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The Absurdity Of Life Without God - William Lane Craig
American Sentinel ^ | December 16, 2008 | Michael Eden

Posted on 12/16/2008 10:31:38 AM PST by Michael Eden

The following is my own transcription of one of the most powerful lectures that I have ever heard. I am delighted to see that it is now readily available in both video of the lecture and as a transcript in PDF format. Since I personally don't care for PDF if a good HTML source is available - and since this is such a staggeringly powerful lecture - I thought I should make it available in a more usable transcript format.

Every religious believer, and every non-believer, should read this powerful presentation of the absurdity of life without God.

The Absurdity of Life Without God by William Lane Craig, a lecture given at Biola University on 5 March, 2002

This a topic that is most serious and somber: the absurdity of life without God.

Loren Eisley writes, "Man is the cosmic orphan. He's the only creature in the universe who asks, 'Why?' Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions: 'Who am I?' 'Why am I here?' 'Where am I going?'" Ever since the Enlightenment, when men threw off the “shackles” of religion, man has tried to answer those questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible: you are the accidental by-product of nature - the result of matter, plus time, plus chance. There is no reason for your existence; all you face is death. Modern man thought that when he got rid of God he freed himself from everything that stifled and oppressed him; instead, he found that in killing God, he had only orphaned himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes, ultimately, absurd. If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms, must die. With no hope of immortality man's life leads only to the grave. Compared to the infinite stretch of time, man's life is but a brief infinitesimal moment; and yet this is all the life that he will ever know. And therefore every one of us must come face to face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called, "the threat of non-being." For even though I know that now I exist, that now I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will die. I will no longer be. And this thought is staggering and frightening; to think that the person I call I, myself, will no longer exist, that I will be no more. It is an overwhelming thought that the majority of us encounter first as children. Most of us simply grow to accept the fact, as we all learn to live with the inevitable. But the child's insight of horror remains true. As the French existentialist, Jean Paul Sarte, observed, "Several hours or several years make no difference, once you have lost eternity."

And the universe, too, faces a death of its own, scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and the galaxies are growing further and further apart. As it does so it grows colder and colder as its energy is used up: eventually all the stars will burn out, and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes - there will be no light at all. There will be no heat. There will be no life. Only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness, and the cold recesses of outer space - a universe in ruins. The entire universe marches irretrievably toward its grave. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed, the entire human race is doomed. The universe is plunging toward inevitable extinction; death is written throughout its structure. There is no escape. There is no hope.

If there is no God, then, man and the universe are doomed like prisoners awaiting execution; we await our inevitable death. There is no God. There is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself becomes ultimately absurd. It means that the life that we do have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose. Let's look at each one of these.

First, there is no ultimate meaning without immortality and God. If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed or not? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. But that shows only a relative significance to his life, not an ultimate significance. His life may be important relative to certain other events. But what is the ultimate significance to any of those events? If all of the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate significance of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference. Or look at it from another perspective: scientists say that the universe originated in a great explosion called 'the Big Bang' about 15 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred: what ultimate difference would it have made? The universe is doomed to die anyway; in the end it makes no difference whether it ever existed or not. And therefore it is without ultimate significance. The same is true of the human race; mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs, for their end is all the same: the same cosmic process that coughed them all up in the first place will eventually swallow them all up again. And the same is true of each individual person; the contribution of the scientists to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the efforts of good people everywhere to benefit the lot of the human race, all these come to nothing; in the end they don't make one bit of difference. Not one bit. Each person's life is therefore without ultimate significance. And because our lives are ultimately meaningless, the activities that we fill our lives with are also meaningless. The long hours spent in study at the university, our jobs, our interests, our friendships, all of these are, in the final analysis, ultimately meaningless. This is the horror of modern man. Because he ends in nothing, he ultimately is nothing.

But it's important to see that its not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence does not suffice to make that existence meaningful. Man and the universe could exist forever, but if there were no God, that existence would still have no ultimate significance. To illustrate one science fiction short story told of a space traveler who was marooned on a barren chunk of rock lost in outer space. And he had with him two vials: one containing a potion that would give him immortality, and the other a poison to end his life. Realizing his hopeless predicament, he gulped down the vial of poison. And then, he had discovered to his horror, that he had drunk the wrong vial; he had swallowed the potion for immortality. And thus he was doomed to exist forever in a meaningless, unending life. Now if God does not exist, then our lives are just like that. They could go on, and on, and on, and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, 'So what?' So its not just immortality that man needs if life is to be ultimately significant. He needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.

