@abgemacht, jmo:

OK, here's my attempt.

Something an increasing majority of English, Philosophy, Math, and Science majors can probably all agree on...

Either there is no God, or if there is "something out there," it's probably not at all what we in the West have supposed it to be for over 2,000 years or so now.

As such, our understanding of how the universe works and what it all means is quite possibly the most uncertain-yet-free in history; the more and more old dogmas of religion get shot down by a special team up of Scientific Inquiry, Philosophical Reasoning, and Literary Persuasion to win people over, the more and more we're able to view things from a comparatively-new point of view, one that increasingly has Science and Logic rather than Religion and Faith to back it up.

As a result, though, there inevitably comes the question...

Why?
Why should we care?
Why does it matter to *me* if there is one universe or a multiverse?
Of what significance am *I* in a world which is one among hundreds?
Of what significance am *I* if I'm the product of evolution and not some Divine Creator?
Of what significance is *anything* we learn if there is no Final Consequence or Justice?
If no one is "watching"...why go on with the show at all?

We have a rather unique ability as human beings to both ascribe and crave meaning--

A slug or a snail or a snake doesn't need to wonder what his place is in the universe...he hardly cares what his place is in the ecosystem, all he cares about is reproducing and eating and shelter and things of a strictly base-nature.

But we as human beings, to cite Maslow's Pyramid of Needs, can move BEYOND that base...and, indeed, it would seem as though if there is any human nature at all, it is a nature that urges us to do just that, to move beyond the basic and create for ourselves greater intellectual, emotional, and psychological goods, in the form of this sort of striving for a sense of importance, meaning...

Really, that idea of "meaning" right there is the key--

We can't say 2+2=4 has some sort of real "meaning" to it beyond two somethings added to another two somethings of a like kind equal four somethings of that kind.

But when we say something like "justice," for example, we have to pause for a moment and think--what do we "mean" by that, what *is* justice?

And a partial reason for THAT, I would posit, is that justice, just like goodness and evilness and virtue and like things, are ALL human constructs, to one extent or another; we may derive some of these ideas from observation in part--ie, we may get a sense of "hierarchy" in viewing ants or bees--but observation generally only gives the "what"...

It's human thought and human construction that needs to give the "why," and without the "why," there would seem to be no meaning to life--

And, to be honest, there quite probably ISN'T an inherent, intrinsic meaning to "life."

"Life" is just the net result of certain atomic and chemical reactions.
Being "Human" isn't much more, then, than belonging to a certain genus and species.

To be a human BEING, however, requires something more...something science and math cannot provide, and something, it would seem, we are either predisposed to desire or, after 5,000 years of desiring it, have become as a race rather conditioned to desiring it.

We need meaning--and with none readily available in God-form, we need to CREATE that meaning, which means we need a vehicle for the Creation of Meaning.

Enter Literature to this end.

In the first place, what was the first "literature?"

The first "literature" we get are myths, legends, folktales, epics, and religious stories.

Contained in every one, no matter how disparate, are both ideas on how we might live as well as a specter from the past of how they lived and what they thought.

Why is this significant?

"Literature" is, when you boil it down, a way of conveying:

1. A story which
2. Conveys ideas, morals, meanings, and other abstract ideas in a palatable manner and
3. Structures them in such a way so that they can
4. Be passed on as
5. These ideas, whatever they are, create a sense of meaning that
6. Allow for both Maslow's higher areas to be reached as well as
7. A certain sense of immortality in that the same ideas/stories "we" share and see will be shared and seen by those 500 years later, and THEY will
8. Either feel what we felt, so immortality via stories=immortality via children a bit, OR
9. Will reject these ideas or else build off them to create a new idea, in EITHER CASE
10. There is a sense of shared continuity and community in Human Construction.

As such, it is through Literature we may do at least two things science cannot:

1. We may construct a sense of self-importance and meaning every sort of scientific discovery would seem to oppose, as, strictly speaking, we ARE "just" bits of carbon atoms strung together in a certain configuration as one of millions if not billions of organisms on one planet in a solar system of eight or nine--I can't help it, I still count Pluto, I was taught Pluto since I was 3 years old, Pluto has planetary tenure as far as I'm concerned, damnit!--planets with dozens of moons in a galaxt that spans many million lightyears that is only one of many more galaxies in universe that is expanding outward and now, perhaps, may be only one of many universes in a multiverse.

THAT is both awfully beautiful and beautifully awful--it can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially given that we as a race are really just now starting to embrace this larger view in larger numbers...5,000 years of recorded history or so, and only in the last century to century and a half have we really begun to fully, on a large-scale, doubt the idea that our planet and we as a race lack any sort of intrinsic importance and are, in all logical respects, a meaningless speck amidst an interstellar picture so huge we don't even have the whole thing mapped out yet, not even close.

In this respect, Literature may be seen as the "appropriate replacement" for Religion.

After all, what was religion in the end but a set of beliefs that were supposed to give us moral and metaphysical structure in our lives, and thus a sense of meaning, with the knowledge that someone "cared," ie, God/Allah/Jesus/Zeus/Vishnu/etc.

Thanks to that team-up by Darwin and Nietzsche, God is Dead.

And with God/gods go the religious sense of importance we as a race once had, an importance science can't fill, as 1. As previously stated, the evidence is against our being altogether special and 2. Science works on facts, NOT on constructs of the human condition...that is, there is no scientific formulation for "Virtue." We may discover what we are biologically conditioned to perceive as good or bad or pleasurable or otherwise, but for these to reach anywhere beyond that first, base level of Maslow's Pyramid, we need something besides raw facts, but rather, a sense that "good" and "bad" mean something, and that our attainment of these things means something.

