Why I Am Not An Atheist - Part Four
No Morality. No Hope. And lastly, there is no valid meaning apart from self-defined meaning if there is no God. And here Atheism runs into another contradiction. If there is no overarching meaning to life, the atheist must counter by offering meaning in a purely existential sense. What do I mean by that? I mean that the atheist is forced into the position of attempting to give meaning to the day-to-day and moment-to-moment activities of life. They encourage the finding of meaning on the small scale while under the umbrella of meaninglessness.
Steven Jay Gould, well respected in his field, has said this concerning the meaning of life: "... once you find out that there is no higher answer, no superior cause, it is liberating if not exhilerating."
His words are a throwback to Aldous Huxley who was a bit more honest in his book Ends and Means when he said that science does not have the right to extrapolate its findings into meaning and metaphysics, nor does it retain the sovereignity to dictate philosophical pronouncements. But he was going to take science's view of a meaningless universe anyway "because a meaningless world frees me to pursue my own erotic and political desires." Amazing how something so damaging can be openly and unblushingly admitted.
G.K. Chesterton has written an outstanding book called Orthodoxy in which he details the struggle of the man without God in attempting to live meaningfully and without contradiction. He became a Christian after reading the atheists, and seeing the constant contradiction in which they argued against Christianity. He says this, "The new rebel in our time is a skeptic. He has no loyalties, therefore he cannot be a true revolutionist because all denounciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind, and the revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (a novel) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and as a philosophy that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a police officer for killing a peasant, and then conclude by the highest philosophical standards that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, then denounces aristocratic profiligates for treating it as a lie. He calls the flag a bauble, then blames th eoppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts, then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Thus the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything(Orthodoxy, 46-47)."
What happens when you go to that scientific meeting and argue for purely Darwinian evolution, and then go to that political meeting to argue for dignity to be shown to random collocations of molecules, and your teenager asks you why you assign any significance to a life that you yourself have described as being the product of blind processes? Are you not arguing for them to be treated as better than they really are, because we are all but time + matter + chance? And inevitably, without God, whether you move from hedonism to utilitarianism to stoicism, your final answer will have to be because you choose to. And your teenager replies that he chooses not to, along with all that may entail (racism, another Holocaust, etc.) and his (or her) position is, ultimately, just as valid as yours. What happens then?
Without God, eventually all the various contradictory strands of life will take their tolls on us and we will ask what is the point, why we bother, and come to no conclusion whatsoever. As Voltaire put it, the verdict of the vastest mind will be silence, and nothing will make sense anymore.
No morality. No hope. No Meaning. What would this look like in our lives? Look around at ourselves and our society today - I have a feeling that this is very much what it will look like. Where we will see programs on television that put infidelity in the spotlight, and rather than weep over lives that have gone so terribly wrong, we will sit in amusement and entertainment - and then punish our children for doing so.
I will end this series with a poem by T.S. Eliot who saw the same things happening with his generation back in the twenties. And, once again, I would like to say that the vast majority of this material is also not my own, but belongs to the hard work of Ravi Zacharias and his team at RZIM Ministries.
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz, he dead
A penny for the old guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
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.
Steven Jay Gould, well respected in his field, has said this concerning the meaning of life: "... once you find out that there is no higher answer, no superior cause, it is liberating if not exhilerating."
His words are a throwback to Aldous Huxley who was a bit more honest in his book Ends and Means when he said that science does not have the right to extrapolate its findings into meaning and metaphysics, nor does it retain the sovereignity to dictate philosophical pronouncements. But he was going to take science's view of a meaningless universe anyway "because a meaningless world frees me to pursue my own erotic and political desires." Amazing how something so damaging can be openly and unblushingly admitted.
G.K. Chesterton has written an outstanding book called Orthodoxy in which he details the struggle of the man without God in attempting to live meaningfully and without contradiction. He became a Christian after reading the atheists, and seeing the constant contradiction in which they argued against Christianity. He says this, "The new rebel in our time is a skeptic. He has no loyalties, therefore he cannot be a true revolutionist because all denounciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind, and the revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (a novel) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and as a philosophy that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a police officer for killing a peasant, and then conclude by the highest philosophical standards that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, then denounces aristocratic profiligates for treating it as a lie. He calls the flag a bauble, then blames th eoppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts, then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Thus the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost his right to rebel against anything(Orthodoxy, 46-47)."
