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William Craig on the absurdity of life without God

Rivius

New Member
arg-fallbackName="Rivius"/>




So, I just came across this somewhat old video by Dr. William Craig (done back in April), on the topic of the meaning of life without God. He's a very skilled debator, I must admit, and he does have some fine points. Note that he isn't trying to say this is proof of God (infact, he even explicitly says it isn't in the final part).

He makes the points that if God does not exist, then there is no meaning to life and that any meaning we ascribe to ourselves is merely self delusion. I am thinking of perhaps writing up a blog entry on this when I get the time, although I really need to think about it, because his arguments seem pretty solid. Seem being the keyword.

I was just wondering on what your views are regarding this lecture. You guys are pretty much the only lot I can have this discussion with, and definitely the smartest, and that's why I brought this here.
 
arg-fallbackName="australopithecus"/>
Rivius said:
He makes the points that if God does not exist, then there is no meaning to life and that any meaning we ascribe to ourselves is merely self delusion.

So he fails at irony as well as logic?
 
arg-fallbackName="ImprobableJoe"/>
He misses the fact that his religion is one that he has chosen for himself, so the meaning he gets from it is also self-ascribed... and delusional, of course. :lol:
 
arg-fallbackName="Rivius"/>
ImprobableJoe said:
He misses the fact that his religion is one that he has chosen for himself, so the meaning he gets from it is also self-ascribed... and delusional, of course. :lol:
Well, yes that's true and is the beautiful irony of it. :p

But the argument is on the whole hypothetical situation that there was a God.
 
arg-fallbackName="Aught3"/>
Yes the irony is quite overwhelming throughout the whole video, especially the part about choosing a delusional meaning for yourself. Nowhere does he give a good reason for thinking that god's existence would give us ultimate (rather than proximate) meaning.

Overall, Craig is very depressing I don't know what the answer is, or even if there is an answer but I think people will continue to create their own proximate meaning whether that is through Marxism, religion, humanism, etc. is up to the individual.

One good point that Craig made is that some religions do provide an answer to the problem of justice. Some times bad people get away with their actions and sometimes good people come to grief. Religions often try to correct this injustice in the next life. Hinduism has reincarnation as a higher or lower level being depending on your actions. Unfortunately for Craig, generic Christianity is not one of these religions. All you have to do is ask for forgiveness from your sins and accept the sacrifice of Jesus and you get to go to heaven. Presumably if Mengele, his health deteriorating while hiding out in South America, asked for forgiveness from God it would have been granted to him and he is now in heaven. His Jewish victims who rejected the sacrifice of Jesus would, of course, be in hell.

One bad point made by Craig is that morality comes from god or else it is based on whim. If morality comes from god then it is just based on the whim of god. But is morality is actually objective then it exists beyond the mind of god and does not rely on his existence.
 
arg-fallbackName="metricdragon"/>
About a thousand years ago and at about 6,500 light years away a stellar explosion occurred in what we know today as the Crab Nebula, it was the event we know as SN 1045, a supernova. A massive star underwent it's process of stellar evolution which led to it's own gravitational collapse into becoming a neutron star, resulting in a explosion of such magnitude that it sent energy in all directions at 10% of the speed of light disintegrating any object in it's orbit for millions of miles. It was visible from earth as the second brightest object in the night sky for nearly a month. Arab, Chinese and Native American scholars wrote about this event and Christian scholars probably wrote about it too, however apparently that may have been corrupted into an allegory for the antichrist, but nevertheless it happened. The explosion created a huge mess in the sky for us to analyse today, but what was the meaning of that?

There is no meaning to it. It just so happened that the star ceased generating energy from nuclear fusion. That's it. This is just one of billions of different supernovae that happen throughout our universe and are probably happening now. If we want to ascribe meaning to the chemical reactions within ourselves. Then why not stars?

