Agnosticism, Atheism, Christianity, Faith, God, Morality, Purpose, Religion, Truth

The Life of a Dog

Nate

This is reality in a universe without God: there is no hope; there is no purpose. It reminds me of T.S. Eliot’s haunting lines:

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 a whimper.

What is true of mankind as a whole is true of each of us individually: we are here to no purpose. If there is no God, then our life is not fundamentally different from that of a dog.
— William Lane Craig

I heard this quote recently, and I immediately thought, it’s also not fundamentally different from that of a god. If God is the “uncaused first cause,” then his life has no higher purpose. There is no “reason” for him to exist. In fact, when you really get down to it, the best reason for God to exist is to explain our own existence. Doesn’t that minimize his importance when you look at it that way? So many of the arguments for God really come down to saying:

We’re so magnificent and complex, we simply can’t be an accident! There must be some reason for our being here! So if we exist, God must exist.

Talk about arrogance! We think so highly of ourselves that we insist the Universe was created for us. But this insistence creates an interesting problem. It claims that we’re so amazing, we deserve to have a higher power interested in us. But this higher power doesn’t deserve the same thing?

If our lives are empty and meaningless without God, what does it say about God’s existence? Wouldn’t his be just as meaningless and empty?

On the other hand, if we say his existence isn’t meaningless because he infuses it with his own meaning and purpose, why couldn’t that same thing be true of us? Instead of having a purpose given to us, we make our own.

Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience answered the issue this way:

You know, to put it simply, I guess this whole line of argument really just seems like wishful thinking to me. Am I missing something? Do you think the “higher purpose” argument is convincing to many people?

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Published by Nate

170 thoughts on “The Life of a Dog”

  1. “One wonders though, if your daughter’s choice in husbands was natural selection” – I don’t recall de-volution being mentioned in “On the Origin of Species,” but it may have been implied.

    “insanity is genetic: It’s passed from the children to the parents.” – Whether genetic or simply contagious, it definitely flows upward. I was the poster boy for mental health until I became a parent, and the outcome should be obvious to everyone. Can I get an “Amen!” Neuro?

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  2. Nate and Ryan,

    nate said,

    “Ryan,
    I agree that you’ve posed some good questions; however, we need to remember that we’ve discovered a number of links between us and the other animals. While our intelligence (and opposable thumbs) have helped us advance technologically, other humans, like Neanderthals and Denisovans, would likely be as advanced if they hadn’t died off. So we may not be as much of an aberration as it would initially seem. If all the links between us and chimps were still around, we might not feel quite so special. :/” – nate

    but let’s also be aware that although most humans use technology, it was a few who created that technology, and the majority merely benefit from their genius. the vast majority of us are essentially trained monkeys who have been taught how to turn on and turn off certain devices. We can mimic mathematical formulas but the vast majority of people could not derive those formulas from scratch.

    I suggest we’re not as advanced we think we are.

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  4. What’s really frightening, William – Nate’s poop not withstanding – is the thought that if any global disaster struck, and we lost all modern technology, we wouldn’t have the basic survival skills that our ancestors had. We’d have to learn it all over again. How many do you know – without the aid of modern conveniences – can make fire from scratch? Keep food from spoiling without refrigeration? And how many would die before we figured it all out?

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  5. I ran across something, Nate – assuming you’ve put away your poop for the moment – that might interest you, since you and Mike were having a go-’round involving unfulfilled biblical prophecies:

    Faking a prophecy of the city of birth: The 8th century BC Jewish sage ‘Micah’ writes about Assyrian invaders and a series of skirmishes in Samaria. He predicts (quite incorrectly as it turns out) that a ruler will arise from David’s Bethlehem and conquer Assyria.

    What does Micah actually say? The Massoretic (Hebrew) text of Micah 5.2, translated, says:

    “But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah who is little among the clans of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be a ruler in Israel.”

    ‘Bethlehem Ephrathah’ here refers to the clan who are descendants from a man called Bethlehem, the son of Caleb’s second wife Ephrathah referred to in 1 Chronicles – it does not refer to a town at all!

    Undeterred, Matthew subtly alters the quoted text in his own story (2.6):

    “And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means the most insignificant of Judah, for out of you will come forth a ruler in Israel.”

