Grieving atheists

@AtheistRepublicWhat is the best thing to say to an atheist who is grieving the loss of a loved one?  

That's a tricky question, and there's more than one way to broach the answer:

i) Is this one atheist taking to another atheist, or a Christian talking to an atheist?

ii) Are the Christian and the atheist on friendly terms?

iii) Is the atheist expecting a word of comfort from the Christian?

iv) There's the danger that the atheist will view the Christian as exploiting the situation. But there are ways to guide the discussion. 

v) It depends on the mood the atheist is in. 

vi) What if atheism has no comforting answer to give in that situation? What if there's no comfort answer to give the atheist? What if the honest answer will be hopeless and depressing? Are you forbidden to give a frank answer if that's depressing and despairing? If you're not allowed to give an atheist honest atheist answers to existential questions, what does that say about atheism when it comes to the issues in life that ultimately matter? 

vii) Instead of attempting to encourage the atheist, supposed a Christian begins with questions. Sometimes it's more effective to asking probing, leading questions rather than spoonfeed him the right answers. That enables him to think it through for himself. Asked him how he feels about the situation. What did the person mean to him? How is his death a personal loss? 

From there the conversation might gravitate to what, if anything, makes the life of the dearly departed important. Was his life important because it was important to decedent or important to others? 

What, if anything, makes human lives important? What if the dearly departed never existed? What difference would that ultimately make? Are we just dandelion puffs blown by the wind? Most never germinate, and those that do merely produce a new generation of dandelion puffs, swaying in the breeze on a dry grassy, forgettable hillside? Repetition for repetition's sake. 

viii) Depending on how the conversation goes, a Christian can ask the atheist if there's a point of unresolvable tension between how the bereaved misses and values his lost loved one and the intrinsic significance of his lost loved one if atheism is true. And if there's a point of unresolvable tension, what gives? Should we cling to the nihilistic consequences  of atheism, or cling to the significance of human lives? If both can't be true, which outlook should take precedence? What's our staring-point? 

If naturalistic evolution is true, then we cherish certain experiences, not because they have intrinsic value, but because natural selection brainwashed us to project illusory value on things with no inherent value inasmuch as that confers a survival advantage on the species. We're the product of mindless, amoral psychological conditioning. 

ix) A standard atheist response is that they continue to live in our hearts and memories. But that's a cheat. They no longer consciously participate in life and love and memory. Your fond memories can't be a substitute for their personal experience. They're gone. 

x) I'm not suggesting Christians always have happy answers. Unless you're a universalist, some stories have bad endings. There is, though, a fundamental difference between hope for some and hope for none. 

In addition, a world of universal oblivion, where all choices good or ill are erased at high tide, is far worse than a moral universe in which some choices have enduring consequences. 

What's the goal of human existence?

1. What is the goal of human existence? According to traditional Catholic theology, the goal is the Beatific vision:

1023 Those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ. They are like God for ever, for they "see him as he is," face to face (1 Jn 3:2; cf. 1 Cor 13:12; Rev 22:4)…these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.

But there are problems with that claim:

i) The setting is heaven or the intermediate state rather than the final state. So can an interim experience be the goal of human existence? How can a temporary experience which will eventually lie in the past be the goal of human existence? 

ii) There's no relationship between the claim and the prooftexts. The prooftexts don't say or imply that the saints will see  the divine essence with an intuitive vision.

iii) It's contradictory to say the saints will see God face to face without the mediation of any creature. God in himself has no face. God has no appearance. He's not a physical being. He can manifest himself, but he does so through symbolic physical media or symbolic dreams and visions. The saints could see God face-to-face in the way Isaiah (Isa 6) and Daniel (Dan 7) had a vision of God like a human king on a throne. 

iv) Of course, there's a sense in which the saints can see God face-to-face in the person of Jesus, as God Incarnate. 

2. What about the evangelical perspective? If you ask evangelicals what's the first thing they want to see or do when they get to heaven, they will give different answers. 

i) Some will say they look forward to seeing their departed loves ones. For them, the joy of heaven is primarily a family reunion between loved ones separated by death. I think that's the more candid answer. (This assumes your late relatives died in Christ.)

ii) The pious answer is that the first thing Christians want to see is Jesus when they die. In some cases that's a sincere answer, but in some cases I suspect they say that because they think that's what they're supposed to say or feel. 

But is that the goal of human existence? Is Jesus a means to an end or an end in himself, redemptively speaking? He's the Savior, but once we complete the pilgrimage, have we crossed that bridge? 

