Is the Universe Blind and Indifferent?

Once upon a time in the manic annals of the world wide web, celebrity scientist and scourge of the humanities Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted this atheist scorcher: “The Universe is blind to our sorrows and indifferent to our pains. Have a nice day!” Comedian Norm McDonald, in contemplative troll-mode, responded: “Neil, there is a logic flaw in your little aphorism that seems quite telling. Since you and I are part of the Universe, then we would also be indifferent and uncaring. Perhaps you forgot, Neil, that we are not superior to the Universe but merely a fraction of it. Nice day, indeed” Norm is getting at a tendency of mysticism towards the One; from a particular mystical view, you are the universe. Laruelle: “The universe was in the world, but the world did not see it.” Neil’s hard atheist logic, needing to deny all metaphysics and any teleology, must demand that the universe be opposed to the loving god of monotheism; no god will save us from ourselves. Right on; but to separate humans from the cosmos is to fall back into a theist logic in which humans have been denied love by a blind and indifferent universe; it as if the universe had once been able to see and to care, until a superior atheist science came along to blind it. And yet it is self-evident to Norm McDonald that this claim of universal indifference is false. If care exists—even in this very small, remote, backwater corner of the universe—then the universe can be said to be caring.