← Stand to Reason Weekly Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Sam. All right, everybody, it's all turn and when I say our, I mean me and my guest, not just you and I. Special show today. Tim Barnett is on board with me and he's going to. Yeah, aka Mr. B. Red Pen Logic. And Mr. Barnett is going to red pen me a little bit and some others who are on a show together. I taped it about four weeks ago, five hours of taping, but they reduced it to three and a half hours. The diary of a CEO and I was interacting with Alex O' Connor and Dr. K. Alex, of course, one of the most famous atheists in the world right now, Dr. K, a Hindu, Buddhist, spiritist, psychoanalyst kind of mixture. And so we have three different points of view that are being offered under the questioning of Stephen Bartlett, the host of the show, on the issue of meaning and purpose. Okay, Tim, here's how I'd like to handle this. You know, Amy and I do Strask, and it's a great combination because she's kind of in charge of the show. She asks the question, I give my thoughts, she weighs in afterwards, and usually they're better than my thoughts. But it's a team effort, right?
- [01:43]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [01:44]
A
And since you're Mr. Red Pen Logic, I think it would be best if you kind of conducted this interview. I'm going to put you in charge. You have separated or isolated a number of clips from the doac, the Diary of a CEO, and we're going to look at those and respond to them. And so let me just throw the ball into your court. And how do you want to proceed?
- [02:06]
B
Well, Greg, here's where we're going to start. You did a fascinating roundtable discussion on the Diary CEO Stephen Bartlett. There's a couple guests with you. You want to say something about them?
- [02:16]
A
Well, Alex o' Connor sat directly across from me. Stephen Bartlett was on my left, and he was the host. He mostly runs things, asks a lot of questions. He's a fabulous interviewer and very curious about lots of things. That's why many people watch this podcast. But Alex and I remember when I called you and I, I first got this invitation in June and I was in Wisconsin. I called you in Toronto, where we're sitting right now at your place.
- [02:43]
B
Right.
- [02:44]
A
And, and I told you I was on this program and this guy, Alex o' Connor was on it too. Now this just shows how completely out of touch I am. You know, I'd never heard of him before, but you told me he was the most well known atheist in the world at that time. And he's only 26 years old. So there's Alex. And then on my right was Dr. K. His first name is Al. Luke and Al oak. Pardon me, Dr. K. Alok. Well, see, this is why we call him Dr. K. And I can't even attempt to pronounce his last name because he's from India and so he's got an Indian name there. But he studied medicine, he got a doctor doctorate in medicine, so he's a physician. Then he became a psychiatrist, which is an extra step. Then he went somewhere along the line. He spent eight years in India studying in an ashram to be a Buddhist monk. So he's bringing Hinduism and Buddhism and spiritism along with all of his psychological training into the discussion. So you've got the atheist, you've got the kind of, I don't want to call New Age because that probably it's much more sophisticated than that, but in that category. And then you've got the Christian theists that are all weighing in on the topic of meaning and purpose.
- [04:05]
B
Yeah, that's right. And this was a five hour discussion. Yeah, I mean this thing went into overtime and it was reduced, it was cut down to about three and a half hours.
- [04:14]
A
That's right, yeah.
- [04:15]
B
And, and this is why actually we're going to have this discussion because there was stuff that got edited out. There were things in a discussion like that. It's very fluid, it's dynamic. Sometimes there's not time to jump in and say something. And so this is going give you an opportunity to say what you wanted to say or an opportunity to say again what you said but got cut out.
- [04:38]
A
It was on the cutting room floor. That's right. I want to say this too before we start because we're going to talk about a lot of that, including things that got left out, including things that I wasn't able to say on the spot. And just for people to understand that you and I both done these things. And when you're in the midst of those things, sometimes it's hard. You can have your plan squared away and have your objectives and done your homework. But then when it, it's like, who was it Mike Tyson said? You have a plan for a fight and it's all fine until somebody punches you in the face. Right. And so there is this kind of fog of war, so to speak, that you encounter in circumstances. And then when you go back over it, it's almost like everything's in slow motion and you remember, oh, I could have jumped in here, but I Do want to emphasize though, a lot of stuff was edited out. I think the DOAC team did a great job and treated me very fairly. Obviously things are going to end up on the cutting room floor. You've got actually went for five hours and 15 minutes, eight cameras running without a stop. And I never looked at my watch because I didn't want anybody to see me looking like I'm. Oh man, you got somewhere else to be, right? Yeah, right. I was focused the entire time and so I was exhausted when I was done. But even with all the edits and everything, I think that as far as my part was concerned, I was very, very happy that I think they did an even handed editing job.
