manifests in the world. Order is not merely the absence of chaos—it’s the presence of discernible, predictable patterns. In geometry, this order is evident in the precise relationships between a figure’s components. For example, the angles of any triangle always sum to 180 degrees, regardless of its size or properties. This consistency suggests a deeper structure that transcends individual variations.

Yet the question remains: where does this order come from? One possible explanation lies in the relationship between geometry and space itself. The existence of two-dimensional space provides the necessary context for geometric forms to exist. Without spatial dimensions, the notion of a triangle or a circle would be meaningless—they depend on space’s very structure. This link implies that geometric order is a natural outcome of the universe’s organization.

Moreover, order is not exclusive to human constructs or mathematics—it also manifests in nature. While some aspects of reality may seem chaotic or random, a closer look reveals underlying patterns and structures. The arrangement of leaves on a plant often follows precise geometric patterns, like the Fibonacci spiral. Likewise, the symmetry of snowflakes and the orderly layout of flower petals are examples of how geometric order appears in the natural world.

This discovery of order in nature challenges the idea that the universe is inherently chaotic or random. Instead of viewing reality as a cosmic accident, the presence of mathematical-level regularities suggests an underlying design.

Physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose has reflected on the beauty and precision of mathematics as evidence of a deeper reality. In The Road to Reality, Penrose suggests that mathematics reveals an ideal structure beyond the physical—a kind of Platonic realm that the universe merely “follows.” This mathematical regularity, harmony, and effectiveness could be interpreted as signs of an intelligently arranged order.

However, it’s important to note that the search for order in the universe doesn’t necessarily prove divine design. Modern science offers alternative explanations based on physical and mathematical principles. For instance, chaos theory and complexity science show that seemingly chaotic systems can display ordered behavior through non-linear processes and emergent patterns.

Still, I believe applying this logic to the entire cosmos oversimplifies things. In the case of our universe, even the apparent chaos in some systems is determined—and perhaps even “destined”—to unfold in certain ways based on the nature of the physical entities that have existed since the beginning. The resulting order and complexity are so intricate, so harmonious, that it seems unlikely to have come from mere randomness at some isolated point in the universe’s early stages.

To some, geometric order is evidence of intelligent design. To others, it’s the result of natural processes and fundamental laws.

The problem with the modern scientific-naturalist worldview is that it often ignores the fundamental question: Why is there something—anything at all—from which order could even emerge? Ultimately, we need a principle beyond the physical—a foundation for the universe we observe. This would suggest that the universe isn’t as it is due to chance, but because of a deeper reason—implying that the order we see, given its complexity, is ultimately something that appears intentional.

Let’s think about this with a simple analogy: if we place two rocks next to each other, not much happens. There is no intrinsic necessity for matter to be the way it is—interacting in such a way as to generate the extraordinary complexity of phenomena we observe in the universe, including life itself.

Our reality could very well have been just two inert, unremarkable rocks.

This suggests something more. The universe, in fact, is nothing like that. And yet, in a universe without creative or intelligent order, there is no intrinsic need for matter to even exist—let alone interact in the precise ways that make life and consciousness possible. In such a universe, it’s far more plausible that particles would not exist at all—and if they did, that they wouldn’t be able to interact meaningfully. Just as placing two rocks side by side produces no meaningful structure, a random, senseless universe would not yield the complex, harmonious interactions we observe.

So, how does matter emerge? Where does it come from in this universe? Why does it exist?

The very fact that something physical could emerge from nothing is deeply strange—truly astonishing. Can you grasp the oddity of that?

This line of thought may lead us to an interesting thesis: that there exists a primordial, non-physical reality preceding all material reality—something from which the material arises. We could simplify this hypothesis even further by positing that the fundamental nature of reality is consciousness, and that what we observe or perceive as matter is, in fact, a simulation or projection within a deeper, immaterial reality.

This takes us into metaphysics and philosophy—areas that transcend empirical science. While science seeks to understand natural phenomena through observation, experimentation, and theory, questions about the ultimate origin of the universe and the foundation of morality require a different kind of inquiry. This doesn’t mean that the inquiry isn’t rational.

On the contrary, although metaphysical and philosophical questions may appear abstract, that doesn’t mean they can’t be approached through reason. In fact, reason and logic are essential tools in the search for answers about the universe’s origin, existence, and the nature of the order we observe.

A rational approach to metaphysics involves critical thinking, logical argumentation, and the use of available evidence to analyze and evaluate different perspectives on fundamental questions. This may include examining arguments for and against the existence of an ordering principle in the universe, and considering the various philosophical theories that attempt to address these questions.

By taking a rational approach, we can examine the underlying premises of our beliefs, question our assumptions, and seek a deeper understanding of reality.

References

Berlin, I. (2002). Libertad y sus traiciones: Seis enemigos de la libertad humana. Taurus.

Camus, A. (2005). El mito de Sísifo. Alianza Editorial.

Harris, S. (2010). The moral landscape: How science can determine human values. Free Press.

Lewis, C. S. (2001). Mero cristianismo (L. A. Schökel, Trad.). Rialp.

Marco Aurelio. (2016). Meditaciones (C. García Gual, Trad.). Alianza Editorial.

Penrose, R. (2004). The road to reality: A complete guide to the laws of the universe. Jonathan Cape.

Platón. (2013). La República (C. García Gual, Trad.). Alianza Editorial.