What Difference Does It Make If God Exists? | HBU Apologetics Intensive - October 2018

In October of 2018, Dr. Craig participated in an Apologetics Intensive through Houston Baptist University, hosted by Second Baptist Houston. In a series of lectures, he provides a robust foundation for belief in God and defending the Christian faith.

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DR. CRAIG: Welcome to this class on apologetics. We are going to be going through my book On Guard for this course, and the lectures that have been distributed to you are based upon that book. Every one of you should have received electronically a copy of the lectures that I'll be giving this week. The tremendous advantage of having these lectures transcribed and available in advance is that this will eliminate the need for you to frantically take notes on what I'm saying. Instead, you can simply follow along and then jot down your own reflections or questions as we go through the material. So I would encourage you to be following along on the notes that have been sent to you as we go through this material.

Now, let's begin our class with a word of prayer by dedicating our week to the Lord.

Father, we consecrate to you this class and ourselves as students in it to be diligent, to be engaged, to be attentive, and to be equipped, Father, to the defense of our faith. We pray that as a result of this week together that we would be better trained to give a defense for the hope that is within. So, with that end in mind, Lord, we pray for your empowerment and your guidance and commit ourselves in this class to you. In Jesus’ name, amen.

We have only five days together, and so the time is very precious. So without further ado, I want to plunge into our lecture number 1 which is, “What difference does it make if God exists?”

Part of the challenge of getting people to think about God is that they become so used to God that they just take him for granted. They never think to ask what would be the implications if God did not exist. As a result, they tend to think that God is irrelevant. It just doesn't matter whether God exists or not. So before we share with people evidence for God's existence, we may need to help them to see why it matters in the first place. Otherwise, they just won't care. By showing them the implications of atheism we can help them to see that the question of God's existence is so much more than merely adding another item to our inventory of things. Rather, it's an issue that lies at the very center of life's meaning. It, therefore, touches each of us at the very core of his being.

Many philosophers, like the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sarte and Albert Camus, have argued that if God does not exist then life is absurd. And I believe that their analysis of human existence in the absence of God shows us clearly the grim implications of atheism. The absurdity of life without God may not prove that God exists but it does show that the question of his existence is the most important question that a person can ask. No one who really grasps the implications of atheism can say “whatever” when it comes to the question of God's existence.

When I use the word “God” in this context, I mean a transcendent, perfectly good creator of the world who offers us eternal life. If such a being does not exist then life is absurd; that is to say, life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose. These three notions (meaning, value, purpose) are closely related but are nonetheless distinct. Meaning has to do with significance – why something matters. Value has to do with good and evil – right and wrong. Purpose has to do with a goal – a reason for something. The claim is that if there is no God then meaning, value, and purpose are ultimately human illusions. They're just in our heads. If atheism is true then life is really objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite our subjective beliefs to the contrary.

This point deserves underscoring because it is so frequently misunderstood. I'm not saying that atheists experience life as dull and meaningless, that they have no personal values or lead immoral lives, that they have no goals or purpose for living. On the contrary, life would be unbearable and unlivable without such beliefs. But my point is that if atheism is true then such beliefs are all subjective illusions – the appearance of meaning, value, and purpose even though, objectively speaking, there really isn't any. If God does not exist then our lives are ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary.

In order to bring home the truth of this claim, at Reasonable Faith we've developed some animated videos to summarize the arguments and help make them clear. So at this time I want you to view this video on the question, “Is there meaning to life?”

VIDEO: You know, nobody asked me if I wanted to exist. Yeah, one day – boom – there you are, and you think to yourself, “Why am I here?” Well, what do you think? Is there a reason we're here? Do our lives have any real significance?

Well, that depends.

On what?

On whether or not God exists.

Wait hold on, are you saying that my life has no significance because I don't believe in God?

No, not at all! I'm saying that if God doesn't exist, it doesn't matter what you believe; our lives would have no objective meaning, value, or purpose. Many atheists themselves recognize this. “If atheism is true life is absurd.”

Okay, and why do they think that?

To begin with, if God does not exist then the physical universe is all there is, which means you and I are just accidental byproducts of nature.

Right, so?

That means we were not intentionally designed, so there's no purpose for us being here.

Whoa!