20th century man came to understand this fact. Read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett; during this entire play two men carry on trivial, mind-numbing conversation, while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. And our lives are like that, Beckett is saying. We just kill time waiting - for what, we don't know. In a tragic portrayal of man Beckett wrote another play – Breath - in which the curtain opens revealing a stage littered with junk. And for 30 long seconds the audience sits and stares in silence at that junk; and then the curtain closes. That's all there is. The French existentialists Jean Paul Sarte and Albert Camus understood this as well. Sarte portrays life in his play No Exit as hell. The final line of the play are the words of resignation, "Well, let's get on with it." And thus Sarte writes elsewhere of the "nausea" of existence. Camus also saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus' hero discovers in a flash of insight that life has no meaning, and that there is no God to give it one. The French biochemist Jacques Monot seemed to echo these sentiments when he wrote in his work Chance and Necessity, "Man finally knows that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe." Thus if there is no God, then life becomes ultimately meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.

Secondly, there is no ultimate value without God and immortality. If life ends at the grave, then ultimately it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint since one's destiny is ultimately unrelated to one's behavior. You may as well just live as you please; as the Russian writer Dhostyevsky put it, "If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted." On this basis a writer like Ayan Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. No one holds you accountable; you might as well simply live totally for self. Indeed, when you think about it, it would be foolish to do anything else since life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid. Kai Nielson, an atheist philosopher, who attempts to justify the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits, "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one; reflection on it is depresses me. Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality."

But the problem becomes even worse. For regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standard of right and wrong. All we are confronted with, in Jean Paul Sarte's words, is "the bare, valueless fact of existence." Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste, or else the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning. In the word of one humanist philosopher, "The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion." In a world without God, who is to say whose values are right, and whose are wrong? Who is to judge that the values of an Adolf Hitler are inferior to those of a Mother Theresa? The concept morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. As one contemporary atheistic ethicist points out, "To say that something is wrong because it is forbidden by God is perfectly understandable to anyone who believes in a law-giving God. But to say that something is wrong, even though no God exists to forbid it, is not understandable. The concept of moral obligation is unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone." In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative subjective judgments. But that means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise love, brotherhood, or equality as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist. there is only the bare, valueless fact of existence. And there is no one to say that you are right, and I am wrong.

Thirdly, there is no ultimate purpose without immortality and God. If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail, then what is the goal of life? To what end has life been? Has it all been for nothing? Is there no purpose at all for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is but a cold grave in the recesses of outer space, then the answer must be yes. It is pointless. There is no goal, no purpose, for which the universe exists. The litter of a dead universe will just go on expanding and expanding forever. And what of man? Is there no purpose at all for the existence of the human race? Or will it simply peter out someday, lost in the indifference of an oblivious universe? The English writer H.G. Wells foresaw such a prospect. In his novel, The Time Machine, Wells' time traveler journeys far into the future to discover the destiny of man. And all he finds is a dead earth except for a few lichens and moss orbiting a gigantic red sun. The only sounds are the rush of the wind, and the gentle ripple of the sea. "Beyond these lifeless sounds," writes Wells, "the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All of the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives, all that was over." And so, Wells' time traveler returned. But to what? To merely an earlier point on the same purposeless rush towards oblivion. One reading this might exclaim, "No, no! It can't end that way!" But this is reality in a universe without God. There is no hope; there is no purpose. Reflect on T.S. Elliot's haunting lines:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

And what is true of mankind as a whole, is also true of each of us individually. We are here to no purpose. If there is no God, then your life is not qualitatively different from that of a dog. That may sound harsh, but it's true. As the ancient writer of Ecclesiastes put it, "For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. (Ecc 3:19-20). In this book that reads more like a piece of modern existentialist literature than a book from the Bible, the writer demonstrates the futility of pleasure, wealth, education, political fame, and honor, in a life doomed to end in death. His verdict? "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" (Ecc 12:8). If life ends at the grave, then we have no ultimate purpose for living.

But more than that, even if life did not end in death, without God life would still be without purpose. For man and the universe would then be mere accidents of chance thrust into existence for no reason. Without God the universe is a result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists. And as for man, he's nothing but a freak of nature, a blind product of matter, plus time, plus chance. There's no more purpose in life for the human race than for a species of insect - for both are the result of the blind interaction of chance and necessity. As one philosopher has put it, "Human life is mounted upon a sub-human pedestal, and must shift for its self alone, in the heart of a silent and mindless universe." And what is true of the universe and of the human race is also true of us as individuals. We are here to no purpose. We are the results of certain combinations of heredity and environment. We're victims of a sort of environmental roulette. Psychologists following Sigmund Freud tell us that our actions are really the result of repressed sexual tendencies. Sociologists following B.F. Skinner argue that all of our choices are really determined by conditioning so that freedom is an illusion. Biologists like Francis Crick regard man as an electro-chemical machine which can be controlled by altering its genetic code. If God does not exist, then you are just a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life. So if God does not exist, that means that man and the universe exist to no purpose (since the end of everything is death), and that they came to be for no purpose (since they are only blind products of chance). In short, life is ultimately without reason.

