← Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Sam. All right, welcome back to our number two of my conversation with Tim Barnett. And as you recall from the last hour, we were right in the middle of a fascinating analysis of the discussion that I had a few weeks ago, aired, you know, I guess 10 days ago. Now, when you're watching this on the Diary of a CEO, the second most viewed podcast in the world, it's my understanding, and I was engaging with atheists and a kind of an Eastern mystic psychiatrist type. Dr. K. Alex O' Connor was the atheist. And of course, the host is Stephen Bartlett. So we're gonna pick up kinda where we left off him in the last hour when we were talking.
- [01:13]
B
Do you have a lived experience of something called purpose?
- [01:18]
C
Oh, well, look, I think purpose is having some kind of reason to act or be. Yeah. And I certainly subjectively am motivated to do things. I think everybody is. Otherwise you literally wouldn't be able to do anything. But it's a bit foggy to me, what, psychologically speaking, on a personal level, that fundamental motivation actually is, wouldn't purpose.
- [01:35]
A
Be more the goal rather than the reason to act, what you're trying to accomplish?
- [01:40]
B
So, Greg, you jumped in there and you made that comment, and they kind of moved on just because the nature of the discussion. What was your point there?
- [01:52]
A
As I recall, I was trying to get a clarification on the goal and the reason you pursue the goal. Okay. And this is where I think I was trying to bring clarity to the discussion that we were supposed to be having the whole time. But we got off on tangents quite a bit, and therefore I didn't get into a lot of that. And sometimes when I tried to, I kind of got squeezed out, or I couldn't find a polite way of interacting, intervening in the discussion. But on my take, meaning comes first. What is the. The meaning that you're here, the reason why you're. Why you're here, and then that begins to then dictate or inform at least the purposes that match the meaning. And if you're involved in purpose, purposes that don't match the meaning, that's a mismatch. It doesn't seem to work out. Maybe this goes back to the paperclip illustration that we talked about, and that is that we were made for certain, we were given meaning, and that's our nature, the kind of creatures we are, I think that dictates our meaning. And then from that flow, the particular objective purposes. And my questioning here was just to try to get clarity on that, because it was almost as if the discussion, especially between Dr. K and, and Alex, their contribution did not take meaning into consideration at all. It was all utilitarian. What are the things that I could do that feel good? And he mentioned Alex did, in the subjective sense. Well, there's nothing wrong about being concerned with that. But notice this is the beginning and the end for them early on. My point was to make the distinction between objective and subjective. Either we're made for a purpose, we have a meaning, we're made with meaning for a purpose, or not. If we are, we got a maker. If there's no maker, there's no objective meaning, then purpose is whatever. And it turns out this is what they were talking about the whole time. They were just talking about the whatever. But most of the time, when they were talking about virtually always the whatever, it was always something kind of noble. Yeah, the way people make people feel better and happier with their lives. Well, look, you know, IDI Amin and Pol Pot and Mao Zedong and Lenin, they all had meaning in their lives because they were all doing. They had purpose they were pursuing. And as far as any of us could tell, they were very satisfied because they kept doing the things they were doing, but it was bereft from any transcendent purpose. There was no. They all denied that, which allowed them to do whatever they wanted. All right, but nobody would say, well, that's a legitimate purpose for your life because it satisfy you. Because they're going to implicitly make moral assessments on that which their worldviews do not give them the appropriate liberty to do. That makes no sense in their world, either of their worldviews, for different reasons, either the atheists or the. The Maya. Everything's illusion but the one true consciousness, reality, monistic reality of God. And yet nevertheless, even focusing in on simply finding things that make you feel like you're living purposefully, they're not addressing whether those things are right. In fact, I don't know if we're going to talk about it or not, but Dr. K actually says at one point, there is no right and wrong here, no good and bad. And I was amiss for not climbing on that, saying, hold. Okay, wait a minute. Hold the. Yes. Right. Wait a minute. Could you say that again? I just want to make sure that nobody misses this because this is part of your worldview and I just want us all to be clear on what you're saying. I didn't do that. And like I said, fog of war, it's hard to know when to get in and when not to. But nevertheless, that's part of the Problem of their views.
- [06:12]
B
So on our view, morality and meaning are directly related to each other.
- [06:18]
A
Yes.
- [06:18]
B
But what they're trying to do is completely separate them from each other.
- [06:22]
A
It's not just try to separate it. Their worldview has no grounds for objective moral distinctions. And again, I'm not criticizing them. I'm observing their worldview. And Alex would admit that right out. Yeah. It didn't come up with Dr. K directly like that. Although there was this statement, there's no right, there's no wrong. Don't get your mind caught up in that thinking. And that I missed that opportunity. But at least that he was kind of showing us, in a certain sense, as philosophical true colors at that point. Most of the time, though, it all sounded very good because his utilitarian approach to the issue of lack of purpose. Yeah. Sounded great because it worked in a clinical environment to help people feel like they had purpose and therefore maybe abandon their suicidal ideations or something like that.
- [07:18]
C
Yeah.
- [07:18]
B
Now, you mentioned a moment ago that the conversation did get a little sidetracked between Alex and Dr. K. I think Stephen tried to bring it back. And he described actually two of his friends who had two different experiences. Both experienced meaninglessness in some sense. One became a Christian. Let's talk. Let's watch the video and then we'll talk about it.
- [07:41]
A
Sounds good.