It gets worse. If God does not exist, there is no absolute standard of moral value. You've heard of Richard Dawkins, the atheist. He points out that in a materialistic universe “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference.”

So you're saying atheists can't be good people?

No, I'm not saying that. Many atheists live good lives. What I'm saying is atheism fails to provide an objective basis for seeing any particular action as good or evil.

Oh, come on! After millions of years of sociobiological evolution, humans have developed a sense of morality. We all know it's good to feed a hungry child and bad to torture someone for fun.

Of course we do, but that's precisely what atheism cannot explain. If there's no God then what we consider right or wrong is nothing more than an accident of evolution or a human social convention.

So what? I'm good with that.

Really!? Evolution implies survival of the fittest, not morality. And social convention means that racism, intolerance, and cruelty are not really wrong; they just happen to be unpopular.

Okay, so atheists need to come up with some objective standard for rights and wrongs. How about this: If an action leads to human flourishing then we can say it's objectively good; and if it doesn't, it's objectively evil.

But why think that human flourishing is good? Aren't you being species-centric? Why not refer instead to the flourishing of rats or cabbages?

Well...

And who gets to decide what contributes to human flourishing? Hitler was convinced killing millions of Jews would promote human flourishing, and Margaret Sanger thought forcing poor people to be sterilized would lead to human flourishing. As Kai Nielsen points out, “pure practical reason will not take you to morality.” So if atheism is true, there is no legitimate basis for saying that behaving one way is worse than behaving any other way. So it really doesn't matter how you live your life. Your day-to-day choices are meaningless.

That's depressing.

So if there's no God, what happens when you die?

Well, nothing. You simply cease to exist.

Right. So one person lives a kind, generous, thoughtful life. Another lives a horrible, violent, selfish life. It doesn't matter! In both cases the outcome is the same: nothingness. So how can their life choices have any objective meaning?

Well, it's certainly meaningful if I discover a cure for cancer or save a child's life.

I agree completely! But atheism can't explain why! Scientists predict that eventually the whole universe and mankind with it will die out. So everything comes to nothing. That's why atheist Bertrand Russell says we must “build our lives on the firm foundation of despair.”

No thanks! I'd rather live a happy life.

You're not alone. Every atheist has to choose between being happy or being consistent. You can tell the whole world you're an atheist, but you can't really live like one.

Okay, so you're a Christian. If your God did exist, how would that change anything?

If Christianity is true then each one of us is here for a reason, and life does not end at the grave. And God? He's the absolute standard of goodness. He knows you, he loves you, and he intentionally created you. So your life ultimately does have objective meaning, value, and purpose. That means you can live a life that's both happy and consistent.

Well, that doesn't prove Christianity is true.

Agreed. I'm simply pointing out that for Christians living a life that is both happy and consistent is possible. For atheists, it's not. So what are you going to choose?

DR. CRAIG: Let's unpack the arguments that are summarized in this video. 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. Therefore, everyone must come face-to-face with what theologian Paul Tillich has called the threat of non-being. 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. The thought is staggering and threatening. To think that the person I call me, myself, will cease to exist, that I will be no more.

I remember vividly the first time that my father told me as a boy that someday I would die. Somehow, as a child, the thought had just never occurred to me. When he told me, I was filled with fear and unbearable sadness and began to cry. Although he tried repeatedly to tell me that this was a long way off, that just didn't seem to matter. Whether it was sooner or later, the undeniable fact was that I was going to die and that thought just overwhelmed me. Eventually, like all of us, I grew simply to accept the fact. We all learn to live with the inevitable. But the child's insight remains true. As the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed, several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

The universe, too, faces a death of its own. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding and the galaxies are growing further and further apart. As it does so, it becomes colder and colder as its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out, and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light. There will be no heat. There will be no life. Only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space. A universe in ruins.

This is not science fiction. This is really going to happen if God does not exist. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed, the entire human race and the whole edifice of human civilization is doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no escape. There is no hope.

What is the consequence of this? It means that life itself becomes absurd. It means that the life we do have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose. Let's look at each one of these notions.