Do you understand then the gravity of the alternatives before us? For if God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. Do you understand why the existence of God is a question that is so vital to man? As one writer has aptly put it, "If God is dead, then man is dead too." Unfortunately, the mass of people do not understand this fact. They continue on as though nothing had changed. Consider the story told by Frederick Nietzsche of The Madman, who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace, lantern in hand, crying, "I seek God! I seek God!" Since many of those standing about did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. 'Did God get lost? They yelled. Or, is He hiding? Or, perhaps He's gone on a voyage, or emigrated! And thus they yelled and laughed and taunted the madman. And then, Nietzsche writes, the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I shall tell you! We have killed him! You and I! All of us are His murderers! But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe up the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually backward, sideward, forward in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? God is dead! And we have killed Him! How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?" The crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment. At last he dashed his lantern to the ground. "I have come too early!" He said. "This tremendous event is still on its way. It has not yet reached the ears of men." People did not truly comprehend what they had done in killing God. And yet, Nietzsche predicted that some day, people would realize the implications of atheism, and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism that is the destruction of all meaning and value in life. "This most gruesome of guests", he said, "is standing already at the door. Our whole European culture is moving for some time now with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade as toward a catastrophe, restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect." Most people still do not reflect upon the consequences of atheism, and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. And yet, when we realize, as did Nietzsche, what atheism really implies, then his question presses hard upon us: "How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?"

About the only solution which the atheists can offer is that we just face the absurdity of life bravely and live valiantly. Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote that "we must build our lives upon the firm foundation of unyielding despair. Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life." Camus said that we should honestly recognize life's absurdity and then live in love for one another." But the fundamental problem with this solution is that it is simply impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy. If he lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. Francis Schaeffer explained this point well, saying, "Modern man lives in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God. Here life is absurd (as we have seen). In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes that there is no God. But because he cannot live consistently and happily in such a world, he therefore makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm that life has meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has absolutely no right to since man and the lower story does not believe in God. Modern man is totally inconsistent to make this leap because these values cannot exist without God, and man and the lower story does not have God."

Let us look again, then, at each of those three areas in which we saw that life was absurd without God, to show how modern man cannot live consistently and happily with his atheism.

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God life has no ultimate meaning. And yet, philosophers continue to live as though life were meaningful. For example, Sarte argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action. Sarte, himself, chose Marxism. Now this is utterly inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say that life is objectively meaningless and then to say that one can create meaning for his life. If life really is absurd, then man is trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sarte has no basis for this leap. Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life. Sarte's program is thus actually an exercise in self-delusion - for the universe doesn't really acquire a meaning just because I happen to give it one. This is obvious. For suppose you give the universe one meaning, and I give it another. Who is right? Well, the obvious answer is neither one. For the universe without God remains objectively meaningless no matter how we happen to regard it. Sarte is really saying, 'Let's pretend that life and the universe have meaning.' And that is just fooling yourself. The point is this: if God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless. But man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were meaningless. And so in order to be happy, he pretends that his life has meaning. But this is of course utterly inconsistent; for without God, man and the universe remain without any real significance.

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and human brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life, on the one hand, and to ethics of human love and brotherhood on the other. The two are logically incompatible. Bertrand Russell, too, was inconsistent. For although he was an atheist, he was also an outspoken social critic, denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste and that he therefore found his own views, and I quote, "incredible." "I do not know the solution," he confessed. The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dhostovesky said, "All things are permitted." But Dhostovesky also showed that man cannot live this way. He cannot live as though as though it's perfectly all right for soldiers to slaughter innocent children. He cannot live as though it's perfectly acceptable for dictatorial regimes to follow systematic pograms of physical torture of political prisoners. He cannot live as though its all right for dictators like Stalin or Pol Pot to ruthlessly exterminate millions of their own countrymen. Everything in him cries out to say that these acts are wrong, really wrong. But if God does not exist, then he cannot. And so, he makes a leap of faith to affirm values anyway. And when he does, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity several years ago as I viewed a BBC television documentary called "The Gathering." It concerned the reunion of certain survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem where they shared experiences and rediscovered lost friendships. Now I had heard stories of the Holocaust before and even visited camps like Dachau and Buchenwald. And I thought I was beyond being shocked by further tales of horror. But I found that I was not. One woman prisoner, for example, a nurse, told how she was made the gynecologist at Auswitzch. She observed that certain pregnant women were grouped together by the soldiers under the direction of Dr. Mengele, and housed in the same barracks. Some time passed and she noticed that she no longer saw any of these women. She made inquirees: "Where are the pregnant women who were housed in that barracks?" she asked. "Oh, haven't you heard," came the reply, "Dr. Mengele used them for vivisection." Another woman told how Mengele had had her breast bound up so she could no longer suckle her baby. The doctor wanted to learn how long an infant could survive without nourishment. And desperately this poor woman tried to keep her baby alive by giving it bits of bread soaked in coffee. But to no avail. Each day the baby lost weight - a fact which was eagerly monitored by Dr. Mengele. Finally a nurse then came secretly to this woman, and said to her, "I've arranged for a way for you to get out of here. But you cannot take your baby with you. I've brought a morphine injection which you can give to your child to take its life." And when this woman protested the nurse said to her, "Look, your baby is going to die anyway. At least save yourself." And so this poor woman took the life of her own child. Mengele was furious when he learned he had lost his experimental specimen, and he searched among the corpses of the discarded babies until he could find the body to have one last weighing.