Likewise, if you meet Jesus when you die, then what? is there something special about being in the presence of Jesus? The disciples were often in his company day and night for weeks or months. But for the most part it wasn't some conspicuously numinous experience. There was the Transfiguration. Walking on water. But in general, to be in the physical presence of Jesus wasn't a source of ecstasy. 

Even in Scripture, encounters with Jesus take two different forms. One form is outwardly human and down-to-earth. The other form is an overwhelming Christophany. 

What do you do for eternity after you meet Jesus? Do the saints hang out with Jesus every day? If so, doing what?

iii) Another answer might be to see the glories of heaven. But many Christians undergo psychological damage in this life. In their case, the first thing they need isn't something spectacular, but emotional healing. Perhaps encountering Jesus will be restorative. And a family reunion will be restorative to some degree. 

It might be a two-stage process. The first stage is emotional healing. After that you're ready for the glories of heaven. 

3. Another cliche is ask God all your questions. Theological questions. Or existential questions what why God allowed certain tragedies or disappointments to darken your life or the lives of your loved ones. 

4. Humans are fundamentally earthlings, and I think we find the fulfillment of our basic needs and desires in natural goods. That doesn't mean the natural realm is sufficient. By itself, the natural realm is thin and one-dimensional. It requires the 3D depth of the supernatural realm to fill it out and give it ultimate meaning. But I don't think supernatural experiences are the essence of what makes human life satisfying. Down-to-earth goods are more central to the kind of creatures God made us to be. 

This also goes to the distinction between heaven or the intermediate state and the new earth or the final state. In this life, many Christians experience deprivations. Things they lost that made life enjoyable and worthwhile, as well as basic physical and emotional needs that went unmet in this life. In the world to come, their neglected physical and emotional needs will be provided for.

The Death of Ivan Ilych

One of the supreme works of Christian fiction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfIM-L6TzHo&t=690s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c6ODLAgGoE

"Death is what gives life meaning"

@SecularOutpost

Death is what gives life meaning.

The fact that life can be lost is what makes life meaningful.

It’s the risk of loss of one’s own life that gives the other things meaning.

https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost/status/1236376219597168640

1. You can file this under: if you want a shallow answer to an existential question, ask an atheist.  

Atheists face a dilemma of their own making. How do they play the losing hand they dealt themselves? Some of them are more forthright about the consequences. By contrast, Jeff's strategy is to make a virtue of necessity.  

Why I'm still a Christian

I mentioned a while back that there's an overemphasis on Christian conversion testimonies. Why these can be edifying to read, what's more useful is to read follow-up testimonies of why someone is still a Christian after 50 years, give or take. Recently I ran that question by some Christian thinkers who are approaching the end of their pilgrimage. The answers for interesting but off-the-record. Then one of them asked me how I'd answer my own question. So, for what it's worth, here's the question and my own answer:

Q. Have you written anything about why you're a Christian at this stage of life? As you know, there's a testimonial genre about how people became Christian in their teens/twenties or how they personally embraced the faith they were raised in at that time of life, but that's frozen in the past. At that age their reasons will be thinner. Over a lifetime, the reasons may evolve or change or be augmented or replaced with deeper reasons. Approaching the end of life, a Christian thinker has thicker reasons for his faith, due to all the life-experience under his belt, study, reflection, and interaction with others. 

A. There's why I became a Christian and then there's why I'm still a Christian. I've been a Christian for 44 years. I became a Christian at 16.

I grew up in a moderately Christian home. My father was intellectual, but agnostic and aloof. My mother was a P.K., pious, but religiously rootless when I was growing up. My grandmother, who lived in town until I started junior high, was the most devout. I adored her, but she wasn't intellectual, so her faith wasn't a reason for me to believe . My Aunt Grace was the best educated Christian I knew at that time, but she was more scholarly than analytical. And we didn't see her that often. My uncle Fred, who was Dean of Education at Anderson U, was a closet apostate. 

I never attended a fundamentalist church. We attended mainline denominations. No doctrinal preaching.

When I came of age around 13, I began to think about death. Not because I expected to die anytime soon, but I was beginning to think about what I'd do with the rest of my life as an adult. And since I was mortal, it made sense to mentally begin at the end and work back from there. At the time I was an atheist. However, it seemed to me that if we pass into oblivion when we die, then life is unimportant. It made me feel alienated from the world.

At that age I didn't have a philosophically astute argument for my intuition, but over the years I've definitely firmed up my view that atheism is a euphemism for moral and existential nihilism. Indeed, one of my pastimes is to collect atheists who admit that.

That didn't make me a Christian, but it did mean I've never been able to consider atheism as a viable fallback option. At one end, my Christianity begins with atheism. That's the backstop. That's just not a tenable alternative. 

