Is There Meaning to Life? | William Lane Craig, Rebecca Goldstein, Jordan Peterson - Toronto 2018

[Music] good evening everyone welcome to the religion and society series event the meaning of life three perspectives we are a sold-out crowd and apparently half the world is watching us on YouTube right now so that's very exciting my name is Karen Stiller and I'm your host for this evening of rich discussion and meaningful conversation including your questions with three fascinating and accomplished professors and authors dr. William Lane Craig dr. Rebecca and Neuberger Goldstein and dr. Jordan Peterson [Applause] sponsored by Wickliffe college the U of T secular Alliance ravi zacharias International Ministries power to change the network of Christian scholars and faith Today magazine the religion and society series generates critical dialogue on matters of faith society and public interest the series tries to shape conversation around teeny-weeny topics like this one the meaning of life topics that deeply matter ideas that are potentially life-changing and now a word from our sponsors tonight sponsors want me to state that this evenings discussion is being staged in the hope that a free and frank exchange of ideas will aid us all in the exploration of important questions and lead us to deeper truth they would also want me to affirm that sponsorship does not imply endorsement of the perspectives or opinions of the speakers and that they are committed to a manner of discourse that respects the dignity of all human beings each of our guests will speak for 20 minutes then we will engage in conversation here on the stage giving our speakers an opportunity to interact with each other then we will take some of your questions you can ask questions via Twitter hashtag religion and society and by texting a number which should appear on the screen and if it's not there now it will be or through the YouTube stream so now it's my honor to briefly introduce our speakers dr. William Lane Craig is a research professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and professor of philosophy at Houston Baptist University he has authored or edited over 40 books as well as over 150 articles in professional journals of philosophy and theology in 2016 dr. Craig was named by the best schools as one of the 50 most influential living philosophers and his website is reasonable faith org dr. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is an American philosopher novelist and public intellectual she is visiting professor of philosophy at New College of the humanities in London England she is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia University and received her PhD in philosophy from Princeton she is the author of 10 books which have received wide attention from such publications as the New York Times The Washington Post The Wall Street Journal The Globe and Mail and others including for her most recent book but not for long a new one is coming Plato at the Googleplex why philosophy won't go away in 2005 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences she has won numerous other awards for both her fiction and scholarship including in 95 a MacArthur Fellowship prize known in the US as the genius org in 2015 she was awarded the National Medal of the humanities by President Obama in a ceremony at the White House and you can find her on twitter at hashtag play doh book tour finally dr. Jordan Peterson is professor of psychology at the University of Toronto a clinical psychologist and the author of the just-released twelve rules for life an antidote to chaos he is now a classic book maps of meaning the architecture of belief offers a revolutionary take on the psychology of religion and the hundred or more scientific papers he published with his colleagues and students have advanced the modern understanding of creativity and personality as a Harvard professor he was nominated for the prestigious Levinson teaching Prize and is regarded by his current UofT students as one of three truly life-changing professors for years his own practice helped his clients manage things like depression obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety he has taught mythology to lawyers doctors and business people and consulted for the UN Secretary General's high-level panel on sustainable we welcome each of you and we anticipate what you'll bring to us tonight I would like to invite dr. William Lane Craig to the podium first [Applause] thank you so much for coming this evening to share this special forum with us the question is there meaning to life is closely connected to another equally profound question namely does God exist for if God does not exist there is no transcendent reality and so both mankind and the universe as a result are inevitably doomed to death like all biological organisms each of us must die and the universe too faces the death of its own scientists tell us that the universe is expanding and everything in it is growing further and further apart as it does sell it grows colder and colder and its energy is used up eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes there will be no light there will be no heat there will be no life only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space a universe in ruins this is not science fiction as unimaginable as it may seem this will happen so not only is the life of each individual person doomed the entire human race is destined to destruction there is no escape there is no hope these plain scientific facts seem nearly incontestable the question then becomes what is the consequence of this many atheist thinkers have argued that it implies that human life itself becomes absurd it means that the life we do have is without ultimate purpose value or significance these three notions purpose value significance though closely related are conceptually distinct purpose has to do with a goal a reason for something value has to do with something's moral worth it's been good or evil right or wrong significance has to do with something's importance why it matters many atheist philosophers from Nietzsche to Russell to Sartre have argued that if God does not exist then life is ultimately absurd it is without ultimate purpose value or significance let me say a word about each one of these first if God does not exist there is no ultimate purpose of life if death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail then what is the goal of life is it all for nothing is there no reason for life and what of the universe is it utterly pointless if its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space the answer must be yes it is pointless there is no goal no purpose for the universe the litter of a dead universe will just go on expanding and expanding forever and what of mankind is there no purpose at all for the human race or will it simply peter out some day lost in the oblivion of an indifferent universe the English writer HG Wells foresaw such a prospect in his novel the time machine wells time traveler journeys far into the future to discover the destiny of man all he finds is a dead earth except for a few lichens and moss orbiting a gigantic red Sun the only sounds are the rush of the wind and the gentle ripple of the sea beyond these lifeless sounds right swells the world was silent silent it would be hard to convey the stillness of it all the sounds of man the bleating of sheep the cries of birds the hum of insects the stir that makes the background of our lives all that was over and so Wells time traveller returned but to what to merely an earlier point on the purposeless rush toward oblivion when is a non-christian I first read Wells book I thought no no it can't end that way but this is reality in a universe without God if there is no God it will end that way like it or not there is no hope there is no purpose second if God does not exist there is no ultimate value in life if there is no God then there are no objective standards of good and evil right and wrong by objective standards I mean moral standards which are valid and binding independently of human opinion if God does not exist then there is no transcendent source of moral values rather moral values are either just the byproducts of sociobiological evolution and conditioning or else expressions of personal taste as the philosopher of science Michael ruse explains the position of the modern evolutionist is that humans have an awareness of morality because such an awareness is of biological worth morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something ethics is Allu Zuri I appreciate that when somebody says love thy neighbor as thyself they think they are referring above and beyond themselves nevertheless such reference is truly without foundation morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction and any deeper meaning is illusory Richard Dawkins puts it succinctly there is at bottom no design no purpose no evil no good nothing but pitiless indifference we are machines for propagating DNA in a world without God there can be no objective right and wrong only our culturally and personally relative subjective judgments so who's to say whose values are right and whose are wrong who's to judge that one person's values are inferior to those of another the concept of objective morality loses all meaning in a universe without God all we are confronted with is in jean-paul sartre words the bare valueless fact of existence that means that it is impossible to condemn war oppression or bigotry as evil nor can you praise tolerance equality and love as good for in a universe without God good and evil do not exist there is only the bare valueless fact of existence and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong third if there is no God then there is no ultimate significance to life if each individual person passes out of existence when he dies then what ultimate importance can be given to his life does it really matter whether he ever existed at all certainly his life may be important relative to certain other events but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events if everything is doomed to destruction then what does it matter that you influenced anything ultimately it makes no difference the contributions of the scientists to the advance of human knowledge the researchers of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world the sacrifices of good people everywhere to better the lot of the human race in the end they don't make one bit of difference they all come to nothing in a famous passage the atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell lamented that man is the product of causes which had