My heart was torn by these stories. One rabbi who survived Auswitzch summed it up well when he said "It was as though a world existed in which all of the Ten Commandments had been reversed: Thou shalt kill, thou shalt lie, thou shalt steal, and so forth. Mankind has never seen such a hell." And yet, if God does not exist, then our world IS Auswitzch. There is no absolute right and wrong. All things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor, Richard Waugner, precisely over the issue of the composer's strident German nationalism and anti-Semitism. Similarly, Sarte, writing in the aftermath of the second World War, condemned anti-Semitism. He declared that a doctrine that leads to extermination is not merely an opinion or a matter of personal taste of equal value with its opposite. In his important essay, "Existentialism is a Humanism," Sarte struggled vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values in his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. He could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

A second problem is that if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished. And all the sacrifices of good people go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view? Richard Wombrandt, who was tortured for his faith in communist prison, wrote, "The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God. There is no hereafter. No punishment for evil. We can do what we wish!' I have even heard one torturer say, 'I thank God in whom I don't believe that I have lived to this hour when I can express all of the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners."

The English theologian Cardinal Newman once said that, "If I believed that all of the evils and injustices of life throughout history were not to be made right by God in the afterlife, why, I think I should go mad." Rightly so. And the same applies to acts of self-sacrifice. A number of years ago a terrible mid-winter air disaster occurred in Washington, D.C. A plane leaving Dulles Airport smashed into a bridge spanning the Potomac River, plunging its passengers into the icy waters. And as the rescue helicopters came attention was focused on one man, who again and again pushed the dangling rope ladder to other passengers rather than be pulled to safety himself. Six times he passed the ladder by, and then when the helicopters came again, he was gone. He had freely given his life so that others might live. The entire nation turned its eyes on this man with respect and admiration for the selfless and good act that he had performed. And yet if the atheist is right, that man was not noble; why he did the stupidest thing possible. He should have gone for the rope ladder first, pushed others out of the way if necessary in order to reach it. But to give his own life for other people for whom he had never even known, all the life he would ever have, what for? For the atheist there can be no reason. And yet the atheist, like the rest of us, instinctively reacts with praise for this man's selfless action. Indeed I think one will never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.

Finally let's look at the problem of purpose in life. The only way that most people who deny purpose in life manage to live happily is either by making up some purpose for their lives, which amounts to self-delusion, as we saw with Sarte, or else by not carrying out their view to its logical conclusions. Take the problem of death, for example. According to psychologist Ernst Block, the only way that modern man lives in the face of death is by sub-consciously borrowing the belief in immortality which his forefathers held to. Even though he himself no longer has any basis for this belief, since he does not believe in God. Block states that the belief that life ends in nothing is hardly (in his words) sufficient to keep the head high and to work as if there were no end. The remnants of a belief in immortality, writes Block, modern man does not feel the chasm that unceasingly surrounds him, and will most certainly engulf him at last. Through these remnants he saves his sense of self-identity. Through them the impression arises that man is not perishing, but only that one day the world has the whim no longer to appear to him. Block concludes, "This quite shallow courage feasts on a borrowed credit card; it lives from earlier hopes and the support that they have once provided." But modern man no longer has any right to that support, since he rejects God. But in order to live purposefully, he makes a leap of faith to affirm a reason for living.

We often find the same inconsistency among those who say that man and the universe came to exist for no reason or purpose but just by chance. Unable to live in an impersonal universe in which everything is the result of blind chance these people begin to ascribe personality and motives to the physical processes themselves. It's a bizarre way of speaking - and it represents a leap from the lower to the upper story. For example, the brilliant Russian physicist, Zodovitzchen Novakoff, in contemplating the universe, asks, "Why did nature choose to create this universe rather than another?" 'Nature' here has obviously become a sort of 'God substitute,' filling the role and function of the Creator. Similarly, Francis Crick, halfway through his book "The Origin of the Genetic Code" begins to spell 'nature' with a capital 'N' - and speaks of natural selection as being "clever" and "thinking" of what it will do. similarly Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer, attributes to the universe itself the properties of God. For Carl Sagan, the cosmos, with which he always spelled with a capital letter, obviously fulfills the role of a God-substitute. Though all of these men profess not to believe in God, they smuggle in a God-substitute through the back door because they cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the result of impersonal forces.