- [05:59]
B
Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a look at some different clips. First clip we're gonna look at is you just being asked for your broad strategy. I know some stuff got left out, got cut out. So we're gonna get your thoughts on that. Let's, let's take a look at the clip though.
- [06:13]
C
Greg?
- [06:14]
A
Yep.
- [06:15]
C
What is the perspective you bring to this conversation and what's the lived experience, the academia that lends itself to that perspective?
- [06:23]
A
Yeah, there's a whole bunch of that fitting in. And I relate to a lot what you're saying alok about people's challenges. Now what's interesting to me about this whole discussion, since I'm a Christian and I understand the world from a theistic perspective, because I think it's the best explanation for the way things are, just.
- [06:40]
C
To give a definition to that theistic. What does that mean, a personal God? A God.
- [06:47]
A
There is a personal God who is involved with the world. He made the world and he still maintains activity as opposed to deistic, which just wound up the clock and let it go. Okay, so my view is because God is still involved, in fact so involved that he actually came to Earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth to create a rescue plan. Now what's interesting to me about this broader question, we can get into more details too, is that if there is a God who made the world for a purpose with meaning, people can participate in that meaning and purpose. Even if they don't know God, they won't be experiencing what they were made for, which is to be in friendship with him, with the plan that he's made for their flourishing. But they still can flourish in some measure insofar as they touch on these objective features. But insofar as we are able, even without belief in God, to kind of get in that Groove of the things that God made us for the purposes that he intends, in light of being made like him in some way in his image, there's going to be a measure of satisfaction. But what they'll be missing is, is the ultimate, and that is that friendship with God and being restored in that.
- [07:57]
B
So, Greg, I know there's some things there that you said big picture, broad strategy, but that got left out.
- [08:06]
A
Yeah. Yeah. What do you want to add to that? It's interesting watching it again, because two things stand out for me. One is when you construct a kind of a game plan, a strategic game plan. That's the big picture, what you're trying to accomplish. The tactical elements are the interaction with the people. The big picture is what you're trying to accomplish, the strategic thing. There were a couple of things that I wanted to do. One of them is to continue to emphasize a line that was there in that first cut, that the Christian view of reality, the biblical take on reality, is the best explanation for the way things are. And I actually, in five hours, I repeated that a number of times because I'm trying to make the point in defense of Christianity that it has explanatory power with regards to the world as we experience it. Then I was going to make a second point and the more broader point, and I was attached to it a secondary point that wasn't as significant. They included the secondary point, but not the broader point. So my main point was this. The reason that we have these statistics is because people, all 90% of Brits, young Brits or whatever, have no meaning, purpose, whatever, however he characterized it. And we're all familiar with those kinds of statistics because many of us are experiencing that. What's it all about, right, is because we have been cut free from our mooring. And when we're cut free from our mooring, then we're going to be subject to every storm that comes by because there's no mooring for us and we need to be reattached to our mooring. And I mentioned in the introduction that Augustine has said, lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. So now I'm making an existential point here about the feeling of restlessness that we have and Augustine identifying God as the source. And that was the point I was trying to make. And more broadly, I wanted to make the point that when it comes to meaning and purpose, and I did make this point, but this is what got left out. You have one of two choices. Either there is objective meaning and purpose follows from it or not. And if there is no objective meaning, then it's whatever, then it's a crapshoot. You know, you could be Mother Teresa, you could be Drake the slave, sex slave trader or whatever, and you can't make a moral distinction between them. So it's either objective or subjective. Now, my claim is that it's objective. That's the best explanation for the way things are. And we know this. The fact that we're all. I mentioned this, that we're all gathered around here together talking about the possibility, what is meaning and purpose is itself and evidence that there is a meaning or purpose to be found. We are hungering for it. And so that was the point that laid the stage. And I wanted to continue to kind of beat that drum. Objective or subjective? Objective or subjective? Objective, real meaning, significant purpose. Now, the point that they left in there was a much more secondary point. And what I wanted to say is, look, even if you don't believe in God and you don't understand the grounding of meaningful life, if God made humans for a particular purpose so that we would flourish, if you participate in those purposes, you will still flourish in some measure. So I'm not saying you can never be satisfied unless you believe in God. God made the world a certain way and you operate the way he made it. Like marriage, for example, and family. You operate that way, you're going to be more satisfied, you're going to flourish even if you don't believe a God. They kept that in there and I'm glad that was in there. But it was the secondary point. The larger one was the point. What is it?
- [12:02]
B
Yeah.
- [12:03]
A
Objective or not.
- [12:04]
B
Yeah.
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A
And if not objective, subjective, and then it's a crapshoot.
- [12:09]
B
Yeah. Because you're not saying that if you don't believe in God or you're not a Christian, you can't flourish in some way.