- [07:42]
D
Just wanted to add something in here. So I. I think part of the reason I've also convened you guys to have this conversation today is because I've got several people in my life that are. I can. I can literally lay out the Personas. But I've got one particular friend who's 35. Between 35 and 40 years old, living in Dubai, living in a glass box. Freelance. So he wakes up in the morning, his bed is there. He then works there, then goes back to bed. He's single, no kids in his life at the moment. He said to me that he can't get out of bed anymore. He feels stuck. And then about six months after, out of the blue, it turns out, without telling any of us, and we're his best friends, he's flown to America, he's been baptized, he's a Christian. Suddenly his life has purpose and meaning again. He's a completely different person. And this individual, never, ever he would be the last person that you'd think would be religious. Got another friend, female, just over 30 years old, doesn't have kids, freelance, works at. When I asked her what her meaning and purpose in life, she said to me, she wants to get to having 200 plants. Plants she can water. She names all of them. She then told me a week after she's in therapy because she feels lost and stuck in life. And so much of the central point, why I've been motivated to have this conversation is it appears to me, and I haven't nailed this hypothesis yet, that freedom, independence, be your own boss. The decline in people having children, the glamorization of. As you said at the very beginning, you know, do it yourself, do it your way is failing people in some way. And that actually the push for independence was in some way some kind of lie. I actually also went through the same new atheist baptism.
- [09:20]
B
All right, Greg, there's kind of two situations there.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah.
- [09:24]
B
One person feels meaningless in Dubai friend of his, and he actually says, last person you think would become a Christian or religious ends up flying to the US Gets baptized. Now feels purposeful, meaningful. This other person has. I mean, they want to just collect plants.
- [09:42]
A
Right.
- [09:42]
B
And I think a lot of people watching, I know in my own heart when I heard that, I thought, ah, collect plants and names them. And then he follows up with, now she's in therapy. Like, she needs, she needs help in finding meaning.
- [09:56]
A
Yeah.
- [09:56]
B
What's, like, what, what do you think's happening here?
- [09:58]
A
It is, it's an interesting comparison for, for, for you. And we know exactly what's going on there. It's not a mystery. I think part of. And it's hard to tell with Stephen. Stephen, I think, is a genuine. He's genuinely curious, especially in this issue when he says he's an agnostic like Alex, I think he's right, but Alex isn't. Okay. He is really on the fence and he's just trying to figure things out. And so he's talking about these experiences. It's interesting. At first, it almost sounds like he's going to say, this guy became a critic and he found meaning and this gal found meaning in her plants. But it doesn't turn out that way because it's not just a matter of finding something. And that's kind of what Dr. K was suggesting. You find something, find something. Just find something. Make sure it has this, this, this quality. Clinically, we know that works. And he's always making reference to the science, but he's just talking about the clinical analysis. This seems to be productive. But now, as Stephen is continuing, it turns a corner because you have a person then, and I would say it didn't just find some religious thing, because now I got religion. No, they found Christ. They found the truth. And that's why their life became orderly in the proper way. They're ordering it to God and there's a transformation. I did talk about this more extensively in the original, but I don't know how much got edited out. I can't recall between them. But there is a unique characteristic about people becoming Christians. The transformation. If anybody is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away, new things have come. Now the skeptic will say, well, that's true of every religion. And my response is, no, it's not. It's very easy to wave that particular wand and say, well, all religions have their people who have radical life changes in some sense. I can find incidents with people who actually have a life change in some religion. But the character in terms of Christianity is radical and it's transformative across the Christian experience. Now, I understand there are people who go to church for a while, then they drift away and nothing happens but what seemed. And there was some appeal to this. Well, there's an attrition rate, right? So now what? Well, of course there's attrition rate, we understand that. But for those who, and this maybe sounds self serving, genuinely connect with Christ, it's durable and it's transformative and you can actually see the difference. And everybody listening to this podcast knows exactly what I'm talking about. Because, you know, people who went through this and radically transformed lives and everything's different. And it isn't just that things got better, because for many people who became Christians in virtue of their Christianity, things got lots worse for them. Think of Christians in Muslim countries, for example, you know, and so you can't just pass it off there they found something that makes them feel good because this isn't the nature of the Christian experience. And it's not only that individual lives get transformed in radical ways, but when lots of those individual lives get transformed at the same time, the culture changes. And historians routinely acknowledge that the Wesleyan Revival in the late 18th and early 19th century transformed England so much that it avoided a Revolutionary war that France faced. All right, and so, wow, that's amazing. And that's where William Wilberforce was a consequence of that early 19th century. And William Wilberforce almost single handedly, certainly the spearhead ended slavery in the United Kingdom, the slave trade and then slavery. And of course, the same thing was happening in the States for the same reason, because of their Christian convictions and their understanding of the way God made the world. So what I'm saying here is you can always point to individual lives that are changed by kind of religious endeavor. But there's something absolutely unique across the board about the Christian experience. And again, that sounds self serving, but this is quantifiable. And I think this is what was happening with the friend in Dubai, Steven's friend in Dubai. Then he had this other person that gave her life to her plants. And where does she end up? She ended up in therapy.
- [14:50]
B
Yeah.
- [14:51]
A
That's telling. Yeah.
- [14:53]
B
Now, Alex is going to go on. In the clip we're going to watch next, he's going to describe here is how you can find purpose. He's going to talk about finding a task and. But it's got to be a task more than just collecting plants. I think we can all see that. And so he's going to talk about what this task needs to entail. Let's look at the.