And it’s interesting to see many thinkers betray their views when they are pushed to the logical conclusions. For example, feminists have raised a storm of protest over Freudian sexual psychology because, they say, its chauvinistic and degrading to women. And, some psychologists have nuckled under and revised their theories. Now this is totally inconsistent. If Freudian psychology is really true then it doesn't matter if its degrading to women. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. But the problem is that people can't live consistently and happily in a world where other persons are devalued. And yet, if God does not exist, then nobody has any value. The only way you can consistently support women's rights is by belief in God. For if God does not exist, women have no more rights than a female goat or a chicken has rights. In nature, whatever is, is right. If God does not exist, then natural selection dictates that the male of the species is the dominant and aggressive one. In nature, whatever is, is right. But who can live with such a view? Apparently not even Freudian psychiatrists who betray their theories when pushed to their logical conclusions.

Or take the sociological behaviorism of a man like B.F. Skinner. This view leads to the sort of society envisioned by George Orwell in his novel "1984," where the government controls and programs the thoughts of everybody. If Pavlov's dog can be made to salivate when a bell rings, so can a human being. And if Skinner's theories are right, there can be no objection to treating people like the rats in Skinner's rat boxes - they run through their mazes coaxed on by food an electric shocks. According to Skinner all our actions are programmed anyway. And if God does not exist, then no moral objection can be raised against treating people like human guinea pigs - because man is not qualitatively different from a rat. For both are the result of matter, plus time, plus chance. But again who can live with such a dehumanizing view.

Or finally take the biological determinism of a man like Francis Crick. The logical conclusion is that man is like any other laboratory specimen. The world was horrified when it learned that in camps like Dachau and Auswitzch the Nazis had used prisoners for medical experiments on living human beings. But why not? If God does not exist there can be no moral objection to using people as human guinie pigs. A memorial at Dachau says, "Nie vida," never again. But this sort of thing continued to go on. It was recently revealed, for example, that in the United States after the war certain minority group persons where injected unbeknownst to them with a sterilization drug by medical researchers. Must we not protest that this is wrong? That people are more than just electro-chemical machines? The end of this view is population control, in which the weak and the unwanted are killed off to make room for the strong. But the only way that we can protest this consistently is if God exists. Only if God exists can there be purpose in life.

The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. And in so far as postmodern man (so called) denies the existence of God and the objectivity of value and purpose, this dilemma remains unrelieved for postmodern man as well. Indeed it is precisely the awareness that modernism issues inevitably in absurdity and despair that constitutes the anguish of postmodernism. In some respects postmodernism simply is the awareness of the bankruptcy of modernity. The atheistic world is insufficient to sustain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, and purpose. If we try to live consistently within the framework of the atheistic view, then we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If we manage to live happily, it is only by giving lie to the worldview of atheism. Confronted with this dilemma, man flounders pathetically for some means of escape.

In a remarkable address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991, Dr. LD. Rue, confronted with the predicament of modern man, boldly advocated that we deceive ourselves by means of some "noble lie" into thinking that we and the universe still have value. Claiming that the lesson of the last two centuries is that intellectual and moral relativism is profoundly the case, Dr. Rue muses that the consequences of such a realization is that one's quest for personal wholeness or self fulfillment, and the quest for social coherence, become independent from one another. This is because on the view of relativism the search for self fulfillment becomes radically privatized. If each person chooses his own set of values and meaning, Rue says there is no final objective reading on the world for the self. There is no universal vocabulary for integrating cosmology and morality. If we are to avoid what he calls "the madhouse option," where self fulfillment is pursued regardless of social coherence, and if we are to avoid what he calls "totalitarian option," where social coherence is imposed at the expense of personal fulfillment, then, he says, we have no choice but to embrace some "noble lie" that will inspire us to live beyond our selfish interests and so achieve social coherence. A noble lie, he says, is one that deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self interests, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, and race. It is a lie because it tells us that the universe is infused with value - which is a great fiction. Because it makes a claim to universal truth when there is none, and because it tells me not to live for self interest - which is evidently false. But, says Rue, without such lies, we cannot live.

This is the dreadful verdict pronounced over modern man. In order to live, he must live in self deception. But even the noble lie option is, in the end, unworkable. For how can one believe in these noble lies while at the same time believing in atheism and relativism? The more convinced you are of the necessity of a noble lie, the less you are able to believe in it. Like a placebo, the noble lie only works on those who believe it is the truth. Once we've seen through the deception, the lie has lost its power over us. And thus ironically, the noble lie cannot solve our human predicament for anyone who has come to see that predicament. The noble lie option only leads, therefore, at best, to a society in which an elitest group of Illuminati deceive the masses for their own good by perpetuating the noble lie. But then, why should those of us, who are enlightened, follow the masses in their deception? Why should we sacrifice self interests for a fiction? If the great lesson of the past two centuries is moral and intellectual relativism, then why, if we could, pretend that we do not know this truth and live a lie instead? If one answers, "Well for the sake of social coherence," one may legitimately respond, "Why should I sacrifice my self interest for the sake of social coherence? The only answer the relativist can give to this question is that social coherence IS in my best interest. But the problem with this answer is that self interest and social coherence do not always coincide. My interest and the interest of the herd are not always the same. Beside, if out of self interest I do care about social coherence, the totalitarian option is always open to me. Forget the noble lie, and simply maintain social coherence, as well as my own self fulfillment, at the expense of the personal wholeness of the masses. Generations of Soviet leaders - who extolled proletarian virtues while they rode in limousines and dined on caviar on their country dachas - found this alternative quite workable.

