Futility, faith and fulfillment
16th May 2014
10am – 12 noon
Nazarene Theological College
Dene Road, Didsbury, M20 2GU
www.manchesterapologetics.com
Futility, faith and fulfillment
16th May 2014
10am – 12 noon
Nazarene Theological College
Dene Road, Didsbury, M20 2GU
www.manchesterapologetics.com
The question
….why?
Confessions (1880)
My life came to a standstill. I could
breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and
could not help breathing, eating,
drinking, and sleeping ; but there
was no life, because there were no
desires the gratification of which I
might find reasonable. If I wished
for anything, I knew in advance
that, whether I gratified my desire
or not, nothing would come of it…
…The truth was that life was meaningless. It was as though I had just been
living and walking along, and had come to an abyss, where I saw clearly
that there was nothing ahead but perdition. And it was impossible to stop
and go back, and impossible to shut my eyes, in order that I might not see
that there was nothing ahead but suffering and imminent death, —
complete annihilation.
Outline
• Could there be purpose without God?
• What if there is no purpose without God?
• Is there purpose with God?
Purpose without God?
3 minutes
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Purpose without God?
• No intrinsic worth
. . . “You”, your joys and your sorrows, your
memories and your ambitions, your sense of
personal identity and free will, are in fact no
more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of
nerve cells and their associated molecules. As
Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re
nothing but a pack of neurons.”
-- Francis Crick,
The Astonishing Hypothesis
(1994)
In a universe of electrons and
selfish genes, blind physical
forces and genetic replication,
some people are going to get
hurt, other people are going to
get lucky, and you won't find any
rhyme or reason in it, nor any
justice. The universe that we
observe has precisely the
properties we should expect if there is, at
bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good,
nothing but pitiless indifference.”
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin
anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because
comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving
mammals a chance not otherwise available (so thank your lucky stars in
a literal sense); because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age;
because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a
million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook.
We may yearn for a “higher” answer — but none exists. This
explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately
liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively
in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers for ourselves…
-- Stephen Jay Gould
The prevailing secular world view is a
pastiche
of
current
scientific
orthodoxy and pious hopes. Darwin
has shown that we are animals, but —
as humanists never tire of preaching
— how we live is ‘up to us’. Unlike any
other animal, we are told, we are free
to live as we choose. Yet the idea of
free will does not come from science.
Its origins are in religion — not just
any religion, but the Christian faith
against which humanists rail so
obsessively.
Purpose without God?
• No intrinsic worth
• No lasting significance
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28
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. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a
spark that appears, flickers, and dies forever…For though I
know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that
someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I
will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think
that the person I call "myself" will cease to exist, that I will be
no more!
- William Lane Craig The Absurdity of Life without God
“Is there any meaning in my life that will not be
destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?”
Tolstoy Confessions
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin
anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because
comets struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving
mammals a chance not otherwise available (so thank your lucky stars in
a literal sense); because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age;
because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a
million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook.
We may yearn for a “higher” answer — but none exists. This
explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately
liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively
in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers for ourselves…
-- Stephen Jay Gould
Purpose without God?
•
•
•
•
•
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Fame, fortune, wealth and happiness?
To love and help others?
To be free?
To live a good live
To achieve progress
Whatever I choose it to be?
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do
everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not
the answer.
-- Jim Carrey
“ ..If there are no answers, if there is no Creator, if there is nothing that’s
really true - when you are in love you must remember that only a
psychopharmacological reaction in your brain is happening. There is no
such thing as love…. You may enjoy music, but you have to realize it is only
a biological reaction; beauty and ugliness, cruelty and compassion are
totally subjective, not real, all in my brain synapses.
You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time;” but just insofar as it
becomes a very good time; just insofar, as it ever threatens to push you
out from cold and pure sensuality and into real warmth and enthusiasm
and joy… you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between your
own emotions and the universe, in which you really live.”
