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.

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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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I’ve only seen this once before. 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 rests on.

I critiqued Steinrucken’s scattered argument here. His most ludicrous line (which makes me wonder if he’s a Poe—in this case, a Christian pretending to be an atheist) is this one:

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

Compare your reaction to mine if you’d like.

Déjà vu all over again

And now we have another example. In a rambling 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 a paper of Craig’s, after which everything changed. Craig declared that the atheist worldview “was worthless in every possible way.”

Adam’s reaction:

It 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.

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson observed, “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 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 find that 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. As for Adam being a well-educated atheist, I’ll let you weigh the evidence.

And 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.

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 here, 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 assure him that he actually is 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 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

Image credit: David Blackwell, flickr, CC

Tom Gilson was provoked to produce his recent book on apologetics because of the 2012 Reason Rally (which I attended). He demands: Why allow the atheists to seize control of the word “reason”?

He said, “The atheists claim to be the party of reason, but they don’t do it that well. Christianity on the other hand has a strong claim to be reasonable and based in reason.”

World famous apologist William Lane Craig agrees:

Christians are genuinely deeper, more thoughtful people than unbelievers are because Christians do wrestle with and think about these very profound, ultimate questions. … We do encourage hard thinking and self-reflection.

Respect for reason

We’re off to a good start. Christians embrace reason, and Christians are eager to wrestle honestly with tough questions their faith raises.

Let’s turn to Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith to see if Craig continues as the strong advocate of reason.

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter. (Reasonable Faith, Third Edition, 48)

Record scratch. The “witness of the Holy Spirit” beats reason? Dr. Craig seems eager to parrot support for reason when pressed, but his true evaluation gives it a secondary role. More from Craig:

It is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that gives us the fundamental knowledge of Christianity’s truth. Therefore, the only role left for argument and evidence to play is a subsidiary role. (Reasonable Faith, 47)

Why bother showing the grounding of his belief? That’s hard work, so he just assumes it—he declares it self-authenticating.

We do find some rationalization for this position:

It seems to me inconceivable that God would allow any believer to be in a position where he would be rationally obliged to commit apostasy and renounce Christ. (Source)

Wow—the guy’s got two doctorates and this is what he comes up with? Just assume God and fit the facts to that assumption?

Even [people] who are given no good reason to believe and many persuasive reasons to disbelieve have no excuse, because the ultimate reason they do not believe is that they have deliberately rejected God’s Holy Spirit. (Reasonable Faith, 50)

Did you see that coming? That’s impressive blame shifting—now it’s the atheist’s fault! Craig elaborates with an analysis of their motivations:

When a person refuses to come to Christ, it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God. (Reasonable Faith, 47)

Aha—so I love darkness. Got it.

More sources of delusion

William Lane Craig has plenty of company in Crazy Town. Are you a Christian who needs a pat on the head and assurance that you’ve backed the right horse? You can check your reason at the door, believe whatever the pastor tells you, and have confidence that you’re right.

• Martin Luther said: “Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
• The Bible says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).
• Apologist Greg Koukl said, “Intuitional truth doesn’t require a defense—a justification of the steps that brought one to this knowledge—because this kind of truth isn’t a result of reasoning by steps to a conclusion. It’s an obvious truth that no rational person who understands the nature of the issue would deny.”
• Philosopher Alvin Plantinga said, “But lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism.”
• The statement of faith of Answers in Genesis begins: “The scientific aspects of creation are important but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.”
• Kurt Wise has a PhD in geology from Harvard but is a young-earth Creationist. He has an unusual relationship with evidence: “If all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”

An appeal for reason

But the Bible makes clear that Jesus intended his miracles to be evidence of his claims. He said, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works.” Demanding evidence is actually biblically supported.

To paraphrase physicist Paul Dirac: in science one tries to tell people, in a way understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in religion, one tries to tell people, in a grand and mysterious way, something they have no reason to believe—that an invisible God actually exists, that prayers are really answered, and that there is an afterlife.

Continue with “More Sloppy Thinking from William Lane Craig”

[The White Queen said:]
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Photo credit: joseloya