Monthly Archives: May 2019

Is Life Absurd Without God? A Reply to WLC’s Influential Article (2 of 3).

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I recently wrote about an atheist who praised the essay “The Absurdity of Life without God” by Christian apologist William Lane Craig (WLC). The praise was so effusive—and coming from a self-declared atheist—that I had to take a look at that influential article. Let’s continue with our critique (part 1 here).

What is the purpose in life?

Craig tells us that life without God has no purpose. Millions of atheists find purpose in life, thank you for asking, but ignore that for now—what purpose does a life with God provide? Drum roll, please, because here’s what Craig tells us we have to look forward to in Christianity: “The chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God.”

That’s the big reward, learning more about God and maybe telling him how fantastic he is? Thanks, but I think the meaning that we find in our lives—learning new things and improving ourselves, striving and sometimes succeeding, doing good for others and enjoying their company, leaving society better than we found it, and so on—is far more satisfying. If an omnibenevolent God existed, I’m certain he’d agree.

What is the meaning in life?

Ever have someone tell you how you should see things from your vantage point? We all enjoy having someone more wise (or maybe just more pompous) than us tell us how we’re doing things wrong.

Craig does a lot of this. Here’s an example where he gets off to a good start:

Camus said that we should honestly recognize life’s absurdity and then live in love for one another.

Yes, there is no ultimate meaning. Loving and serving each other is a good way to live our lives. But this doesn’t satisfy Craig. He continues:

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if one lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. . . . If God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair.

And, yet again, millions of atheists see no problem here. Neither does the dictionary—there is no ultimate demand in the definition of “meaning.”

Craig tries again:

The atheistic world view is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose. If we try to live consistently within the atheistic world view, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy.

The millions of ex-Christians who’ve switched to the atheistic worldview disagree.

Another try:

As Dostoyevsky put it: “If there is no immortality then all things are permitted.” On this basis, a writer like Ayn Rand is absolutely correct to praise the virtues of selfishness. Live totally for self; no one holds you accountable! Indeed, it would be foolish to do anything else, for life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid.

All things are permitted? No one holds you accountable? Tell that to the judge. Most of us are happy to be accountable to the friends and family in our lives (but if Craig would be a rampaging murderer without the constraints of Christianity, then I’m glad he’s a Christian).

As for sacrifice for another, we’re programmed for that because we’re social animals. One wonders if Craig ever gets out of his ivory tower to test his ideas against reality.

Here’s Craig’s advice to any atheist who shares his glum view of reality.

About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely.

You want joy? Get a puppy. Find a romantic partner. Get involved in life. “Live bravely”? Thanks for the condescension. I can suggest a place where Craig can shove his Godsplaining.

Craig does a poor job of seeing things from someone else’s viewpoint. This isn’t surprising—it’s not his worldview. Atheists have meaning, atheists experience happiness and despair little differently than Christians, atheists consistently accept finite meaning in life, and atheists are able to face reality by following the evidence where it points.

It’s the Christians who have the problem with consistency, especially if they take Craig’s advice to ignore reality and pick a worldview based on how pleasing it is rather than how likely it is to be valid. And it’s the Christians who are most uneasy about mortality. In a 2011 study, “[The most religious study participants were] by far the most likely to exhaust finances on life-prolonging treatment.”

Ask an ex-Christian how much better it feels to drop the cognitive dissonance of juggling unsupportable Christian claims in the face of explanations that are nicely grounded by science.

William Lane Craig declares himself to be Nietzsche’s madman, the only one who sees things correctly. He handwaves that atheists don’t understand the consequences of their worldview, but all he means is, “You don’t see it my way.” Of course I don’t see it your way—you’ve done nothing to argue for its correctness. And, given your inept flailing, I’m sure that I understand my perspective far better than you do.

Craig insists on imposing his childish view on everyone else. He’s in an existential tizzy about the idea that there is no ultimate purpose to life, and he thinks everyone else should share his view. I suggest he approach this the old-fashioned way: by providing compelling evidence for his position.