- [12:15]
A
Right? I'm not saying that.
- [12:16]
B
Yeah. Now I'm interested in what you think about the broad strategy that, that Dr. K had.
- [12:23]
A
Yeah.
- [12:23]
B
And Alex had. So you were trying to set the stage. It's either object or it's. Or it's not. Did you think Alex agreed with you on that, Dr. K? Was he even having the same conversation? Because it seemed at times like there was two separate conversations happening.
- [12:37]
A
This is one of the biggest, the biggest frustrations for me is because this conversation was not linear.
- [12:43]
B
Yeah.
- [12:44]
A
Now our friend Wes Huff, Joe Rogan, him and Joe, back and forth. And so you kind of stay on a topic pretty well here we have four people and two of them talking a lot between themselves, Alex and Dr. K. And sometimes I couldn't even get into that discussion because it's hard to break in. And you got to think always of the optics. How do you get in? Well, you could just barge in. Well, that's not very polite. Then it's gonna make you look bad. Right. So I'm thinking all the time about how I maneuver and make my points if I'm able to. And sometimes I'm thinking, oh, make a note here, I got something to say about that. And then five minutes later, I get in kind of thing. So this is a frustration. Even viewers have mentioned that same thing. And when it comes to this issue of meaning and purpose, remember the distinction between objective and subjective. Alex is stuck with subjective. He knows that because he's an atheist. There is no objective meaning or purpose. It's just molecules clashing in the universe. Everything's designed, as it were, by the blind watchmaker of natural selection and mutation, the evolutionary story. And so he's got nothing. And there were many times where he was actually pressed on that issue, even by Stephen. So what would you say? And he goes, I don't know. Yeah, because there is nothing there. I call, and this is not disparagement, this is description. I call atheism the nothing option. What caused everything? Nothing. What is life about? Nothing. What is the meaning of life? Nothing. What is man's problem? Man has no problem. How do you fix it? You don't fix what's not broken. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And so in a certain sense, as the atheist, he's locked into merely subjective responses. Now, Dr. K, thank you. He is in a different situation because he believes in a transcendent reality. He's a mixture kind of Eastern religions. So he's making reference to this some of the time, especially towards the end. But in the beginning, he's kind of. He's kind of rejecting the idea that he knows anything about.
- [15:03]
B
That's right.
- [15:04]
A
Objective meaning big T, truth, big M meaning big P. Purpose. He's just looking at what are modalities he can use in a clinical setting to help people who are feeling suicidal find meaning for themselves. Now, this is completely subjective. Totally. And by the way, he had. There were a lot of points I thought that were helpful. You know, you organize your life. You drop back 60,000ft, take a look at, you know, this too shall pass. And so there's good recommendations that were given there. But notice that everything that he ends up saying is all on the Subjective side, it's the utilitarian side. Here's what works. And I miss some opportunities, especially when the theological side, spiritual side was developed a little bit. Given his Hindu mindset essentially that, that God exists and that's the ground of reality, but everything else is an illusion. Maya, in their terms, I miss the opportunity of asking just very directly. So let me see if I understand this. Dr. K, on your view, everything else is illusion but God himself, and therefore all these distinctions are illusory. That would include the distinction between good and evil. Is that your understanding that ultimately there is no distinction between good and evil? Now, that's that view. And I would be curious how he actually responded to that. But I know the answer to it. So what's interesting is there was a lot of discussion, we'll get to it, on the whole issue of evil and suffering and that kind of stuff. Okay. Alex especially brought it up. But I'm the only one in a position of anybody in that discussion. Considering that Stephen is kind of laying on the sideline, just asking questions. I'm the only one in that discussion that could make legitimate distinctions between good and evil. Given my worldview, Alex certainly can't and NOR Can ELOK Dr. K, because of his Hindu Maya mindset. The irony is, in both cases, we'll get to this. Both of them used moral language to describe things. Even when Alex was trying really hard not to, he couldn't avoid it. And my answer to that is this gets back to the best explanation is because I owe this insight to Francis Schaeffer. God actually made the world that we live in. And we are human beings, made the image of God. And even if we run from God, we can't run from ourselves. We're going to say things that are true about the world, even when our philosophy denies that thing that we can't help saying. Yeah.
- [17:43]
B
Well, I want to move now to another clip where Alex o', Connor, he's going to describe what motivates us to make meaning in our lives. Let's take a look at the clip.