- [15:13]
C
Just wanted to be curious, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think people need tasks. I think that purpose is intimately tied up with the idea of task to fulfill. That's why people tend to find meaning in projects which are not completed yet. In fact, Pascal writes quite compellingly about this when he writes about boredom. And he imagines a gambler, someone who enjoys gambling, and says, well, why is this person gambling? Because they're doing this thing with the chance of winning some money. Okay, so why don't you just give them the money? Just take the gambler and give him all the money that he could possibly receive without playing the game and he won't be very fulfilled, even though he's getting ostensibly what he was trying to get. No, no, that wouldn't be fulfilling because he enjoys the gambling. Okay, says Pascal, then let him play the game, but make it such that he'll never actually win the money, but he gets to keep playing the game. And he's not going to be very fulfilled by that either. That's also going to be completely pointless. And so Pascal noticed that what you kind of need to avoid boredom and I suppose to imbue your life with purpose, at least in this analogy, is some kind of task to fulfill that you haven't fulfilled yet, that you don't know if you're going to fulfill, that you believe will bring you fulfillment when you get it, but you haven't got it yet. That's why I think religion does it really well, because it's the definition of something which you don't have now, which you can strive for, which when you get, you believe will be fulfilling.
- [16:40]
B
All right, so there's a couple things there. He says that's why religion fits this Right. Cause that's. By definition, you never quite get to the end there. You never quite get fulfilled. I think there's a problem with that. I want to get your thoughts on it. But the way he describes his task that you never quite. To me, it's like dangling that carrot, you know, that you never. It's just out of reach. You're always going after, but you can never achieve. Is that all we got to do is find a task like that?
- [17:11]
A
Well, it's very interesting. He's quoting Pascal here. Very clever, because Pascal is a Christian mystic, a very significant player in Christian. He's written a piece called Pensee, which means thoughts. And these are reflections on the world and life, whatever, and they really function as evidences for the truth of Christianity. But he's very thoughtful. And so he's drawing on Pascal, which is kind of interesting. He's quoting our guy, but he's making a secular point, and he's drawing. See, Pascal didn't believe the application that Alex is making. Sure. Just find something that you're working to do and hope in the completion of it, you'll have satisfaction. That wasn't Pascal's purpose or his view. In fact, I think the mere satisfaction goal. Pascal called licking the dirt. Licking, or maybe licking the earth, something like that. But notice what Alex is doing is he's giving a very utilitarian kind of response. He's saying, well, we've noticed these things about people, and there's got to be a couple of things in order in a certain way, or else it's not going to be. And he used the word meaningful. All right, well, there's some truth to that. If you can order things in a certain way, this is the utility of it, then maybe you will be satisfied. But it's interesting when people do that, even when they have very, very noble goals or very significant goals, they still are aware that this isn't it. So I had a close friend and roommate, in fact, many, many years ago, whose brother qualified for the Olympics as a diver. And when he qualified and he was favored for a medal, he did really poorly. And the reason he did poorly is when he got his life's goal, going to the Olympics, it turned out to be so empty to him that he couldn't perform well. And it turns out that was one of the things that brought him to Christ. But the Olympics are a good example. And it's. This is like, a lot of people don't know this, but there are so many emotional problems for Olympic gold medalists after the Olympics are over because they realize this thing, which Alex is saying, what they need to do to have a feeling of meaning and purpose in their life, it doesn't ultimately satisfy. And this, by the way, is. It's. It's kind of like a. It's not. Profound observation.
- [19:58]
B
No, we all. We all know this. Yeah.
- [20:00]
A
We see this everywhere. And so it's not. It can't just be that utilitarian thing that he's describing. It's got to be something more than that. And when people set very high goals and then accomplish those goals, there's still this question. And by the way, on a personal note, I don't imagine Stephen's watching this, but I think that's where Stephen's at. Stephen is radically successful. Yeah. Radically successful. I read an article about him in Forbes magazine, and this whole project. Yeah. Amazing. But what is he doing a show on meaning and purpose for himself?
- [20:37]
C
Sure.
- [20:38]
A
He says that I'm so taken with this because I'm trying to figure it out.
- [20:42]
D
Yeah.
- [20:43]
A
So obviously this success isn't enough for him. And I think that's really telling. Yeah. Now, when it comes to meaning and purpose, these are. These. These are words that sound synonymous to some people. And in the conversation, people are using these words in different ways or maybe even mixing them up.
- [21:03]
C
Yeah.
- [21:03]
A
In my view. I think we've already talked about this. That meaning is first and purpose flows for meaning. Yeah. If you don't know what your meaning is, then you're going to do just. You're not going to know what purposeful actions satisfy, what life is all about. And so then the only thing you're left with is purposes, subjectively determined purposes. Well, this feels good in the moment. Let's try this. And then there are standard purposes. Be successful, make a lot of money, get married, have kids, get a beautiful wife or whatever, husband and whatever. But it turns out that people realize that's not enough. That's not it. Yeah. And this drives them to despair, which is exactly what we're talking about. So this solution that Alex is talking about is not adequate. And we know it.
- [21:56]
B
And it fits with your broad strategy. He's offering purely subjective meaning and purpose.
- [22:04]
A
Right.
- [22:05]
B
And none of these are going to be adequate. Now, I want to. I want to continue on with this. There's another clip here. Want to take a look at where Alex actually tries to explain meaning in terms of evolution?
- [22:18]
A
Okay. Oh, yeah.
- [22:19]
B
And so I want to get your thoughts on this.