Concluded in part 3.

I wish to propose for the reader’s favourable consideration
a doctrine which may, I fear,
appear wildly paradoxical and subversive.
The doctrine in question is this:
that it is undesirable to believe a proposition
when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/20/15.)

Image from Max Braun, CC license

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Is Life Absurd Without God? A Reply to WLC’s Influential Article.

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I recently wrote about an atheist who gushed about the irresistibly incisive philosophical arguments of Christian apologist William Lane Craig (WLC). He signed his letter to Craig, “Your biggest atheist fan.” This atheist said that Craig’s essay “The Absurdity of Life without God” kept him awake at night because it “completely shattered my worldview.” We’d better take a look at this life-changing essay.

(The full essay is in Craig’s Reasonable Faith (2008), and I’m guessing this isn’t much changed from the 1984 first edition. The version I’m responding to is online and a little shorter.)

The foundation of the problem

Craig begins by recounting how he first learned as a child that life is finite. He said, “I was filled with fear and unbearable sadness.” That his own death was far in the future did nothing to allay the problem. Whether his death was hours or decades away didn’t matter—it was eternity or nothing.

Here Craig tips his hand. His life’s work has been dedicated to resolving that little boy’s fear of death. He might’ve confronted the problem of death by being a doctor or cancer researcher. He might’ve explored religion and spirituality as a skeptic to see if any discipline offered tangible truth about the afterlife. But he has made clear that following the evidence where it leads isn’t his goal.

And following the evidence is certainly not what he’s doing in this essay. He finds no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose in atheism (I agree—atheists just find regular meaning, value, and purpose) and then flails about as if we can do something about that. It’s like wishing that 2 + 2 = 9 and then spending your entire life concocting a justification for your new view of arithmetic.

How does reality work?

WLC whispers truths about reality as if his dreadful realizations may not be expressed in polite company.

“My life is just a momentary transition out of oblivion into oblivion. . . . This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call ‘myself’ will cease to exist, that I will be no more!” (Well, yeah. Your life and death are not really that big a deal. Welcome to reality. Neil DeGrasse Tyson observed, “If you are depressed after being exposed to the cosmic perspective, you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.”)

“And the universe, too, faces death.… As it [expands], it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes.” (You’re seriously anxious about the fact that there will be no more stars in 100 trillion years? No one but you loses sleep over this.)

“Mankind is thus no more [ultimately] significant than a swarm of mosquitos or a barnyard of pigs. . . . Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.” (Yeah. Get over it.)

And again we have the perspective of the young boy shocked by these realizations for the first time. This is a boy growing up in America, smart enough to do well in school and build a career. This is a boy granted the luxury to fret about existential issues like eternity, the eventual death of the universe, and Mankind’s lack of ultimate significance. Sounds like someone has #FirstWorldProblems. Sounds like someone needs a hug.

Contrast these concerns at the top of Maslow’s pyramid with Third World issues. Consider a child with real problems—orphaned by a tsunami in Haiti, forced to serve as a soldier in the Congo or a sex slave in India, or dying of malaria in Niger. WLC’s handwringing about the eventual death of the universe doesn’t amount to much by comparison.

Let’s return to his central point, “This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call ‘myself’ will cease to exist, that I will be no more!” He’s fretting about how a billion years from now, without Christianity’s promise of an afterlife, no one would care whether he had existed or not (which, apparently, is enough evidence of the afterlife for him).

But what does this approach imply? He could save his own relatives from such an oblivion by learning about and celebrating their lives. He could share anecdotes from his genealogical research with family members so that great-great-great-grandma would live on. But unless he’s forgotten to share the importance of this crucial hobby with his readers, he doesn’t care. Apparently, the goal isn’t to help mankind live on but to help him live on. (h/t commenter MR)

An elementary error

Another category of concern is with the meaning of life. Read these quotes and see if you have the same objection I do.