Personally I think that when stars die they go to heaven too.
 
arg-fallbackName="Case"/>
metricdragon said:
About a thousand years ago and at about 6,500 light years away a stellar explosion occurred in what we know today as the Crab Nebula, it was the event we know as SN 1045, a supernova. bla bla bla

Now I'm no physicist, but I would like to ask you how it could be possible for an explosion that supposedly took place 1000 years ago some 6500 lightyears away to be visible on earth. You know... when light emanating from that place requires 6500 years to travel to us, that would either make the event 7500 years old by now or it would take another 5500 years for the news to reach us.
 
arg-fallbackName="metricdragon"/>
Case said:
metricdragon said:
About a thousand years ago and at about 6,500 light years away a stellar explosion occurred in what we know today as the Crab Nebula, it was the event we know as SN 1045, a supernova. bla bla bla

Now I'm no physicist, but I would like to ask you how it could be possible for an explosion that supposedly took place 1000 years ago some 6500 lightyears away to be visible on earth. You know... when light emanating from that place requires 6500 years to travel to us, that would either make the event 7500 years old by now or it would take another 5500 years for the news to reach us.

Well, I'm not sure... but isn't that how special relativity works? Sort of?
 
arg-fallbackName="monitoradiation"/>
metricdragon said:
Well, I'm not sure... but isn't that how special relativity works? Sort of?

Not that I'm aware of. I thought the speed of light appears to be equal in all inertial frames; which means if an event occurred 6500 lightyears away (in reference to earth time) then we will see the event in 6500 years.

Back to OP:

WLC is one of the most irritating apologists alive. Him and D'Souza.
 
arg-fallbackName="metricdragon"/>
monitoradiation said:
Not that I'm aware of. I thought the speed of light appears to be equal in all inertial frames; which means if an event occurred 6500 lightyears away (in reference to earth time) then we will see the event in 6500 years.

Oh alright, my bad Case.

I'll have to read up on special relativity in depth.
 
arg-fallbackName="monitoradiation"/>
metricdragon said:
Oh alright, my bad Case.

I'll have to read up on special relativity in depth.

Yeah, it's pretty nifty to have general knowledge before posting on a public forum.

I was going to pick at your post anyway. I didn't feel like quoting the original one since Case got to it. You sounded like you needed further convincing, so I decided to pitch in.

Oh, my bad. You thought a forum thread worked like PM's... I'll try not to budge in next time.
 
arg-fallbackName="metricdragon"/>
monitoradiation said:
metricdragon said:
Oh alright, my bad Case.

I'll have to read up on special relativity in depth.

Yeah, it's pretty nifty to have general knowledge before posting on a public forum.

I was going to pick at your post anyway. I didn't feel like quoting the original one since Case got to it. You sounded like you needed further convincing, so I decided to pitch in.

Oh, my bad. You thought a forum thread worked like PM's... I'll try not to budge in next time.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is here so I'm just going to wave and smile.

*waves and smiles* :)
 
arg-fallbackName="FaithlessThinker"/>
Case said:
Now I'm no physicist, but I would like to ask you how it could be possible for an explosion that supposedly took place 1000 years ago some 6500 lightyears away to be visible on earth. You know... when light emanating from that place requires 6500 years to travel to us, that would either make the event 7500 years old by now or it would take another 5500 years for the news to reach us.

I'm not an astronomer, not even close to being one. But could you or anyone tell me how solid is the Wikipedia article on SN 1054?

Anyway my thoughts about this is that when an event really happens outside the earth's atmosphere, and there are people on earth to observe it, they will have observed it and noted it regardless of race or religion. This can be used as an argument against religious claims of astronomical proportions such as "splitting the moon" which nobody has observed except for the followers of that religion.
 
arg-fallbackName="monitoradiation"/>
metricdragon said:
I'm not entirely sure what your point is here so I'm just going to wave and smile.

*waves and smiles* :)

Aren't you supposed to be reading special relativity instead of trolling this thread? *waves and smiles* :)
anon1986sing said:
Anyway my thoughts about this is that when an event really happens outside the earth's atmosphere, and there are people on earth to observe it, they will have observed it and noted it regardless of race or religion. This can be used as an argument against religious claims of astronomical proportions such as "splitting the moon" which nobody has observed except for the followers of that religion.

Hmm, actually some may use things like SN 1054 to argue that their religion is right; saying things like astronomic events/objects proves that the "Truth" is universal across all cultures, and then somehow twist it to say that the other religions got it wrong.
 
arg-fallbackName="metricdragon"/>
monitoradiation said:
metricdragon said:
I'm not entirely sure what your point is here so I'm just going to wave and smile.