- [22:21]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [22:21]
B
Let's take a look.
- [22:22]
C
I'm saying something a bit different. What I was going to go on to say is to. Is to point out that. And bear in mind this comes from a part of Pascal's Pensee which is titled Man Without God. You know, he goes on to discuss man with God, but I look at the development of the human species and our particular proclivities. Lewis makes this argument from desire that you mentioned. Why do we have a desire for food? Well, because there is actually food to have. The evolutionary biologist says the reason that we develop hunger is because those who didn't died. And if you don't have some sense of hunger, you're not going to seek out food and you will die. And so it just so happens that those who develop this feeling of hunger will be more likely to survive. And therefore hunger is a part of our human condition. Well, such is meaning if you have two isolated communities, one of whom says, I just don't care. Whatever, man. No interest in having children. No interest in building societies, legal systems, constitutions, whatever the case, moral systems, none of that. They just don't care. Nihilists. They're not even gonna have children. That society will die out. Another society, which just so happens to perhaps delusion, like in an exercise of delusion, just develop this inexplicable feeling. And of course, this evolves over time and starts with essentially the kind of random mutation of ideas that works on the genetic level. In evolution, they call it memetics when it's ideas rather than genes. The society which just ends up developing this idea that. Actually, I can't quite explain why, but I just have this drive towards building a society and engaging in legal justice and moral systems and kind of. They're just more likely to survive. So we end up with this. With this sense, this drive within us that we can't explain and yet we have.
- [24:03]
B
All right, Greg. We got a drive within us that has evolved the sense that comes just through a process of evolutionary ideas, not genes, mimetics.
- [24:15]
A
So let me say the phrase, because I don't want to lose this, okay? A random mutation of ideas that works on a genetic level. That was his exact words, a random mutation of ideas. Now, you could talk about mutation ideas in a very kind of general sense. Yeah, well, you know, people had these ideas and that morphed, like freedom and dignity or whatever, Liberty and freedom, French Revolution morphed into this crazy thing which was the French Revolution. Everybody lost their head. You know, you can have that. Well, you could talk about that as like a mutation of ideas, but he's not talking about some ideas. Getting changed into something else. He's talking about a mutation that is genetic. And he says it on a genetic level. Now you have just such a classic example of a category error. In other words, you're asking questions around or ascribing kind of qualities to something that it's not appropriate to. To ascribe to that thing. So if I said, Tim, let me tell you what the color blue sounds like. You say, wait a. Colors don't have sounds. That's not what colors are. Right. So I'm talking about. I'm confusing categories. And so now he's talking about ideas that are the result of evolution. And this is the problem with what he's just said. Yeah. And you know, I say this respectfully, but Alex, and people like Alex get away with this all the time in their explanation of things. They just wave this magic wand. And I'm choosing my words advisedly here. It's like a magic wand to them. They wave the magic wand of evolution and this explains away everything. Okay, so let me get more precise about this problem. He's. He's trying to be dismissive of our hunger.
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B
Yeah.
- [26:23]
A
Psychological hunger. Our soul. Ish hunger. Our conscious hunger for meaning and significance. Yeah. So I offer Lewis's argument from desire. Well, this is a hunger like other hungers that have satisfaction. Yeah.
- [26:39]
B
There's a reality of food. Yeah.
- [26:41]
A
It's. It's easy for him to make the connection between hunger for food.
- [26:46]
B
Yeah.
- [26:47]
A
And the evolutionary model. If we weren't hungry for food, we wouldn't eat. And then we die out. But I think it's probably pretty safe. There's all kinds of living things that don't hunger for food but have other mechanisms to get nourished. So that doesn't really compute. But that's not the biggest problem. The bigger problem is that he is trying to explain through a mechanistic biological process, a propositional awareness in the consciousness that gets altered over time because our genes get altered over time. And so he's making a connection there between the two. They do the same thing. And he mentioned it with morality. It was in his description. Let's just say human beings weren't concerned with morality or government or anything like that. Well, look at. The planet is filled with living organisms that have no concern about that.
- [27:43]
B
They're in our back. My backyard right now.
- [27:45]
A
That's right.
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B
The birds are hanging out back there.
- [27:47]
A
And many of them function in community.
- [27:50]
B
Sure.
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A
Instinctively. Look at the ants, bees for example.
- [27:54]
B
And they survive.
- [27:55]
A
And they survive their own community. But it isn't because they're manufacturing it.
- [28:00]
C
Yeah.
- [28:01]
A
And so there's a discontinuity there in part, but especially the problem of trying to imagine how a biological process can actually cause our conscious awareness to contain propositional concepts, things that can be stated in terms of sentences, for example. Now I take him to task on this a little bit, but I didn't get to play it out as much as I'd like to. And my complaint with him was that, and the viewers of the show, they'll see how I play this out. But basically Darwinian evolution can't even explain consciousness. And this is why you have. Thomas Nagel over at New York University writes this book, Mind and Cosmos, and the subtitle is why the Materialistic Neo Darwinian View of Reality is Almost Certainly False. Something like that. Now, he's an atheist, but he also is a specialist in consciousness and he knows you cannot reduce consciousness to something material. And if you can't reduce it to something material and it's real, then materialism is false. He didn't want to go there. And this is why Daniel Dennett says consciousness is an illusion, because that's what he's forced to do. My point with Alex on this particular issue is you can't even explain consciousness in a materialistic way, but now you're trying to explain the contents of consciousness, meaning. Yeah, in a materialistic mechanism. It's not going to work. And just because you say so and you wave your wand because you think that the consequence, the result, has some benefit for us getting our genes into the next generation, doesn't mean that evolution, properly understood, can explain that. But this is the wand. Oh, you can see how that benefits society. It benefits us, we live better and all that. You can see that, right? Oh, therefore evolution is the cause of it. Wait a minute, that's the wand. Really? You've got to do more. You've got to look, go to the genetic level. If you're going to claim that this consequence is a result of the genetic mutations, you've got to at least attempt, please, to give some biological characterization of the pathway where you get from this to that. And if you can't do that, you have absolutely no right to claim that evolution is what caused that. Sure. Especially when the process is materialistic and the result is non materialistic. That's huge. Yeah, that's the one.
