futility, faith and fulfillment 16 th may 2014 10am – 12 noon nazarene theological college dene...

Futility, faith and fulfillment16th May 2014

10am – 12 noonNazarene Theological CollegeDene Road, Didsbury, M20 2GU www.manchesterapologetics.com

Futility, faith and fulfillment16th May 2014

10am – 12 noonNazarene Theological CollegeDene Road, Didsbury, M20 2GU www.manchesterapologetics.com

The question

….why?

…The truth was that life was meaningless. It was as though I had just been living and walking along, and had come to an abyss, where I saw clearly that there was nothing ahead but perdition. And it was impossible to stop and go back, and impossible to shut my eyes, in order that I might not see that there was nothing ahead but suffering and imminent death, — complete annihilation.

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and could not help breathing, eating, drinking, and sleeping ; but there was no life, because there were no desires the gratification of which I might find reasonable. If I wished for anything, I knew in advance that, whether I gratified my desire or not, nothing would come of it…

Confessions (1880)

Outline

• Could there be purpose without God?

• What if there is no purpose without God?

• Is there purpose with God?

Purpose without God?

3 minutes • • • • • •

Purpose without God?

• No intrinsic worth

. . . “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 behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.”

-- Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994)

properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy

that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because comets

struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving mammals a

chance not otherwise available (so thank your lucky stars in a literal

sense); because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age;

because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a

million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook.

We may yearn for a “higher” answer — but none exists. This

explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately

liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively

in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers for ourselves…-- Stephen Jay Gould

The prevailing secular world view is a pastiche of current scientific orthodoxy and pious hopes. Darwin has shown that we are animals, but — as humanists never tire of preaching — how we live is ‘up to us’. Unlike any other animal, we are told, we are free to live as we choose. Yet the idea of free will does not come from science. Its origins are in religion — not just any religion, but the Christian faith against which humanists rail so obsessively.

Purpose without God?

• No intrinsic worth• No lasting significance

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,To the last syllable of recorded time;And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

Macbeth Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are

inevitably doomed to death. Man, like all biological organisms,

must die. With no hope of immortality, man's life leads only to

the grave. His life is but a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark

that appears, flickers, and dies forever…For though I know now

that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no

longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought

is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call

"myself" will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

- William Lane Craig The Absurdity of Life without God

“Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?”

Tolstoy Confessions

We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy

that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because comets

struck the earth and wiped out dinosaurs, thereby giving mammals a

chance not otherwise available (so thank your lucky stars in a literal

sense); because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age;

because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a

million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook.

We may yearn for a “higher” answer — but none exists. This

explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately

liberating and exhilarating. We cannot read the meaning of life passively

in the facts of nature. We must construct these answers for ourselves…-- Stephen Jay Gould

Purpose without God?

• Fame, fortune, wealth and happiness?• To love and help others?• To be free?• To live a good live• To achieve progress• Whatever I choose it to be?

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.

-- Jim Carrey

“ ..If there are no answers, if there is no Creator, if there is nothing that’s

really true - when you are in love you must remember that only a

psychopharmacological reaction in your brain is happening. There is no

such thing as love…. You may enjoy music, but you have to realize it is

only a biological reaction; beauty and ugliness, cruelty and compassion

are totally subjective, not real, all in my brain synapses.

You may still, in the lowest sense, have a “good time;” but just insofar as it

becomes a very good time; just insofar, as it ever threatens to push you

out from cold and pure sensuality and into real warmth and enthusiasm

and joy… you will be forced to feel the hopeless disharmony between

your own emotions and the universe, in which you really live.” - C.S. Lewis

“He was about 50 years old, one of half a

dozen survivors clinging to twisted

wreckage bobbing in the icy Potomac

when the first helicopter arrived. To the

copter's two-man Park Police crew he

seemed the most alert. Life vests were

dropped, then a flotation ball. The man

passed them to the others. On two occasions, the crew recalled last night, he handed away a life line from the

hovering machine that could have dragged him to safety. The helicopter crew –

who rescued five people, the only persons who survived from the jetliner – lifted

a woman to the riverbank, then dragged three more persons across the ice to

safety. Then the life line saved a woman who was trying to swim away from the

sinking wreckage, and the helicopter pilot, Donald W. Usher, returned to the

scene, but the man was gone.

—"A Hero – Passenger Aids Others, Then Dies", The Washington Post, January 14, 1982

“In some cultures they love their neighbours; in

others they eat them, both on the basis of feeling.

Do you have any preference?”- Ravi Zacharias

"If God does not exist, everything is permitted,”- Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov (1880)

‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by

the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason

to suppose that my beliefs are true...’- John Haldane

Purpose without God?

• No intrinsic worth• No lasting significance• No satisfaction in fame, fortune and happiness• No basis for true love and altruism• No basis for objective morality• No confident hope for the future

Outline

• Could there be purpose without God?

• What if there is no purpose without God?

• Is there purpose with God?

No purpose? So what?

• Not a proof of God’s existence but a reason to examine one’s worldview

• The impossibility of reconciling that with our day to day living

Purpose without God?

• No intrinsic worth• No lasting significance• No satisfaction in fame, fortune and happiness• No basis for true love and altruism• No basis for objective morality• No confident hope for the future

"I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning;

consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without

any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The

philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned

exclusively with a problem in metaphysics, he is also concerned to

prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not

do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political

power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to

themselves... For myself, the philosophy of meaningless was

essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political."-- Aldous Huxley in Ends and Means, 1937

Outline

• Could there be purpose without God?

• No purpose? So what?

• Is there purpose with God?

“Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, … “There is always a day of reckoning.” The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits—ourselves, or to our souls.

That is every human’s life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting.”

- Donald Van de Mark

The return of two requirements

• Intrinsic worth

• Lasting significance

The return of two requirements

• Intrinsic worth– We are created– In God’s image

• Lasting significance

Genesis 1: v 27

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The return of two requirements

• Intrinsic worth– We are created– In God’s image– For the purpose of glorifying God

• Lasting significance

Isaiah 43: 1-7But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel:“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior;I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush[a] and Seba in your stead.

4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you,I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life.5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth—7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”

Ecclesiastes 12: vv 13 -14"Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil"

Revelation 4 : v 11“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power,for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.”

Philippians 3: vv 7 – 9a

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

The return of two requirements

• Intrinsic worth– We are created– In God’s image– For the purpose of glorifying God and living in

relationship with God

• Lasting significance– The promise of eternal life in relationship with and

worship of God

Revelation 21: vv 3-4

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Westminster catechism

Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever

The return of two requirements

• Intrinsic worth– We are created– In God’s image– For the purpose of glorifying God and living in

relationship with God

• Lasting significance– The promise of eternal life in relationship with and

worship of God

Purpose with God?

Why should I want to glorify God?Why is that inherently valuable / worthwhile?

3 minutes

According to the Christian world view, God does exist, and man's

life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may

enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity

therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful,

valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality.

Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical

Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

- William Lane Craig