First, no ultimate meaning. If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter in the end whether he ever existed at all? Now, certainly his life may be important relative to certain other events, but what's the ultimate significance of any of those events? If everything is doomed to destruction then what does it matter that you influenced anything? Ultimately, it makes no difference. Mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs for their end is all the same. The same blind cosmic process that caught them all up in the first place we'll eventually swallow them all again. And thus the contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good people everywhere to better the lot of the human race – all these come to nothing. This is the horror of modern man. Because he ends in nothing, he ultimately is nothing.

But it's important to see that it's not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence doesn't make that existence meaningful. If man in the universe could exist forever but there were no God, their existence would still have no ultimate significance. To illustrate, I once read a science fiction story in which an astronaut was marooned on a barren chunk of rock lost in outer space. He had with him two vials – one containing poison, and the other a potion that would make him live forever. Realizing his predicament, he gulped down the poison. But then to his horror he discovered that he had swallowed the wrong vial. He had drunk the potion for immortality, and that meant that he was cursed to exist forever – a meaningless, unending life. Now, if God does not exist then our lives are just like that. They could go on and on and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, “So what?” So it's not just immortality that man needs if life is to be ultimately significant. He needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist then he has neither.

Thus, if there is no God then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.

Is there any question about that first element before we move on to value in life?

QUESTION: If I were an atheist, I would ask why is it a given that the universe is doomed?

DR. CRAIG: It is because it is expanding, and as it does so it's energy is used up. Entropy increases and so eventually all the fuel in the stars will be burned up. Everything will become dark and cold, and the universe will approach a state of absolute zero. Matter will disintegrate into a ultra-thin gas of elementary particles expanding into the endless darkness. So scientifically death is written throughout the structure of the universe – physically, the physical laws that govern the universe, imply this.

QUESTION: How do we know we're not just animated meat, and if there's anything more to us than just animated meat? We are finding out that the brain may make all our decisions we make regardless of our consciousness, and is what would distinguish us from any other animal. Why are we anything more than animated meat?

DR. CRAIG: The argument here is that if atheism is true then that conclusion is correct. As Dawkins would put it, we're just animated chunks of matter. I'm not trying to refute that claim. On the contrary, I'm helping us to simply understand the implications of an atheistic view of reality.

QUESTION: So with an atheist perspective could they then say even though we're doomed or we have a short time here couldn't we be leaving a better life for the next generation or self-fulfillment in this current life that we have?

DR. CRAIG: When you say “a better life,” that's a value judgment. Right? That will be pertinent or relevant to the next consideration we talk about: is it coherent on atheism to talk about lives that are better or worse? What I'm going to argue is that on atheism there is no objective standard of goodness or rightness and wrongness. It's purely subjective whether you think one type of life is better or worse than another.

That forms a nice segue to the next section on meaning in life. Let's turn then to the second element: no ultimate value. If life ends at the grave then it makes no ultimate difference whether you live as a Joseph Stalin or as a Mother Teresa. Since your destiny is ultimately unrelated to your behavior, you may as well just live as you please. As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky put it, if there is no immortality then all things are permitted.

The state torturers in Soviet prisons understood this all too well. Richard Wurmbrand, a pastor who was tortured for his faith in communist prisons, reports,

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no Hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners.^[1]

Given the finality of death, it does not really matter how you live. What do you say to someone who concludes that we may as well just live as we please out of pure self-interest? Somebody might say it's in our best self-interest to adopt a moral lifestyle – you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. But clearly that's not always true. We all know situations in which self-interest runs smack in the face of morality. Moreover, if you are sufficiently powerful like a Ferdinand Marcos or a Papa Doc Duvalier or a Kim Jung-un then you can pretty much ignore the dictates of conscience and safely live in self-indulgence. Historian Stewart C. Easton sums it up well when he writes, “There is no objective reason why man should be moral, unless morality ‘pays off’ in his social life or makes him ‘feel good.’ There is no objective reason why man should do anything save for the pleasure it affords him.”^[2]

But the problem becomes even worse. For regardless of immortality, if there is no God then there is no objective standard of right and wrong. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words, the bare valueless fact of existence. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the byproducts of biological evolution and social conditioning. After all, on the atheistic view there's nothing special about human beings. They're just accidental byproducts of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Richard Dawkins’ assessment of human worth may be depressing but why, on atheism, is he mistaken when he says, “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference . . . We are machines for propagating DNA. It is every living object’s sole reason for being.”^[3]

In a world without God, who is to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative subjective judgments. Think of what that means. It means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil; nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, or love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent for in a universe without God good and evil do not exist. There is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong.