I became a Christian at 16 simply by reading the Bible, beginning with Matthew. That was it. Apologetics came later. I backed into apologetics, not to answer my own questions, but to advise others.

As a new Christian it became quickly apparent that I could ask questions the people I knew couldn't answer, so I'd have to find my own answers.

Although I'm cerebral, I'm naturally an intellectual drifter. I coasted through public school on raw talent. I was never studious. 

Partly because I found public school boring. For instance, I was probably mathematically gifted, but they didn't know what to do with gifted students. They just taught techniques for solving problems, whereas I ignored the textbook and toyed with equations until they balanced out in my head. The teacher didn't approve.

Some guys excel academically because they have a competitive streak. I don't. I always thought living to beat the competition was a stupid goal in life. Until I became a Christian, I was an intellectually lazy, indifferent student. It took a sense of Christian duty to galvanize my abilities.

Theologically, I'm primarily interested in exegetical and philosophical theology. Intellectual challenges to Christianity have never been the chink in my armor. I've read all the best atheists. 

In addition, I've invested a great amount of  time in evidence for Christianity as well as evidence refuting naturalism, including neglected lines of evidence. 

As you know, Christian faith has several components. One is belief or conviction, grounded in evidence. My faith is pretty invulnerable in that respect, although I'm only human, so I don't claim to be indestructible.

Where I'm vulnerable is the emotional problem of evil. The way to harm me is through harming those I care about. My three closest, most devout relatives suffered the most. 

I think some Christians lose their faith, not because they cease to believe in God's existence, but God's benevolence. They feel God betrayed them or betrayed those they loved. If you doubt God's goodness, then his existence is secondary. 

However, I'm a presuppositional Christian and an existential Christian. I think God is the source of meaning, math, modality, morality, and logic, as well as creation. On that front alone, naturalism is not an option.

In addition, I've never been a truth for truth's sake, follow the evidence wherever it leads thinker. That bifurcates the good and the true. But both are necessary. Without truth, goodness is illusory; without goodness, truth is worthless. 

Watching what happened to my closest relatives was emotionally damaging to my faith, but damaged faith is worth clinging to. We can't live without hope.

So between the positive evidence for Christianity, as well as the evidence for the falsity of naturalism, I remain a Christian. Atheism is repellent, and the other religious offerings aren't serious rivals. 

I should add that I've had a number of uncanny experiences over the years (as well as witnessing like phenomena with some of my relatives), so it's not confined to abstract public evidence. 

Living for the moment

Arguing against atheism can pose a bit of a dilemma for a Christian philosopher or apologist. You're having to probe the consequences of a false position. A counterfactual critique. If atheism were true, these would be the consequences (per impossibile counterfactuals and reductio ad absurdum conditionals). If, however, atheism is false, then it's unnatural to have a consistently atheistic outlook. It takes an effort of the imagination to project yourself or immerse yourself into that mindset and take it seriously. To the extent, moreover, that atheism is depressing, there's a disincentive for atheists to take their own position as seriously as they ought. 

Some atheists honestly admit that they dread the prospect of personal oblivion when they die. But other atheists say, or at least feign, no fear of death. Indeed, some assert that the brevity of life and finality of death are what makes life precious. An unrepeatable opportunity. 

Of course, from a Christian standpoint, human beings don't face oblivion when they die. So a Christian apologist is having to explore the consequences of an unreal outcome. And it can be a challenge to fully enter into that artificial perspective. 

Some atheists maintain that our ultimate oblivion has no bearing on what makes life significant, important, or meaningful. What matters is what we do in-between. 

Let's take a comparison. Suppose a 20-year-old goes to the doctor for an unrelated ailment. After some routines diagnostics, he finds out that he has an inoperable brain aneurism. He feels normal. Feels healthy. But he could drop death tomorrow. He won't have a normal lifespan, and he's liable to die sooner rather than later. So that suddenly interjects into his outlook on life a combination of uncertainty and inevitability. He is fated to die young. He has a ticking timebomb in his head. It can detonate at any time, and it will explode. 

Or suppose he's diagnosed with a genetic defect which will become a degenerative illness, like MS, ALS, Parkinson's, or Huntington's disease. At the moment he's healthy and asymptomatic. He has several good years ahead of time.

But in both cases, a dire future casts a baleful shadow on the present. Even though he's healthy now, he knows that he's doomed, and his pitiless foreknowledge can't help but change his outlook on life. Unlike animals, humans psychologically occupy past and future as well as the present. What we think awaits us powerfully affects our capacity for happiness at present. Given a choice, we'd rather be miserable at present but with a happy future than be happy at present but with a miserable future. We'd trade a present good for a future good. And that's not irrational. That's because the present will soon be gone. We can't hold onto the present. It is constantly slipping away. But as long as we last, we will always have the future–for better or worse. When it comes to the value of life, we view the present as an backward extension of the future rather than the future as a forward extension of the present. 