This is reality in a universe without God: there is no hope; there is no purpose.

Life is utterly without reason.

If God does not exist, then you are just a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life.

In a universe without God, good and evil do not exist.

No, what you mean to say is that there is no ultimate hope, purpose, reason, good, or evil. People find plenty of the ordinary kind. Look up those words in the dictionary—they don’t need any transcendental or absolute grounding.

It’s not that Craig doesn’t understand the issue. For example, he asks, “[A person’s life] may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events?” Here, he contrasts importance from the standpoint of that person with ultimate importance—not a difficult distinction to make. But in dozens of other instances, as in the quotes above, he conflates the two ideas. You’d think someone with two doctorates would write more carefully.

Here’s an example where he conflates the two in the very same sentence: “If God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless” (emphasis added). It’s hard to imagine how this confusion has survived in this essay since he wrote it three decades ago. He’s either a sloppy writer, or he intends to deliberately mislead the reader.

In part 2: WLC’s essay has a number of points that need responses.

Somebody is looking out for me,
keeping track of what I think about things, forgiving me . . .
I believe they know everything I’ve said and done
and they still love me.
And, I’ve concluded after careful observation
that the person keeping score is me.
— Adam Savage

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/16/15.)

Image from Elijah O’Donnell, CC license

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An Atheist Celebrates the Comfort of the Christian Worldview

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In 2010, John Steinrucken wrote an article, “Secularism’s Ongoing Debt to Christianity.” Like philosopher Antony Flew’s ghost-written appeal to deism a few years earlier, Steinrucken became a short-lived darling within the Christian apologetics community. Finally, they had found an atheist with a little common sense who could appreciate Christianity as the foundation that Western civilization rested on.

The most ludicrous line in Steinrucken’s scattered argument was this:

Has there ever been a more perfect and concise moral code than the one Moses brought down from the mountain?

Grab a barf bag and compare your reaction to mine.

Déjà vu all over again

I’d only seen one other instance of an atheist praising the Christian worldview.

But then I came across yet one more example. In a rambling 2015 email titled, “You’ve Ruined My Life, Professor Craig!!” a gushing fanboy named Adam tells William Lane Craig how fabulous he is. Craig ruined Adam’s atheist worldview by presenting such danged good arguments for Christianity.

Kevin Harris, Craig’s podcast sidekick, said,

Many are, in fact, saying (including myself) this is the greatest letter in the question and answer forum on Reasonable Faith.

The greatest letter? That’s something we must investigate.

Problem the first: nihilism

Adam said that he was a happy atheist who loved philosophy until he read Craig’s article, “The Absurdity of Life without God,” after which everything changed. (I have responded to this article of Craig’s.)

Craig declared that the atheist worldview “was worthless in every possible way.” Adam’s reaction:

[That article] completely shattered my worldview. . . .

What you say the atheistic worldview entails is true. There is no escaping the nihilism as an atheist.

Everything has died for me.

You have ruined my life.

It doesn’t sound like Adam was much of an atheist but more on this later. Adam is saying here that life has no ultimate meaning. Well, yeah. So what?

Adam apparently gets anxious at the thought that God, a billion years from now, won’t leaf through his little notebook, see Adam’s name, and think fondly of the good times they had together during Adam’s brief life on earth. Sorry Adam, but out of the billions of people on the earth right now, you’re not that big a deal. You’re even less important when seen with all of history as a backdrop.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a helpful observation: “If you are depressed after being exposed to the cosmic perspective, you started your day with an unjustifiably large ego.”

Life has plenty of meaning, just not transcendentally grounded meaning. It has the meaning that we assign to it and that we find for it, not that someone else like a religious leader assigns for us. Most of us find that not debilitating but empowering.

Problem the second: moral grounding

Adam had another concern:

There is no foundation for morality outside of God.