What happens when you go to that scientific meeting and argue for purely Darwinian evolution, and then go to that political meeting to argue for dignity to be shown to random collocations of molecules, and your teenager asks you why you assign any significance to a life that you yourself have described as being the product of blind processes? Are you not arguing for them to be treated as better than they really are, because we are all but time + matter + chance? And inevitably, without God, whether you move from hedonism to utilitarianism to stoicism, your final answer will have to be because you choose to. And your teenager replies that he chooses not to, along with all that may entail (racism, another Holocaust, etc.) and his (or her) position is, ultimately, just as valid as yours. What happens then?
Without God, eventually all the various contradictory strands of life will take their tolls on us and we will ask what is the point, why we bother, and come to no conclusion whatsoever. As Voltaire put it, the verdict of the vastest mind will be silence, and nothing will make sense anymore.
No morality. No hope. No Meaning. What would this look like in our lives? Look around at ourselves and our society today - I have a feeling that this is very much what it will look like. Where we will see programs on television that put infidelity in the spotlight, and rather than weep over lives that have gone so terribly wrong, we will sit in amusement and entertainment - and then punish our children for doing so.
I will end this series with a poem by T.S. Eliot who saw the same things happening with his generation back in the twenties. And, once again, I would like to say that the vast majority of this material is also not my own, but belongs to the hard work of Ravi Zacharias and his team at RZIM Ministries.
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz, he dead
A penny for the old guy
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
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.
posted by Brian at 7:48 AM
9 Comments:
Great essay, and thanks for the poem. I've never read it before. I had a friend who insisted that because he chose to give his life meaning, it had meaning. He didn't need anything external to live a satisfying life. We discussed a lot, but in the end I discovered that he enjoyed the philosophical arguing for its own sake, not because he actually cared about coming to some conclusions, himself. Essentially, after two years of ongoing discussions, he remained in much the same position that he had before we started to interact. I suppose I did, too. I learned a valuable lesson: I can't convince someone to follow Christ by using philosopy (even if the conclusions seem obvious to me. :) God's the only one who can change hearts, and He doesn't even bother with the smokescreen of the mind--He goes right for the quivering center of us. Thanks for posting these ruminations!
All the philosophizing in the world won't make a lick of difference if someone's heart, or will, is what's wrong. Rather, it is a method for showing that there is sufficient evidence for the Christian worldview to the honest person who is also truly (that is, without a bias) looking for answers.
As Ravi Zacharias once said in one of his newsletters, the role of the apologist is to provide proof and evidence while supporting the Christian worldview and also pointing out that the real issue is not the evidence, but rather the will of the person weighing the evidence.
Brian, again, well spoken and very well quoted. Keep it up.
CJC,
I apologize for not having takent he time to respond to your well thought out and expressive comment. I wanted to let you know that I appreciate your commentary and that I wll get back to you soon.
Let me say, first and foremost, that I do not mean to insult anyone. I do mean to challenge certain views, defend other views, and deal with views and their outworkings in our lives; I'm not trying to put anyone down.
Having said that, let me get to the meat of my post in response to CJC.
According to the Dictionary of Philosophy, by Edwards, atheism is the definite, dogmatic denial of the absolute. It does not say "I don't think there is a God." It does not say "I do not believe there is a God," it says "There is no God" which, by your post, you seem to recognize as self-defeating. The word atheism comes from the Greek with the alpha, a, for the negative and theos for God; a statement that essentially means "negative God" or "There is no God." Now Agnosticism, in Greek is composed of the alpha, a (again) and gnosco (knowledge)which essentially means "one who doesn't know." In Latin it is far more insulting, as it is literally a one-on-one equation with an ignoramus, "one who doesn't know."
Let me clear the point here. What you have said is that you do not affirm God's nonexistence, but rather lack theistic belief due to insufficient evidence. The reason many atheists are moving to that position is because a negation in the absolute sense ("There is no God") is unsustainable and thus they reason that there is no counter-position available and so come to the defense of atheism by positing lack of evidence. And making those absolute negations clobbered atheists, like Bertrand Russell, in their debates because the debates were over in minutes. So the position of atheism defended by insufficient evidence presents a front of atheism, with agnosticism sneaking in through the back door.
First, I see no reason to assume that atheism should be the default view. I don't currently see any leverage for why any view should be the default view, whether theistic, atheistic or pantheistic. But more importantly, to move to atheism because theism seems insufficient is not logically valid. It is not valid to move to B from A because A seems to be insufficient unless you can also show that all the other views are equally insufficient (such as pantheism). It is bad philosophy, and bad science, to move to one perspective because another is not sustaining - rather we ought to move to another view because the new view has greater explanatory power. But as has been discussed, atheism cannot explain hope, meaning, or morality.