    What Matthew has done is change the reference to a clan, to a reference to a city – but who would notice!

    This is from “‘Matthew,’ A Gospel for Messianic Jews.”

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  6. From the same source:

    Matthew maintains that ‘Isaiah’ had prophesied that Jesus would be born of a virgin:

    “Behold, a virgin will be with child, and will bring forth a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,”
    – Matthew 1.23.

    Matthew’s source is the Septuagint (Isaiah 7.14). But the Greek-speaking translators of this version of Hebrew scripture (prepared in 3rd century BC Alexandria) had slipped up and had translated ‘almah’ (young woman) into the Greek ‘parthenos’ (virgin).

    The Hebrew original says: ‘Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel.’

    Honestly translated, the verse reads: ‘Behold, the young woman has conceived — and bears a son and calls his name Immanuel.’

    The slip did not matter at the time, for in context, Isaiah’s prophecy (set in the 8th century BC but probably written in the 5th century BC) had been given as reassurance to King Ahaz of Judah that his royal line would survive, despite the ongoing siege of Jerusalem by the Syrians. And it did. In other words, the prophecy had nothing to do with events in Judaea eight hundred years into the future!

    Yet upon this doctored verse from Isaiah the deceitful scribe who wrote “Matthew” was to concoct the infamous prophecy that somehow the ancient Jewish text had presaged the miraculous birth of the Christian godman.

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  7. And:

    Faking a reason for the trip to Egypt:

    Only Matthew tells the story of the holy family rushing off to Egypt to escape the murderous intent of Herod the Great. And yet Herod was a firmly established ruler who skillfully stayed on the winning side at Rome over four decades. He also had full-grown male heirs to succeed him.

    The notion that Herod would be “afraid” that the baby of an obscure Nazareth carpenter would supplant him is laughable. According to Luke the blessed trio returned immediately to Nazareth without any concern for the wrath of the Jewish king. But the Egyptian connection is vital to Matthew’s purposes – he has in mind a literary vignette in which Herod plays the part of “Pharaoh”, infants are killed, and “Israel” (=”Jesus”) is rescued.

    Matthew this time quotes the venerable “Hosea”, though without giving his source:

    “So he got up and took along the young child and its mother by night and withdrew into Egypt, and he stayed there until the decease of Herod, for that to be fulfilled which was spoken by Jehovah through his prophet, saying: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.’ ” (2.14,15)

    Perhaps if Matthew had admitted that he was selectively quoting from Hosea 11.1 informed listeners would have known that the reference is not a prophecy at all. Hosea is lamenting the ‘degenerate vine’ of Israel of his own day, unlike the chosen people at an earlier time:

    “When Israel was a boy, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.”

    “Israel” and “son” here mean the Jewish people. In other words, the connection of the Hebrew exodus with Jesus is completely spurious – but it makes a good story.

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  8. Sounds like a great book, arch! I’m familiar with the issues surrounding the flight to Egypt and the virgin birth, of course. And I had read once that the reference to Bethlehem in Micah was a bit suspect as well, but I didn’t know the details of that one. Thanks for sharing!

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  9. “The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails” makes the same points and many more.

    No one seems interested in the fact that the Catholics wrote the New Testament and may have done so based only on the word-of-mouth tales (tradition) of superstitious illiterate peasants. There does seem to be a dearth of provenance for the New Testament, and, worse, it isn’t really clear at all that history supports even the existence of Jesus at all.

    Now mind you, I would like to believe. I grew up with this stuff. Western Civilization is built on the Bible for better or worse. Nevertheless, I find it disturbing that no one seems to be able to address these problems in a credible manner.

    So now, just to keep things interesting, I present a moral / ethic dilemma for the nominally godly — and it’s not trivial because it keeps popping up in modern media:

    We all know the story of Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. OK, OK, maybe not, since you might know them by the more familiar Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They risked their lives and refused to bow down to the golden idol of the king… but what if… what if… instead they had to face the prospect of living and watching their parents tortured and killed off. Or their children (if any). If this sounds familiar, just countenance the latest Star Trek (Into Darkness) where a man kills himself by blowing up a secret Federation facility so his daughter with a rare disease can be cured and live. Or dozens and hundreds of other scenarios played out in Arrow, Person of Interest, etc etc.