- [17:54]
C
And I think that is why it exists. I think humans are in a strange predicament due to the mystery of consciousness. We find ourselves, possibly uniquely amongst other animals in the position of being mortal, being physically embodied, being in a world, but also knowing those things. It's one thing to experience the world. It's one thing to be. It's another thing to be aware that you're experiencing it. Josh Rasmussen once said, there's a difference between noticing a tree and noticing that You've noticed a tree. We have this sort of second order abstraction that we can do. So we know that death is coming, for example, and death makes a mockery of everything that we do, seems to just obliterate any sense of purpose or meaning, because anything that we're building will ultimately, as far as we're concerned, be gone. And that may well be unique to human beings. And so I'm not the first to suggest that the principal motivating factor behind meaning infused activities that humans do is an engagement in death denial or some kind of immortality project. People, literally, for fear of, as a result of the knowledge that this will come to an end, engage in what we might call immortality projects. They engage in things which will outlast themselves, which give them a sense of escaping this death. The most obvious example is in religious traditions which literally promise immortality for your own soul.
- [19:21]
B
All right, so Alex says that we engage in immortality projects, AKA religion, because we fear death. So is that what's really going on? Are we just making meaning to suppress this fear of death?
- [19:33]
A
Well, what Alex said is very interesting because he's a very bright guy and there's so much of what he said that almost everybody can acknowledge. Fear of death concern consciousness. We reflect on our own states of mind, unlike virtually anything else. Oh, by the way, that's a unique set of circumstances in the creator, in the. Try not to be biased here. I was going to say created order, let's just say the natural order. And he doesn't think it's created, obviously, but it is an odd set of circumstances that nothing else seems. No other living thing seems to do this third order reflection. And it raises other questions about the nature of the mind and the uniqueness of human beings that go beyond the evolutionary project, because everything else is surviving just fine without that. In any event, he honestly acknowledges it. Okay. And then he uses that given that we're reflective and we know we're going to die, oh my goodness, I'm going to die now. What? That hurts. That creates a kind of angst, a dread of the future. Oh, I know. And this is on a subconscious level, maybe a cultural level. This is his view. I know I'll imagine immortality is true for me. That's the immortality project. Okay, so there's nothing at all wrong with the speculation that he's offered. However, he's very close to creating a genetic fallacy if he thinks that his explanation for these desires that we have is. Is evidence that there is no immortality project itself. This is the way it feels when you Watch it. And this is the power of his capability as a rhetorician and the power of genetic fallacies. It's like the person who says, oh, you're a Christian because you were born in America. If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you'd be a Muslim. And Christians are caught by surprise. They think, well, that might be true. Oh, my goodness. Well, of course, the observation doesn't tell you anything about Christianity or Islam as to which one's true. And of course, if the atheist was born in Saudi Arabia, he wouldn't be an atheist either, you know, so that knife cuts both ways. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. But in my view, it's not sauce for either. It's a fallacy. It's a fallacy, right. So it may be an interesting speculation, but you have to be careful that you don't act like the alternate explanation that he's offering as an atheist, as a meditation materialist, is actually a refutation of, say, the Christian's view or any other religious view that has an immortality project that's connected to it. It could be that we have this angst about dying. Actually, there's no could be about it. This is true. Right. Everybody could relate to that. But that doesn't mean we're inventing heaven or life after death or something like that. That has to be assessed on its own merits. Now, here's what's interesting about this, and it's just part of the dynamic. I understand how this works, and I'm not faulting Alex, but Alex is an atheist. So what he needs to do, he must do this. He must take everything that seems at odds with materialistic atheism, like the afterlife, well, that's not real. And God in the after, that's not real. He's got to try to find some way to explain away the intuitions we have about them. So I had made the case that we are having. And I think this is partly what got cut out, because I referenced C.S. lewis, and he responded to it in the piece that was in there. But the reference that he was referring, the thing he was referencing to, was taken out. And that is Lewis said, if we have a hunger for something, it's because there's a satisfaction in principle at least. So we're hungry for food, and there's food to satisfy it. We're thirsty for liquids, so there's water, et cetera, et cetera. We're also hungry for justice. Well, there must be justice to satisfy, but it's not done in this World in this life, it must be done in another life. So I'm using a version of that, and I cited that in the beginning of my opening comments, that we are all sitting around talking about this because we are hungering for something. And the fact that we're meeting and talking about this is evidence that the thing that we're hungering for, meaning and purpose, is objectively available to satisfy us. There is an end that is a result, there is a goal that is attainable. We're not just, you know, making noise here. We're talking about something real. So I'm making that point. And the difference between Alex and I, we're coming up from different worldviews, is because Alex is forced by his worldview to conclude one thing. Okay. Of course there's a certain sense which my worldview compels me to certain ends in the discussion. But notice the way I'm arguing. I'm arguing that this, our worldview makes sense of all of these ordinary features of life that all human beings experience. It's the best explanation for the way things are. What is he doing? His worldview must deny all of that.