no provision of the end they were achieving but no fire no heroism no intensity of thought and feeling can preserve an individual life beyond the grave that all the labors of the ages all the devotion all the inspiration all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system and that the whole temple of man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins all these things if quite not beyond dispute are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand only within the scaffolding of these truths only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built thus on atheism life itself becomes ultimately meaningless if God does not exist then life is without ultimate purpose value or significance in his poem the end of the world the American poet Archibald MacLeish portrays life as an idiotic circus until one day the show is over let me read it to you now quite unexpectedly as Vassar oh the armless ambidextrous was lighting a match between his great and second toe and Ralph the lion was engaged in biting the neck of Madame Sussman while the drum pointed and teenie was about to coffin waltz time swinging Jaco by the thumb quite unexpectedly the top blew off and there there overhead there there hung over those thousands of white faces those dazed eyes there in the starless dark the poised the hover there with vast wings across the cancelled skies there in the sudden blackness the black Paul of nothing nothing nothing nothing at all this is the horror of modern man because he ends in nothing he is nothing do you understand the gravity of the alternatives before us if God exists then there is hope for man if God does not exist then all we are left with this despair as Francis Schaeffer has aptly put it if God is dead then man is dead too unfortunately most people do not realize this fact they continue on as though nothing had changed I'm reminded a friedrich nietzsche's story of the madman who in the early morning hours burst into the marketplace lantern in hand crying i seek god i seek god since many of those standing about did not believe in God he provoked much laughter did God get lost they taunted him or is he hiding or maybe he's gone on a voyage or emigrated and thus they yelled and laughed then writes Nietzsche the madman turned in their midst and pierced them with his eyes whither is God he cried I shall tell you we have killed him you and I all of us are his murderers but how have we done this how are we able to drink up the sea who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon what did we do when we Unchained this earth from its Sun whither is it moving now away from all suns are we not plunging continually backward sigh word for word in all directions is there any up or down left are we not straying as through an infinite nothing do we not feel the breath of empty space has it not become colder it's not night and more night coming on all the while must not lanterns be lit in the morning do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God God is dead and we have killed him how shall we the murderers of all murderers comfort ourselves the crowd stared at the madman in silence and astonishment at last he dashed his lantern to the ground I have come too early he said this tremendous event is still on its way it has not yet reached the ears of men people did not yet truly comprehend the consequences of what they had done in killing God but Nietzsche predicted that someday people would realize the implications of their atheism and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism that is the destruction of all meaning and value in life I find that most people still do not reflect upon the consequences of atheism and so like the crowd in the marketplace go unknowingly on their way a few years ago a toronto-based free thought organization bought bus ads that proclaimed there probably is no God now stop worrying and enjoy your life according to a spokesman for the group they wanted something happy something bright I wonder what's really neat you would have thought of those ads few contemporary atheists have Nietzsche's courage to look a theism squarely in the face without blinking but when we realize as did Nietzsche the niall ISM that atheism implies then his question presses hard upon us how shall we the murderers of all murderers comfort ourselves confronted with the human predicament about the only solution the Atheist can offer is that we simply face the absurdity of life and live bravely the fundamental problem with the solution however is that it's impossible to live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview if you live consistently you will not be happy if you live happily it is only because you are not consistent Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well modern man says Schafer lives in a two-storey universe in the lower story is the finite world without God here life is absurd as we have seen in the upper story our meaning value and purpose now modern man lives in the lower story because he believed there is no god but he cannot live happily in such an absurd world therefore he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning value and purpose even though he has no right to since he does not believe in God while giving lip service to atheism the atheist lives as though life were important as though it really mattered what he does and thinks as though certain things were really right and wrong and so is outraged at the injustice 'as of this world and acts as though his petty projects and plans really were significant the human predicament is thus truly terrible the atheistic worldview is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without purpose value or significance if we try to live consistently within the framework of the atheistic worldview we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy if instead we manage to live happily it is only by giving the lie to our worldview atheism therefore cannot support a happy and consistent life but if atheism fails in this regard what about Christian theism according to the biblical worldview God does exist and life does not end at the grave God has created us for a purpose to know him and enjoy him forever God Himself who transcends socially relative mores is the objective standard of moral principles and goodness and his Commandments are the source of our objective moral duties because we shall live forever the decisions and actions we take in this life are imbued with an eternal significance the lasts beyond the grave biblical theism therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a purposeful valuable and meaningful life God and immortality because of this we can live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview thus biblical theism succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down now I would be the first to say that none of this proves that God exists even if atheism is unlivable it may still be true but in tonight's dialogue we've not been asked to discuss whether God exists or not I've written extensively on that question elsewhere tonight we've been asked to discuss is there meaning to life on this score there need be no dispute between the theist and the atheist indeed it has been the atheists themselves as we have seen who have given the most poignant analyses of the human predicament let them speak for themselves without God they tell us life becomes absurd for it is without ultimate purpose value or significance I agree but I would add one thing we've seen that if God does not exist then life is futile if God does exist then life is meaningful only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live consistently and happily therefore it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal a rational person ought to choose theism that is to say if the evidence is equal it seems to me positively irrational to prefer death futility and fare to life meaningfulness and Happiness therefore my advice is go with God as Pascal said we have nothing to lose and everything to gain [Applause] Thank You dr. Craig we now welcome dr. Neuberger goldstein [Applause] thank you very much for coming tonight this is one of those rare occasions when I'm going to speak in public to a roomful of strangers in a personal way which isn't easy for me I'm one of those people who finds it difficult to speak in a personal way even in private just ask my loved ones but this question which we are discussing tonight life's meaning which forces us to confront how we ought to live so as not to squander our one and only chance and our one and only life this question is for me as it is for each of you personal personal not just because it matters so much to each of us matters as much as our own lives matter to each of us which they of course must matter given that we have to live them after all who else's life are you going to pursue if not your own but also personal in the sense that how you approach this question how you make sense of it and perhaps resolve it or perhaps don't resolve it draws on the deepest aspects of who you are as an individual your particular passions and interests and talents and culture and temperament and character as well as on what your view of reality is your view of reality in the grandest sense the answers you give no matter how tentative to the questions the philosophers call metaphysical is there a God are there immaterial souls is there an afterlife have we free will a person's metaphysics is going to affect her thinking about life's meaning which is why the sponsors of tonight's event so wisely invited three speakers with disparate metaphysical outlooks to address this question and I'm very honored to be one of them because of the weight that I give to individual variability and determining approaches to this question of the meaningful life I don't believe that there does exist one definitive answer to tonight's question the meaning of life definite article firmly in place my meaningful life may not be right for you I suspect for many of you that is true to begin with it may not be right for you because you disagree with my metaphysical outlook so then what is my metaphysical outlook in a word I'm a naturalist a naturalist in the philosophical sense in the metaphysical sense I don't think that anything supernatural exists and by the supernatural I mean anything that is not subject to the laws of nature my naturalism is inconsistent with a transcendent God immaterial souls and afterlife another way of putting naturalism is that I believe we humans are part of the rest of nature I'm not interested at least not tonight in arguing for my naturalism or in going into how it differs