    Now then.

    What does God expect of a Christian? And yeah, I already know I John 1 where Christians have an advocate to have their sins forgiven. But really, that’s just a cop out. Would you really divulge national secrets which may cause the death of hundreds (or even millions) just so you can save your mother (son, daughter) — like that drama with parents compromising themselves to save their children (interestingly enough, the President was willing to allow his son to die to keep his oath of office, but his wife, the first lady was not so stalwart. And people died).

    Now given what I see of diversity amongst Christians (I’m not sure there is such a thing as a monolithic ‘Christianity’ — it’s a hodge-podge confused mess of divergent beliefs), I have doubts that anyone could give a good account of themselves based on uncompromising principle — particularly in the case of abortion after a case of rape.

    So is there anyone who would say as a ‘Christian’, “I won’t compromise because it would dishonor God and I will let my loved ones be tortured and die”? Or will everyone to a man cop out? “It’s so much more loving,” you know, like the Corinthians who let a man who committed fornication with his father’s wife (stepmom) stay in the congregation (if you remember, the Apostle Paul had him kicked out on principle).

    Is there an adequate answer?

    Besides the deafening silence, that is.

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  10. If I were a Christian, I would suspect the stock response you would get is, “Well, god let HIS son be tortured and die, what makes you think YOUR child is any better?”

    Of course since I’m not, my own response to that would be that if one is to believe the NT, after three days in the ground, his own kid was alive and well, and within a time period that no one seems to agree on, was back home with daddy, sipping cognac in front of the celestial fireplace. Then too, there’s the whole, he let his son be tortured and die as a sacrifice to himself, after rules that he didn’t have to make, were broken, thing —

    I’m currently re-reading “The Hidden Face of God,” by Friedman, and he makes some very interesting and insightful points. He demonstrates that from Genesis onward, a theme runs through the OT, whereby the god of the Bible gradually steps back and relinquishes control of things to humans, finally disappearing altogether, as in the Book of Esther, where he’s never even mentioned. The NT breaks the continuity of that theme, indicating a different mindset at work entirely. It would be like you’ve just finished reading a book by Charles Dickens, and started a sequel to, say, “A Tale of Two Cities,” but written by Mark Twain – the style is so different, it’s jarring.

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  11. Yes, of course: The Cheshire God, gradually disappearing until what’s left of His grin just disappears, while the caterpillar keeps asking, “Who are You?” The explanation I’ve heard is that the people didn’t want God around and He didn’t much like their sins and violence anyway, so He just became a disappearing deadbeat dad.

    And then…

    This is the foremost thing that bothers me about Christianity: the way it does not resolve to anything concrete.

    What does the bible’s god REALLY want people to do? Does bible-god want people to keep Saturday sabbaths and annual holy days, or does he not? Does bible-god want people to sacrifice animals on altars or does he not? Does bible-god want people to tithe or does he not? Does bible-god want people not to eat pork and shellfish, or does he not care what you eat? Does bible-god want women’s head’s covered or is he okay either way? Should we hate our enemies, like David said (Psalm 139:21-22), or should we love our enemies, like Jesus said (Matt. 5:43-45)?

    The gospel writers, Jesus, and Paul, all played very fast and loose with their treatment of “scripture” (the old testament), interpreting it in ways that often had little if any connection to what the biblical writer they were quoting actually meant to say. They cherry-picked which parts they felt were valid and which parts they felt were not. The same is true today. One of the reasons why there are 42,000+ different sects of Christianity is because people can’t agree about how bible-god wants people to live, worship, and believe.