Any comment or a question about that second element then – the question of value in life?

QUESTION: I just wonder how an atheist can justify taking antibiotics because if none of it has any meaning don't they do things like that? Yet, we’re just as good as they are so why would we kill a bunch of bacteria?

DR. CRAIG: I actually know an atheist philosopher, Alex Rosenberg whom I debated at the University of Purdue, who gave this advice to students: take drugs. Given the absurdity of life, what you can do is take drugs and that will help you to feel better. Clearly, at best that solution will merely address your subjective, emotional feelings of depression at the meaninglessness and worthlessness of life. But it will do nothing to provide objective meaning, value, or purpose to life. So that even this answer (medicine) doesn't do anything to deny the point that I'm making which is that in the absence of God there is no objective value or meaning to life. Remember, again, the question here is not the question of whether one subjectively finds life meaningful, valuable, and purposeful. Of course, everyone does who's not suicidal. But the question is: Is there an objective meaning, value, and purpose to one's life? And my argument is that on atheism there isn't. It's an illusion, an illusion of human consciousness.

QUESTION: I was using this argument with someone. I was sharing Christ with someone recently and they said morality came from a disruption of biophotons and corrupted chakras. Is that coming from a pantheistic worldview, or have you ever heard that argument?

DR. CRAIG: It sounds like pseudoscience to me, but in any case, like the other question that was asked earlier, it only reinforces the point that I'm making. Yes, if atheism is true, that's at best what morality is. So these aren't refutations of the argument. Do you see that? These aren't refutations. These are actually substantiations of the argument. They agree with the argument. In the absence of God morality is just – what did you say? – just a disruption of biophotons. Right! That's the argument. That there is no objective morality or meaning or purpose in life.

Let's go to the third element then which is no ultimate purpose.

If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail then what is the goal of life? Is it all for nothing? Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space then the answer must be “yes, it is pointless.” There is no goal, no purpose, for the universe. The litter of a dead universe will just go on expanding and expanding forever.

And what of man? Is there no purpose at all for the human race? Or will it simply peter out some day, lost in the oblivion of an indifferent universe?

The English writer H. G. Wells foresaw such a prospect. In his novel The Time Machine Wells’ time traveler journeys far into the future to discover the destiny of man. All he finds is a dead earth, except for a few lichens and moss, orbiting a gigantic red sun. The only sounds are the rush of the wind and the gentle ripple of the sea. “Beyond these lifeless sounds,” writes Wells, “the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives – all that was over.”^[4] And so Wells’ time traveler returned. But to what? – to merely an earlier point on the purposeless rush toward oblivion. When as a non-Christian I first read Wells’ book, I thought, “No, no! It can’t end that way!” But if there is no God then it will end that way. Like it or not, this is reality in a universe without God. There is no hope. There is no purpose.

And what is true of mankind as a whole is true of each one of us individually. We are here to no purpose. If there is no God then your life is not qualitatively different from that of an animal. As the ancient writer of Ecclesiastes put it, “The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies, so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over the beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all turn to dust again” (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20). In this book, which reads more like a work of modern existentialist literature than a book from the Bible, the author shows the futility of pleasure, wealth, education, political fame, and honor in a life doomed to end in death. His verdict? Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. If life ends at the grave then we have no ultimate purpose for living.

But more than that. Even if life did not end in death, without God life would still be without purpose. For man and the universe would then be simply accidents of nature thrust into existence for no reason. Without God, the universe is the result of a cosmic accident – a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists. As for man? He is a freak of nature, a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. If God does not exist then you are just a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life.

So if God does not exist, that means that man and the universe exists to no purpose (since the end of everything is death) and that they came to be for no purpose (since they are only blind products of chance). In short, life is utterly without reason.

Any comment or question on this third element of purpose in life?

QUESTION: Have you ever had an atheist say to you the ultimate end being nothingless and purposeless is actually preferred for them in terms of . . . if they actually believe in a God and reject him?