*waves and smiles* :)

Aren't you supposed to be reading special relativity instead of trolling this thread? *waves and smiles* :)

Hmm, actually some may use things like SN 1054 to argue that their religion is right; saying things like astronomic events/objects proves that the "Truth" is universal across all cultures, and then somehow twist it to say that the other religions got it wrong.

*currently reading up on SR*

I think we got off on the wrong foot here, I'm not arguing that celestial events prove WLC's point. I'm saying that it contradicts it. I think we all agree that SN 1054 happened for absolutely no reason other than the natural causes that instigate a supernova.,trying to ascribe meaning to it is just as useful as ascribing meaning to the formations of stalactites in a dark undiscovered cave or or microorganisms bonding to create a biofilm in a plastic bottle at the bottom of a rubbish heap or two meteors, invisible to the naked eye or any telescope, smashing into each other in the dark vacuum of space or a number of other things that would never affect us. Just because SN 1054 could be seen from earth, people would ascribe meaning to it, but we know that it has no meaning, and no use, it was just another stellar explosion among the many that occur in space. If there was a god that did meaningless things like that, then that would give us equal meaninglessness to a pebble rolling down a mountain, ergo making our lives equally as "absurd" with or without him.

Is there something I have wrong here?
 
arg-fallbackName="RedYellow"/>
The main problem with arguements like these is that apologists try to hijack the definitions of words such as "purpose," or "morality" to essentially say that they are solely contingent on the existence of a God. However, these words have dictionary definitions independant of any concept of God.

To say that purpose without a God is merely a delusion, is to continue to falsely compare purpose in a Godless world, with the purpose a God would give if he existed. However if there is no God, then purpose can only come from the human mind, thus, it is as real as it can possibly be in either context. It's like saying a chair can't be a real chair unless it was crafted by the ultimate master chair builder, therefore any chair made by anybody else is fake. Yet, these fake chairs would still perform the desired function, so what's the point? It's the same thing with arguements against secular morality. Why should it matter where morality or purpose come from as long as they perform the function that these concepts exist to describe? Theists want to re-write the dictionary.

So what is more important? The origin, or the function?
 
arg-fallbackName="monitoradiation"/>
metricdragon said:
I think we got off on the wrong foot here, I'm not arguing that celestial events prove WLC's point. I'm saying that it contradicts it. I think we all agree that SN 1054 happened for absolutely no reason other than the natural causes that instigate a supernova.,trying to ascribe meaning to it is just as useful as ascribing meaning to the formations of stalactites in a dark undiscovered cave or or microorganisms bonding to create a biofilm in a plastic bottle at the bottom of a rubbish heap or two meteors, invisible to the naked eye or any telescope, smashing into each other in the dark vacuum of space or a number of other things that would never affect us. Just because SN 1054 could be seen from earth, people would ascribe meaning to it, but we know that it has no meaning, and no use, it was just another stellar explosion among the many that occur in space. If there was a god that did meaningless things like that, then that would give us equal meaninglessness to a pebble rolling down a mountain, ergo making our lives equally as "absurd" with or without him.

Is there something I have wrong here?

I certainly wasn't implying that you're using celestial events to validate your religion. I was saying to Anon1986sing that some people have chosen to use celestial events in such a fashion.
 
arg-fallbackName="bongorock"/>
I think WLC does argue well and I think this irritates many Atheists. Personally I think that's why I find him so annoying. What he is saying is ludicrous but he often gives the impression that he has won the argument. I think many atheists find him very difficult to debate with, take Hitchens for example. Even when he was arguing that you can prove the resurrection through historical means he wasn't soundly beaten which should have been relatively easy.

However, I don't understand how God gives life meaning. The biggest question in life for me is, 'why is there something rather than nothing' and this question can be quite disturbing. If I found out God existed tomorrow though, it wouldn't answer this question satisfactorily. If God exists then we are nothing more than a piece of grass in an enormous garden that he's made. The only difference is if the grass doesn't grow like he'd like then he'll eternally punish it. Plus it begs the question, why grow the garden in the first place, was he bored?
 
arg-fallbackName="monitoradiation"/>
bongorock said:
I think WLC does argue well and I think this irritates many Atheists.

I highly doubt that he does. The problem with him is that he tries to come off as an intellectual while his arguments are refuted everywhere, yet he constantly parrots them as if they haven't been. And then he has the audacity to call everyone else absurd.
 
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