from scientism to which I don't subscribe nor am i interested in going into the personal story as to why I who happen to have been born into a profoundly religious family and whose strictly adhered to as very demanding tenets for most of my decades finally abandoned it for naturalism I'll simply tell you that it wasn't undertaken lightly rather what I am interested in discussing is how the metaphysical stance of naturalism which might strike you as severely disadvantaged as a severely disadvantaged vantage point for contemplating a meaningful life isn't that it provides all the resources one needs for pursuing a meaningful life and that perhaps perhaps what I have to say might even be meaningful to those of you who metaphysically disagree with me so that we can in approaching this all-important question of pursuing a meaningful life agree on more than we disagree on which would be nice especially for me since being able to reach a point of deep commonality across divides even so fundamental as metaphysical divides which stop and think about it for a moment means that we inhabit entirely different subjective realities that's a deep divide deeper than political divides - never the less reach commonality in virtue of our shared humanity across so deep a divide is for me one of the main goals of my pursuing a meaningful life I wouldn't be so bold as to universalize this goal of mine and say it's necessary for any meaningful life but it does happen to be necessary for mine which explains a lot about why I'm standing here tonight talking in a way that I'm not comfortable talking before a room full of strangers but nobody wise ever said pursuing a meaningful life is easy that it's comfortable that it's constituted of only pleasant experiences or desires for Pleasant experiences that's hedonism and being a naturalness doesn't commit a person to hedonism if it did I wouldn't be here but now I do pass to a feature that I would be prepared to universalize to all meaningful lives call it epistemic responsibility from the ancient Greek word Epis team meaning knowledge and I mean by the phrase taking very seriously the responsibilities of being the kind of creature who forms beliefs on the basis of reasons which of course describes us posthumous we are reason giving creatures we offer reasons for both our beliefs and our actions and always the reasons for our actions include reference to our beliefs we act not only on our desires but also on belief so reasons for beliefs are always involved always central when challenged about our beliefs whether by others or by ourselves we stand ready to offer reasons and one challenged on those reasons we offer reasons for those reasons and then reasons for the reasons for the reasons and so on that's why Aristotle defined us as the rational animal because of our readiness to offer reasons Aristotle wasn't claiming that they're necessarily good reasons that we offer the man wasn't a fool the philosopher Bertrand Russell already came up today also a metaphysical naturalist offered a kind of witty rejoinder to Aristotle's definition quote it has been said that man is a rational animal this is my Bertrand Russell impersonation all my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this and end quote but Russell isn't really regarding maybe I should give the rest of the talk and that accidents more authoritative thing but Russell isn't really negating what Aristotle was addressing our always standing ready with the reasons but rather pinpointing the facts that's so awesome the reasons are bad taking seriously the possibility that the reasons for one's own beliefs might be substandard standing ready to expose them to the severus criticism not just criticism that you yourself can think up or those who share your own beliefs naming your own epistemic bubble but also crucially exposing them to criticisms of those who disagree with you that's what I mean by epistemic responsibility it's what Socrates meant when he announced that the unexamined life is not worth living which is a somewhat harsh way of saying that epistemic responsibilities ought to be your universal eyes to all meaningful lives we can forgive Socrates for being a bit harsh when he made that pronouncement he'd just been voting guilty by a jury of over 500 of his fellow opinions charged with a capital crime of introducing new gods and corrupting the young again nobody wise ever said that the meaningful life is the maximally pleasant the comfortable life but just in case it seems as if the meaningful life is nothing but unpleasantness let me just say that changing one's point of view under the strictures of epistemic responsibilities is as best as one can is is a pleasurable experience there is pleasure in the sense that one is seen more objectively than one had before that one is making progress in understanding starting more narrow contingent perspectives it feels expansive the philosopher burrows Spinoza also a metaphysical naturalist whose own religious community excommunicated him at the age of 23 argued that the experience of expanding one's viewpoint under the strictures of epistemic responsibility beats out all other pleasures including riches and fame and sensual delights that it alone provides us quote continuous supreme and unending happiness unquote but whether pleasurable or not we all want to live a meaningful life because our lives matter to us this is not a matter of argument this is a an immediate fact of course I matter to me because I am me effects panel in his concept of coitus made this first-person self referential kind of mattering I matter to me the very essence of our individual identities what am i I am the thing who doesn't have to offer any reasons to explain or justify why the survival and flourishing of one Rebecca Newberger Goldstein matters to that thing but it's also true of us universally true that we have a will to matter that extends beyond the first person self-referent racial type of mattering the will to matter the profound longing not to be as nothing is there any will deeper than that in us humans it's deeper even than the will to survive we don't want to live when we become convinced that we don't that we can't that we will never matter those are the words of clinical depression in fact the website in the US for suicide prevention is called you matter we no sooner discover that we are then we want that which we are to matter we are creatures of matter who long to matter and I don't think that we can discuss the meaningful life without addressing this profoundness of our longings a meaningful life has got in some way to satisfy the will to matter let me just explicate what I don't mean to imply by speaking of the will to matter first of all by the will to matter I don't mean the will to matter more than others matter though for many people competitive mattering being richer smart or taller more powerful better-looking more stylish or athletic more talented more original more pious more whatever is the only kind of mattering they can contemplate such people are often quite unpleasant to be around it seems to me if I can get political for one moment that we've got a stunning specimen in the current President of the United States of America is Donald Chu is Donald J Trump living a meaningful life in his endless pursuit of competitive mattering stop using up my twenty minutes in any case when I say the will to matter I definitely do not mean the will to demonstrate that one matters more than others matter in fact I believe it to be demonstrably true that to the extent that any of us matter we all matter to that same extent demonstrably true so many human goods are in equitably distributed among us riches and power beauty and health talent and status and luck and love but not mattering which is why it is so unspeakably tragic when people lead their lives badly there are lives matter and when I say the will to matter I don't mean the will to demonstrate that you matter in some spectacular heroic way your name to be spoken for spoken for as long as there shall be speakers that's what the ancient Greeks called clay house getting spoken about because of something extraordinary about you something worth recounting that you did even if it wasn't moral it was in terms of Klaus that the ancient Greeks defined the meaningful life and that was precisely the point about which socks Socrates was consistently hectoring them which hectoring as you know his fellow Athenians dint altogether appreciate nor does will to matter necessarily require that one matters in the even grander transhuman cosmic eternal scheme of things that one matters to the very universe itself which is the master of the universe this is the religious point of view and I know believe me I know how potently it satisfies the psychological will to matter my opinion is that all the arguments for God's existence come after the fact which is an emotional fact generated out of the common emotional core of us all the will to matter and yes there is nothing as powerful as the Abrahamic religions all three of them Judaism Christianity and Islam to make a believer feel that she matters cosmically matters it is powerful stuff when I lived according to my family's faith I wasn't allowed to eat anything didn't have the proper rabbinic all imprimatur if I can use a word for a Roman Catholicism to apply to the rabbi's and there was this kind of pastry hostess Twinkies I've actually got one with me because I didn't know whether you'd be familiar with it it just looks so delicious to me as a child especially that creamy inside smeared all over my friends lips as they gobble them but I harbored not a doubt that where I ever to taste a hostess Twinkie the Lord of the hosts himself would instantaneously know and be angered that was frightening but I never doubted for a moment that I powerfully I cosmically mattered that God Himself would care if I took a bite a naturalist can't satisfy her will to matter in such a psychologically powerful way as someone who holds such religious beliefs but that doesn't mean we can't satisfy it as sufficiently to live a meaningful life a life that permits us to add something of value to the world but wait a minute where did this talk of value all of a sudden come in I've just been talking about the will to matter a completely naturalist concept that I think can be explained by way of evolutionary psychology and suddenly here's an invasion of value talk what philosophers called normative language well values do come in when we consider wisely what it is to satisfy the will to matter the awful thought the it's 4 a.m. and I'm wide awake and wondering what it all means thought is that had