Metaphysics and the Meaning
of Life:
How the Kingdom of God
Changes Everything!
Richard Klaus
October 18, 2016
Glendale
Community College’s “God and Truth IV: God and the Meaning of Life”
Preliminaries:
·
Thank you
to Glendale Community College for sponsoring these events
·
Thank you
to Professor Lupu for the invitation
Introduction
·
April 20th—was the 17 year anniversary of the Columbine High
School massacre
o
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold
§ Killed 12 students and 1
teacher
§ Injured another 21 people
o
Eric Harris: Journal
§ “I just love Hobbes and
Nietzche (sic).”
§ “I say ‘KILL MANKIND’ no one
should survive” and “theres no such thing as True Good or True Evil, its all
relative to the observer. its just
all nature, chemistry, and math. deal with it.”
§ T-Shirt on day of shooting:
“Natural Selection”
·
Or Consider… Jeffrey Dahmer: arrested in 1991 for brutal
sex crimes and cannibalism
o
Spoke of his belief that “the theory of evolution is truth, that we all
just came from the slime, and when we died… that was it, there was nothing—so
the whole theory cheapens life.”
o
“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then
what’s the point in trying to modify your behavior to keep it in acceptable
ranges.”
·
We are shocked by the above behavior and find it morally repugnant
·
All these cases of ethically deviant behavior are linked with
corresponding views about reality and the meaning of life.
·
In these cases a metaphysics of meaninglessness breaks forth in
violence
·
IMPORTANT QUALIFICATIONS:
o
Not all who engage in murderous violence are self-consciously motivated
by philosophical naturalism
o
Not all who hold to philosophical naturalism engage in murderous acts
of violence
o
There may be medical and psychological issues in those mentioned above
§ Eric Harris: “clinical psychopath” by
some
·
MAIN POINT: deep connection between
metaphysics, the meaning of life and the ethics that flow forth from such
views!
A. The meaning of life: What
are we talking about?
a. At least three concepts:[1]
i. Purpose: Are our lives
directed toward some goal or end?
ii. Significance: Do our lives
count for anything as part of a greater whole?
iii. Value: Is my life worth
anything overall? Is it better
lived than not?
B. Two basic approaches to meaning
in life: Discovered vs. Created
a. Bestowed from outside: in which case we Discover this meaning
b. Meaning created from the
inside: self-ascribed and self-determined
C. Meaning in life questions
are bound together with larger philosophical concerns…
a. What one thinks about
ultimate reality (metaphysics) will affect how one is able to consistently
answer the question about meaning
b. This is illustrated by a
number of contemporary philosophers and thinkers
“That man is the product of causes which had
no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his
hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations
of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can
preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages,
all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human
genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and
that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath
the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond
dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can
hope to stand. Only within the
scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair,
can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”[2]
--Bertrand Russell
“We’re just a bit of pollution. If you got rid of us, and all the stars
and all the galaxies and all the planets and all the aliens and everybody, then
the universe would be largely the same.
We’re completely irrelevant.”[3] --Lawrence Krauss (Arizona State
University cosmologist)
“’You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your
memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are
in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their
associated molecules. As Lewis
Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’”[4] --Francis Crick
“Naturalistic evolution has clear
consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no
life after death exist; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no
ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.”[5]
--William Provine (Cornell evolutionary biologist)
c. Can’t be written off as the
ramblings of some mentally deranged teenagers.
d. Given Naturalistic evolution: there is no meaning to be discovered
e. Naturalistic evolutionary
accounts of humanity and cosmos tend to degenerate—if consistent—into
nihilism.
§ Tamler Sommers & Alex
Rosenberg “Darwin’s Nihilistic Idea: Evolution and the Meaninglessness of Life”
“Darwinism thus puts the capstone on a process which since
Newton’s time has driven teleology to the explanatory sidelines. In short it
has made Darwinians into metaphysical Nihilists denying that there is any
meaning or purpose to the universe its contents and its cosmic history. But in
making Darwinians into metaphysical nihilists, the solvent algorithm [random variation acted on by natural
selection] should have made them into ethical nihilists too. For intrinsic
values and obligations make sense only against the background of purposes,
goals, and ends which are not merely instrumental.”[6]
--Tamler Sommers & Alex Rosenberg
f. But if not discovered
perhaps meaning can be self-generated
or created
g. Problems:
i. Arbitrary
1. Anything can be one’s
purpose in life
a. Engaging in medicine to help
others
b. Sitting around playing video
games
c. Harming others
§ Sailson Jose das Gracas:
Brazilian serial killer (over 40 murders)
·
told reporters that murders filled a void in his life
·
“At 17, I killed the first woman and that gave me a buzz. I kept on doing it and I enjoyed it.”[7]
ii. Bootstrapping problem: lifting oneself up by one’s bootstraps
1. If life lacks objective
meaning then how does one making a choice suddenly confer meaning on it?
Christian Theism
1. What about Christian
theism? How does it answer the
question of the meaning of life?
2. First, meaning is objective and discovered
3. God is both transcendent and
personal
a. Provides the grounding of
objective meaning and value
b. God can be known: He Is There and He Is Not Silent
4. Not bare theism or
deism. Not simply a nameless,
faceless transcendent source of value
5. Rather, it is a “blood, sweat, and tears”
kind of theism
6. The ultimate revelation of
God is found in Jesus of Nazareth: Scandal and glory
a. Both its scandal: the raw particularity of ultimate and final
revelation in a single Person in history
b. and its glory: God has come and dwelt
among us for awhile
7. In Jesus…
a. the transcendent God draws
near to humanity
b. the Love of God is displayed in his
self-sacrificing death
c. the Power of God is manifest in his historical
resurrection from the dead
d. and all of this is part of
God’s plan which demonstrates his unparalleled Wisdom
8. Christian theism: Affirms objective Purpose,
Significance, and Value
a. There is PURPOSE:
i. Defined and revealed by our
Creator à Discovered; not self-created
ii. One summary: “Man’s chief
end [i.e., our highest purpose] is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”
b. There is SIGNIFICANCE:
i. Our lives our part of God’s
wise plan for his creation
ii. As followers of Jesus, his
people play a part in the kingdom drama and agenda he is pursuing through the
ages
c. There is VALUE:
i. Created in God’s image: “crowned with glory and
honor” (Ps 8)
ii. Re-created by the mercy of
Jesus’ substitutionary death and the power of his resurrection
iii. Value of belonging to God
and his people
9. Christians don’t always live
up to these majestic realities
a. but this is the New Testament
portrait of Christian theism;
b. this is the life and meaning
available to us!
Conclusion
10.
Began: metaphysics and the meaning of life
i. Ideas have consequences… and
some ideas have victims!
“If
we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt
him. When we present man as an
automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn
of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and
environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case
prone. I became acquainted with
the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the
ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of
heredity and environment—or, as the Nazi liked to say, of ‘Blood and
Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced
that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately
prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and
in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”[8]
--Viktor Frankl
11.
But we are more than nihilistic meat machines or a bundle of neurons
12.
There is a meaning in life available waiting to be discovered—revealed
in the person of Jesus!
[1]
Drawn from James Anderson, “Can Life Have Meaning Without God?” Gospel Coalition (July 16, 2013). Online: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/can-life-have-meaning-without-god.
[7]
Ryan Gorman, “’Killing Calmed Me Down’: Brazilian Man Admits Murdering More
than Forty People for ‘Fun’” (December 12, 2014). Online: http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/12/killing-calmed-me-down-brazilian-man-admits-murdering-more-than-40-people-rio-de-janeiro/21115576/.
