Religion and the Search for Meaning Theme Analysis

The Sirens of Titan depicts humanity’s search for meaning in what often appears to be a meaningless and random universe. The novel suggests that the systems of belief humans develop in order to access meaning are essentially illusions, and it is most disdainful about systems of belief that place humanity at the center of the universe. While trying to find meaning is perhaps an inevitable part of being alive, the idea that humans are the most important species in the universe is emphatically proven wrong in the novel by the depiction of alien species and forces whose age, intelligence, and power vastly outrank those of humankind.

The novel depicts a future moment in human history when old systems of belief (namely, religion) are coming into contact with new truths about the universe revealed by advancing technology and space exploration. Intriguingly, the novel does not indicate that religion and the space age exist in tension, which is a common assumption. Indeed, the narrator actually reverses this assumption by arguing “It was a situation made to order for American fundamentalist preachers. They were quicker than philosophers or historians or anybody to talk sense about the truncated Age of Space.” This idea is repeated in the description of Bobby Denton, an Evangelical Christian who describes Earth as “God’s space ship.”

Yet rather than suggesting that the coherence between religion and space exploration is because religion accurately describes the universe, the novel instead suggests that it is due to a kind of foolishness and delusion inherent within religion. For example, the idea that Earth is “God’s space ship” clearly doesn’t have any actual meaning. If God is really the creator of the universe, why would He need a spaceship, and if He did, why would He choose a small planet that doesn’t even move? This observation suggests that religious people want to be able to accommodate space exploration and the facts it reveals within their existing systems of belief, but that in attempting to do so, they end up making statements that are ridiculous and meaningless.

The irrelevance of religion in the age of space exploration is further confirmed by the religion that Winston Niles Rumfoord invents, the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Unlike the claims of the religious people quoted above, Rumfoord’s description of God is arguably more accurate (and certainly more coherent in conveying the truths about the universe that space exploration reveals). The motto of the religion is “Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.” Yet while this may be a more realistic understanding of God, it calls into question why a religion that views God as “utterly indifferent” should exist in the first place. Indeed, it is soon revealed that through the religion, Rumfoord aims to increase his own power by performing “miracles” thanks to his ability to see the future. In this sense, Rumfoord’s religion does not provide a system of meaning for its followers, but instead is more like a cult wherein Rumfoord himself has an all-powerful role. 

Another way the novel explores the temptations and futility of mankind’s search for meaning is through the idea of luck. Luck plays an important role in the novel, particularly for Malachi Constant and his father, Noel, who both credit their enormous success in life to luck. Importantly, both explicitly connect luck to religion and God, yet are only very vaguely religious or spiritual themselves. Noel begins his adult life as an unsuccessful and poor man. He makes a series of investments based on the first sentence of the Book of Genesis, investing in companies that have the same combination of letters that can be found in this sentence. This investment strategy—which is not remotely founded in business knowledge and is more like playing the lottery—pays off, and Noel becomes the most successful businessman in the United States.

Yet while some may be tempted to read this turn of events as “proof” of the Bible’s truth, Noel does not do so. Recalling the growth of his wealth in a letter to Malachi, Noel observes, “I kept my eyes open for some kind of signal that would tell me what it was all about but there wasn’t any signal. I just went on getting richer and richer.” This indicates that the search for meaning relies less on the existence of signs than on how people choose to interpret them. The fact that Noel keeps “getting richer and richer” after investing based on letters in the Bible could easily be interpreted as a “sign” of the truth of Christianity, but Noel does not favor this interpretation.

Malachi adopts a similarly vague interpretation of his own luck; together with Noel’s beliefs, this suggests that people may actually not be invested in searching for deeper meaning as long as everything is going well for them. When speaking with Rumfoord about the question of why he is so lucky, Malachi nonchalantly says, “I guess somebody up there likes me.” Of course, by the end of the novel “somebody up there” is revealed to be not the vague idea of God that Malachi invokes here, but actually the Tralfamadorians, an alien species that is controlling human history. This, in turn, circles back to the surprising coherence between space exploration and religious belief. The phrase “somebody up there” suggests that the way people talk about God better describes an alien species than the all-powerful force that Rumfoord indicates is actually “utterly indifferent.” Ultimately, the novel depicts two versions of a higher power—the aliens who are using humanity to their own ends and the God who does not care about “puny man”—neither of which are capable of providing humanity with a true sense of meaning.