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Post date: Aug 13, 2015 1:22:08 PM
Notes from Case for Christianity mp3 by J.P. Moreland
I. Atheism and the Meaning of Life.
A. We all want our life (and the life of others) to count for something; to have meaning
1. Not all worldviews are equally consistent with desire to have meaning in life.
a. if atheism is true, should treat your baby the same as a cat or a rock.
B. Martin Sullivan. book “Boomer Blues”: people are more depressed today than before.
1. no confidence in larger cosmic purpose. people try to create meaning by looking at self.
C. Is there meaning (purpose, value) in life and if so, where does it come from? If no, why not just commit suicide?
Are we intrinsically valuable or do we create value by believing self to be valuable?
1. this is more than just living for pleasure or finding pleasure in life.
D. Albert Camus
First published Thu Oct 27, 2011
Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a journalist, editor and editorialist, playwright and director, novelist and author of short stories, political essayist and activist—and arguably, although he came to deny it, a philosopher. He ignored or opposed systematic philosophy, had little faith in rationalism, asserted rather than argued many of his main ideas, presented others in metaphors, was preoccupied with immediate and personal experience, and brooded over such questions as the meaning of life in the face of death. Although he forcefully separated himself from existentialism, Camus posed one of the twentieth century's best-known existentialist questions, which launches The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide” (MS, 3). And his philosophy of the absurd has left us with a striking image of the human fate: Sisyphus endlessly pushing his rock up the mountain only to see it roll back down each time he gains the top. Camus's philosophy found political expression in The Rebel, which along with his newspaper editorials, political essays, plays, and fiction earned him a reputation as a great moralist. It also embroiled him in conflict with his friend, Jean-Paul Sartre, provoking the major political-intellectual divide of the Cold-War era as Camus and Sartre became, respectively, the leading intellectual voices of the anti-Communist and pro-Communist left. Furthermore, in posing and answering urgent philosophical questions of the day, Camus articulated a critique of religion and of the Enlightenment and all its projects, including Marxism. In 1957 he won the Nobel Prize for literature. He died in a car accident in January, 1960, at the age of 46...
Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” (MS, 3). One might object that suicide is neither a “problem” nor a “question,” but an act. A proper, philosophical question might rather be: “Under what conditions is suicide warranted?” And a philosophical answer might explore the question, “What does it mean to ask whether life is worth living?” as William James did in The Will to Believe. For the Camus of The Myth of Sisyphus, however, “Should I kill myself?” is the essential philosophical question. For him, it seems clear that the primary result of philosophy is action, not comprehension. His concern about “the most urgent of questions” is less a theoretical one than it is the life-and-death problem of whether and how to live.
Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in a variety of ways. As we have seen, both the presence and absence of life (i.e., death) give rise to the condition: it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and it is absurd to hope for some form of continued existence after death given that the latter results in our extinction. But Camus also thinks it absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world, for he sees the attempt to gain rational knowledge as futile. Here Camus pits himself against science and philosophy, dismissing the claims of all forms of rational analysis: “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh” (MS, 21).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/
* it makes no difference if you help an old woman across the street or run her over.
E. believing something just for pleasure without researching as to whether their beliefs is true is foolish and meaningless.
F. Modern Culture and the meaning of life.
1. Edmund hasserl: The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1954)
a. modern society think that science is the only thing that gives us truth about what is real
b. science excludes questions of the meaning of life and so we have no values
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/husserl/
2. modern world has elevated science beyond it's logical boundaries
a. they all knowledge comes from science and so questions of meaning are unanswerable.
3. Empiricism: the only thing we can know is true is what we can test with the five senses
a. “seeing (sensing) is believing”
b. excludes many questions: justice? life after death? virtue vs. vice? God? soul? etc.
4. Scienticism: scientific things are all we can know. if something is sci testable then it is true; if not then it is not true.
a. carl sagan
b. matter is all that there is.
5. Macro Evolution: has left us with no meaning in life
a. Stephen Jay Gould. paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and science historian
"The human species has inhabited this planet for only 250,000 years or so-roughly 0.0015 percent of the history of life, the last inch of the cosmic mile. The world fared perfectly well without us for all but the last moment of earthly time–and this fact makes our appearance look more like an accidental afterthought than the culmination of a prefigured plan.
Moreover, the pathways that have led to our evolution are quirky, improbable, unrepeatable and utterly unpredictable. Human evolution is not random; it makes sense and can be explained after the fact. But wind back life’s tape to the dawn of time and let it play again–and you will never get humans a second time.