I not existed the world would have been no different at all that my existence though it means all the world to me adds nothing of value to the world beyond my perspective the world would have been just the same or maybe even better had I never been to live a meaningful life is to live so as to expunge this 4 a.m. thought here is where the individual variability that I spoke about before comes in a person's talents commitments temperament culture character yield with the 20th century philosopher Bernard Williams also a metaphysical naturalist had called projects including a person's ground projects quote providing the mode of force which propels him into the future and gives him in a sense a reason for living there is tremendous variety between us in what era ground projects are the full spread of human diversity and ingenuity is in display is on display in the ground projects devised to confront the will to power and it includes the heights of our human achievements creations and the arts discoveries in the sciences improvements in forms of government as well as the depths of injustice and cruelty there is within the full range of our ground projects both darkness and light a ground project that successfully ministers to the will to matter may not add up to a meaningful life certainly not if it comes at the expense of epistemic responsibilities nor if it crucially depends for its success on undermining others sense of mattering which is a hallmark of vicious viciously false ideologies and if to achieve a meaningful life one's Brown project has not only to avoid these grievous errors but also add some value to the world then we can also be sadly mistaken thinking we're adding positive out of value to the world when alas were not then it will feel to us from the inside as if we're living a meaningful life but we'll be self diluted it's good to get some objective feedback if possible I've shared with you that my ground project crucially involves reaching across the deepest divides so as to touch on the even deeper commonalities between us in virtue of our common humanity whether I succeeded here tonight and that goal isn't for me to say but rather for you but of course I hope I have and I thank you humbly for giving me the opportunity thank you dr. Neuberger goldstein and now we welcome dr. Jordan Peterson [Applause] one of the things that's really struck me about intellectual life is how often we get the questions wrong and we often get them backwards not just wrong but actually backwards so as a clinical psychologist I've often treated people with anxiety and people wonder practically individually clinically why are people anxious and I think that's a completely ridiculous question it the reasons for anxiety are starkly self-evident what I wonder is why aren't people terrified out of their skulls so badly every second of their life that they can't even move yeah and you all laugh because you understand that it's like anxiety that's no mystery it's like brief spells of calm that's a mystery okay client will come to me and say well I'm procrastinating why do i procrastinate it's like no that's a stupid question it's easy just to sit there and do nothing what's the mystery is why you ever get up and do anything difficult at all procrastination is the default and psychologists ask doctors ask well why do people take cocaine it's like no no it's the wrong question the right question is why not like an addicted rat don't you just take cocaine all the time until you die that's the question and this question about meaning is like that too is there meaning in life that's a stupid question and it's I'm serious about that that's not a question you ever ask yourself if you're in pain right because when you're in pain you know that life has a meaning it's the pain and you can't argue yourself out of that meaning and so when we're asking whether or not life has meaning that isn't what we mean what we mean is in the face of life's pain and suffering does life have any positive meaning and that is not the same question now leave that aside for a minute and I'm going to tell you a little story it's a little experiment remember in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell down there was a great celebration in Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra played a part in it and they came out to a section of the wall that had been knocked down where there was a huge crowd and played Beethoven's 9th and I remember watching that the great third movement the triumphant third movement and it was so wonderful to see everyone there and hear this orchestra playing those unbelievably remarkable notes in triumph that this horror show had finally come to a halt you can imagine someone critically minded and rational not an event like that standing behind you as you're listening to the great strains of that symphony manifest themselves tap you on the shoulder and say well you know that Symphony is going to end what makes you think it has any meaning at all it's like well how do you respond to something like that you say you should reconsider the way you're looking at the world there buddy because that's just not the right answer it's just not the right question it's like the symphony has no meaning because it ends well you're not paying attention to what's going on if that's the way you think or maybe you're thinking too much yes you're thinking too much and not paying enough attention but it's more serious than that and this ties in the issue of pain say what is it all matter if in 10 billion years the earth is going to fall and or this Sun is going to expand and consume the earth what difference does it make and I would say well is that that kind of answer you're gonna give to a child that's in pain that's your answer it's like hey you've got the flu you're anxious you're having a nightmare you're in terrible pain but in ten million years who the hell is going to know the difference Yeah right no kidding it's like you don't if the question is if that response is absurd in that situation then it's an absurd response the mere fact that you can come up with a time frame across which your current activity is meaningless only means that you're capable of playing with meanings across time frames it doesn't mean anything at all about meaning as far as I can tell is it absolutely obligatory that everything that's meaningful has to be significant in some unimaginable distant future why is that the hallmark why wouldn't you just say here's an idea why don't you stop conceptualizing your life across timed timeframes that takes all the positive meaning out of them how would that be for a suggestion maybe the fact that posing the question in that way makes you feel miserable and wretched and futile is an indication that there's something wrong with posing the question in that manner and you might say well there's nothing wrong with posing questions and I would say well that brings us back to the child in pain problem sometimes there is a problem with posing questions in a certain way and what difference is it going to make in 10 million years is not a sufficient response to someone who's suffering and then you might say well we could we could expand that idea even we could take play with that idea of suffering we could say well maybe it's a child in our switz you know and the suffering isn't merely a consequence of an illness not that that's trivial but the suffering is the consequence of conscious malevolence how about that and the purpose of the malevolence is just to make things worse and and to top it all off because malevolence is a form of art it's not only to make things worse it's to make things worse in the worst possible imaginable way which is basically to amplify the suffering of someone maximally innocent in the most pointless way possible well what what's your answer to that it's like 10 million years what difference is it going to make life is fundamentally meaningless it's like what kind of answer is that it's an answer that shows that the framework within which that question is generated is invalid that's what kind of answer it is I I realized a while back that I had gone through a process when I was in my 20s there was akin to something Descartes did I'm not trying to compare myself to Descartes but he was he was trying to look for something that he couldn't doubt and the consequence of his search was I think therefore I am which I don't think is exactly a good translation of what Descartes meant I think he meant something more like I can't dispute the reality of my own consciousness something like that and that's good that isn't where I got two in my contemplations I was looking for something that I regarded as incontrovertible and I was fortunate at that time because I was reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Solzhenitsyn wrote the Gulag Archipelago among many other things and the Gulag Archipelago is a description of the absolute catastrophes of the Soviet state and the entanglement of the individual psyches of the Soviet citizens in that catastrophe their descent into deceit and cruelty deceit resentment and cruelty when Solzhenitsyn said in the Gulag Archipelago that he thought the Nuremberg trials were the most important event of the 20th century and the reason he said that was because the Nuremberg judgement for better or worse was that there were some acts that were so viciously brutal that there was no excuse whatsoever for engaging in them no matter who you were or what your culture was or what your rationale was and so for for Solzhenitsyn the Nuremberg trials established what you might describe as the transcendent reality of evil and that's an unbelievably useful thing it's akin to this idea of suffering in my estimation and because well it's the child in the in Auschwitz problem that you need an answer to the problem posed by the suffering of innocence as a consequence of malevolence you say that's that's it that's evil the conscious exaggeration of unnecessary suffering that gives you a vantage point that's wrong whatever it is that that's wrong well then you have a place to stand you can say oh okay now I know that there's something that's wrong in the non-trivial way in a way that can't be just dispensed with with rational objections that emerge as a consequence of contemplation of the boundedness of life those answers aren't serious enough to address the issue well so I thought okay well I found something that I can grip on to or stand on without dispute there are acts that are unquestionably evil and that means that there are acts that are unquestionably good now it doesn't mean that we know what they are right because just because you