    Instead of converging, the bible is so contradictory that even people who believe it can all be rationalized can’t agree on the correct way to rationalize it. They wind up coming away with divergent ideas about what bible-god wants. There is no statement about biblical “teaching” that can be made, though it may be backed up with the most compelling Scripturally-supported logic, which, from a different point-of-view, cannot be repudiated as dead wrong in favor of a alternate doctrinal position, which can also be backed up with an equally compelling scripturally-supported logic. Any attempt to rationalize the various rationalizing logics and points-of-view will leave you with absolutely nothing. You will be forced to draw the conclusion that there is no bible-god. But people don’t usually attempt to do this. Instead, they spend their whole lives going around in ideological circles, adopting at one time one point-of-view, at another time another point-of-view from a limited set of more or less contradictory points-of-view. When christians see others doing this, they call it “situational ethics.” When they do the same thing, they don’t even notice.

    Of course, there’s another issue: Where the Bible is fairly clear, Christians just plain choose to be confused because they let their emotions (lusts) get in the way and flat out don’t do what it says because it doesn’t feel right to them with their socially conditioned consciences. The foremost example of this is the movie, “God’s Not Dead” starring Hercules and Clark Kent / Superman from Smallville. Now Scripture is clear about “flee fornication”, “be not unequally yoked with unbelievers”, “know you not it is a shame for a man to have long hair”, but here we are: These upstanding Christians are living together with unbelievers and the men are sporting long hair. I mean, if I were familiar with the Bible and had never heard of Christianity, I’d be really confused. And given that the protagonist of the morality play finally came to realize that his girlfriend of 6 years was manipulating him to do what SHE wanted and believed, you just have to wonder, WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Jeez, it’s enough to make you want to use those darn euphemisms.

    I’m personally finding all of this chaotic and irrational without much of an excuse. Maybe all of Christianity needs to repent, reinvent itself and present solidarity were “we are not divided, all one body we”, but then those cultmeisters may not be able to cash in on the Chri$tian Mu$ic and take the loot to live in mansions and have expensive nice things.

    What??!??!!!

    Is it all about the money?!

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  12. “know you not it is a shame for a man to have long hair”

    If you’re not confused enough, look up a Jewish sect known as the Nazarites, who believed it was a sin for a man to cut his hair.

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  16. Hi Nate, I read this before, but decided not to comment and get involved in the argy bargy that follows. I haven’t read all the comments, but I thought it may be worthwhile now the dust has settled to offer a more charitable explanation of Craig’s comments, not to have an argument, but to offer an alternative.

    1. I think pointing out the possible meaningless of life is worth doing, not because we think human beings are “so magnificent and complex, we simply can’t be an accident!” (after all, one of the strong and most criticised features of the evangelical faith of people like Craig is human sin), but because we are human and we have aspirations and we mostly want our lives to be meaningful.

    2. I don’t think this is in any way an argument for the existence of God, but an argument why the question of the existence of God is worth investigating seriously.

    3. You ask why God’s life isn’t meaningless, but this isn’t a logical consequence of Craig’s statement. The reason why our life is meaningless without God (he is arguing) is because it is short and leads to nothing except other lives which ditto. The reason why life with God is meaningful (he is arguing) is because it goes on and is part of something bigger and lasting. So is God’s life, so his life is meaningful for the same reason.

    Now I’m not sure that I agree with the logic of this (a short happy life has at least some meaning, in the pleasure we have for that time), but I think you have misunderstood the logic.

    4. In the end, the question still is whether it is true or not.

    Thanks.

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  17. You seem to have mellowed a bit, E, since last we tangled met, and seem now to be willing to admit that each coin has two sides. Congrats!

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  18. Thanks Arch, I don’t think I’ve changed, I think I always was willing to let each person hold their own beliefs. I think we tangled more over apparent facts, but I can sometimes be clumsy and pushy. I’m glad if I have come across better, I hope that is the real me. Thanks.

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  19. Hi UnkleE,

    Just a quick question:

    “The reason why life with God is meaningful (he is arguing) is because it goes on and is part of something bigger and lasting. So is God’s life, so his life is meaningful for the same reason.”

    Don’t really agree with this part – just because something is eternal doesn’t make it meaningful.

    While part of something bigger and lasting would imply that God will need to create things to be meaningful. By Himself His own life would have no meaning as well.

    So going by this logic I would argue that Nate’s assertion still stands.

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  20. Hi Powell, I guess it depends on your definition of meaningful, something neither Craig nor Nate nor I have done (as far as I am aware). But giving eternal life to many billions of people seems sort of meaningful to me.

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