Life under the sun

Maybe one way of looking at Ecclesiastes is that Solomon is painting a picture of fallen life in a fallen world, that is, life "under the sun".

Not only are human beings fallen, but the whole of creation is fallen. For example, Eccl 3:20 seems to reflect Gen 3:19. We're but dust returning to dust. We live fallen lives in a fallen world. Like nuclear radiation from Chernobyl, the fallout from the fall contaminates the whole world.

Likewise hebel could mean several different things among which is, of course, breath. The brevity of breath. God breathed life into us. We who are earthen vessels. Animated clay. But this "breath" of life - our lives - will expire as quickly as it's inspired. Breathe in, breathe out, and it's all over.

Ecclesiastes is a picture of humans "groaning" (as Paul would put it) along with the whole of creation. Groaning over how fleeting everything is. Groaning over how toilsome our labors are. Groaning over our cryptic, Sphinx-like world. Groaning over the futility of life. And so on and so forth.

This groaning arguably points to a longing in the human heart. A longing for eternity, which God himself has placed in our hearts (Eccl 3:11). A longing for life "under the sun" to end. A longing for something better that doesn't wear down or wear out but lasts forever. Something which this world can't fulfill. Only the world to come (eternity) can satisfy.

As an aside, I've always appreciated Ecclesiastes for its realism. It doesn't pull punches. It tells it like it is. It's the antidote to Hallmark card Christianity.

Does God have a purpose in life?

On a theistic view, there is no objective purpose of *God’s* life: there is no ‘Super-God’ to give God purpose in God’s life. Poor God has to choose His own purpose in life. @RFupdates is simply pushing the problem back a step. https://t.co/kTrneRRGVM

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) October 27, 2019

@SecularOutpost

 On a theistic view, there is no objective purpose of God’s life: there is no ‘Super-God’ to give God purpose in God’s life. Poor God has to choose His own purpose in life. @RFupdates is simply pushing the problem back a step.

This is Jeff Lowder's attempt to be clever and turn tables on the argument. But his arguments aren't improving with age. It's such a confused, and simplistic riposte. 

1. On the face of it, Jeff is laboring to mount an argument from analogy. Either the principle holds true in both cases or not at all. But what could that mean?

2. Human beings are contingent, needy creatures. Physically dependent on their environment. For instance, we can only survive and thrive within a very narrow temperature range.

In addition, we're social creatures with emotional needs. Including the need to touch and be touched by other human beings. 

Human beings are not self-contained units whose needs are internally supplied and satisfied. In the nature of the case we require things outside ourselves to provide for our emotional needs and personal fulfillment. 

3. How is that supposed to be comparable to God? A self-contained being who is complete in himself? An being who needs nothing outside himself to supplement himself? A timeless agent who has no unrealized potential. No longings. No impediments. 

4. To say humans need to have a purpose in life doesn't imply that God needs to have a purpose in life, as if God needs something to give his life direction or satisfaction from one day to the next. In classical theism, God isn't that kind of being. 

5. In addition, while the debate is typically framed in terms of what makes life "meaningful," there's more than one concept in play:

There's the question of what, if anything, makes an individual life important. That's distinct from personal fulfillment. Your life can be important even if you're unfulfilled or dissatisfied. 

Is life worthwhile? That's ambiguous. In one respect life is potentially worthwhile, but some people treat the gift of life as worthless because they have nothing adequate to live for. 

6. Is immortality a necessary condition for life to be important? 

7. What makes life fulfilling? What ought to make life fulfilling? If I lose everything I care about, is that fulfilling?

And if what I care about is merely the way my brain was wired by a mechanical process without wisdom or benevolence, is that meaningful? Or is that hollow and arbitrary? 

What makes anything good? Is it just an illusion we project onto an indifferent reality? 

Infinite resignation

Here is an interview with Eugene Thacker.

Thacker is an anti-human and nihilist philosopher. He originally comes from a comparative literature background.

Moreover his work In the Dust of this Planet has influenced the writers for the television series True Detective, a series about a pair of detectives chasing a serial killer across many years, a series which is itself awash in nihilism, especially Matthew McConaughey's character. In this respect, Thacker is kindred spirit to David Benatar (Better to Have Never Been?) and Jim Crawford (Confessions of an Antinatalist).

Three responses to evil

Three existential responses to evil, according to Os Guinness:

Why I'm a Christian

At approximately 51 mins., John Lennox tells a moving story: