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A Year Without God Aftermath

April 05, 2015     Time: 16:42
A Year Without God Aftermath

Summary

An update on the former pastor who made headlines vowing to spend a year without God.

Transcript A Year Without God Aftermath

 

Kevin Harris: Dr. Craig, we've done prior podcasts[1] on Ryan Bell, the former Seventh-Day Adventist pastor who stepped away from his faith and embarked on an experiment to live without God for a year. You just never know when something is going to go viral, but this certainly has. This has gotten the attention of the press. You never know when you are going to have your 15 minutes of fame. He is certainly having his. Maybe it’s because it is political. He deals with lesbian and gay rights issues. Maybe this plays into the hands of the liberal press.

Dr. Craig: And certainly the New Atheism. Richard Dawkins has a foundation that is actively seeking to out pastors who have lost their faith and get them to come out of the closet as non-theists. The New Atheism is eager to find people like Ryan Bell and to tout them as heroes of courage and conviction.

Kevin Harris: When Ryan Bell announced this, every atheist organization in tarnation gave him a platform and said, Come on in! He stepped away from his faith, just in case people aren't familiar with him.[2] He says,

It was a gut-wrenching decision but I couldn't see any other way to find peace and clarity. I encountered major theological differences with my denomination and evangelical Christianity in general, including the way it marginalizes women and LGBT people.

I questioned the problem of evils and God's general silence and inactivity. I sought out more liberal theologies and found them to be the slow death of God. Now I had to face the very real possibility that God does not exist.

 

You've been highly saddened by this experiment that he has done.

Dr. Craig: You could see this result coming, Kevin. When we did our earlier podcast about how he was embarking on this experiment, we just said this is disastrous. The life of faith is not an easy one. It requires spiritual disciplines such as prayer, meditation, meaningful corporate worship, Bible study, fellowship with other Christians. Therefore, to walk away from all of these spiritual disciplines and to ask, “What is going to happen to me?” is almost guaranteed to result in a loss of faith in God. It is not at all surprising. It is just so sad and so tragic that this unnecessary loss of faith has occurred now in this man's life.

Kevin Harris: This is kind of a familiar refrain here. How people want their transcendent cake and eat it, too. He says,

I was feeling small against the beautiful and terrifyingly indifferent sea before me. Then I started to feel grateful. "What are the chances that I would be sitting on this beach right now, looking at this remarkable scene of beauty?" I thought. I was struck again by how unlikely my existence is.

 

Dr. Craig: Yes. Now, that is certainly true that your existence is unlikely. But these feelings of gratitude. That is interesting. Whom are you grateful to? There isn't anybody on atheism to be grateful to for your existence.

Kevin Harris: The universe? The molecules bouncing around?

Dr. Craig: As he said, this is terrifyingly indifferent. I know when I've been swimming in the ocean, I am so impressed by just the relentless impersonal power of these waves that come rolling in over you relentlessly. And unless you pay constant attention you will be snuffed out like a gnat. And nobody will know. No one will care. It is an indifferent, enormously powerful force. On his view, as he says, this is just an indifferent universe without God, and therefore there isn't anyone to feel grateful to for your existence.

Kevin Harris: You have to sit in God's lap to slap his face. It is just what it reminds me of so often. In our recognition of beauty and good and everything, but then . . .

Dr. Craig: Yes, that is right. Notice also he recognizes the objectivity of beauty here; it is not just in the eye of the beholder. Where do those values come from? We will see later on he recognizes the objectivity of values as well, which I think is difficult to ground on an atheistic perspective.

He mentions here the problem of evil and the hiddenness of God as reasons for doubting God's existence.[3] Of course, Christian philosophers have written extensively on both of those problems. There is a vast literature on the problem of evil, I think, which shows how difficult it is to mount an atheistic argument on the basis of evil in the world. In another news story about Bell's decision to be an atheist, I saw a remark that I think sort of tipped his hand when he said, “For this year I studied all the arguments for God's existence and came to the conclusion that none of them was good.” Now, Kevin, I have been studying the arguments for God's existence for decades as a full-time philosopher, and I still haven't plumbed the depth of all of these arguments. Graham Oppy, an atheist philosopher from Australia, set out to write a book on the cosmological argument for God's existence. He never got beyond the question of whether or not there could be an infinite regress of events and wound up writing a whole book just on the question of infinity. He never managed to get to the rest of the argument. Yet, Bell breezily claims to have exposed all of these arguments in the course of this single year which made it very clear to me that the basis for his loss of faith is not intellectual. No one could responsibly come to that conclusion as a layperson in the course of a single year. This is motivated by these deeper existential problems.

Kevin Harris: Here is where he quotes you, Bill. He says (quoting you),

"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose."

 

His response to your words there, Bill, is,

But my experience is that acknowledging the absence of God has helped me refocus on the wonderful and unlikely life I do have. This realization has increased my appreciation for beauty and given me a sense of immediacy about my life. As I come to terms with the fact that this life is the only one I get, I am more motivated than ever to make it count.

 

Dr. Craig: What is evident from his response there, Kevin, I think, is he hasn't understood the argument. My claim is talking about what I call ultimate or objective meaning, value, or purpose in life. The claim here is one that many atheists themselves have made – without God, life has no objective meaning, value, or purpose. But that doesn't mean that you can't have subjective personally invented values and meanings and purposes in life. In fact, my argument is that no one can actually live happily and consistently with the view that life is objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless. Therefore, in order to live happily, you simply make up a meaning for your life. You construct a set of values. You invent a purpose for your life. This is the only way in which you can live tolerably with atheism. So when he says that he has found that now, as an atheist, life is more meaningful to him and more precious and so forth, this only shows that he hasn't understood that the claim is about objective meaning, value, and purpose. All he is saying is that as an atheist he finds more subjective meaning, value, and purpose to his life. That doesn't in any way refute the argument that atheism implies the absurdity of life without God or nihilism. One isn't talking about subjective attitudes. One is talking about the way the world really is independently of your attitudes.