- [24:57]
B
Yeah.
- [24:58]
A
And so he's finding ways to explain obvious features of human existence away without giving any evidence that his worldview is actually accurate. Yeah, that is a massive distinction.
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B
Yeah. And by the way, you wrote a book about how Christianity is the best explanation of reality called the Story of Reality.
- [25:24]
A
Yeah, absolutely. How the world began, how it ends, and everything important that happens in between. And it's basically, you know, a 30, 000 foot analysis or look at telling the story of reality from the beginning to the end. And, and, and it gives you a really good perspective on, on that big picture stuff, kind of like mere Christianity, which far excels what I wrote. But a lot of people say they can't read it because CS Lewis is too difficult. Oh, this is a sad state of affairs if that's the case. Nevertheless, I tried to meet that need with a different tone, though I did try to copy Lewis in some way meet that need the way he, in a conversational way, met that for that time in Mere Christianity. And I tried to meet that need here with the Story of Reality.
- [26:14]
B
Cool. Well, I want you to see another clip. This is one where Alex is actually asked about the meaning crisis. Okay, take a look.
- [26:20]
C
There is this idea that we are living in a meaning crisis that has cropped up maybe in the past hundred years or so, or maybe in the last few hundred years or so as a response to the Enlightenment and the Decline of religion. I think that's far too easy. I think that's way too easy. I think that if there is such thing as a meaning crisis, it is literally the human condition and the reason why these projects were invented in the first place.
- [26:42]
B
So, Greg, I want you to answer the question of why there's a meaning crisis. But before you do, Stephen actually brought you guys together to discuss meaning and purpose because there's something happening in the culture. And he quotes a few stats. I'll give you some of those. 3 in 5Americans believe that their lives lack purpose. 9 in 10 young people in the UK believe their lives lack purpose. 59% of Brits said that life is. They live a meaningful life, whereas 25% said they don't at all. I mean, these are pretty devastating. And then he goes on to say, look, there's people who are showing up in church now in response, like the increase, especially in young people 18 to 24. And so it seems like people are turning towards religion. What's going on here?
- [27:29]
A
Now, Alex would probably label that as just kind of a psychological move for personal gratification. I'm going to understand it differently because I think that there. Look, reality is structured a certain way and it isn't just molecules in the universe and the way the molecules are structured. There's all kinds of important observations we can make that have, I think, theistic implications. But when we look at human beings and the human condition and there is such a thing, I mean, you watch in Hollywood, for example, and these people are theists advancing theistic worldviews, but they talk about the triumph of the human spirit. What the heck is that? Well, they're identifying something that's real. And this hunger, this meaning crisis that Alex says, oh, this is far too simple. It's the human condition. What is the human condition? It's what people are aware of. And all those statistics demonstrated hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger, hunger for something that is not being satisfied. Now this is where Lewis comes in, I think quite obviously an application. The argument from desire which he used applies here. Why are we desiring these things? It seems to me the most likely explanation is because there is a satisfaction to those things in principle that we are desiring. It's not just some psychological thing, our mortality, as he mentioned earlier, and we're making up these immortality projects. There's something going on here. Now here's the key thing for I think, this broader discussion and I want people to be thinking about this, our job. If we want to have a worldview that is Comprehensive is we have to explain the world the way it is. We can't dismiss salient features of the world. And remember now, I'm not talking about just the physical world. I'm talking about the non physical world that's part of our interior lives that we're in touch with all the time. We can't just dismiss that because we don't believe in that kind of stuff. It doesn't fit in the box of our worldview and act like it's not real. I mean, this goes back to Daniel Dennett, one of the former New Atheists, because he passed away last year. And you come to the issue of consciousness, which we'll probably talk about a little bit. And he didn't know what to do with consciousness, which is true of all atheists because you cannot reduce consciousness to something material. And so what's his solution? He doesn't say, well, consciousness is real and immaterial. He says that, well, consciousness is not real, it's an illusion. So I just want you. There's problems with that too. We won't go into it, but I just want you to see the move. This is a piece of reality that does not fit in to the fixed worldview that he holds. And so he has to deny the existence of something real and everybody else knows about. You will see this time and time and time again. It must happen this way if you're going to cling to a worldview that is inconsistent with reality. That's why the story of reality, what is the world really like? And what take on reality most comprehensively makes sense of all the important things. And I'll tell you what, molecules moving in motion in the universe, those aren't the most important things in anybody's life. Yeah, right. You ask anybody what's the most important things in life and just pause and they'll say things like love.
- [31:13]
B
Sure.