DR. CRAIG: I have heard atheists say that once they let go of belief in God and came to believe that life has no objective value, that this was sort of a relief because they no longer felt bound by an unlivable ethical code to live up to. That it was a kind of a relief not to have a guilty conscience anymore because now there were no absolute moral standards to which they needed to conform. In that sense there was a bit of a relief from getting rid of God and living a life where there are no objective moral standards to live by. I find that hard to believe that such a view was carried out consistently as I’ll show, but I have heard atheists suggest such a thing.

QUESTION: Have you seen any research that connects atheists to a bad father image in their family relationships?

DR. CRAIG: I have seen it, but it's not relevant to this talk. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze atheists or ask why they believe as they do. We're simply exploring the implications of an atheistic worldview. Here the writings of the atheists themselves are our best resources. It is the atheists themselves who have given the most poignant analyses of the human predicament in the absence of God. So this is in no way an attack upon atheism or an attempt to psychoanalyze why they believe as they do or anything of that sort. It's simply an attempt to unpack the implications of this worldview – implications that are freely acknowledged by a good many atheists themselves.

QUESTION: In your experience over the years as you debated with atheists, what would you say has been the consensus among atheists to be the counter-argument to establishing some sort of objective meaning, value, or purpose? Because all humans intrinsically search that out. What have you heard atheists say in response?

DR. CRAIG: It may come as something as a surprise to you, but the large majority of atheists will respond to this by trying to affirm the objectivity of moral values and hence meaning in life. They do not want the relativism and nihilism that atheism seems to apply. They desperately want to cling to some sort of objective morality. But they are very hard-pressed to come up with an explanation for this. We'll see more of this when we get to the moral argument for God's existence. This is in a sense a preview of that argument. We'll examine in more detail when we get there atheist attempts to ground objective morality without God. So hang on to that until we get to the moral argument.

QUESTION: I was just wondering. Your arguments work with atheists, but what happens when you face agnostic people? Are you able to apply some of your logic and reasoning?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. She asks: This would apply or is directed toward atheists, but what about somebody who's an agnostic? An agnostic is a person who says he doesn't know whether God exists or not. Notice that agnosticism is not a view. Either God exists or he does not exist. Those are the two views. Agnosticism is merely a personal confession of ignorance that one doesn't know which view is correct. So it's not as though agnosticism is a third view – a kind of middle ground or something. Either God exists or he doesn't exist. And the agnostic merely confesses his ignorance as to which of these is true. So this would apply to agnosticism in saying that if there is no God then there is no objective meaning, value, and purpose. So you, Mr. Agnostic, not knowing whether God exists or not, don't know if there is any basis for objective meaning, value, or purpose in life. You are landed pretty much in the same boat as the atheist because you have no basis for affirming the objectivity of meaning, value, and purpose as an agnostic.

QUESTION: I wanted to comment on someone else's thing and what you were saying about the atheist wanting to cling onto that there's an objective reason for morality is very interesting. Because there very much is. So in a way they're clinging to the truth and that's very right. It's like someone might not believe in the times table but they know that 2+2 is 4. It's to say otherwise would be absurd. So it's interesting. It's not just for the sake of atheism but for this to be otherwise would be absurd.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I agree with you actually, and again when we get to the moral argument we will exploit that point in support of the premise that objective moral values and duties do exist. So you're quite right.

I hope you begin to understand the gravity of the alternatives before us. For if God exists then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist then all we are left with is despair. As one writer has aptly put it, if God is dead then man is dead, too.

Unfortunately, most people do not realize this fact. They continue on as though nothing had changed. I’m reminded of the story told by the 19th century atheist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, of a madman who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace, lantern in hand, crying, “I seek God! I seek God!” Since many of those standing about did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. “Did God get lost?” they taunted him. “Or is he hiding? Or maybe he has gone on a voyage or emigrated!” Thus they yelled and laughed. Then, writes Nietzsche, the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes:

‘Whither is God?’ he cried, ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? . . . God is dead. . . . And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?^[5]

The crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment. At last he dashed his lantern to the ground. “I have come too early,” he said. “This tremendous event is still on its way — it has not yet reached the ears of man.” People did not yet comprehend the consequences of the death of God. But Nietzsche predicted that someday modern man would realize the implications of atheism; and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism — that is to say, the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

I find that most people still do not reflect upon the consequences of atheism and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. But when we realize, as did Nietzsche, what atheism implies, then his question presses hard upon us: How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?