- C.S. Lewis
“He was about 50 years old, one of half
a dozen survivors clinging to twisted
wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac
when the first helicopter arrived. To the
copter's two-man Park Police crew he
seemed the most alert. Life vests were
dropped, then a flotation ball. The man
passed them to the others.
On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a life line from the
hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew –
who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner – lifted
a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to
safety. Then the life line saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the
sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the
scene, but the man was gone.
—"A Hero – Passenger Aids Others, Then Dies", The Washington Post, January 14, 1982
“In some cultures they love their neighbours; in
others they eat them, both on the basis of feeling.
Do you have any preference?”
- Ravi Zacharias
"If God does not exist, everything is permitted,”
- Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov (1880)
‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by
the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason
to suppose that my beliefs are true...’
- John Haldane
Purpose without God?
•
•
•
•
•
•
No intrinsic worth
No lasting significance
No satisfaction in fame, fortune and happiness
No basis for true love and altruism
No basis for objective morality
No confident hope for the future
Outline
• Could there be purpose without God?
• What if there is no purpose without God?
• Is there purpose with God?
No purpose? So what?
• Not a proof of God’s existence but a reason to
examine one’s worldview
• The impossibility of reconciling that with our
day to day living
Purpose without God?
•
•
•
•
•
•
No intrinsic worth
No lasting significance
No satisfaction in fame, fortune and happiness
No basis for true love and altruism
No basis for objective morality
No confident hope for the future
"I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning;
consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without
any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The
philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not
concerned exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also
concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he
personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends
should not seize political power and govern in the way that
they find most advantageous to themselves... For myself, the
philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of
liberation, sexual and political."
-- Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937
Outline
• Could there be purpose without God?
• No purpose? So what?
• Is there purpose with God?
“Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes
around does come around, … “There is always a day of
reckoning.” The good among the great understand that
every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness
of our spirits—ourselves, or to our souls.
That is every human’s life work: to
construct an identity bit by bit, to walk
a path step by step, to live a life that is
worthy of something higher, lighter,
more fulfilling, and maybe even
everlasting.”
- Donald Van de Mark
The return of two requirements
• Intrinsic worth
• Lasting significance
The return of two requirements
• Intrinsic worth
– We are created
– In God’s image
• Lasting significance
Genesis 1: v 27
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
The return of two requirements
• Intrinsic worth
– We are created
– In God’s image
– For the purpose of glorifying God
• Lasting significance
Isaiah 43: 1-7
But now, this is what the Lord says—
he who created you, Jacob,
he who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
Cush[a] and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honored in
my sight,
and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
nations in exchange for your life.
5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you;
I will bring your children from the east
and gather you from the west.
6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’
and to the south, ‘Do not hold them
back.’
Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the
earth—
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
Ecclesiastes 12: vv 13 -14
"Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God
and keep his commandments, for this is the whole
duty of man. For God will bring every deed into
judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it
is good or evil"
Revelation 4 : v 11
“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being.”
Philippians 3: vv 7 – 9a
But whatever were gains to me I now consider
loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I
consider everything a loss because of the
surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I
consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ
and be found in him.
The return of two requirements
• Intrinsic worth
– We are created
– In God’s image
– For the purpose of glorifying God and living in
relationship with God
• Lasting significance
– The promise of eternal life in relationship with and
worship of God
Revelation 21: vv 3-4
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look!
God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will
dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself
will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every
tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or
mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has
passed away.”
Westminster catechism
Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and
to enjoy him forever
The return of two requirements
• Intrinsic worth
– We are created
– In God’s image
– For the purpose of glorifying God and living in
relationship with God
• Lasting significance
– The promise of eternal life in relationship with and
worship of God
Purpose with God?
Why should I want to glorify God?
Why is that inherently valuable / worthwhile?
3 minutes
According to the Christian world view, 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. Biblical
Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary
for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God
and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and
happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where
atheism breaks down.
- William Lane Craig