Wrong. He begs the question by assuming that morality means a God-grounded morality. It doesn’t—look it up. Morality is simply the set of beliefs about good and bad, right and wrong. I’ve never seen evidence for objective morality (morality that would be true whether humans were here to appreciate it or not). Examples inevitably offered such as the wrongness of torture for fun are instead examples of shared or strongly felt morality. We don’t need God to explain human morality; evolution does the job.

(I discuss morality here and here. I respond to Christian apologists’ weak arguments about morality here, here, and here.)

Who is this guy?

Kevin Harris assures us that Adam’s letter is what it claims to be rather than a hoax. I believe him, even though that’s hard to believe given ingratiating flattery like this aimed at Craig:

You are and always have been my favorite living philosopher. I have seen every debate you have ever recorded and put up on the internet. I watch all your lectures and talks. . . . I think you are the epitome of what a philosopher should be. You’re uber logical, fantastically clear, and “computeresk” with the speed and precision of your responses to objections against your position, particularly the criticisms you respond to in your debates.

(I’m imagining William Lane Craig concert posters taped up on the walls in Adam’s room.)

I must disagree with Adam’s assessment. Craig is a good debater and puts on a good show on stage, but that’s about all I can find positive to say. I’ve responded to his unscientific approach to reality here and here. Some of what he writes sounds like what would get a failing grade in a college freshman paper.

So why isn’t Adam a Christian?

Adam says that he’s bowled over by the fabulousness of Craig’s deist arguments but can’t take that last step to become a Christian. Still, it sounds like he’s tempted:

The deeper I dive into philosophy, the more the theistic worldview seems more plausible. The concepts or “language” of mathematics seems to “cry out” as you put it for an explanation, objective moral values seem to be real (but they can’t be “real”, if atheism is true), the idea of “existence” nauseates me to no end (just the thought of anything, at all, existing, and especially existing without any reason, frightens me), and I could go on and on.

I’ve responded to Craig’s Argument from Mathematics, and we’ve talked about objective moral values above. As for Adam’s fear of stuff existing without a reason, I have no idea what he’s concerned about. Doesn’t science explain why things exist? And where it doesn’t (yet), can he be saying that God is hiding in those gaps of science’s ignorance?

This admission of fear tips his hand. He’s not much interested in the truth but in finding a respected scholar who can pat him on the head and reassure him that he is indeed living in Fluffy Bunny Land, just like he’d hoped.

Adam’s concern

Adam hates his “nihilistic-atheistic world” and sees Christian belief as his salvation. If he simply swapped in a new set of beliefs, these unpleasant thoughts would be gone.

Theism is a dream come true. The world would make sense, the existential mysteries that haunt me would be solved, life would be livable. It is atheism, however, which seems to be true, yet I do not want to live like this. I have become depressed to no end. I have been in a nihilistic rut for years now. I have become utterly recluse. Yet, even with all this, I cannot come to believe in God. . . . You may be my last hope. . . . I know the “answer” is Christianity, but as I said, I cannot get myself to believe its truth. I am an atheist who hates atheism. I want there to be a God more than anything, yet I cannot get myself to believe in one.

If Adam is this depressed, he needs therapy. But if he desperately wants Christianity to be true and knows that Christianity is the answer, then he’s a Christian.

That was easy. Adam, be sure to contact me if this becomes a problem again. Please pay on the way out.

Craig’s response

Craig does little besides bask in the adoration, though a couple of his points need a response.

You need to escape the cloying bonds of naturalism by catching glimpses of a transcendent reality beyond the material world.

If anything binds us, it’s religion. Look at a map of world religions to see how the Big Questions get different religious answers based on where they’re asked.

Genesis 1 tells us that God shaped the earth like Play-Doh, while science tells us that a typical galaxy holds 100 billion stars and that your little fingernail held at arm’s length covers a million of them. Oh—and it backs up its claims with evidence.

If any explanation is cloying (or condescending), it’s Christianity’s childish Bronze Age view of reality.

Craig riffed on Adam’s concern about nihilism:

[Atheists who reject nihilism are] inconsistent with [their] worldview. In fact, I argue it is really impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of an atheistic worldview. So if you want to be happy you are going to do what your friends do, and that is to live inconsistently.