- [31:15]
A
Family. And they don't mean bodies, they mean the relationships. On and on and on. You notice that none of the things they identify as really important. Yeah. Have any science has any access to. They don't say, you know, the internal combustion engine, that's the most important thing. Especially mine, Porsche. You know, I mean, anybody says that's gonna be shallow, we'd see that right away. But this betrays something about what it means to be human. Something we know now Alex is going to want to say. And he does essentially say this, we're just inventing that. We just invent all of these things because the pain is so great. It's not just meaning and significance that's almost too insignificant of a way to characterize it. The pain is so great. We have to invent these whole worlds of things to satisfy the angst, to quiet, to silence the angst inside of us.
- [32:09]
B
Now, Greg, you, Part of your argument is that purpose and meaning, these things flow from our nature and more specifically, our designer. Right, right, absolutely. And Alex actually has an argument that he offers against this particular view, the paperclip analogy. Okay, so we're going to run to a clip, see what he has to say, and then I really want to get your response.
- [32:37]
A
Sure.
- [32:38]
C
Let's just suppose for a moment that they were. Let's suppose that I created an artificially intelligent machine and I gave it a purpose. And that purpose was to produce paperclips. And because of the development of artificial intelligence technology, it became conscious in a. A recognizable sense. It had an interior sense of self. It sort of had, say, feelings or emotions about the world. But it is just an AI robot whose entire purpose in life is to make paperclips. Now, I could say that because that AI was designed by a creator with a purpose that was explicitly given to it, that that life is meaningful. But I think it would seem to most people that a life whose meaning consists in creating paperclips is not sufficient, is not enough to address what people really want. It's not just some kind of purpose. It's not just even some kind of purpose which is given to you by an authoritative creative source. It's something which is further than that. Yeah, but if I can just relate this to the God question. The problem that arises is that you have to answer the question of why God infuses life with the meaning that he gives it. It's either something which he has sort of arbitrarily plucked up and chosen to create, in which case we have this problem of arbitrariness or. No. Or in fact, there is some reason why God had to give us a particular kind of meaning that's endemic to the human condition, that he had no choice but for that meaning, that more important kind of meaning to be given to human life. But if he was beholden to that, if he had to give us a particular kind of meaning, it seems like there's a standard of meaning which exists outside. Right, right outside of God. So I'm not sure, in other words, the mechanism by which being created by someone who says, this is your purpose would be fulfilling in the way that people want it to be.
- [34:23]
A
And he's basically saying if you are given meaning because God is obliged to give you that meaning. Well, that means there must be something outside of God that obliges him. Now, if he's not obliged to give you that meaning, he can give you any meaning he wants, then it's completely arbitrary as a coin.
- [34:41]
B
Like paper clips.
- [34:42]
A
Yeah, well, paper clips. So the problem with that whole approach is it's a false dilemma. There is a, like, tertium quid. There's a middle ground to make sense of this. It's not the case. And I'm just dealing with one of these items at a time. It's not the case that if God decides to do it and he's not forced by some outside thing that turns out to be greater than God, that diminishes him and that side of the dilemma that therefore God's choice is arbitrary. Just because Alex doesn't know the reasons why God does the things he does doesn't mean it's a coin flip for God. And that's the presumption he's made to make this approach to explaining meaning and purpose, the Christian approach, seem inconsequential or shallow. Well, either God's forced to do it or just whatever. But why would we say that? Why would we be forced to do that? Do I know why God did what he did? No, most of the time, unless he tells us. And this is a problem with why did God or why didn't God. Questions. They presume that if we. Well, that we can find an answer when God hasn't told us. So a lot of times I'm going to say, I don't know, I don't know. But that doesn't mean it's arbitrary. And so he's being quite inappropriately dismissive at that particular point. Okay, now the project here, of course, is to take my argument for God based on our awareness of personal meaning and to trivialize it by using this illustration. Illustrations are fine, but they have to be parallel.
- [36:22]
B
Yeah.
- [36:22]
A
If the illustrations that you give to make a refutation, see, it doesn't work here, so it doesn't work there. If it's not parallel in a meaningful way, then it's not a defeater of the view and his illustration is not parallel in a meaningful way. Now, you and I have discussed this. You probably have other insights on this. But my basic point was that first, he's kind of presuming that AI machines are capable of becoming conscious.
- [36:54]
B
Yeah.
- [36:55]
A
No, this is not possible. I'm just saying, because this isn't a problem with technology. It's a problem. It's A philosophical problem. And he had to know better, but he has no place else to go because he's a materialist. And so he's got to believe material things produce consciousness because that's what happened to us, didn't it? Yeah, Kind of thing. Remind me to come back to animals in just a few moments. I don't want to forget this, but. And so he's trying to be dismissive there. But in our worldview, and if you're going to attack or critique, if you will, our worldview with what you think is a parallel. It's got to be parallel to our worldview or it doesn't apply. Yeah. In our worldview, God made human beings like himself in his own way.