Insofar as motivation for belief is concerned, we have to be careful here. Very often atheism is considered to be freedom from religious shackles, and the passage from Aldous Huxley I quote so much admits that the motivation for the philosophy of meaninglessness was not evidence, but personal desire. At the very least, we ought to be a tad more skeptical towards a view whose proponents admit that they hold their view based on desire and not evidence. Very often theism is derided because some claim that theists are merely wishful thinkers; but as Huxley, Nagel, Gould, Dawkins and others all readily admit - they too are just as guilty of wishful thinking as theists are accused of being. Very often atheism claims it is more impartial because it has no agenda; but the admissions of such atheists shows that it does have an agenda. As I said before, at the very, very least, the impartiality admitted to by many atheists (who are big names in their fields) levels the playing field between theism and atheism. Furthermore, there are those who become theists because they see no other option and are not exactly joyous about it. C.S. Lewis is a prime example who admitted in one of his books that one semester at Oxford he gave in and admitted that God was God, perhaps the most reluctant and dejected convert in all of England. And I think that anyone who claims they have avowed or disavowed the existence of God based purely on the intellect, is either prejudiced towards either view (theism or atheism) *or* simply does not quite understand the subject. The outworkings of God's existence have too many personal implications in our lives for all of us to approach it in a truly unbiased manner. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that God is too threatening, if God exists, for us to approach without bias. And anyone who can easily claim that they care for only the truth at the drop of a hat should be suspect. Anyone truly interested in the truth should be wary of his or her own biases most of all.
You mentioned that your life is meaningful because you choose for it to be meaningful. Well - what if I (or anyone else) decides that life is not meaningful? The problem with meaning being left to personal choice is that there is no way to justify finding meaning in life over and above not finding meaning in life except for mere opinion or feeling. And where are we going to go, as a people, if mere feeling is the measure of what we do and why we do it? Feel like robbing someone? Go ahead. Feel like killing yourself? Go ahead. The same problem arises for hope and morality. What if I find meaning in slaughtering people? What if I find meaning in cannibalism? I'm sure Hitler thought that what he was doing was both good and meaningful.
Now let me be careful here. I am NOT saying that all atheists are immoral evil people. What I am saying is that the atheist cannot justify one type of morality over and against another (or justified meaning, or justified hope). Kant, Camus, and other philosophers who removed objective morality from God could not defend their position over and against the meaninglessness-type of position because they, too, could find no leverage, no criteria, for discernment or judgement. Let us assume I am an atheist and I choose to find meaning in my job, my work, etc. My teenager does not see the point in finding life meaningful and takes his (or her) own life or someone else's. And if atheism is true, then that loss of life does not have meaning unless I choose for it to have that meaning. Somehow I don't think any of us would be tihnking this should such a thing actually happen; we would be horrified that our own child had comitted suicide.
I hope that for all of my readers, our parents do not choose to not find meaning in helping us. Nor us to find meaning in helping our own children. But then again, there is no reason to do so apart from personal opinion or feeling.
Just a few other side notes that not really fall into the larger points I outlined above.
You mention that despite the rough spots in life, you always strive for something better. Without an objective meaning, morality, or hope; what does "better" really mean? Does it mean what is better for you personally? What if I find flying airplanes into skyscrapers better for me? You called just such an act bad (And I agree that it is) but you cannot justify not doing the bad thing you mentioned if someone happens to find just that action to be the better action.
Secondly, you mentioned that I want to be reuinited with friends and family and live out my life in eternal bliss. There is a popular misconception about Heaven, that we go there to be reuinted with our friends and families and the medi has helped to popularize this view. But that is not necessarily the Biblical view; the best thing about Heaven is not seeing my family, my friends, or even the bliss that is to come, it is being in the very presence of God.
Lastly, and this seemed to be more of an undercurrent in your post than an actual statement, you claim that you desire to "make change here and now." I understood this to meant hat you think theists do not, that they are too caught up in their happy ending, or whatever, to have any effect on the world at all that is significant. I think such a blanket statement, *if* that is what you meant, is obviously false. Mother Theresa is an excellent example. The Bible repeats itself, time and again, for believers to help the orphans, assist the poor, and defend the widows; in essence to help those who have no one to help them.
What I don't understand is: why does God give one meaning? Why should I have more meaning in relating to something I can't see, feel or hear, than in relating to other people? Because God is stronger, bigger or longer-living? Surely that doesn't give more meaning. Because God created the universe? And how does that give me meaning? Because he wants something from me? Well, other people want something from me, and I'm sure they exist; why should God wanting something from me give me meaning?
Perhaps you are just shifting the problem back a step to something we can't answer. It is like saying, what causes the rain? And answering: "God causes it." Has that really said anything?