Now, Dr. Rue would undoubtedly regard such an option as morally repugnant. But therein lies the rub; Rue's dilemma is that he obviously values - deeply - both social coherence and personal wholeness for their own sakes. In other words, they are objective values - which according to his philosophy do not exist. He has already leaped to the upper story. The noble lie option thus affirms what it denies - and so refutes itself.

But if atheism fails in this regard, what about biblical Christianity? According to the Christian worldview, God does exist, and man's life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. And biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life: namely, God and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. The Bible affirms that life is ultimately significant because we have eternal life which is the knowledge of God forever. This is the fulfillment of human existence, it is what we were made for. moreover, moral values are rooted in the nature of God Himself, and God's moral commandments constitute for us our objective moral duties. Moreover the moral choices that we make in this life have an eternal significance because we will be held accountable for them by the holy God. The purpose of life, as the Westminster Catechism states, is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. And thus biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

Now, I want to be perfectly clear that none of this shows that biblical Christianity is true. But what it does show, I think, is to spell out clearly the alternatives. If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live consistently and happily.

And therefore it seems to me that even if these two options were absolutely equal, the rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. That is to say, it seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and despair to hope, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, "we have nothing to lose, and infinity to gain." The cosmic orphan can come home.


TOPICS: Apologetics; General Discusssion; Moral Issues; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: atheism; existential; god; pascalsfallacy; pascalswager; religion
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To: GunRunner

Allright. Pythagoras would’ve liked you, or whatever.

Well, I gotta go feed my dog. I’ve deduced he’s hungry from him bringing me his food bowl. :)


61 posted on 12/16/2008 2:11:06 PM PST by nominal
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To: alexander_busek
That God exists, but that at least some of us will turn to dust, and that perhaps even some sincere believers' souls will be consigned to oblivion?

While not confessing to know the ins and outs of every religion known, I'm unaware of any sort of religion that doesn't have some sort of punishment for "wrong" behavior. To your second prong, no, I don't believe that, and I'll explain why below.

So you are an adherent of "salvation through faith, alone?"

Not exactly. We're getting into deeper territory here, but I'll have a quick go of it. This is, in my mind, a simplistic view of the term "faith" that tends to distort Christianity. I believe you to mean when you say this that you mean "faith" simply to mean "belief," and that's not quite right. When I use the term "faith," I mean it as something considerably more than simply belief. For instance, when I make the decision to believe, it is not just simply a conversion of one day I don't believe that Christ died for our sins and the next day I do; that is far too simplistic.

Most people, including Christians, are proud. We like to believe that we can do things on our own, and we can do things without the help of others, including without the help of God. These same people go on their lives thinking that they are leading perfectly moral lives and are "good" people and that because they are good people, they will be rewarded in Heaven for their "goodness." Many of these people are Christians, and many go to church each Sunday. But they are wrong.

They are wrong because they haven't truly tried to practice Christian virtues, and haven't truly reflected on their ability to live their lives according to how we should. It is not until a person makes a true and serious attempt at practicing Christian virtues--and then failing--that faith can truly take root. The important lesson that we learn from our attempt, as Christians, is that no matter our effort, we cannot succeed. It is impossible; thus, to the extent that our salvation depended on our living a virtuous life, there is no such possibility. Without God's grace, we know we are doomed. Only once we realize that we are doomed can we truly accept Christ's offer, which is salvation.

Once we've accepted Christ, it doesn't mean then that we stop trying to live according to Christian virtues. If we've truly handed ourselves over to Him--if we have true faith--then it follows that as part of our commitment to Christ that we've changed our behavior to attempt to practice Christian virtues so as to please God. We will fail, of course, because we are men, but that is where we are saved by God's Grace. Thus, there can be no Faith without a commitment to Christian virtue.

Again, CS Lewis talks about this rather extensively in Book III of Mere Christianity, which I would commend to you. In regards to the question of whether good actions or faith in Christ brings a Christian to Heaven, he likens it to which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. He says:

"A serious moral effort is the only thing that will bring you to the point where you throw up the sponge. Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair at that point: and out of that Faith in Him good actions must inevitably come."