Thanks for the condescension, but I can have happiness and consistency. There is no ultimate meaning or purpose to the universe, humanity, or my own life. Ordinary meaning and purpose—discovered and invented by humans—works just fine, thanks.

Craig assured Adam that God is chasing him (in a way that made me wonder if Adam might need a restraining order):

He is after you and will continue His pursuit until you recognize in Him all that you are longing for.

Tell that to the ex-Christians whose faith waned and who begged God to reveal himself. Didn’t happen. Read more at Rational Doubt, the blog of the Clergy Project, a safe place for clergy who doubt.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels.
— Robert Ardrey

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/8/15.)

Image from David Blackwell, CC license

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Bad Atheist Arguments? Let’s Investigate 16 of Them. (Part 4)

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This is the conclusion of our look at a Christian’s list of 16 supposedly bad atheist arguments (part 1). Take a look and see if your critique is the same as mine.

If you want more, here are other posts in which I’ve responded to claims of bad arguments.

Argument #13: Religion is toxic

“The idea here is that religious thought always motivates actions that are bad. One problem with this idea is that ‘religion’ is a broad term. It puts people who follow all kinds of religions under one umbrella, even if the differences between those religions are stark. It also downplays any potentially ‘good’ actions taken under religious motivations.”

Yes, let’s avoid sweeping statements, and let’s admit both that Christianity can make Christian do good things and that Christians can find value in church services and their church community. But yet again, we are given a caricature of a reasonable atheist argument. Was a thoughtful critique of Christianity too hard to respond to?

Christianity is a hydra. Some flavors are nurturing, but many denominations or individual congregations contain toxic elements. You don’t need to be in a Jim Jones cult or be in the thrall of a televangelist who continually demands “Your most generous love offering of at least $80.” The problem can be debilitating feelings of guilt. It can be constant anxiety over whether you’ve done enough or believed enough to avoid hell. It can be the fear in the mind of a child startled awake by a noise, wondering if the imminent End has finally started. Some denominations hold friends and family hostage—sure, you can leave, but you leave them behind.

Christianity is often a social busybody, imposing its morality on society. It can also intertwine with politics. Christianity is flexible enough that you can find biblical support for almost any political position, and this can give some Jesus pixie dust to an election campaign. I’m particularly annoyed by politicians eager to attack church/state separation in return for Christian votes when church/state separation is central to the Constitution and the friend of the Christian as much as the atheist.

No, Christianity isn’t universally toxic, but it’s still only partway between Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll.

(Click for a rebuttal to the claim that Christianity improves society’s social metrics.)

Argument #14: Jesus is just a copy of pagan gods

“This argument seems powerful on the surface as Atheists stack up to similar traits between Jesus and pagan gods—‘born of a virgin,’ ‘resurrected,’ ‘born on December 25’, etc. But when you dig deeper into the primary sources for the pagan gods, you will find that the traits don’t align with the actual stories of those gods.”

We’re starting with a point of agreement, because he seems to acknowledge the precedents—Dionysus and Tammuz died and rose again (before Jesus), Alexander the Great and Helen of Troy had supernatural births (before Jesus), and so on. Here’s a paraphrase of the argument: “Okay, Jesus did rise from the dead like other gods, but when you look at the biographies of those gods, they aren’t anything like Jesus!”

Uh, yeah. If the Jesus biography were the same as that for Dionysus, we’d call him “Dionysus.” No one claims that their stories are identical.

List the miracles of Jesus—healing the sick, raising the dead, water into wine, walking on water, virgin birth, and the resurrection, for example. Which ones are unique to Jesus? Asclepius healed the sick. Achilles was raised from the dead by his mother Thetis. The Oenotropae were three sisters who could change water into wine. Helen of Troy had a supernatural conception. Dionysus rose from the dead. How does Jesus stand apart as the only real one?