know one pole of something doesn't necessarily mean you know the other I could say that whatever leads us as far as way as we can possibly get from Auschwitz that's good well I've been trying to puzzle out what that might be for 25 years to outline it in the practical manner I suppose in it in an abstract manner to understand if there's a route I am owed of being let's say that takes us away from undue suffering but more than that takes us away from undue suffering multiplied by malevolence it's a fundamental existential problem of life we all suffer that's the meaning of life we all suffer the suffering is exacerbated by the malevolence in our hearts and the malevolence in the hearts of all of us and the Paramount issue that faces us is what to do about that and the answer is I think live a life that manifests itself as meaningful because it seems to me that the meeting isn't a rational phenomena it's not something that you create this is where Nietzsche I think got it wrong he believed that as a consequence of the death of God we had we would have to create our own values we would have to become God's ourselves so to speak but I don't think that Nietzsche was right because I don't think that we can create our own values I think that we have to discover them and I think that what we discover our eternal values and I think that the eternal values that are discoverable are precisely the values that lead us away from the pathway to perdition that was characterized by places such as our switz and I also think that we all know this now it's not that we can't question it because we can question it but the questioning is in some sense beside the point like the person objecting to the grand their grandeur of Beethoven's 9th by pointing out that it's going to end the questioning is beside the point it's missing the point I've studied a variety of great psychologists Jean Piaget and Carl Jung and Freud and Carl Rogers many of the great 20th century clinicians and and my sense is that along with the biologists in the evolutionary psychologists that we're we're starting to map out the pathway that might be the the opposite of the catastrophic mode of being that leads us into pits of Hell like Auschwitz and that there's something genuinely real about it like seriously real metaphorically real and literally real both at the same time that the instinct to meaning that you experience for example when you listen to something great that that in that experience of meaning that over comes you isn't some epiphenomena it's not something some mere reflection of some more fundamental process but that which is more fundamental than anything else say well you can't deny that pain is real and suffering is real and you can't deny that suffering induced by malevolence is the worst of all possible sufferings those are all undeniable as far as I'm concerned those are all meanings of life and and they're real enough so that if you encounter them like if you encounter true malevolence the probability that you'll walk away from it unscathed is very very low you will damage you psycho physiologically and you might never recover and that's real enough for me well is the path away from that real is the path that transcends that real maybe it's more real that's what I've come to believe is pessimistic as I am about the nature of humanity myself included as real as I believe suffering and evil to be it appears to me that the mode of being that leads you away from that that enables you to bear the suffering with nobility and to be useful to others who are in pain and to constrain the malevolence in your own heart and around you that that mode of being is more powerful than that which it is set against and not only that I think that we experience this I think we experience it we just don't notice maybe because we're too busy thinking because noticing and thinking aren't the same thing we see in our own lives when we're engaged in something deeply meaningful music is the best pathway to that I think it's the most it's the most rapid and indisputable pathway to that everyone virtually everyone loves music and music speaks of meaning it it does it directly it shows you what life would be like if it was ordered and harmonious and you were dancing along with it properly it gives you an intimation of psychological integrity but you watched your lives day to day week to week month to month you'll notice that there are times when you're so deeply engaged in what you're doing when what you're doing is so meaningful in the kind of meaning that announces itself not the kind that you're creating that life is so meaningful you think this is worth the suffering you think well that's meaning right meaning is what makes the suffering worthwhile is that real it's not something you think up it's something that you discover and you can watch you could see day to day minute to minute hour to hour week to week you can see when you're conducting yourself or being conducted in a manner that allows that meaning to reveal itself in a way that in the moment even if you don't notice the conditions of your life justify themselves and and that's really saying something because pain and suffering and malevolence are real and for something to justify that it's really something for something to justify that but will you find that you find it in art you find it in literature you find it in the relationships you have with others if those relationships are founded on trust and truth you find it in what you say and do if what you say and do comes from the heart you can experience that the price of experiencing it I would say is twofold you have to take responsibility for being you have to do that voluntarily and that means that you have to take responsibility for this suffering of being and accept it and work to ameliorate it and you have to do that voluntarily and that's a barrier I think very frequently that arguments like well what difference is it going to make 10 million years in the future aren't hyper-rational objections to the nature of being itself but hyper rationalistic excuses failing to bear the responsibility of living properly moment-to-moment an hour-to-hour there say you have a child who's sick maybe one who's been hurt you say well what do you say or do in the face of that well you say hey kid I'm here with you I'm here beside you matters what's happening to you and we're gonna do everything we possibly can to get through this together and if you're lucky you get a hug there's a consequence of that and you think if you don't think that's meaningful man there's something wrong with your soul and the answer what the hell difference is it going to make in 10 million years that's the devil himself speaking oh that's good enough [Applause] thank you to all three of you you've given us a lot to think about and I would like to open this time by just throwing it open with the three of you if you were all taking notes at various times is there something you would like to jump on to right away that you heard dr. Craig well I was very heartened Jordan by your affirmation of the objectivity of moral values and duties you said there are things that are unquestionably good and unquestionably evil that these moral values are not things that are invented but they are discovered and I couldn't agree more and I would want to push you on this to say that this very consideration ought to help you to move through naturalism and Beyond naturalism to a transcendent ground for the objectivity of these moral values and duties because they won't be found in naturalism The Naturalist is trapped in the lower story objective moral values and duties are not physical entities described by the laws of nature these are transcendent realities either platonic or else grounded in God and therefore the very affirmation of the objectivity of moral values and duties it was so strong throughout your talk which I so appreciate it's it's anti relativistic its objective istic I want to I want to encourage you to push through that naturalism to finding a transcendent ground for these in theism I think that's the most plausible moral theory that will enable us to affirm the objectivity of these moral values and duties [Applause] i I've tried to work out the sorts of ideas that I portrayed in this talk today within a naturalistic framework as much as possible for because of the naturalistic technique is so powerful no not least for that but also because there's glimmerings in the scientific literature of the sorts of ideas that you portrayed when you mentioned that the evolutionary biologists are increasingly making the claim that morality is a biological adaptation and I think you can make a very strong case for that a much stronger case than has actually been made so far I think there is a very sophisticated ethic that has evolved that we recognize as a consequence of the evolution of our cognitive and emotional structures I think that that recognition manifests itself in admiration you know people are very imitative it's one of the things that characterizes us in Contra distinction to animals who are not very imitative it's probably the precondition for our linguistic capacity one of the things that characterizes human existence is the capacity to spontaneously pick a model for emulation right a model for admiration and that's the manifestation of that moral instinct to say well to admire is to want to copy say well what do you want to copy well you want to copy that which is most admirable what is most admirable well what is most admirable that starts to become a that starts to become a transcendent question right you can imagine that the the local examples of what's admirable they're right in front of you and and and they're concrete and tangible but to abstract out from that that which is admirable in and of itself is simultaneously to construct something like the representation of a transcendent good and that's to some degree how religious conceptions emerge from their underlying biological substrate now you might say well that's merely reducing the religious conceptualization the religious abstraction of what's good to the biological substrate and I think you can read it that way but I don't think that that necessarily indicates what it is I think that the entire process of evolution is somehow shaping itself around maybe platonic ideas something like that some transcendent good and that it's a mistake to assume that just because you can make an association between the transcendent abstract good and the process of evolution that one is necessarily reducible to another it isn't the way reality works commit the genetic fallacy to try to say that because one's moral