Now, a FAILING of religion was in its dogmatism--this is "The Book," "The God," The Ten Commandments," "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before ME."

Literature and Philosophy improve upon this failing--you can read Shakespeare and Tolstoy, and even though the latter thought the former was a crude craftsmen with no talent and couldn't really ever see why "the Bard" was so beloved, there is no commandment stating "Thou Shalt Love No Authors Before Me."

So we can read "Hamlet" and "War and Peace" alike, derive meaning from their characters and situations and speeches, and not have an issue; we may like one over the other (I've only read snippets of him and I already find Tolstoy plodding in a way even Dostoyevsky isn't) but that doesn't mean we can't take meaning from both...

There is no "heresy" in Literature.

Further, there is no inherent conflict with Science, either, beyond the basic generalization that Literature is generally more abstract and interpretative whereas Science is more rules-based and may have more concrete applications.

Literature knows its place in relation to Science, and does not presuppose to transgress that divide. No English major is going to go to be so absurd as to think attending a Shakespeare play every Sunday and praying to the Bard will ensure an afterlife of bliss and happiness or a cure to their diseases. In fact, Emily Dickinson herself wrote in a poem once:

""Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency."

And that's just it--Literature is an invention, a tool to give our lives meaning.

We get ideas of justice, good, evil, right, wrong, daring, and a sense of the epic from Literature, and these ideas are what make us more than the mere animal we scientifically are.

I've quoted a poet...now, to quote a scientist, and not just any old scientist...

"Science without Religion Is Lame, Religion without Science Is Blind"

-Albert Einstein

Replace "Religion" with "Literature," and we as a race both have our heads on straight and a reason to continue "spiritually"...without the spirits and tautologies and books that advocate infanticide and rape and slavery.

The other great reason?

2. Two things certain...

"Death and Taxes."

We all will die.
And NOW we've cast off that old, erroneous idea of Heaven and Hell and a sort of "second life after death."
As such, our sense of an eternal existence or stay as an entity in this realm or another, too, is gone.

Once again, where Religion has failed, and where Science gives the cold, hard facts of the blank canvas, Literature is able to paint a picture and ensure meaning once more.

Earlier I said that Literature was, initially, really just stories to pass down morals in the hopes of teaching the younger generation what they needed to know to come of age and survive.

With the Death of God and the Rise of Secularism, stories are all the more important, as they allow for what Religion no longer can--

A realistic sense of that same immortality within the human sphere of meaning and ideals that we as a race have constructed for ourselves.

We had a Macbeth reference earlier in the thread...well, let it be said that Shakespeare WILL be read "'til the last syllable of recorded time," or to put it another way, and perhaps the best way, Sonnet 18--"So long as men can breathe and eyes can see/So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

Shakespeare, thus, "lives on" into the modern day, because at least a certain essence of what he was, namely, his words, are still "in the discussion," as it were.

Think of it this way:

When we debate here, generally we do cite figures and their ideas to go along with our own...

And as we do that, we ensure that at least SOMEONE, SOMETHING in this scientific vastness DOES ascribe meaning, DOES care about the Labors of Hercules or the Quest for the Holy Grail or Hamlet's pontificating on "What a piece of work is a man."

Think of all the names, and with them, all the characters, places, people, and ideas that are preserved from the indifference of the scientific universe by the UNIVERSE MAN CREATES FOR HIMSELF VIA LITERATURE.

For the Author, Literature allows for their own preservation.

And for the Reader, it allows one to continue to construct those human ideals of meaning in the first place WITHOUT going back to Square One each time because we as a culture remember the stories and authors...

Were they not taught, we'd start over with every generation and not progress, and THAT, too, is another conceit that Literature allows--the idea of progress, and a sort of goal that we as a race are striving for.

We now know it's not god, it's not Heaven...

But if we can believe even still that there was something of worth in Plato's ideas, and then Aristotle took us a step further, and Descartes a step further than that, and Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Kant, Nietzsche, Russell, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Sartre...all getting closer and closer to some "truth," some human-constructed idea of "truth" that, like meaning, seems as if it is either something we are built to require or else have come to require, much like meaning...

It is in teaching Philosophy and Literature that we preserve both the closest thing to a "soul" we have--that is our words, personalities, and ideas--for those of us who further our sense of understanding and being, and in doing so, allow ourselves the ability to build upon their work, and reach those upper levels of Maslow's Pyramid, to "actualize" ourselves.

This isn't a quest for the Ubermensch or for a Philosopher King.
This is the continued construction of a collective human consciousness...

This is humanity taking on the role of the God it has rightfully cast off and, by embracing both the logic of Science and the idealism of Literature, finding a way to give itself a two-world system once more...

Not a division between the Heaven and Earth, but one between the Universes of Scientific and Humanistic Truths.

We inhabit the a Scientific Universe, and in it, we are mere tenants, we are specks.
We create the Humanistic Universe, and in it, we are the Creators, we are gods...

WE HAVE MEANING THIS WAY...WITHOUT claiming the Earth was made 6,000 years ago and that two people in a garden with a talking snake are the reason we are all terrible, suffering sinners that should beg forgiveness.

We teach Shakespeare so we can learn and preserve from his ideas, thus, and to inspire, even if it's an inspired hatred or boredom, a rejection of the Bard...

But it's also essential to upholding that final human construct we all need, namely, that someone WILL care once we die.

If we don't teach and care about Shakespeare or Dante or Homer--who will?

Likewise, if we don't teach or care about Literature, and the meaning it allows for in its shared role with Science...who will, and how can we ever rise above the mere sum of our parts?

Science gives us an understanding of the Homo Sapien Human in the larger universe.
Literature gives us a reason to believe that human is a Human Being...and worthwhile.

(OK, that was my best shot!) :)