- [30:44]
B
So you can't get there from here. You can't get from evolution to meeting morality, purpose, what you guys are talking about, right?
- [30:51]
A
Exactly. It's so interesting the way he so thank you for the clarity. Yeah. What was the line again? How Darwinian or an evolutionary process that then he tossed out Mutation of ideas on a biological level. Yeah, all you have to do is just wait a minute. Hold. Hold your horse. Let's just think about that.
- [31:11]
B
Doesn't work.
- [31:12]
A
Doesn't make sense.
- [31:14]
B
Okay, well, let's switch gears. We got another clip here where Alex suggests that the meeting crisis is a result of being bombarded by our phones having all these ideas. There's just tons of ideas and different people have different purposes. And this is what's causing our media crisis.
- [31:33]
A
He makes another mistake here too.
- [31:34]
B
So let's look.
- [31:36]
C
Change to our society that has been brought about specifically by telecommunication, by the ability to oftentimes unintentionally and non consensually be confronted with traditions and people from halfway across the world that just remind you every single day, zing, zing, zing, every single day that your truth is not the only truth. That the transcendence that you've placed your trust in is completely sub and personal. And there's someone over there believes something totally different and seems to be living just the same kind of happy life that I think is why people are struggling so much. It's not just because they're atheists.
- [32:15]
B
So there's a couple things kind of smuggled in there. So you're bombarded by lots of different ideas. And then he says the transcendence you put your trust in is completely subjective and personal. That's what you discover when you see all these videos.
- [32:28]
A
Yes. Okay, so this is another you can't get there from here kind of moment. Yeah, I remember when I was a much younger Christian, so I was a younger man and that's relevant to this illustration. And I was talking about Christ and I was talking to an older woman who was world traveled and she was basically very patronizing, patting me on the knee, saying, oh, young man, it's obvious you haven't been out very much. When you start traveling the world, you realize that there are so many different views. Now the way Alex characterize it was truths, which that's an abuse of the word, actually. And I would think that he'd be much more careful than that. But nevertheless it served its purpose. Here you have your truth or you think it's true. They have their truth and you have your satisfying life in light of your truth and they have their satisfying light in their truth. And this, and this is the misstep, this proves or seems to indicate that yours is merely the subjective experience. What were the exact words that you used a moment ago.
- [33:36]
B
It was the transcendence you put your trust in is completely subjective and personal.
- [33:43]
A
Yeah, completely is the key word there. Now, how does he know it's completely subjective and personal? Because other people have different subjective personal experiences that are based on beliefs that are contrary to yours. Sure, I agree with that. Yeah, he's doing the Sonny thing, patting us on the knee when you real. Of course, what he's saying is not when you realize the rest, that there are other worlds. He's saying we know that now because the connectivity of the world, all of these ideas are available to us. And I think this does give some people pause. Wow, look at all these. How could everybody else be wrong? It's because everybody disagrees with each other. Yeah. Now, somebody could be right, but they can't all be right. They might all be wrong. And that's what he's suggesting here. But just in virtue of the difference, that doesn't mean somebody's not correct. Now, just take the scientific realm, which Alex has got a lot of respect for, obviously, and so do I. There are all kinds of differing opinions among scientists on all kinds of things, including evolution. You have the Darwinian fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins, and you have the punctuated equilibrium crowd like the Harvard Stephen Jay Gould, you know, where everything's jumping. They call it, jokingly, evolution by jerks because a lot of people didn't like Gould. But there's this big battle going on and they're only unified when they're fighting the creationist crowd kind of deal. So there's all this variety. Does the variety suggest to us that nobody's right, that this is all their personal subjective experience? No. It could be that somebody is correct.
- [35:29]
C
That's right.
- [35:30]
A
And our convictions. Let me back up some Christians convictions are like provincial. They haven't seen the world. They don't know about anything else. They just know about Christianity. This is the way they were raised. Well, it doesn't mean their views are false. And if they see more views, then they might want to question it. All right, but Christianity isn't grounded in some provincial thing, unaware of all the other views. We know about all those other views. And the world is now much smaller because of the connectivity. And we are able to assess those other views and then draw conclusions. And this is what we do as Christian casemakers. We show why, as I argued here, given the other alternatives, Christianity is the best explanation for the way things are. Now, we could be mistaken, but you can't just assert somebody is mistaken. This is just their subjective thing. Simply because there are many opposing viewpoints that those other people are convinced of. You have to look at something else than their subjective convictions. And this is what we do.
- [36:43]
B
You got to look at the evidence. Yeah, this is. This is. It's fascinating that he made that point because normally Alex is always geared towards. Least he talks about being geared towards truth. What's truth? And it just seems. It seems obvious that just because there's lots of different beliefs out there, a lot of different opinions, that that means, you know, no one could be right. Of course not.