beliefs originated through such a biological evolutionary process that therefore they are explained away and have no objective validity that that just is too close yeah I think it's partly what happens to is that you you at that level of analysis you have to start questioning your initial presumptions like the idea that the most true truth is objective because I'm not sure it is I don't think we understand what constitutes truth very well and there's the truth that you act out as well as the truth that tells you what the world is made of and those aren't necessarily the same thing and so things get very murky at that level of abstraction but one thing I have learned from attempting to reduce religious preconceptions to their biological substrate is that there's always something left over that you haven't explained and it's it's not something trivial because every time I look into what's left over it turns out to be unutterably deep that I get rid of some more of it and the rest becomes unutterably deep so dr. goldstein I believe just as strongly and objective moral truths and I do in fact I completely reject your argument that it requires either a grounding in God or into some sort of platonic ideals there there's an ancient argument it goes back to Plato Plato's Euthyphro that of tristar argue that quite my book successfully argues that the addition of God really doesn't help with grounding morality and this is the Socrates asked a priest he was the fro the athenian religion and tell me what is it that make something good and and Euthyphro answer don't thank God that God loves that God it's God's attitude or the gods attitude that that makes it good Socrates asks well does God love the good because it's good or is his loving it what makes it good if it's the first that God loves giving to the vulnerable to the victims to the orphan to the widow because it's good then there is something independent in virtue of which God loves these actions that makes them good and that constitutes the reason for the goodness if God hates genocide and loves a charity then there is a reason in virtue of which God has these more attitudes and if God himself has no reason for it if it's just when if it's Caprice then is that really satisfying our answer as to what makes good acts good and bad acts bad that the addition of God doesn't round things at all like leaves it it makes what seems to us mysterious and answers it with another mystery so that this is you know an ancient argument repeated by Spinoza repeated by by Russell repeated by people and I would like to ask you how you answer the question and I the whole history of moral philosophy from Spinoza you know through part through Rawls through Tom Nagel all these arguments have given completely naturalist arguments to try to ground morality and they are in fact the kinds of arguments by means of which we've made progress in fact that all of the individual rights movements there you know anti slavery and emancipation of women and on and on and on have been made on the basis of completely naturalist arguments taking it as elemental from something that we've learned from our own lives that we matter and that if we want to answer what is it in virtue of which we matter what we get to fairly quickly is its in virtue of something that we share with everybody else and this is the kind of arguments that have actually had real consequences in terms of emancipating and making real people's lives better Oh ever since I would say the Enlightenment actually and so so I guess my question to you is double but you say to the Euthyphro argument how does God really help and to what do you say about the whole progress of moral philosophy which has in fact been completely secular and has helped more people then I'm not gonna say then religion I'm not going to say it but bulletin believe me has made a lot of people suffer as well when you speak about Auschwitz it's very hard for me not to cry every person of my generation and my family is named after a dead child who died there so to me this is extremely personal my very name Rebecca is some child who died so that this is uh how does this come up I don't know I just had to sit here I'm sorry those are my two questions to you I'm really surprised I'm really surprised to hear you trot out the old Euthyphro dilemma because this has been answered over and over again by contemporary Christian philosophers like Robert Adams William Alston and others the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma it pauses two non mutually exhaustive choices either the gods love something because it is good or it is good and therefore they love it the theistic alternative to the youthful dilemma is that something is good because it is identical with God God is the good god is what Plato referred to as the good so that the the reason God will something is because he is good and his moral commands to us reflect the goodness of his own intrinsic moral nature God is by nature essentially kind loving compassionate fair and so forth and this completely resolves the Euthyphro dilemma because it's a third alternative to the the question now in terms of the second question you raised the problem with all of these theories is that they can't justify their starting point they just take it for granted that some sort of humanism is true that there is something about human beings that is intrinsically morally valuable but that's precisely you see what's called into question by naturalism if the film of evolutionary history were rewound and shot over again a very different sort of creature might have evolve from the evolutionary process with a very different set of values and by what right would we be able to say well our values are the correct ones and yours are the wrong ones it's also solely culturally relative and so while I applaud the advances in human rights and things of the sort that you mentioned I I want to help by offering a foundation for the objectivity of the moral values and duties that we both hold dear a foundation that I think is conspicuously lacking and naturally we you approach this it's wrong you know there is a kind of transcendental argument meaning you know that kind of argument that is inspired by Kant by Immanuel Kant where we look at not an extra fact in order to justify something but we look at the very conditions that make certain kinds of thinking possible the the the categories of the mind he this is how he tried to confront Humes problem we can't we can't justify induction human David you had demonstrated this there's no circular way to justify induction and yet rational life depends on induction we can't justify deduction logic none circularly how could one accept any argument for deduction if that was the very thing that is being called into question there is a kind of normative reasoning without which life is impossible and we certainly apply it always to ourselves we if somebody treats us in a way that completely violates our mattering our sense of dignity if I'm lying on a beach soaking up the Rays I'm thinking about this right now because I'm soaking up excuse me some some big guy wants to get from point A to point B and I'm lying Pyne in the sand and and he doesn't step over me or go around me but just clump clump clump right on my stomach to get to the next point what am I going to feel a complete outrage complete indignation how can you possibly have done that you had reason not to behave that way what is the reason my pain my suffering don't care about causing pain to each other in the natural world animal pain predation goes on all the time what he's doing is just preserving his evolutionary advantage that is not the point I am concentrating on concentrating on the point of me lying there thinking in my wrathful indignation how could you have done that you had reason not to do that my pain gives you reason not to do that there is no way that we can conduct our lives without having those kinds of reactions which they are emotions they are emotions indignation yes outrage that are very complicated they're called moral emotions because they have hidden in them that claim that somebody has reason to act otherwise right and there is no way that we can conduct our lives without having these reactions right isn't that exactly my point that it's impossible to live consistently and happily as though your life were valueless as though you had no value I agree so so that is our starting point and from that one goes on to other things then one thinks well if I can't possibly live without feeling that my life has some value that when you treat me as if I don't matter this outrage I feel you had a reason to act otherwise what is it about me that that gives me this claim of putting reasons on you when I think about that and try to justify it I very quickly see there's nothing special about me everybody is living this way everybody knows first person naturally that they matter they can act otherwise they can't conduct their lives otherwise and that is what Spinoza called comatose right that this is a complicated emotion it isn't some sense what the genes would have a very complicated creature like us who has self-reflection and reasons what would end up saying I matter and then ask and and why exactly do i matter you come to the conclusion not so quickly right it's taking us millennia it's you know because I come from this tribe or I'm a member of this race or this people or on my this gender or whatever slowly slowly slowly it's taken us a very long time to actually get to the point I'm moral philosophy has helped us a great deal here that what it is in virtue of which I matter is the same in purch of which we all matter why do so many people then tussle with the question of do I matter like why why do so many of us struggle with the meaning of life that we're all pretty much painfully self-aware of all our inadequacies people know that they're finite and brutally breakable and capable of reprehensible actions and it makes all of us doubt the the validity of our claim to a continued untrammeled existence and we have to bear the existential guilt that that knowledge of finitude and insufficiency and malevolence leaves us with and I would say that's part of the call to noble action as an antidote to precisely that and that call to what you could be rather than what you are that's a good call demeaning I also had the answer to your question I had a dream I had a dream once and I'm speaking psychologically here not not theologically I had a dream once I was in the cemetery of an old church an old cathedral surrounded by the graves and there were indentations in the grounds where all the graves were and