Here is one:
Oliver Thomas naively states that lives must have “meaning.” Does meaning have to come through mythology taught as fact as in the major religions?
Life is, and always has been, the adaptation to the changes and mutations of the universe. Religion is, and always has been, a culturally devised defense mechanism. Each life’s meaning is individual. It seems that with religion, the meaning involves war and terrorism. This I can do without.
R. Sloan Wilson
(?+)Bennison. “Court” of Bishops. Game. Set. Match.
If there is no objective ultimate meaning, then all the pretense of subjective individual meanings are irrational, because without an ultimate permanent meaning, nothing has meaning.
Materialism leads inexorably to nihilism if one is consistent. Of course, most of the materialists that are consistent commit suicide. The rest just live in an irrational state of cognitive dissonance where they hope without justification and press on with pretending their lives have “meaning” and that they really do experience love and free will. No, they do not live what they believe…that free will is an illusion and love is just a chemical reaction. They do not live as though their lives are just a complex series of electro-chemical events. They live in an insane fashion, where they act as though they have real free will and real emotions, etc. Love is just oxytocin, testosterone, and estrogen if the universe is truly only materialistic. The only ethics come from a petri dish and passing on dna is the only worthwhile activity.
The sun will eventually swallow up the earth in a fiery cataclysm. If mankind escapes, it will take 17,000 years (traveling at 30,000 mph – the fastest manned spacecraft to date only traveled 24,760 mph) to reach the Oort cloud, let alone another viable star system. Cosmic radiation will kill everyone in the spacecraft long before they even reached the edge of our solar system. If we try to go faster, dust particles hitting the spacecraft would destroy them…the faster things go, the more kinetic energy they have.
There is no escape from our dying solar system…but if there were, it only delays the inevitable end. The 2nd law of thermal dynamics is unrelenting…heat travels to cold. The universe will eventually wind down as it continues to expand and matter itself will dissolve into the cold vacuum. The waves of heat energy will continue to disperse at a rate of the square of the inverse and eventually the background thermal radiation will be so small that it would become immeasurable. Ultimately, there will be nothing left of the entire universe…nothing.
So everything that mankind has ever done or ever will do will become nothing…not even a memory. It will be as if it never happened. If there is no God, what I have just described is all there is. If someone is truly a materialist and rejects God, then that is what their life will come to mean in the end…absolutely nothing. Pretending that there is any meaning is just plain crazy.
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Our lives will have meaning. We will not end when the universe ends. We will live forever with our God and Creator…our Lord, our friend, our Heavenly Father, our King. His name is Jesus and He is the Christ, the chosen one, the annointed one, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.
If the materialists are right, I have lost nothing by believing in God. My “irrational” belief is no better or worse than theirs.
If I am right, the materialists have lost everything and I have gained everything.
The choice between the two world views is ultimately a leap of faith, however, I find there is considerable evidence to justify the hope that I have. The entire creation seems to have been designed and fashioned in such a way as to make the conditions for human life optimal. The earth is unique. It’s position is unique. The timing of human existance is unique. There are literally hundreds of conditions that had to be met simultaneously for intelligent life to even be possible. The fact that we are here is amazing. We defy the odds.
The smallest measurable and meaningful unit of time is the time it takes for light to travel, in a vacuum, a distance of 1 Planck length. That is about 10-43 seconds. There is a limited number of events that could happen in the entire universe from the singularity (Big Bang) until now and they can be broken down by time. Over the 30 or so billion years of the expected lifespan of the universe, allowing for every known atom to make a trillion trillion trillion events per second, there could only be (and this is a generous estimate) 10 to the 36 events per particle per second in the entire universe. Given a universe that is a million times larger and a billion times older than our actual universe, 30 quatrillion years old, there could only be 8*10^240 events ever. That accounts for every possible event by every proton.
Dr. Harold Morowitz, who was a professor of biophysics at Yale University, estimated the probability of the random formation of the simplest form of living organism known to be 1*10^340,000,000. Dr. Carl Sagan estimated it at only 1*10^2,000,000,000. Both estimates far exceed the 8*10^240 events possible in a universe a million times larger and a billion times older than the one we actually have.
Borel’s law of probability states that if the odds of an event happening are worse than 1 in 1*10^50, then that event will never happen.
So, which position has more evidence for the leap of faith? It appears impossible that life could occur randomly. Yet, that is what the materialists want us to believe. I believe in God. My belief has evidence to support it. My belief offers rational ultimate meaning and a consistent lifestyle. The materialists offer nihilism or inconsistant and irrational cognitive dissonance.
The leap of faith is not blind…
Sorry for the spelling errors, but it is late and I am tired. I think the thrust of my arguments retain their merit, despite the spelling errors.
3, yu write: “The only ethics come from a petri dish and passing on dna is the only worthwhile activity.” I disagree with the last part of your statement. Actually in the materialist worldview there is no point in even passing along your dna. Your end is personal extinction and you have no objective reason to seek survival beyond your own natural end. The fact of survivors has no meaning for the individual and the survival of the species likewise has no objective meaning or purpose. In fact nothing that does not improve, enhance or benefit an individual in the here and now has no purpose. The only thing that has any value to the individual is being totally self-centered and living in the maximum self comfort until you die.
#3 Hi Bro. Michael,
You are correct. I had in mind the “biological imperative”, but you are quite right. Survival for man is not an instinct, nor is procreation. You are right on the money when you say that in a strictly materialist world view, the survival of the species has no objective meaning or purpose.
Thanks for the correction.
#5, I don’t understand you. Survival is an instinct and so is procreation.
What have I misunderstood? Larry
Hi Larry,
If survival were an actual instinct, it would be impossible to deliberately commit suicide. Humans are unique (as far as I know) in that we do not procreate when our mate is “in heat”, but when we decide to. These are learned behaviors, really and truly. Hormones impact the behavior, but the behaviors are learned. There are actually very few true human instincts. One is the fanning of the toes when the foot is stroked in babies. Clinging at certains stages of development. Sucking at certain stages of development. Etc. To be an actual instinct, it has to be an inborn pattern of activity or tendency to action common to a given biological species. Humans have to learn almost everything because we don’t have many instincts. A horse foal will stand within 4-6 hours after birth. Humans don’t learn this until about 8+ months have passed with much practice and help. We don’t have a “walk” instinct. In fact, if a person has a stroke, they must sometimes learn the behavior all over again. Bees will do a dance telling other bees where they found food. They don’t learn this behavior, it is innate.