Is There Meaning in Life?

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey, it is good to welcome you to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. Lots of people are talking about an event featuring Dr. Craig that took place in January of 2018 at the University of Toronto. Dr. Craig was invited to share the platform with Jordan Peterson and Rebecca Goldstein and discuss the question “Is There Meaning to Life?” Quite a topic, huh? If you are familiar with Dr. Craig's work, you know that he has spoken and written on this topic. So, what was it about this discussion that has so many people talking, and what about what Jordan Peterson and Rebecca Goldstein had to say on this question? Very soon, Dr. Craig and I will get together and get his thoughts on what was said in Toronto to a packed auditorium of over 1,500 people. It is coming soon – stay close! Today, let's hear Dr. Craig's opening speech. He was asked to speak first; here is what he said.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you so much for coming this evening to share this special forum with us.

The question “Is There Meaning to Life?” is closely connected to another, equally profound question, namely, “Does God Exist?” For if God does not exist, there is no transcendent reality, and so both mankind and the universe are as a result inevitably doomed to death. Like all biological organisms, each of us must die. And the universe, too, faces a death of its own. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space — a universe in ruins. This is not science fiction. As unimaginable as it may seem, this will happen. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is destined to destruction. There is no escape. There is no hope.

These plain scientific facts seem nearly incontestable. The question then becomes, what is the consequence of this? Many atheist thinkers have argued that it implies that human life itself becomes absurd. It means that the life that we do have is without ultimate purpose, value, or significance. These three notions — purpose, value, and significance — though closely related, are conceptually distinct. Purpose has to do with a goal, a reason for something. Value has to do with something’s moral worth, its being good or evil, right or wrong. Significance has to do with something’s importance, why it matters.

Many atheist philosophers, from Nietzsche to Russell to Sartre have argued that if God does not exist, then life is ultimately absurd. It is without ultimate purpose, value, or significance. Let me say a word about each of these.

First, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate purpose of life.

If death stands with open arms at the end of life’s trail, then what is the goal of life? Is it all for nothing? Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space, the answer must be, yes — it is pointless. There is no goal, no purpose for the universe. The litter of a dead universe will just go on expanding and expanding — forever.[1]

And what of mankind? Is there no purpose at all for the human race? Or will it simply peter out someday, lost in the oblivion of an indifferent universe? The English writer H. G. Wells foresaw such a prospect. In his novel The Time Machine Wells’s time traveler journeys far into the future to discover the destiny of man. All he finds is a dead earth, except for a few lichens and moss, orbiting a gigantic red sun. The only sounds are the rush of the wind and the gentle ripple of the sea. “Beyond these lifeless sounds,” writes Wells, “the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives---all that was over.”[2] And so Wells’s time traveler returned. But to what? — to merely an earlier point on the purposeless rush toward oblivion. When as a non-Christian I first read Wells’s book, I thought, “No, no! It can’t end that way!” But this is reality in a universe without God. If there is no God it will end that way, like it or not: there is no hope; there is no purpose.

Second, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate value in life.

If there is no God, then there are no objective standards of good and evil, right and wrong. By “objective standards,” I mean moral standards which are valid and binding independently of human opinion. If God does not exist, then there is no transcendent source of moral values. Rather moral values are either just the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning or else expressions of personal taste. As philosopher of science Michael Ruse explains,

The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth.  Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory. . . .[3]

Richard Dawkins puts it succinctly: “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference . . . We are machines for propagating DNA.”[4]

In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. So who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? Who’s to judge that one person’s values are inferior to those of another? The concept of objective morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. All we are confronted with is, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s words, the bare, valueless fact of existence.

That means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or bigotry as evil. Nor can you praise tolerance, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist — there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.

Third, if there is no God, then there is no ultimate significance to life.[5]

If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate importance can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? Certainly, his life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If everything is doomed to destruction, then what does it matter that you influenced anything? Ultimately, it makes no difference.