- [37:41]
B
Yeah.
- [37:41]
A
In the image of God. Now that is going to. That produces a certain type of consciousness, a certain type of awareness. And then when he equips us to do particular things, those things are tied to our nature. Yeah. The kind of being we are. And so purpose flows from meaning, and meaning is tied to the kind of creature we are. So if God makes us for himself to be in friendship with him, and makes us for productive, meaningful, satisfying and fulfilling work, then gives us work to do, well, then all that ties together in a kind of a nice neat package. If we do the things that we were made to do in virtue of our meaning in relationship with God, being like him, according to His. His image, then we flourish and we are deeply and profoundly satisfied. Now, of course, that's presuming there's no intervening factors. And there's a huge one called the Fall, and that creates all kinds of problems. And we'll get into that now, the animal, animal stuff. All right. Actually, animals are the kind of machines that Alex is describing, because animals are wet machines on his view, right?
- [39:02]
B
Yeah.
- [39:02]
A
And they have consciousness that, on his view, is going to have to be the result of some kind of naturalistic process. And animals have functions. They do particular things that are consistent with their nature. And that's why different animals act differently, because they have different natures. Now, atheists don't like to talk about natures because that's these occult forces, these invisible things that make things happen. But it's just so obvious to the casual observer that creatures are different. And it's not just their physical thing. In fact, it's their natures that. That drive certain physical behaviors that are germane to the physical stuff. So you take a. If you take a. A spider. Spiders make webs. Yeah. How do they know how to do that? Well, they don't have to learn. They just do it because it's built in. Notice their nature has the function built in. And so they just automatically, without having to think, very fulfill the function. Now, are they satisfied? Well, I don't know. I never really talked to a spider. But I have this intuition, I have this suspicion that animals, generally speaking, are satisfied because they're fulfilling their nature. Not by choices so much though. I think animals do make choices, but by their instinct that drives them. So if you go to a spider web, a spider's baking web, and you knock it out, it'll go back and start repairing it.
- [40:28]
B
Yeah.
- [40:29]
A
And then you knock that out, it'll start repairing it again and it will do this same behavior, it's called fexish behavior, over and over and over again until it finally expires trying to do it. It's built to do that.
- [40:43]
B
Yeah.
- [40:44]
A
All right. It's fulfilling its nature. So it turns out that, you know, there are, there are these AI machines that are conscious that do make paper clips kind of thing, but in a way that's consistent with their nature. And my suspicion is, like I said, I don't know what's going on inside the conscious selves of other created things, but my suspicion is they're pretty satisfied and that's why they just keep doing it. You know, it's no problem. I'm looking over their shoulder because they don't want to get eaten, but they're after fashion, enjoying themselves. And I think this is the beneficence of God who's made this in place. So I don't have any problem with conscious machines making paperclips if that's what they were made for. Human beings were not made for that kind of thing though. Yeah. And that's why he's trading on an intuition in our own minds. Like if we were the ones doing that, that would not be very meaningful. He's right. Not that mundane work. It can't be meaningful or valuable or whatever. It can be. And lots of people do mundane things. But it isn't just in virtue of making paper clips that you say, well, I must not be made for a meaningful purpose. Yeah. You have to look at the whole picture.
- [41:57]
B
Yeah.
- [41:58]
A
But you have a different take on that.
- [41:59]
B
Well, I, I, we, I think we're on the same page for a lot of this. I think it's, it's fascinating. It's a false analogy.
- [42:05]
A
Yeah.
- [42:05]
B
The parallels aren't parallel. The most significant is this, this AI conscious machine, paperclip making machine. He's trying to say that's the. That's the human. That's like a human.
- [42:15]
A
That's right.
- [42:16]
B
But the human by nature is made in the image of God, as you pointed out. And so its purpose is going to reflect that nature, whereas that's not part of the paperclip making machines nature. It's not there. It's interesting, when you. I watched the video back, what I found was he says they make this the creator. This person makes this machine and then it becomes conscious. It becomes conscious. And I thought, well, if it becomes conscious, then the nature just changed. It went from a nature of a paperclip making machine to now a new nature. That's called.
- [42:49]
A
Actually, if it was just a machine, it wouldn't have a nature because it's not. It would have a function.
- [42:53]
B
Yeah, that's right.
- [42:54]
A
And then it would have functions, but they don't have nature.
- [42:56]
B
That's right. And then. And then it would have this other thing as a conscious machine. Yeah. So I think that that's the most significant kind of anti. Parallel. And as you just pointed out, when something isn't parallel, an argument from analogy, it doesn't hold, it doesn't work.