- [37:07]
A
It's such a fundamental mistake, too, for him to make.
- [37:10]
B
Yeah.
- [37:10]
A
We deal with this in a relative is book, Frank Beckwith and I, and I think he's the one who made the observation, look, some people think the world is flat. Some people think the world is round. That doesn't mean the world has no shape. Yeah, that's just a mistake. Yeah.
- [37:25]
B
All right, I want to change gears a little bit. We're still going to talk about truth, truthful worldview, but look at how subjective experience actually relates to that. Can it. Can it actually bear any kind of evidence towards a worldview? And yes, it's a good conclusion. Let's take a look.
- [37:43]
C
If you want to know why somebody feels a particular way psychologically, you can offer an explanation which has absolutely nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a worldview. You can then separately discuss the truth or falsity of a worldview, which you've then gone on to do with specific reference to the problem of consciousness.
- [37:56]
A
It thinks it has absolutely nothing or it can be experienced apart from the issue of worldview.
- [38:02]
C
I'm saying that if you're literally just trying. I mean, if the question I'm asked is why do people perceive a lack of meaning in their life? That's just a question about their psychological constitution. That's literally a question about why they feel a particular way.
- [38:15]
A
So if a person was a total nihilist, didn't believe in anything, was important, and then they were depressed and even suicidal, would you say there wasn't a link between that worldview and their feelings?
- [38:27]
C
Yes, there is, but what I'm saying is that the link between that worldview and their feeling has nothing to do with the truth of the worldview. You see what I'm saying? Oh, yeah. I find nihilism can be true. Nihilism can be false.
- [38:36]
A
Right.
- [38:36]
C
Nihilism can be an unintelligible concept. It can still be the case that that person's Conviction is making them depressed.
- [38:42]
A
I agree.
- [38:43]
C
In the same way that somebody could be a Christian and that makes them really happy, that doesn't mean Christianity is true. Someone can become a Christian and become really depressed. That doesn't mean that Christianity is false. What I'm trying to point out is it is just trivially true.
- [38:54]
B
All right. This was an interesting back and forth between the two of you, and I want to just read something Alex says later. We're not going to show the clip, but he says the subjective sense, sense of meaning a person feels from Christianity has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of Christianity. So do you agree with that? Why or why not?
- [39:14]
A
No, No, I don't. And actually this particular point that he introduced there.
- [39:19]
B
Yeah.
- [39:19]
A
In a more common sense way that seemed appealing, he applied and more aggressively later on in the conversation. My questions were just to get clear on exactly what he was saying. I wanted to really get clear. And then so I gave way because now I understood. But it's a problem because what he wants to do is divorce anything subjective as having any bearing on the truthfulness of a view. Yeah. And the reason he's doing that is because he's an empiricist and he brings this up at different times. It comes through. I don't know if he would.
- [39:57]
B
What's an empiricist?
- [39:58]
A
Purist. This is somebody who believes that all knowledge comes through the five senses. So science, of course, is the, the, the queen of those disciplines that helps us to know things. Now, if you say science is the only thing that gives you truth about the world, that's called scientism. That's taking it another step. I don't know if he would do that or not, but he's close sometimes. And so when, when, when he makes this, this statement about experience, he's introducing a broader thing. And I'm, I'm trying to get clear in my view. Look, what he's trying to do is, is limit the legitimate basis for making any conclusions about the nature of the world to a particular kind of thing. And he was very insistent. There it is. Has no bearing. Something like that. Well, that would work if you're a materialist. Yeah. And. And these, these outside things, anything outside of the empirical realm, I mean, they're not even. Their reality is even being questioned. Yeah. And if they're real, they're just something produced by the brain and the central nervous system and it's just emoting. In fact, that's his view about morality. He's an emotivist. Now, emotivist is a type of relativist or moral non realist. Moral realist is something that thinks that morality is real, it's objective. A non realist says, no, it's not real. Any moral statements we make are just our truth. He goes a step further and says they're not even our truth. Moral statements don't even have propositional content in his view. So they're not even true or false. They're just emotions. So when we say rape is wrong, all we're saying is oh, that's all it means? Yeah, it doesn't even, it doesn't mean anything. Yeah, you know, yuck or something like that. So he's, he, he's, he's not going to take any subjective element to have any bearing on our question of meaning. What I want to say is look at the human condition. We are not just moist robots. We are conscious beings that experience life on many different levels. In fact, all kind of the ways that we're talking about this together have to do with the different levels that we experience life on that are not reducible to empiricism. And so to squeeze all of that out is to disqualify a whole bunch of stuff that legitimately should be in play in trying to figure out the nature of reality or the best explanation for the way things are.
- [42:51]
B
So it's that. No, it's, no, there's no bearing is what you're taking issue with. Like there is there the, your experience of Christ plays a role. Like there is some evidential value or it puts it kind of in the running as far as competition with other worldviews.
- [43:08]
A
If, if a person's life is transformed when they adopt a different understanding of the nature of reality, and if that understanding is true, one would expect this kind of result. Well then that seems evidential for the truth of the belief system. And by the way, I'm willing to say this applies across the board any place you have a significant, a change in life experiential impact of single, of following what you think is true. Well, that's evidence that counts, but it's not the whole story. Sure. Because you have contradictory experience. I should say you have experiences that seem to support contradictory views. Sure.
