Scientist and skeptic Richard Dawkins, in his book River Out of Eden, explains: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Skeptic Magazine interviewed Dawkins and asked if his world view was the same as Shakespeare's Macbeth, that life is "a tale told by an idiot, filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing."

"Yes," Dawkins replied, "at a sort of cosmic level, it is. But what I want to guard against is people therefore getting nihilistic in their personal lives. I don't see any reason for that at all. You can have a very happy and fulfilled personal life even if you think that the universe at large is a tale told by an idiot."