Absurdity of Life Without God: Part 1

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this unit is to explore the following question: Can Life have a Meaning, Value, and Purpose in the absence of God?

By Fr. Gregory Bishay

Inspired by the work of William Lane Craig, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

We have great concern and love for the people that we are discussing with. May the Lord enlighten our heart with the amount of Love that God has for His children. We also stipulate that fighting atheism does not infer that an atheist person's life is of no value, or of no meaning. We never also say that their contribution to society is minimal, or their scientific contribution is minimal. It is in fact because we believe in the value of their lives, that we are fighting atheism. Love is the main motivation behind our apologia (Greek for "defense")

Man is the cosmic "orphan." He is the only creature that asks "why." Other animals have instincts to guide them.
Man has learned to ask questions, who am I, why I am here, ... where am I going. He is the only creature that questions everything related to his existence.
As a result of the Modern Human "enlightenment" that resulted in getting rid of God, the answers about human origin come in the following themes: (1) you are the accidental by-product of nature; (2) you are the result of reason and non-eternity, or (3) you are the result of matter plus time plus chance, there is no reason for your existence, and the only thing that for sure awaits you is death.
Man thought that in getting rid of God that he had freed himself from everything that stifled or oppressed him. Instead, he had found that in killing God he actually orphaned himself.

For if there is no God, then man's life becomes ultimately absurd; if God does not exist and hence directly follows that there is no afterlife, then the immediate conclusion is that man and the universe are doomed to death; Man like all biological organisms must die. There is no immortality, the end is just the grave. All his life, compared to the length of the universe is an infinitesimal moment and yet this is all the life he will ever know. Then we all will come head-on face-to-face with "The Threat of non-being." Even though I know that now I exist and that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exit/be. Frightening, staggering, that the person I call "I," "myself" will no longer be.

William Craig: "The day that my father said that "someday I will die," as a little boy, the thought had never occurred to me, I was filled with sadness and cried and cried. My father assured me that it is far off, but it did not matter because I knew that it would happen in the future. As I grew old I realized that it will happen no matter what and yet it left deep sadness inside of me. It affected the child that still lives inside me."

The thought overwhelmed me, as French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, observed: whether our time on earth is several hours long or several years makes no difference if you lose eternity.

And 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, hence after a period of time, which means that over time it grows colder as energy is dissipating from it, eventually stars will dim, and all matter will collapse and there will no longer be a vibrant Universe. The entire Universe is marching towards its inevitable extinction. It is written throughout its structure, there is no escape, there is no hope.

Therefore, if there is No God, Man and Universe are doomed, like prisoners awaiting execution. There is no God, there is no immortality. What is the consequence of that? This means that life itself becomes ultimately absurd. The life that we have has no ultimate meaning, value, or significance.

In the sections below, the following consequences of life without God will be discussed:

No ultimate meaning
No ultimate value
No ultimate purpose

CONSEQUENCE 1: NO ULTIMATE MEANING

Life becomes ultimately absurd, it has no meaning. If each individual lives and passes out of the list of existing humans, what ultimate meaning is there to this existence. Does it matter if he lived at all?

Relative vs. Ultimate Significance

If you affect others throughout your life, then it gives a relative significance to the person's life, it has a significance to some or many events, but if all events will end in nothing, then what is the ultimate significance of his contributions? The universe has no ultimate significance.

Let us look at it from another perspective: Big-bang, suppose it had never occurred, what ultimate difference would it make? No difference, because the world will be doomed anyway--at the end it does not matter whether it ever existed or not. Ultimately, it makes no difference, therefore it does not matter if it existed or not. The same applies to the human race; mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist.

Mankind becomes like a swarm of mosquitos, or pigs, the big bang that coughed them up to begin with will eventually swallow them up again.
Science that advances mankind to alleviate pain, will be for no ultimate purpose.
Diplomats who work to improve life for their citizens in the world, all their efforts will lead to no significant purpose.
All our life's activities will ultimately become insignificant: education, friends, relationships, etc...

It is important to note here that it is not just immortality that man needs; Mere duration of existence does not suffice to make that existence meaningful. If there were no God, then existence still has no meaning.

Let us study this hypothetical story that portrays the existence of Man without God. He would be like a man on a vast planet finding himself alone (no God), having two containers, one with poison and one for immortality. Realizing that he is alone forever, he decides to drink the glass of poison, but to his horror he finds that he drank the one for immortality. This is our life with an accidental choice to "kill God" and live without Him. No God, but life goes on and on, but it is meaningless.

It is not just immortality, Man needs God. If God does not exist, immortality is meaningless.

Literary Examples:

Read, Samuel Beckett's (Waiting for Godot): He portrays two men carrying out mindless conversation while awaiting the arrival of a third, who never comes.
- Or think of a stage of junk, and the audience stares in silence at it for 30 seconds, then the curtain closes
- This is life with nothing after it; lots of aimless activity just to pass the time till the bell rings.
Sartre: in his play "No Exit", he asserts that life is hell, final line of the play "let's get on with it", elsewhere he calls it the "Nausea of Existence"
Albert Camus writes at the end of his brief Novel "The Stranger'' insightfully that he discovers that life has no meaning with no God to give it one.
French Biochemist, Jacques Monet, "Chance and Necessity" - Man finally knows that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the Universe.