- [43:51]
B
So they can't break the tie, but.
- [43:53]
A
Yeah, you can't. Exactly. Something else has got to break the tie. Yeah, but you can't just dismiss it because now you're, you're dismissing what it means to be human. Yeah, so, so here he's, he's reasoning through a bunch of stuff. He's using a reasoning faculty which itself is not empirical. It has nothing to do with the five senses, the ability to reason. If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. Yeah, that's a transitive property or something like that. In any event, you don't even need to know what A, B and C actually is to see the relationship there, the rational relationship there. And this is. He's trading on these things all the time, but they are not empirical. They are part of his human self, his ability to do this, and he trades in them all the time. These are features of consciousness, laws of reason and rationality. You're not going to explain that by waving the wand of evolution.
- [44:48]
B
I got a curious question. So this past Sunday, the girls from the local Teen Challenge, you know, Teen Challenge Drug Rehabilitation center, they came in and they kind of did a presentation, and two of the girls gave their testimonies, just powerful testimonies of just an absolutely transformed life just from, like, night and day. Just incredible when as I'm sitting there, as. As I'm. I haven't experienced what they've experienced in their whole life and all the stuff. But is there evidential value, you know, as I. As I'm listening to that for them, obviously they've experienced something as I'm listening to the transformed life. Would you say that also has?
- [45:31]
A
Oh, absolutely. If I encounter somebody who has had a powerful, maybe a miraculous engagement with Christ and that's quantifiable, then that's going to encourage me about my own same shared conviction about Jesus, though I'm not having their experience about it. And by the way, there's a biblical point to be made here. Let's just take the life of Jesus. In Mark, chapter two, Jesus heals the paralytic one that was lowered through the roof. And he says, first your sins are forgiven. Now this causes some consternation because nobody can forgive sins but God alone. Here's what Jesus says. He says, in order for you to know that the Son of Man has the authority to forgive sins, I say to you, arise, Take up your palate and go home. So what Jesus does is he works a miracle in the physical realm to bear testimony to something going on in the spiritual realm that cannot be seen empirically. There's a connection there. Now, I don't know why anybody will insist that this connection is illicit, but that's exactly what Alex was doing.
- [46:45]
D
If he came to you and he was your friend in Dubai and he said, my life is lacking meaning. I can't get out of bed anymore. What would you prescribe him? What would you recommend? What would you suggest? As he's your friend.
- [47:01]
C
It'S hard to know without knowing that friend. But if it seemed to me like going to church or reading the Gospels might provide that for him, then I'd probably recommend that he did that. But I think that literally, the subjective feeling of meaning is usually tied up in the identification of something that transcends your individual self. And I think whatever is the most plausible course of action for that person to engage in something like that would be what I would recommend for them. Maybe they're not particularly interested in religion. I'd recommend that they read some philosophy of mind and try to understand the nature of consciousness. And they might start. I might recommend, depending on who they are, that they take a psychedelic drug and try to experience something which cannot be put into words.
- [47:44]
B
All right, so we could. You might go to church is an option. Read the Gospels, do drugs. There seems to be a lot on the table there, a lot of different options. Greg, what do you, like? What is actually going on here? Just for people?
- [48:00]
A
You saw me going like this because this is distressing to watch. But it was distressing for him to answer the question. If you saw his own body language, he's going like. He's kind of saying, I don't know. Because he has no foundation from which to work except for subjective experience. And that's what he says. Find something that works. Feels good. Most people. Very curious, by the way. Most people need to try to ground their meaning in something transcendent. Wonder why that is. That. That, to me, is a hint. Yeah, maybe there's something transcendent to ground it in. He disagrees with that approach. But nevertheless, it is interesting that he acknowledges that. Yeah, we realize that something that is just merely earthly, so to speak, mundane, vulgar, ordinary, is not enough to ground deep meaning. We have to go to something transcendent. And so he's just kind of at loss there. And I can see that he doesn't have anything more to offer because he's an atheist. And there is no transcendent meaning. So what you have to kind of do, I mean, is trick yourself. I think this is a fair characterization of Alex. You have to trick yourself. He didn't believe in anything transcendent. You have to trick yourself into thinking there is something transcendent to have meaning and purpose in your life. Which does raise a question. And this comes up, as I recall in the discussion. I don't know if I made the final cut. What does Alex make of his own life. Now Dr. K asked him a question about that and he just spun his wheels. Because if he thinks that real meaning and purpose, at least the sense of it comes from characteristically for human beings, from something transcendent. And he knows in his view that there is nothing transcendent. What about Alex? Yeah, he is stuck in a kind of soulless existence right now. Later on in the conversation, there's talk about Gnosticism and panpsychism and this gets a little bit esoteric, you know, kind of hard to follow. And so it's almost like he's. He ends up reaching for the stars some way. Yeah. Trying to figure this out. He is fascinated by the issue of consciousness. Yeah. Doesn't know what to do with it. And. And nevertheless, it's easy for us. We know what to do. It's just. This just fits perfectly into our worldview. But he was at loss, wasn't he?
- [50:47]
B
Yeah. It seemed like it was surprising to me that he offered up some of these things. Like what? Try going to church or try reading the gospels as if like the truth doesn't matter anymore. Just do whatever works. It's. And then. But maybe at the end of the discussion, like you pointed out, when he talks about panpsychism and this thing, maybe there is like that transcendent. Although he never says this is like the capital T truth.
- [51:13]
A
Yeah.