Kevin Harris: So you are talking about more than what we can construct. You are talking about ultimately.

Dr. Craig: Yes, exactly.

Kevin Harris: And that ultimate meaning is what would inform or undergird anything that we can construct, I think, Bill.

Dr. Craig: Sure. Of course. That, I would claim, comes from a transcendent reality which is God. Bell, I think, just doesn't seem to get the point. He actually says in the article, “I construct meaning in my life from many sources, including love, family, friendships, service, learning and so on.” On this view, meaning is simply a subjective construct.[4] Someone else can construct a very different meaning for his life. Adolf Hitler can construct a meaning for his life. Or the Ayatollah Khomeini can construct a meaning for his life. But none of these are objective. None of these are really the meaning for life. Then, again, in the way he concludes the article, he makes the same thing. He says, “. . . we make meaning from the experiences of our lives; we construct it the way we construct any social narrative.” Socially constructed realities are not objective. Take money, for example. Money, or currency, is a socially constructed reality. What really exists are pieces of paper and discs of metal, which are intrinsically valueless really. But in a certain cultural or social context they count as money. They count as currency. But if no people existed, if they were wiped out, then those pieces of paper and discs of metal would have no value intrinsically at all. It is a purely social construct. Similarly, this is what he says about meaning in life. It is just something that you construct, which is my point! That is the point I am making! On atheism, there is no objective meaning, value, or purpose in life. These are just subjective constructions of individual persons, and therefore provide no ultimate answer to our deepest questions.

Kevin Harris: If they are just our own constructions, what is it? Just kind of a placebo effect?

Dr. Craig: Yes. It is a way of coping with a horrible reality, namely, the atheistic world – this terribly indifferent universe in which we find ourselves that couldn't care if we existed any more than a flea. So we pretend that our life has meaning, value, and purpose in order to cope even though objectively speaking it really doesn't. So what Bell has said here doesn't do anything to refute the claim of either atheists or Christians who have claimed that without God life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose.

Kevin Harris: This is what frustrates me, Bill. He was a pastor. Why didn't he correct how people were treating the LGBT people or women? He says popular Christian theology is to forget this life and just look for a paradise one day. That is not Christian teaching. Why didn't he correct it then?

Dr. Craig: Exactly.

Kevin Harris: Now he is complaining about it. He is complaining that we neglect this world because of the sweet by-and-by and the pie in the sky, by-and-by. Why didn't he correct it then?

Dr. Craig: I think it exposes his own philosophical naivety and lack of understanding. He had this caricature of Christianity where he says, according to the Christian upbringing that he had, ultimately this life doesn't matter. On the contrary, that is his view! That is atheism! That ultimately this life doesn't matter. What Christianity says is that this life is infused with significance, and the choices and the attitudes and the things you do in this life have eternal consequences on to eternity. So by having an objective significance, value, and purpose for this existence, this finite existence is now infused with meaning, value, and purpose, which are ultimately missing from the atheistic worldview that he has come to embrace. It is sad that here was a pastor who had so poor a grasp upon basic Christianity that he walked away from this caricature and has embraced a view whose consequences now, I think it is clear, he still doesn't understand.

Kevin Harris: And he has affected millions of people due to this decision for whatever reason. I noticed that there are now trends that pick up on the theme that he has done – a year without God. He's got his website ayearwithoutgod.com and things like that. I am now seeing people say, A year without TV, A year without speeding, I am going to spend a year without being unkind. They are picking up on this theme, doing their own websites. One liberal preacher doesn't believe in hell. He wants everybody to live a year without believing in hell, and see where that gets you and things like that. People have picked up on this in our social media environment and are now continuing this theme.[5]

Dr. Craig: Has anybody – Kevin, to your knowledge? – tried a year without atheism? That would be an interesting experience – wouldn't it? – for one of these atheists to say, “I am going to have a year without atheism. I am going to act and behave in both my private and public life as though I am a Christian.”

Kevin Harris: Come to my church. We will feed you some fried chicken!

Dr. Craig: The question, I wonder, is would such an experiment work, or would it become just an example of hollow hypocrisy? Because that is sort of a difference. You could live like an atheist for a year by pretending God doesn't exist and follow your doubts. But if you are an atheist and you try to live like a Christian for a year, how are you any different than a religious hypocrite? I am not sure. I think you'd have to have sincere doubts about your atheism.

Kevin Harris: You wouldn't be motivated by the fact that reality TV and reality podcasts are so popular these days – to be motivated to do this social experiment in front of a watching world and then get press on it and maybe a few sponsors.

Dr. Craig: Even that, you see, is, I think, antithetical to the spiritual life and the spiritual search, because it is egocentric, self-exalting. This whole project very much draws attention to one's self because it is not carried on privately but in this very public way.[6]

 


 

[1] See http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-danger-of-trying-on-atheism (accessed April 6, 2015).

[2] See http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/08/opinion/bell-god-atheism/index.html (accessed April 6, 2015).

[3] 5:05

[4] 10:00

[5] 15:02

[6] Total Running Time: 16:43 (Copyright © 2015 William Lane Craig)