Well, about the only solution the atheist can offer at this point is that we just face the absurdity of life bravely and live courageously. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell, for example, believed that we have no choice but to build our lives upon “the firm foundation of unyielding despair.”^[6] Only by recognizing that the world truly is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life. Camus said that we should honestly recognize life's absurdity and then live in love for one another. The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it's impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview. If you live consistently, you will not be happy. If you live happily, it is only because you are not consistent.

Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, lives in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God.

Let's look again then at each of those three areas in which we saw that life is absurd without God and see how difficult it is to live consistently and happily within the framework of an atheistic worldview.

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God life has no ultimate meaning. Yet, philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action. Sartre, himself, chose Marxism. Now, this is totally inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say that life is objectively absurd and then to say that you may create meaning for your life. If life is really absurd then you're trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for such a leap. Sartre’s program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. But the universe doesn't really acquire a meaning just because I happen to give it one. This is easy to see. Suppose I give the universe one meaning, and you give it a different meaning. Who's right? Well, the answer of course is neither one. For the universe without God remains objectively meaningless no matter how we happen to regard it. Sartre is really saying let's pretend that the universe has meaning. And that is just fooling yourself.

The point is this. If God does not exist then life is objectively meaningless. But man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless. So in order to be happy he pretends that life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent for without God man and the universe are without any real significance.

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The view that there are no values is logically incompatible with affirming the values of love and brotherhood. Bertrand Russell, too, is inconsistent for though he was an atheist, he was also an outspoken social critic denouncing war and restrictions on sexual freedom. Russell admitted that he could not live as though ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste, and that he therefore found his own views “incredible.” “I do not know the solution,” he confessed.^[7] The point is that if there is no God then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, all things are permitted. But man cannot live this way so he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.

The horror of a world devoid of value was brought home to me with new intensity several years ago as I watched a BBC television documentary called The Gathering. It concerned the reunion of survivors of the Holocaust in Jerusalem where they rediscovered lost friendships and shared their experiences. One former prisoner, a nurse, told of how she was made a gynecologist at Auschwitz. She observed that pregnant women were grouped together by the soldiers under the direction of Dr. Mengele and housed in the same barracks. Some time passed, and she noted that she no longer saw any of these women. She made inquiries: “Where are the pregnant women who were housed in that barracks?” “Haven't you heard?” came the reply. “Dr. Mengele used them for vivisection.” Another woman told of how Mengele had bound up her breasts so that she could not suckle her infant. The doctor wanted to learn how long a baby could survive without nourishment. Desperately, this poor woman tried to keep her baby alive by giving it pieces of bread soaked in coffee. But to no avail. Each day, the baby lost weight, a fact which was eagerly monitored by Dr. Mengele. A nurse then came secretly to this woman and told her, “I have arranged for a way for you to get out of here. But you cannot take your baby with you. I have brought a morphine injection that you can give your child to end its life.” When the woman protested, the nurse was insistent, “Look, your baby is going to die anyway. At least save yourself.” And so this mother felt compelled to take the life of her own baby. Mengele was furious when he learned of it because he had lost his experimental specimen, and he searched among the dead to find the baby's discarded corpse so that he could have one last weighing.

My heart was rent by these stories. One rabbi who survived the camp summed it up well when he said that in Auschwitz it was as though there existed a world in which all of the Ten Commandments were reversed: thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal, thou shalt lie. Mankind has never seen such a hell. And yet, if God does not exist then in a sense our world is Auschwitz. There is no right and wrong. All things are permitted. But no atheist, no agnostic, can live consistently with such a view. Nietzsche himself, who proclaimed the necessity of living beyond good and evil, broke with his mentor Richard Wagner precisely over the composer’s anti-semitism and strident German nationalism. Similarly, Sartre writing in the aftermath of the Second World War condemned anti-semitism, declaring that a doctrine that leads to mass extermination is not merely an opinion or matter of personal taste of equal value with its opposite.^[8] In his important essay, “Existentialism is a Humanism” Sartre struggles vainly to elude the contradiction between his denial of divinely pre-established values and his urgent desire to affirm the value of human persons. Like Russell, he could not live with the implications of his own denial of ethical absolutes.