62 posted on 12/16/2008 2:12:42 PM PST by Publius Valerius
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To: GunRunner

“I believe the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence...”

I’m not going to attempt to prove the existence of God to you. I’m sure you have heard all the arguments you wish to hear. There is free will and you have chosen.

But the author remains right that most atheists hold values that have no foundation in atheism. They can attempt name changes and other ruses, but their views and values are logically inconsistent. Nor is it the case that a little more study - hitting the books - can solve their problem. The answers are not to be found in Freud, Marx, Sagan or any other author whom they would choose to heed.


63 posted on 12/16/2008 2:13:13 PM PST by ChessExpert (The Dow was at 12,400 when Democrats took control of Congress. What is it today?)
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To: Michael Eden
But even when I doubted whether there really was a God, it never once occurred to me to think that the idea of God was some kind of terrible thing.

I'm sure that your god is a wonderful god that is very kind and just in all circumstances. If I chose to accept Pascal's gambit, I might envision such a god myself. After all, the emphasis today is on a 'personal' god, so we're really dealing with millions of different deities here, since every person has their own belief of what god is.

I personally would not under any circumstances want to live under a god who cast people into the fires of eternal suffering simply for not believing in him.

Even when I was a Christian I was unable to believe such a thing, and yes, I think it would be awful if true.

64 posted on 12/16/2008 2:13:50 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: nominal; All
Another of W.L. Craig's best: Significance of the empty tomb [http://www.bethinking.org/bible-jesus/advanced/the-historicity-of-the-empty-tomb-of-jesus.htm]
65 posted on 12/16/2008 2:14:33 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: nominal
Well, I gotta go feed my dog. I’ve deduced he’s hungry from him bringing me his food bowl.

That's actually inductive reasoning. You can't know for a fact that he's hungry since he can't tell you; you're making your best assumption on the facts at hand. Maybe he wants to play fetch and can't find his ball, so he brought you his bowl instead. 8^)

66 posted on 12/16/2008 2:17:59 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: GunRunner

What if the Creator, in order to have the creation we have, with spiritual awareness that we have, had to create the universe so that not believing in the Creator and His personal desire to be your God results in your ending up ‘beyond God’s Love and all that such Love causes to be’? It would not be a fault of God that you could end up outside of His Love and all that such entails, it would be your own destiny formed in your selfishness.


67 posted on 12/16/2008 2:22:59 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: GunRunner
a god who cast people into the fires of eternal suffering simply for not believing in him.

That's a distortion, I think. My response to this is that God doesn't cast people into the fires of hell for not believing in him; people are judged according to their behavior and virtue. If you are unworthy, you are not allowed into Heaven. Some people have recognized that they are unworthy to be let into Heaven and they have asked God for forgiveness for their sins. Because Christ volunteered to accept our punishment for us, His Grace grants those people forgiveness and they are admitted into Heaven to spend eternity with God.

On the other hand, those who choose not to ask for forgiveness are not given it and they must stand for judgment upon their own merit.

Even when I was a Christian I was unable to believe such a thing

I truly think, unfortunately, you have been misled.

68 posted on 12/16/2008 2:29:24 PM PST by Publius Valerius
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To: MHGinTN
It would not be a fault of God that you could end up outside of His Love and all that such entails, it would be your own destiny formed in your selfishness.

Since we're playing 'what if', do I end up living for eternity under everlasting torture and pain because I didn't believe in him? Or am I simply dead at the end of my life in the Old Testament sense (i.e. no hell) and it's over with.

I can't make myself believe, and if god exists, he made me this way. So would he rather I lie to myself and him when I get to the afterlife? I think he would think more of me if I were honest with myself, rather than trying to concoct an artificial belief just so I can partake in the rewards of his love and all that such entails.

69 posted on 12/16/2008 2:31:37 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: Michael Eden
And the force of Craig's argument is that one is literally reduced to "pretending" that life really has meaning, value, and purpose, or accepting God.

The fact that Craig finds it easier to deal with life if he assumes that there is a God does not prove that God actually exists, any more than a small child finds it easier to believe in Santa Claus proves that Santa Claus actually exists.

Leading atheist H.L. Mencken said, "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." And if life has no ultimate purpose, value, or meaning, why shouldn't we?

Because it is more desirable, for perfectly obvious and worldly reasons, to live in a civilization.

Certainly, belief that life has a purpose, a value, and a meaning has not prevented people from slitting throats. Quite a few throats were slit by people who believed that the purpose, value, and meaning of life were to be found in smiting the infidel, or in cleansing the world of untermenschen, or in paving the path to the paradise of the workers, or in any of a thousand different brand names for the same old thing.

70 posted on 12/16/2008 2:32:52 PM PST by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: Publius Valerius
On the other hand, those who choose not to ask for forgiveness are not given it and they must stand for judgment upon their own merit.

Since, in your view, anyone who does not accept Christ cannot stand on their own merit, that means all non-Christians go to hell, correct?