The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good people everywhere to better the lot of the human race. In the end they don’t make one bit of difference. They all come to nothing.

In a famous passage, the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell lamented,

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; . . . that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours 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.[6]

Thus, on atheism, life itself becomes ultimately meaningless. If God does not exist, then life is without ultimate purpose, value, or significance.

In his poem “The End of the World” the American poet Archibald MacLeish portrays life as an idiotic circus, until one day the show is over. Let me read it to you now:

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.[7]

This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.

Do you understand the gravity of the alternatives before us? If God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. As Francis Schaffer has aptly put it, “If God is dead, then man is dead, too.”

Unfortunately, most people do not realize this fact. They continue on as though nothing had changed. I’m reminded of Friedrich Nietzsche’s story of the madman who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace, lantern in hand, crying, “I seek God! I seek God!” Since many of those standing about did not believe in God, he provoked much laughter. “Did God get lost?” they taunted him. “Or is he hiding? Or maybe he has gone on a voyage or emigrated!” Thus they yelled and laughed. Then, writes Nietzsche, the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes[8]:

‘Whither is God?’ he cried, ‘I shall tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night and more night coming on all the while? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? . . . God is dead. . . . And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?[9]

The crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment. At last he dashed his lantern to the ground. “I have come too early,” he said. “This tremendous event is still on its way — it has not yet reached the ears of man.” People did not yet truly comprehend the consequences of what they had done in killing God. But Nietzsche predicted that someday people would realize the implications of their atheism; and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism — that is, the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

I find that most people still do not reflect upon the consequences of atheism and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. A few years ago a Toronto-based Freethought organization bought bus ads that proclaimed: “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” According to a spokesman for the group, they wanted “something happy, something bright.” I wonder what Friedrich Nietzsche would have thought of those ads. Few contemporary atheists have Nietzsche’s courage to look atheism squarely in the face without blinking. But when we realize, as did Nietzsche, the nihilism that atheism implies, then his question presses hard upon us: how shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?

Confronted with the human predicament, about the only solution the atheist can offer is that we simply face the absurdity of life and live bravely.

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it’s impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a world view. If you live consistently, you will not be happy; if you live happily, it is only because you are not consistent. Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, lives in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God. While giving lip service to atheism, the atheist lives as though life were important, as though it really mattered what he does or thinks, as though certain things were really right and wrong and so is outraged at the injustices of this world, and acts as though his petty projects and plans really were significant.

The human predicament is thus truly terrible. The atheistic world view is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without purpose, value, or significance.[10] If we try to live consistently within the framework of the atheistic world view, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving the lie to our world view. Atheism, therefore, cannot support a happy and consistent life. 

But if atheism fails in this regard, what about Christian theism? According to the biblical worldview, God does exist, and man’s life does not end at the grave. God has created us for a purpose: to know Him and enjoy Him forever. God Himself, who transcends socially relative mores, is the objective standard of moral principles and goodness and His commandments are the source of our objective moral duties. Because we shall live forever, the decisions and actions we take in this life are imbued with an eternal significance that lasts beyond the grave. Biblical theism therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a purposeful, valuable, and meaningful life: God and immortality. Because of this, we can live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview. Thus, biblical theism succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

Now I would be the first to say that none of this proves that God exists. Even if atheism is unliveable, it may still be true. But in tonight’s dialogue we’ve not been asked to discuss whether God exists or not. I’ve written extensively on that question elsewhere. Tonight we have been asked to discuss, “Is There Meaning to Life?” On this score there need be no dispute between the theist and the atheist. Indeed, it has been the atheists themselves, as we have seen, who have given the most poignant analyses of the human predicament. Let them speak for themselves: without God, they tell us, life becomes absurd, for it is without ultimate purpose, value, or significance. I agree.

But I would add one thing: we’ve seen that if God does not exist, then life is futile. If God does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live consistently and happily. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose theism. That is to say, if the evidence is equal, it seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and despair to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. Therefore, my advice is: go with God. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.[11]