Daniel
Daniel,
I think that is a good question.
Let me begin by saying that, to a certain degree, "because God causes it" is an answer, however simplistic and prone to misunderstanding. I think it is only disqualified if, however, one does not believe in ultimate causes.
Furthermore, to one who is asking a question and wants a meaningful answer, it is not terribly satisfying.
The question of meaning arises when one attempts to make sense of the world. When the world is senseless, we wonder what the meaning is behind life. The quest for meaning therefore arises, at least very often, in light of the apparent meaninglessness of life itself as found in its various contradictory strands. We struggle to do good but get nothing, while those who do evil prosper - for example. We see goodness in the works of men, but also wanton evil, etc. We then attempt to make sense of it.
In God we find purpose for everything that is totally coherent. As I discussed in this line of posts, Sarte espoused the heart of existentialist philosophy, but ultimately he finds it contradicts his own life experience when he is unable to reconcile his view of the world with the apparent existence of a creator-being. George Shaw remarks that he is an "atheist who has lost his faith" because his view of the world ultimately does not provide for him the necessary tools to understand life itself.
In Christ we see a world view that coheres to itself and that explains the world around us. We also see this world view fully lived out. Christ does not call us merely to an ethic, but to Himself, because He is the ethic. He calls us to Himself because He is the Truth, concerning our nature as human beings, and our destiny as children of God.
Ultimately, true meaning in life comes from connecting with the purpose in which we were made. In connecting with God through redemption made possible in Jesus Christ we are connected to the ultimate purpose for and by which all things were made.
This is also where an atheistic world view runs into contradictory problems. If there is no ultimate meaning, then one must generate one's own meaning and each is equally justifiable as the next whether it be Hitler-like, Mother Theresa-like, or something in between.
I hope I answered your question? Thanks for posting. I'm looking forward to a continued conversation.
Brian,
Perhaps what is meaningful is in the eye of the beholder. My faith used to be what it sounds like yours is. And indeed I felt that being God's creation gave my life meaning.
In the end, however, I became disillusioned with the faith. Granted, I wanted it to be true, and I wanted to believe in a life after death, and God's calling gave me purpose and fellowship. But nevertheless I questioned if it were really true. After a long search lasting 5 years or more I concluded it was very unlikely to be true, and could certainly not be known to be true with the confidence that Christians exude.
I used to think that life would be meaningless without my faith. But when I eventually lost it, I found that lo and behold, life still had meaning. Perhaps not a meaning that one can summarize in a sentence or give a formula for, but I have found peace and purpose. I used to think it would be terrifying to think that life would cease after death; how could 80 years in 14 billion have any meaning or significance? But the analagy of a flower made me rethink this. A flower can be beautiful and short-lived; and actually some of what makes it special is its fragility and short existence. Our lives can be like that; beautiful and fleeting.
I recognize there is plenty of good and evil in this world. But I don't need a cosmic battle to explain it; rather I just look and see that the natural world is a competitive and capricious place. As someone with the capability to grasp this I can make a difference is my small corner of the galaxy for my short lifetime.
So, anyway, I am an example of someone who has found peace and meaning as a non-theist.
Daniel
Daniel,
I've met several people who say similar things, about finding peace apart from God. Is there no peace to be found outside of God? No - there is a common grace extended to us all, found in meaningful relationships and pure joys (like the joy of a beautiful winter morning, or a sunset, or of a loved one's hug).
I've also experienced some measure of doubts in my faith of various degrees. I have to say that, ultimately, my doubts have been answered any my faith made stronger. I don't say that to be disparaging, mind you, but just to give you some background on what my faith life has been like. Thank you for sharing some of yours.
Our lives can be short and sweet, to rephrase what you have said. They may also be long and brutal, or short and brutal.
I suppose what I am trying to get at is that there is some measure of peace that can be found outside of God, but that some of the biggest minds who proposed such a philosophy, or adhered to it, have claimed that it is ultimately not fulfilling. It seems to me that you have essentially made a choice to see your life as like that of a flower.
What about someone who does not make that choice? What about someone who chooses to be capricious with their allotted time on earth?
The point I'm driving at is, apart from an ultimate destiny, any ultimate meaning we choose for ourselves is purely arbitrary and therefore any choice is equally justifiable and morally good. If the truth is that life has no grand meaning then our own lives do not either, regardless of what we feel or choose to feel. The ultimate outworking of such honesty is despair, as Bertrand Russel himself pointed out.
Yet this despair is ultimately unlivable. That life is ultimately unlivable is counter-intuitive and entirely contradictory - why is there life if living is ultimately impossible?
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