- [43:15]
A
There's a couple of times when I make a statement kind of like this, I'm not sure if I did it in the broader context of that conversation, that portion of the conversation, but I'm saying, okay, well, people are just going to have to decide for themselves. You're giving one explanation, Alex, and I'm giving another explanation. I'm pretty confident that the explanation that I'm giving resonates with our deep intuitions about the nature of reality. And I think that the way he's operating is not doing that at all. He is evacuating existence from all the significant things we're aware of, because he must, given his materialistic view. Now, he does it in a very articulate way. He's very bright. And I think we have to take his reflection seriously. But when we take this reflection seriously, we find out that it's deeply flawed.
- [44:04]
B
Yeah. Alex likes to use illustrations, analogies. And we're going to jump to another clip, and this is one where he describes a situation where a meteor is going to hit the planet and kill everyone.
- [44:18]
A
You know, it starts with the imagine that a lot of times it's that language. Or let's just suppose that.
- [44:24]
B
Yeah.
- [44:24]
A
And there is a legitimacy to trying to work the problems with thought experiments. Experiments, exactly. It's what philosophers do and totally legitimate. But you gotta be really careful because these kind of thought experiments Sometimes can go south in ways that people don't see. And that's what we're gonna talk about here.
- [44:44]
B
Yeah, let's take a look.
- [44:45]
C
All right, suppose you discovered, and this probably won't be the case for you because you believe in an afterlife, but suppose that you're an atheist for a moment. Suppose it were the case that you discovered that after you die a meteor is going to come and wipe out all life on earth. Everybody's going to die almost instantly after you do, but you'll be dead, so you will live your entire life as it was anyway. And suppose the rest of the world doesn't even this is going to happen, but you're told this is going to be the case. Would that motivate you to write your book? More or less. Most people say that it would seem a bit pointless now. What's the point now in writing this book? What's the point in having children if they're going to die 30 days after I'm gone? What's the point in doing any of these things? What will they still do? They'll still do the sensory stuff, they'll still eat, they'll still have sex, they'll still sleep, this kind of stuff. But the typically meaning laden activities of life, they would certainly be demotivated to do. And it's an interesting thought experiment to give us some insight as to the fact that, well, maybe this means that at least in part the motivation for these actions in the first place is that they will extend beyond our death.
- [45:45]
B
Greg, I'm not sure what this illustration is supposed to accomplish. Do you know what he's getting at here?
- [45:50]
A
Well, we both listened to it a couple of times here. I heard it the first time, obviously I was there. And then we've heard it a couple of times. And to be honest, I'm sympathetic with you and not to diss Alex at all, but I don't understand entirely what part this point plays in the bigger picture of meaning, significance, etc. Because the idea of that, and I think the way he put it, is if you know that right after you die the world's going to end, then would you do the meaningful things that you think you're doing now if your efforts weren't going to continue? And it seems to me that is the atheist view. If they're convinced there is nothing after this, I guess the atheist could think, well, I wrote a book that people will be reading for years after this and maybe I can get some existential satisfaction out of that fact. Maybe a novel Maybe something, pardon me, fun to read and people will enjoy it. That brings me satisfaction knowing that. But if I know that that won't take place, that the world is going to end, would I still write the book? I can't answer that because I'm not an atheist. I don't know what I would do. You know what's interesting though, is that if you take the existentialist view now, existentialists were smart people, thinkers that came to the conclusion there was no God. And the meaning of life essentially is whatever meaning you give it and the decisions that you make and that validates you and that, that's the long and short of it. But it turned out a bunch of those guys committed suicide because it made sense to them, since nothing else made sense, that they were going to validate their own existence by ending their existence. And of course, you can't make a value judgment against that if you think their worldview is accurate. So again, I think what Alex is describing is the condition that every atheist finds himself in. Ultimately, maybe the world won't end next day after I die or the month after, but ultimately it all turns to dust. And in fact, it's very interesting that the Bible makes mention of this. The grass withers, the flower fades. Now the word of God that lasts forever. But it's not just grass and flower withering and fading. We do, and there's a reference to that numbers of time. And even in Ecclesiastes we see this life under the sun. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. That's life in a. Essentially a materialistic world, the kind of world that Alex thinks exists. And so I guess I am. I'm mystified about the point he's making, but I think that this is what atheists are stuck with ultimately. But we're not. If the Christian view of reality is sound, then that changes everything. And of course, we have lots of reasons to think that it is. We're not just speculating, we're not just tossing out an alternate idea.
- [49:00]
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 Koukl for Stand to Reason. Give him Heaven.
- [49:15]
A
Sam Sat.