I truly think, unfortunately, you have been misled.

I was raised in a Christian home and a Christian church. No one tried to mislead me and their explanations are completely parallel with what you said.

I'll put it another way.

Do you believe that all devout Hindus go to hell?

By your own reasoning they do.

I'm an antitheist on this particular belief; not only do I not believe it, it would be awful if it were true.

71 posted on 12/16/2008 2:36:44 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: GunRunner
That's actually inductive reasoning. You can't know for a fact that he's hungry since he can't tell you; you're making your best assumption on the facts at hand.

The same is true when a human being tells you he's hungry, really; one infers that certain sounds correspond to certain concepts based on inductive learning in childhood.

72 posted on 12/16/2008 2:36:48 PM PST by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: Michael Eden
But even when I doubted whether there really was a God, it never once occurred to me to think that the idea of God was some kind of terrible thing. It never occurred to me to say, “Christianity is awful.”

Same here.

In the last book in the Narnia series, every man and talking creature meets Aslan. Some look at him with love, some with love and fear, and some with hate and fear. I think that captures the esssence of the human response. It is born of choice and habit, which is choice repeated and accumulated.

One person was from a far away place and had been taught not to follow Aslan but to follow Tash, who it turns out was evil and cruel. This man showed integrity and nobility in his lifelong support of Tash. Aslan told him that his virtue, like all virtue, was in Aslan’s name, whether he knew it or not.

Of course, the Narnia stories are fiction. But they are fiction from an extremely perceptive person. I think the preceding paragraph gives a clue into how it is that many people can find the right path regardless of their circumstances - where and when they were born and lived.

73 posted on 12/16/2008 2:36:49 PM PST by ChessExpert (The Dow was at 12,400 when Democrats took control of Congress. What is it today?)
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To: GunRunner

It appears you have successfully caught your ‘tale’ in your mouth and are now on a roll. I believe what the Bible teaches, that every human has a soul and spirit and that that is eternal, everlasting. I suppose the answer to your query would be that you will be alive forever more and aware that you are ‘outside of God’s Love and all that His Love sustains.’ That ‘ud be hell, dude. Why risk it? ... If you choose to believe He is, He will be responsible for the rest and will—as He has done with me and millions of others—add to your faith. If you come tot he end of this mortal coil and there is nothing beyond it, how have you harmed yourself or those around you? On the other hand, if you ... well, you get the gist. Why do that to yourself and those around you?


74 posted on 12/16/2008 2:41:55 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: Publius Valerius
While not confessing to know the ins and outs of every religion known, I'm unaware of any sort of religion that doesn't have some sort of punishment for "wrong" behavior.

I may be mistaken, but I am sure that that is a central tenet of the Jehovah's Witnesses, namely that all but the "righteous" will simply return to dust. (And, of course, they cite Scripture to back this assertion up.)

Further, according to a report by the doctrine commission of the Church of England:

"Hell is not eternal torment, but it is the final and irrevocable choosing of that which is opposed to God so completely and so absolutely that the only end is total non-being."

The Episcopalians likewise believe that Hell is merely "alienation from God."

Regards,

75 posted on 12/16/2008 2:43:23 PM PST by alexander_busek
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To: ChessExpert

Wasn’t it ‘faith’ that Jesus sought in those whom He measured?


76 posted on 12/16/2008 2:45:45 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: GunRunner

The most obvious problem with polytheism is with the question of what makes a “god” as opposed to “merely” a very powerful being. The simplest analogy is the difference between Thor as seen by pagan Norsemen and Thor as seen by modern readers of Marvel Comics.


77 posted on 12/16/2008 2:45:53 PM PST by steve-b (Intelligent design is to evolutionary biology what socialism is to free-market economics.)
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To: All
Nad one more audio worth listening to from W.L.Craig [http://www.bethinking.org/bible-jesus/advanced/contemporary-scholarship-and-the-resurrection-of-jesus.htm]
78 posted on 12/16/2008 2:50:29 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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To: MHGinTN
Why do that to yourself and those around you?

You're using Pascall's wager again. It's a poor argument, that I should believe because if it's true, GREAT!; if not, no harm done.

Like I said earlier, I'm not going to believe in a fairy tale because the fairy tale is more appealing. On top of that, I don't hold the Christian god's selection process for heaven as all that appealing at all.

On another note, your idea of hell reminds me of a short story by Stephen King called "The Jaunt". A true definition of what I would consider hell is explained, and it has nothing to do with monsters or any other horror cliche.

79 posted on 12/16/2008 2:52:33 PM PST by GunRunner
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To: GunRunner

Ah, cannot let go of the tale once you get a firm grip with your teeth. Sorry about that.


80 posted on 12/16/2008 2:58:10 PM PST by MHGinTN (Believing they cannot be deceived, they cannot be convinced when they are deceived.)
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