CONSEQUENCE 2: NO ULTIMATE VALUE

1 - If life ends in the grave, and that is it, then intrinsically there is NO difference in how one lives. Whether we choose to be saints or satanic, it doesn't matter. Destiny is independent of lifestyle or behavior, and hence one ought to live as one pleases.

(Russian) Dostoevsky, "if there is no immortality, then all things are permitted."
Based on author, Ayn Rand in "The Virtue of Selfishness" you can just live for yourself and that is perfectly commendable.
Sacrifice for another person would be stupid, for life is too short if you live it for another person. (We can add to this that Marriage would have no meaning except for sexual pleasure, or giving to the one who gives you, then once your spouse stops giving, divorce would be the right thing to do in this selfish lifestyle. Parenting would be the most absurd thing to do; for why should I have children whom I will spend my life supporting)
Keigh Nielson, a theist philosopher, attempts to justify the viability of ethics without God, he writes at the end: "we have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational person unhoodwinged with ideology or myths , need not be individual egoists or classical a-moralist, reason does not decide here, the picture that I depicted for you here does not please me, rather depresses me, for pure practical reasons, even with a good knowledge of the facts, even that will not take you to morality."
In other words, he concluded that having reason does not lead to having morality.

2 - If there were no God, then there is no objective standard of right or wrong. (Sartre: moral values are just the expressions of personal taste and/or socio-biological evolution)

Who is to judge the values? The Concept of morality?
To say that something is wrong with no God existing to forbid it, has no meaning at all.

3 - No Objective right or wrong, only our culturally and personally, subjective judgment. For who could say whose values are right or wrong?

4 - To deny the goodness of something because it is forbidden by a law-giving God is perfectly intelligible, but to say it is wrong without the existence of God who forbids it is not. Two main points should be stated here:

Apart from God the concept of moral obligation is void, for whom are you obliged to? Whom are you accountable to?
Without God, the judge is the person or the culture, hence all judgments become relative; there is no absolute right and wrong.

5 - Consequently, war, crime, evil, cannot be called wrong in an absolute sense. On the other hand also, equality and fairness cannot be praised.

No one can say that anyone is right or wrong in the absolute sense
It has to be all relative, depending on the society you live in. So hence there are no absolutes. What is wrong in the US may be right in other places. What is right today could be wrong tomorrow, depending on whose voice we choose to listen to. People as a group evolve into deciding what is right and what is wrong.

CONSEQUENCE 3: NO ULTIMATE PURPOSE

1 - If at the end of one's life there is just death standing with open arms, then what is the goal of life; all for nothing, no purpose. So without God, there is no purpose for the existence of the Universe. What is the universe, it must be pointless, no purpose or goal for its existence; Just expanding to "terminal" coldness.

2 - Consequently, Man would have no purpose for existence.

H . G. Wells: "The time machine" travels to the future to discover the destiny of man, he writes in the novel, "the world was silent, all the sounds of man, cries of birds, hum of insects..., all was over", then the time traveler returned, but to what?? to merely an earlier point of rush towards oblivion??
- There is no hope.
T.S. Elliot, 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 with a whimper.
In the book of Ecclesiastes: fate of the sons of man, is the same as the end of beasts. Futility of pleasure, wealth, political fame, his verdict: Vain of Vanity. This is the end of man if he had no ultimate purpose for existence; A long-term one, not just for a short life.
Man and Universe, we are just accidents, there is no reason for existence, man is a freak of nature, man and insects are the same, just two accidents of nature.

We are victims of a sort of a genetic and an environmental roulette.

Psychologists following Freud would say that our actions are the result of sexual tendencies.
Sociologists following B. F. Skinner argued that all of our choices are determined by conditioning, so freedom is an illusion.
Biologists like Francis Crick regard man as an electrochemical machine altered by a genetic code.

GRAVITY OF THE ALTERNATIVES

We have to ponder deeply on the gravity of the alternative life which culminates from the absence of God.

When you assert that God does not exist: you are a miscarriage of nature thrust into an ending dying universe for an infinitesimal period. You are an accident with a timer, expiring without a reason to be there. Life is rendered to be without reason. Man and Universe exist for no purpose, since the end is death, they also came to be to no purpose since they are just a blind chance.

Fredrick Nietzsche tells the story of a madman who bursts into the marketplace, and cries out "I seek God, I seek God." People in the marketplace, not believing in God, laughed, so he said, "Did He get lost, is He hiding, Gone on a voyage and immigrated?" He cries out, "We have killed God'' How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? He threw his lantern to the ground and said "I have come too early, this tremendous event is still on its way, it has not yet reached the ears of man." He predicted that someday people will embrace Atheism and people will embrace Nihilism which is the destruction of all meaning and value.

Like the crowd in the story, people go on their way.

To answer Nietzsche question, here is how people will comfort themselves:

To live in internal comfort, the Atheist offers for us to live life as:
- Facing the absurdity of life bravely, and
- Live valiantly.
Bertrand Russel's solution: "we must build our lives on the firm foundation of the unyielding despair only by recognizing that the world is really a terrible place, then we can come to terms with life."
Camus offers the solution: "Life is absurd, grasp that and live in love with one another"

FINAL THOUGHTS

So why do we need God?

God hope
No God Despair
Existence of God is vital to the existence of man.
"If God is dead, then Man is dead too"
We need God to give value to the work we do, and the people we choose to be, because His value endures beyond this world and what we see