Christianity was a latecomer to the supernatural-ideas swap meet. Palestine was at the crossroads of Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, and other empires, and it’s not surprising (from a natural standpoint) to see borrowing of supernatural ideas from all over the ancient near east.

If the Jesus story were true, it would not look like an quilt made from ideas plucked from its environment. Sure, the details of the Jesus story are different from those of Asclepius, Achilles, Dionysus, and the rest, but that’s true for all of them. Each one is unique. The supernatural achievements of a true god would look dramatically different from the results of human imagination.

Argument #15: The Flying Spaghetti Monster

“New Atheists intended to make a point by bringing up this fictional creature—that you could assign the attributes of God to any random thing. But many Atheists who mention the creature now seem to do so in order to mock religious ideas rather than make a substantial point about them. Overall an Atheist who brings the creature up today ends up looking more ridiculous than thoughtful.”

There is indeed a ridiculous element to this, but it’s not where this author thinks. When considering the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sauce be upon him), Christians find that his properties compare poorly against those of Yahweh, who is the ground of all being, the Creator of all, and Aquinas’s necessary First Cause.

But that can be easily remedied. What’s missing? You say that the FSM isn’t omnipotent? Okay—then make him omnipotent. You say that the FSM isn’t omniscient? Okay—make him omniscient. Make him outside of time and space. Make him the Creator. Heck, give him a jet pack and a ray gun. The FSM is an idea that can be shaped as necessary.

You say that’s cheating? Nope—that’s how Yahweh got many of his properties. The Bible doesn’t say that Yahweh exists outside time and space, that he is three yet one, or that he was the cause of the Big Bang. And those properties that the Bible plausibly does give him are also refuted by the Bible. God is love, God is omniscient, God as the creator of the 200 billion galaxies in the universe? The Bible itself can be cited to argue otherwise.

The deist arguments that are apologists’ go-to arguments for God—the design argument, the moral argument, the Transcendental Argument, and so on—point to the FSM as readily as to Yahweh.

Sure, the FSM is ridiculous, but guess what other god also is.

Argument #16: Christians never agree

“The argument goes like this: Since Christians always seem to disagree about everything, it’s clear that God isn’t involved in the whole process.

“This argument is incredibly broad and immeasurable—it is uncertain how much agreement there would need to be before the objector no longer sees a problem. It also ignores that ‘mere Christianity’—the divinity, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—is almost entirely agreed on amongst Christians.”

What part of “omniscient and omnipotent” do you not understand? I would stop seeing a problem if your god could accurately convey his message. That’s not much to ask of a god, and yet Christians’ 45,000 denominations argue that he can’t. The Bible itself is ambiguous and contradictory. The Christian can respond that maybe God doesn’t want to make a clear and unambiguous message, but then what kind of trickster god have they created?

What I’d expect from an actual god is a simple, clear message. What we get instead is the 780,000-word blog from a primitive desert tribe. The manuscripts from which we get our New Testament are a flimsy foundation that doesn’t support an unbelievable story. Few old manuscripts remain, and the time gap from original to best copies is large (more here).

The author wants to take the “mere Christianity” route, which looks at the overlap that is common to almost all denominations, but how does that help? Yes, there are a small set of shared beliefs, but lots of conflicting beliefs remain. And if he likes the “mere Christianity” route, why not the “mere theism” route as well? That is, if you say that some overlap exists among Christian denominations and so declare them all valid routes to God, why not look at the overlap among religions and declare them all valid routes to the same God? Admittedly, this overlap may only be “the supernatural exists,” but his mere Christianity isn’t much of an overlap either.

(Click for a thought experiment that highlights the weakness of the Bible record.)

A holy book that looks manmade—full of factual errors, ambiguity, and contradictions and not protected against decay—is one more reason to be satisfied with the natural explanation for Christianity. No supernatural assumptions are necessary.

The Good Book—
one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.
— Ashley Montagu

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Image from Matthew T Rader, CC license
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