Neither can the so-called New Atheists like Richard Dawkins. For although Dawkins says that “there is no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference” he is an unabashed moralist. He vigorously condemns such actions as the harassment and abuse of homosexuals, religious indoctrination of children, the Incan practice of human sacrifice, and prizing cultural diversity over the interests of Amish children. He even goes so far as to offer his own amended Ten Commandments for guiding moral behavior,^[9] all the while marvelously oblivious to the contradiction with his ethical subjectivism. Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.

Finally, let's look at the problem of purpose in life. The only way that most people who deny purpose in life live happily is either by making up some purpose (which amounts to self delusion, as we saw with Sartre) or by not carrying out their view to its logical conclusions. The temptation to invest one's own petty plans and projects with objective significance and thereby to find some purpose to one's life is almost irresistible. For example, the outspoken atheist and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg at the close of his much acclaimed book The First Three Minutes writes as follows,

It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. . . . It is very hard to realize that this all is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.^[10]

There's something very strange about Weinberg's moving description of the human predicament. Tragedy is an evaluative term. Weinberg sees the pursuit of scientific research as raising human life above the level of farce to the level of tragedy. But on atheism, what is the basis for such an evaluative differentiation? Weinberg evidently sees a life devoted to scientific pursuits as truly meaningful, and therefore it's too bad that such a noble pursuit should be extinguished. But why, on atheism, is the pursuit of science any different than slouching about doing nothing? Since there is no objective purpose to human life, none of our pursuits has any objective significance. However important and dear they may seem to us subjectively, they are no more significant than shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. The atheistic worldview is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were without ultimate meaning, value, or purpose. If we try to live consistently within the atheistic worldview, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving the lie to our worldview.

Confronted with this dilemma, modern man flounders pathetically for some means of escape. For example, in a remarkable address to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science in 1991, Dr. L. D. Rue, confronted with the predicament of modern man, boldly advocated that we deceive ourselves by means of some Noble Lie into thinking that we in the universe still have value.^[11] According to Rue, "The lesson of the past two centuries is that intellectual and moral relativism is profoundly the case." He says that the consequence of this realization is that one's quest for self-fulfillment and the quest for social coherence fall apart. This is because, on the view of relativism, the search for personal self-fulfillment becomes radically privatized; each person chooses his own set of values and meaning.

So, what are we to do? Rue says there is, on the one hand, the mad house option where self-fulfillment is pursued regardless of social coherence. On the other hand, there is what he calls the totalitarian option where social coherence is imposed by the state at the expense of personal fulfillment. If we are to avoid these two options, he says, then we have no choice but to embrace some Noble Lie that will inspire us to live beyond selfish interests and so voluntarily achieve social coherence. A Noble Lie is one that deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, and race. It is a lie because it tells us that the universe is infused with value which is a great fiction. Because it makes a claim to universal truth when there is none. And because it tells me not to live for self-interest, which is evidently false. But without such lies, says Rue, we cannot live. This is the dreadful verdict pronounced over modern man. In order to survive, he must live in self-deception.

Any comments or questions on this last point.

QUESTION: If I understand you correctly, you're saying that it's basically impossible to live consistently as an atheist except maybe [by using that life] to kill yourself. But it seems to me imaginable that you could just go the selfish way and say if I'm going to die I might as well have an enjoyable time. Or to use your example to enjoy shuffling the chairs on the Titanic since you know you're going to drown.

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that that is a viable alternative. If you really try to live consistently as an atheist – that there are no values, that you have no value nor those you love have value, that there's no meaning to your life, there's no purpose for your existence – I think you will be profoundly unhappy, depressed, and maybe even suicidal. So I think that the atheist worldview is one that is impossible to live out consistently and happily.

QUESTION: I was trying to apply this to the everyday and the approach that we would take when talking to someone on a one-to-one basis. I mean, to me, most of society doesn't even know they're not supposed to be in the exit lane until the last second. That's about how far they're thinking in their lives. So beyond bread and circus, they don't seem to ponder these questions.