all of a sudden they the grave started to open and it was a graveyard where great people great men of the past had been buried and so grave opened and I an armed King stood up and then another grave opened and another armed King stood up and just happened all around me and these were very formidable figures right they were the great heroes of the past and after a number of them appeared on the scene they looked around and saw each other and being warrior types they immediately started to fight and the question is what stops the great kings of the past from fighting and I had a revelation after the dream I can't remember if it was part of it but he has it was part of the dream they all bowed down to the figure of Christ I thought and then I woke up and I thought what in the world is that dream mean what in the world could that possibly mean and then I understood it I understood that if you have 20 Kings let's say and you took the thing that was most king like about each of them and then you combined it into a go figure then you'd get a single figure of transcendent heroism of transcendent good and it's a tenant of the Union School of Psychology let's say that that figure of transcendent good is symbolized by the image of Christ and the purpose of that image is so that even the tyrannical King has someone to bend his knee to and that's absolutely vital I mean it does you don't have to approach it from a religious perspective although you inevitably do because when you speak of things at this level that's what happens but you need an image of the transcendent embodied good to to serve as something that unites the great tyrants of the past it's something like that it's an emergent it's an emergent vision of embodied unity and it's a psychological necessity it's a sociological necessity and I think it bears very strongly on your question about why is it that people matter it's the the the classic Western out bouncer to that the judeo-christian answer to that is because you have a spark of divinity within you and that divinity is a reflection of this transcendent good and it's obligatory for me to recognize that in you and vice versa if we're going to inhabit the same territory without mayhem peacefully and with the ability to cooperate now you might say well the mere fact that a transcendent image is necessary as a uniting figure doesn't prove the reality of that image but I would say well yes but it doesn't disprove it and it strongly hints at something more profound especially when you also ally it with the observation that the encounter with something truly admirable produces the instinct of awe and that's not a rational instinct it's an irrational instinct but it's a marker that you're in the presence of something greater than yourself and it's not something that you have voluntary control over it's something that overtakes you and it could easily be a reflection of the truth now you can make a biological ruin you can make a biologically reductionistic argument about that but it starts to become extraordinarily difficult because you you you enter into the realm where these transcendent experiences of religious significance and awe are phenomenological and psychological reality and it's not easy to explain why that's the case so I am somewhat suspicious of the transcendent some things that make us feel part of something people matter is transcendent you said that no no no no I said I did not no no I said I was using a transcendental kind of argument Paulo Conte that is transcendental dental this is not this is different from transcendence well the same for everyone it's transcendent because it transcends the individual if there's something about the every individual that's fine that's fine there's a vocabulary you are talking about a transcendent reality beyond the natural realm Rebecca doesn't believe in such a reality she says everything is confined to the laws of nature and things subject to that but she's using the word transcendental a transcendental argument like Kant where in order to justify for example reasoning you show that without the assumption of reasoning you couldn't even deny the the validity of reasoning it's a it's a it's almost kind of pulling it up by your bootstraps sort of argument that's what you're talking creates the very conditions for coherence there in our life right and I would say you know this there are transcendental arguments for logic for induction for deduction for induction and I would say for norm for moral reasoning as well that there are certain preconceptions that are we can't live our life coherently without them we can stop with ourselves but if we push it further that's exactly what the spinosus project was a completely naturalist deduction of of FX he calls it the ethics it had a profound effect on European history it took a hundred years but it seeded the Enlightenment from which soul meant so much moral progress has derived that I am very much a beneficiary of it as a woman as a Jew I am very much a beneficiary of that of what came from the Enlightenment but yes I was was that makes me the Lord the bigger being part of a movement that bigger makes us more than we are this kind of trying to transcend our humanity what makes me very nervous because you know I mean what can my the imprint on my mind is always both the victims of the greatest horror that I know of and and the perpetrators of it who felt so transcendent those Nazis right they were part of a very larger-than-life movement that made them feel you know with talk about symbols symbols galore spectacle galore it was a kind of drunkenness of transcendence I have heard that I'm nervous about that give me music give me art give me great novels give me poetry that kind of transcendence but the sort of transcendence that is the transcendence that makes us feel all at one in our humble humanity that kind of transcendence I I believe in but but I don't like the larger symbolic we are transcending our human condition let's just be human that would be triumph enough we want to move very quickly and just starting to take questions because we're the time is moving I but first I want to talk about the Twinkie in the room because that really is about religion I think putting rules on you have an answer to the meaning of life the religion would be a freedom experience I'm sure can can you respond to that dr. Khurana I didn't catch the question well just this idea of religion being an oppressive reality Oh versus a meaningful reality for the meaning of life I think that the argument that I have offered this evening is simply irrelevant to the societal effects upon of religion you cannot judge the truth or falsity of a worldview based upon its societal impact for example Einstein's theories of relativity being largely misunderstood led to a cultural relativism where people thought he meant or thought everything is relative they didn't understand the demonstrate relativity and relativism and so in some ways relativity theory has had negative cultural consequences in terms of promoting a kind of moral relativism does that show the theory is false of course not the truth or falsity of a worldview doesn't depend upon its societal impact and so as a philosopher I'm just not that bothered are interested in what are the social implications of theism I'm talking about a meta ethical argument a metaphysical argument that will give us an objective grounding for significance human value and purpose in life that can then be fleshed out in practical normative ways this is from a viewer how does your perspective on the meaning of life account for evil and suffering would you like to take that first dr. Peterson well I I read something very interesting many decades ago there was a Jewish meditation on finitude and it was presented in what you might describe as a Jewish Zen koan there aren't that many of those so here was the question what does a being who's omniscient omnipresent and omnipotent lack so those are the three classical attributes of God and the answer was limitation and that was the reason for the creation of man if there's something about limitation that the absolute locks say well being requires limitation let's say because if you can be anything at all at any moment then you're everything at once and in some sense you're nothing at all we're in this situation our being is defined by our limitations and that produces suffering the question is whether there is a mode of being that justifies the suffering that's the fundamental religious question and I think that the answer to that is yes so being requires limitation limitation necessitates suffering but there are modes of being that allow you to transcend the suffering that's the hope and then with regards to evil it seems to me I have to speak metaphysically or theologically here that a universe without the possibility of evil is also one without the possibility of good and I would say that if human beings conducted themselves properly we could have a universe where free choice was the rule we were free to choose evil but there would be no evil because we would choose good and I think that we should be very careful at laying the existence of evil at the kree or at the feet of the creator without looking to our own in producing it so that's my answer to that this is a question for you specifically dr. Peterson do you believe religions like Christianity have a role in the pursuit of discovering that which is opposite of evil I think that that is what they are fundamentally in the entire I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the underlying narrative structure of the Bible for example is a very strange collection of books but it has a narrative structure and the narrative structure is something like people fell into history when they became self-conscious and because they were self-conscious conscious of their own limitations conscious of suffering itself they are also able to become and motivated to become resentful and cruel and bitter homicidal and genocide and that's I suppose in some sense the genesis of evil our life is bounded by suffering and painted by malevolence and there's a pathway through that and as far as I can tell the Bible the entire Bible is a meditation on the pathway through that now it's not a meditation we understand because most of its story it's embedded in stories it's stories are the way that we transmit information that we don't yet understand so but I think that the Bible properly understood is a is the best what would you say it's the best set of instructions that we have to understand what it would mean to live a life that would enable us to bear suffering nobly and to constrain malevolence