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; 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 ourselves — from our own wisdom and ethical sense. There is no other way.”
b. if macro evo is true, human race is an accident,
6. modern culture then concludes that values are private and relative and so are moral values.
a. can't test moral values like other things. not made of matter.
b. questions of value are not real. no objective answer.
c. result:
1. loss of community because there is no shared values.
a. relative values and individuals
b. moral discourses becomes rights claims.
c. no more questions about character and virtue or duty
2. ultimate worldview questions are no longer true or false
7. we need to rethink our worldviews. be a consistent atheist
8. if these are true then moral values are private and relative and there is no right and wrong
--we create values and there is no real community
G. Scientific naturalism vs Christian Theism (CWV). two ways of looking at reality.
1. either there is or there is not ultimate meaning of life.
2. issues that are relevant
a. freedom of will and responsibility
1. we assume it. we make choices and are responsible for them.
a. ex. speed limit etc.
2. if sci naturalism is true, free will does not exist. there is no soul. matter does not have the power to choose against it's nature. also, no moral responsibility.
a. John Searle says that “our conception of physical reality simply does not allow for radical [libertarian] freedom.”
b. Darwinist Professor William Provine equates "modern science" with atheism and states five basic principles:
“First: Modern science directly implies that the world is organized strictly in accordance with mechanistic principles. There are no purposive principles whatsoever in nature. There are no gods and no designing forces that are rationally detectable...
Second, modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society.
Third, human beings are marvelously complex machines. The individual human becomes an ethical person by means of two primary mechanisms: heredity and environmental influences. That is all there is.
Fourth, we must conclude that when we die, we die and that is the end of us...
Finally, free will as it is traditionally conceived ... simply does not exist ... There is no way that the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices.
In short, there's no God, no supreme standard of right and wrong, no rewards in heaven or punishments in hell, and no free will or personal choice whatsoever. Provide says calls these things "modern science," but of course, they are not scientific findings at all; they are atheist doctrines. And the implications of these doctrines aren't pretty.
Is it wrong for a man to abandon his wife and children and sleep with many different women? Says who? The man isn't making personal choices; that's just the way he's evolved.”
https://woh.org/producer/sermons/sermons_display.php?id=1544
c. ex. heating a pot of water. must follow natural laws. can't transcend nature
d. freedom is the ability to choose irrespective of environment.
e. ex. homosexuals, argue that their behavior is predetermined by biology
f. conclusion: determinism or randomness
3. Christian Worldview: we are matter, energy and soul (immaterial)
a. soul allows us to transcend our bodily conditions; our choices make a difference.
1. we have the power to choose and are responsible for our choices
b. best makes sense of human free will and moral responsibility.
b. must be real set of values; that are intrinsically objective good, right or wrong.
1. if not, then no meaning in life.
a) arbitrary definitions of what is good, etc.
b) Meaning of life would be arbitrary:
c) We can create and change values like friendship, lying is okay, adultery, etc.
d) values would no longer be values if man creates them
e) do we create values? where did them come from? from matter and motion (space-time universe)?
f) values must be objective, independent of our choices or even beliefs about them
2. CWV: personhood is more fundamental than space-time universe
a) God is intrinsically valuable. Values come from Him
b) J. L. Mackie, The miracle of Theism: more values are odd that they are unlikely to have come from natural universe...no creator means no objective values
c) if no God, how do we have free will? value?
d) CWV: people have equal value as human beings
3. speciesism (a form of racism): people who think that humans are special because they are human.
a) Peter Singer and Helga Cuza: Should the Baby Live.
* Infanticide
* the only reason humans have equal value is if we are made in the image of God. but there is no God so, we are not made in the image of God. so to say that humans have some special value above the rest of the universe because we are humans is speciesism (bias toward own biological classification)
* and so humans don't have equal value or equal rights
* civil rights movement falls apart if atheism is true. no logical (and moral) reason to treat anyone with equal respect.
c. humans are significant and have equal value.
1) equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.
* Ex. Education and judicial system assume this to be true.
*Atheism: we have nothing in common equally to be morally relevant.
- if true, no intrinsic value or equal value.
* Martin Luther King Jr: all man is created in image of God and has value.
* Founding Fathers, inalienable rights not from the State but Creator
d. purpose and plan for life.
1) sci naturalism: history is a series of ultimately meaningless events according to the laws
of chem and physics. no purpose. no reason why were are here. no climax.
2) CWV. we are made in image of God. to seek him and know Him and explore creation.
God gives values to his creation.
a) life has meaning.
e. a worldview must deal with human failure
1. if no God, the world just is...
2. in our own moral fiber, we do not live consistently with our own moral principles.
a. We fail, we live for self instead of living for others; we are alienated from God, others and even self.
b. atheism has no solution for this
3. CWV: has narrow answer; precise diagnosis = real answer (solution) not wide or general
a. we know there is something wrong in our selves and in others.
b. Jesus came, died and paid penalty for our sins so we could have a personal relationship with God.
c. investigate the questions of the meaning of life
d. don't get your idea of Christianity from Christians, first go to Jesus (the true
representative of God)
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