DR. CRAIG: That's the point of the illustration of Nietzsche's madman in the marketplace. Exactly. The mass of humanity doesn't understand this. That's why I'm trying to help you to grasp it clearly so that you can share this with an unbelieving friend who says, “Yeah, whatever. It doesn't matter if God exists or not.”

QUESTION: During the Second World War, Germany was a nominal Christian country. How could Auschwitz happen?

DR. CRAIG: If I understood you correctly, the question was in a nominally Christian country like Germany, how could Aucschwitz happen? That's a question for a sociologist or historian to answer, not a philosopher. It's not germane to the argument that's being offered in this lecture. The point is that if there is no God then National Socialism was just as good as democracy and that what Hitler and his cohorts did wasn't objectively morally wrong.

QUESTION: There is a line of thought which comes from my brother among other things that natural selection in itself has a purpose that is moving toward better, and obviously we're at the top so it's obviously moving toward better so far. So the thought is, and he brings up Nietzsche and Margaret Singer and all kinds of stuff, but the thought is that natural selection because it is bringing about improvements and continuing to work toward better is a purpose in and of itself.

DR. CRAIG: I don't know if you've misunderstood. Was it your brother, you said? Or whether your brother just doesn't understand the biological theory of evolution. Because on the standard biological theory of evolution, it is directed (or really undirected) by random mutations. And the force of the word “random” here is not that the mutations occur by chance. That's not the force of the word. What biologists mean when they say that the mutations occur by random is that they do not occur with a view toward the flourishing or the benefit of the host organism in which they take place. They occur indifferently to the flourishing or deficit of the organism in which these mutations occur. So to say that natural selection has a purpose is simply unscientific. That is to fail to understand the theory which is that these mutations occur randomly. They are undirected.

FOLLOWUP: Use a different term: survival of the fittest. The mutations that aren't viable die out, and so inherently the mutations are improving upon themselves. They are getting better.

DR. CRAIG: Right. Yes. But that’s not purpose. The mutations are random. They do not occur with a view toward either survival or the deficit of the organism in which they occur. They are indifferent to the fate of the organism in which they take place. But if in the environment in which the organism lives these mutations are beneficial then its progeny will survive. On the other hand, if they produce deficits with regard to the environment then those will be killed off and will die. And that's how evolution explains adaptation to the environment. But there's no sense here of an overriding purpose that it's occurring for a reason, that there's a goal in mind to which evolution is directed. These are random mutations.

QUESTION: I'm thinking about God before creation. He's an existence. He is almighty. He is perfect. He is whole. What is your best explanation as to why he would even think about creating us, imperfect and with capability of sin?

DR. CRAIG: This is a question that is pertinent more to the section that we'll look at after the break. But by way of preview let me simply say that it seems to me that creation is not for God's benefit. He's perfect. He's self-sufficient. He needs nothing. Therefore creation can only be for the benefit of the creature. God has created finite persons who are capable of having a relationship with him and so coming to know the incommensurable good of a relationship with God himself. That would be the motive for which he would create these finite creatures – it would be for their own benefit.

Let's take a 10-minute break now and we'll come back and contrast the atheistic worldview with biblical Christianity.

I've argued that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of an atheistic worldview. But what about biblical Christianity? Biblical Christianity challenges the worldview of modern man. For according to the Christian worldview, God does exist and life does not end at the grave. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life: God and immortality. Because of this we can live consistently and happily within the framework of our worldview. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

None of this shows that biblical Christianity is true. The atheist might smugly say that I have embraced a Noble Lie and so am self-deceived. So we'll need to examine the arguments for and against the existence of God in a minute. But for the time being, at least what we've done is to clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist then life is futile. If God does exist then life is meaningful. Only the second of the two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it makes a huge difference whether or not God exists.

It seems to me then that even if the evidence for these two alternatives were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose to believe in God. That is to say, if the evidence is equal, it seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal argued, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

But my goal in this lecture has actually been much more modest than this. By sharing the absurdity of life without God, I only hope to have gotten you to think about these issues, to realize that the question of God's existence has profound consequences for our lives and that therefore we cannot afford to be indifferent to it. If we can achieve that much in sharing with an unbeliever then I think we are well on our way.