that's what it looks like to me I mean I can give you a quick example of that there's an idea deep idea that emerges in the first chapter of Genesis that that being that extracts habitable order out of nothingness and potential uses truthful speech to do that is the mechanism by which that occurs and that the habitable order that's extracted from the chaotic potential by truthful speech is good and that the capacity to do that is part and parcel of each human being something I believe to be as accurate as anything can be accurate and so there's an idea right in the beginning right in the first chapter of that book that if people spoke truthfully that the order they spoke into being would be good and I believed that to be the case and I think that people experience that in their own lives you know what happens if you lie to yourself you know what happens if you lie to other people and betray them you produce little pockets of Hell within you and around you and if you cease to do that then things improve and that begs the question of just how good they could get if we season to do that all together dr. Craig this question is for you right why does the lack of ultimate signet significance entail the lack of temporary significance it seems to me that in order for something to be significant to be important it needs to make a difference that's what it means to be significant and so if no matter what you do everything winds up the same your choices are ultimately insignificant that is to say they're inconsequential and on naturalism all of our choices the entire human race is ultimately inconsequential it it doesn't matter it's insignificant and that seems to me to be virtually undeniable on on atheism you know it's this temporality that seems to really matter to you you know that unless it is you say you're right it's almost a tautology in order for something to be significant it has to make a difference but but why can't it just make a difference for some duration and not forever if somebody is in pain is suffering and I can do something to take that suffering away that matters and it doesn't matter that neither I nor the sufferer will exist you know well let's remember my argument is a tripartite argument and yeah there are three components to it purpose value and significance now I agree that if things have objective moral Worth and value then there being merely temporary does not mean that they're insignificant that in that case you can have significance despite its transitoriness in virtue of its moral worth but my argument is that in the absence of God there isn't any objective foundation for the affirmation of objective moral values and duties these are simply illusions fobbed off on us by the socio biological evolutionary process and therefore you can't rescue significance by appealing to the inherent moral worth of temporary things if it were only the biological process the evolutionary process how could it be that through reflection slowly far too slowly we actually can make progress right everything so it's a every zero so there's nothing more biologically determined than male dominance over women nothing is more right this is well no wait Rebecca right by what by women we have we have our ways but but but you know and but we are slowly this is there's all sorts of behavior that is biologically determined right xenophobia I spent a lot of time in Africa observing the chimps it was one of the most amazing experiences for me I mean I came back and all I could only see I came back to a conference actually and there were two men on either side of me yeah that's all this is my faith this is my Dube and they were arguing over me and there was a little lady in between and you know and they were pointing their fingers and buh-buh-buh trying also to impress me a little bit and you know all I could see was what I had just seen in Uganda fauna pose in the chimps not bonobos Oh bonobos are entirely different bonobos are the same sort of social behavior exhibited by Homo sapiens is already present in their primate relatives life baboons and chimpanzees yes and there is no reason to invest human morality with any more objective significance than that kind of behavior that evolution is programmed into other primate species because it's advantageous and the struggle for survival what what civilization is what world progress is mystic worldview I think on a naturalistic worldview you would be justified in talking about moral change but the word progress smugglers [Applause] but that's because you think that's because you think on a naturalist basis of a purely natural species there is no way to justify to ground objective morality that's what you mean spray could since I don't buy that premise I do think that one quotation and I want you to comment on it sure okay we are running out of time all right I hate to say and then I'm gonna ask you to each make a statement the scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world the tastiness of fruit and the fowl nosov carrion the scariness of heights and the prettiness of flowers are features of our common nervous system and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes our reactions could go the other way now if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring why should we believe it anymore real and if it is just a collective hallucination how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone rather than just distasteful to us that's a statement by Steven Pinker well yeah steven pinker clearly believes that we can make sense out of moral progress that's and believes that we can grab morality on purely naturalistic we are creatures who offer reasons right we offer reasons we reflect upon reasons we reflect upon our own reactions certain of our reactions are biologically determined but we reflect on them and we can ask whether or not we this is how we are not animals this is how we are not shows we can ask whether these reactions are right what gives us the right would we were I not myself would I tolerate this in somebody else we're able to rise to that level evolution has given us that capacity it's given us language it's given us self reflection it's given us the ability to contemplate points of view other than our own that's what human intelligence is and given that and give in certain reactions that we have that ground our lives that without these reactions we could not even pursue our lives we can ask what is it am i special am i special that I have the right to ask you to treat me with dignity is there something possible life do i cosmically play some special role no obviously I don't that's delusion that's insanity this is the kind of reasoning reasoning that is that biology has equipped us with that allows us to go beyond the chimps that we descended from thank you I'm gonna ask each of you and I'm gonna ask you to start with this dr. Peterson and this is what how we will end this evening I'm going to ask you to pretend you're speaking to a friend or maybe a young person who is struggling with finding meaning in life and I'm just gonna ask you to share what you would tell them how you would encourage them as we end out so I've been working on trying to get this these words right these particular words for the last couple of weeks and good answer maybe to the question being is suffering tainted by malevolence and so what's the meaning there's pain to alleviate there's chaos to confront there's order to establish and revivify and there is evil to constrain not least in our own hearts and that's meaning enough for everyone [Applause] dr. goldstein you know we are creatures who we're trying to get our bearings this is I think something very very cheap about us we come into this world we want to know what it is where are we what are we and what are we supposed to do with whatever it is that we are we are creatures who are trying to get our bearings and we asked two sorts of questions and trying to get our bearings we asked what is and we ask what matters and the question what matters comes in two forms you know who matters and what matters and we all we all want to matter we all want to matter beyond the first person the thing that's just given that our genes are driving us to feel us it's where matter until our genes are replicated into the next generation and there is I guess I concentrate you see a lot of darkness and I see so much more light in trying to make our lives matter the the positive value that we can add most importantly to those fellow creatures those who are going along or all in on this together trying to get our bearings any help that we can offer any contribution that we can offer like this is right I mean this is this is a meaningful occasion people struggling hard with very very different points of view to see something that will be universally beneficial no matter how much you disagree that is meaning get in it I would say to them get in on this might get past yourself think about all the other fellow creatures who are with you in this struggle together and let's join forces and and move forward that's what I would say the great American philosopher William James once remarked that we may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries seeing the books and hearing the conversation but having no inkling of the meaning of it all and I would want to encourage you to think that perhaps the universe is a far far more wonderful place than you've yet suspected that there may be a transcendent personal God who created the universe and you with a goal in mind to know him and enjoy him in a personal love relationship forever you find yourself now alienated from this being of perfect goodness and love due to the moral evil that has been so pointedly described tonight but there's forgiveness and cleansing available if you will but avail yourself of it and so I would encourage you to do what I did as a teenager seeking for the meaning and purpose of my life pick up a New Testament and begin to read it and ask yourself could this really be true could there really be a God who loves me and who has sent His Son Jesus Christ to redeem me that I might know him forever I believe that if you'll do that it could change your life in the same way that it changed mine [Applause]

Channel: ReasonableFaithOrg

Views: 338,217

Rating: 4.8367348 out of 5

Keywords: William Lane Craig, Jordan Peterson, Rebecca Goldstein, Life, God, Jesus, Faith, Christianity, Christian Apologetics, Apologetics, Philosophy, History, Science, Theism, Atheism, Naturalism, Morality, Good and Evil, Purpose, Meaning

Id: xV4oIqnaxlg

Length: 126min 18sec (7578 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2018