- [51:13]
B
But it seemed at least when it came to, hey, what's it. What's the advice?
- [51:18]
A
Right.
- [51:18]
B
Well, just try whatever, you know, whatever works. And that's. That. That's not taking into consideration what's really true anymore.
- [51:27]
A
Yeah, that's right. It's all utilitarian. So much of both of their solutions to the sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness was do this thing to trick yourself to help you feel better. I guess. Now he. Alex would say this is really. He would have to say, I think you're tricking yourself. Yeah. With believing in something transcendent. Now, Dr. K's worldview had a foundation for something transcendent. Yeah. But it was still quite utilitarian in the way he approached it.
- [51:59]
B
Actually. I want to go to Dr. K next. So we haven't played a lot of clips from Dr. K. So let's take a look at how he kind of defines religion and what the purpose of religion is.
- [52:09]
A
Yeah.
- [52:10]
B
You know, you asked me at the beginning, am I religious? I think here's my understanding of. And we were talking a little bit about people can have the subjective feeling of religion. What is the relationship to that thing Being true. So here's what I've sort of observed. I don't know if y' all have ever been to like a really great cathedral.
- [52:28]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [52:28]
B
But like, you know, if you go to a great cathedral, you don't have to be Christian to be awe inspired by what you see. So when I look at the project of religion, which is a little bit different from spirituality, one of the things that I've observed is that religion is a series of structures to evoke a personal experience. So is that what religion is?
- [52:53]
A
Well, it's so strange that he would give this characterization because he's reducing religion to something that is not transcendent at all. This statement that he made about the way he characterized religion is something that Alex could have said too. Yeah, he could have said the exact same thing. With no belief in any transcendence. Now I think people just have to decide as they look at the religious project, people differing, doing different things. Is that what's going on there? No, I think what religions are attempting to do is tell you what reality is. Like every different religion is a different story of reality. And those who are careful adherence to the religion or thoughtful adherence to it, they're not going to say, like many Americans do, well, this is my truth. But you have your truth, because I'll just relativized it. Now what we're talking about is not the nature of the world, but just what's going on inside of me. And that's kind of the way Dr. K was characterizing it. No, those people are going to say, and I think this is his ultimate view because he's kind of Hindu, Buddhist, something like that. And he talks about karma at different times. Right. And he's rolling this out as if it's real, a real feature of the world. There is a cause and effect element with karma. And gee, that's the way he thinks the world really operates. And what happens a lot of times with people coming from that religious perspective is they're going to say what other religions are doing and are just practices that help you get to the world of enlightenment that is characterized in our religion in Hinduism. So it's like all religions lead to Hinduism is what it amounts to, because the teaching there is. There's a kind of enlightenment. We don't have to get into all the details, but there's a kind of enlightenment that comes from doing different religious practices they call asanas. And Christians can do prayer and meditation and worship, and these function as asanas. To have them help them have a transcendent experience.
- [55:01]
B
In fact, didn't Dr. K at one point say, like, you. You got it, like you. You're enlightened. You know, that kind of thing.
- [55:08]
A
Yeah.
- [55:09]
B
I don't know if it made the cut in the final edit.
- [55:11]
A
Yeah.
- [55:12]
B
But it.
- [55:13]
A
Again, he does say something complimentary to me as, like, Greg's in.
- [55:17]
B
Yeah.
- [55:18]
A
Which is so ironic because in the. In the conversation, I had to put the brakes on and say, look, you and I have completely different worldviews.
- [55:26]
B
Yeah.
- [55:28]
A
Think I'm in on isn't what I think I'm in on. All right. But nevertheless, it was almost a comical moment.
- [55:35]
D
Yeah.
- [55:35]
A
And I guess it did cut out. Cut out because he. From the final cut, because he was talking about the way I smiled. You got a great telling the other guys. He said, hey, look at. Look at the smile. Can't you. I don't know if this kind of glory or Was what it was.
- [55:50]
B
Yeah.
- [55:52]
A
But. And it was complimentary. Sure. It was a sweet thing to say, but. But it was just. It struck me as so odd because I am not enlightened in the way he thinks. Enlightenments work. Yeah. I. There was a point of confidence. They asked me about my confidence level, and I said, I'm at a 10. My confidence level. I could be wrong, but I'm at a 10. This is why I live the way I do.
- [56:16]
B
Yeah. That's why I'm here defending this position.
- [56:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And why. Why I. I have meaning and purpose in my life. There's no big question about that in my life. Now, does that mean my life is somehow, you know, like, without trials or tribulations or. No, no. And I do get to talk about that a little bit towards the end. No. I'm just like anybody else living in the world. But this is a significant part, I think, of the Christian. The authentic, genuine Christian experience is that even when the world is going bad, things are going rough, there is a centeredness. Not because we're kind of in touch with the divine in the Hindu sense, but because Christ is in control in this world. You will have tribulation, Jesus said, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. You cannot translate that into Hinduism. Jesus was not a Hindu mystic. He was not a Buddhist. He was a Torah observant Jew. And that was a very precise worldview. And that brings stability for me. You know, I mean, a lot of people as well. I'm not just saying subjectively. I think it's true. And this is why there's stability in my life, even with all the vicissitudes of living in a fallen world that I have to engage.
- [57:35]
B
Well, friends, thanks for joining us. We're going to continue this conversation on the next podcast, which you can find on our website when it becomes available. Thanks for joining us. This is Tim Barnett. Greg Kochl for Stand to Reason. Give Them Heaven.