Thanks to Ricrab, I spend time putting some sense to questions that seemingly ‘smart’ theists bring forth. Below is a copy of it. 12 amazingly intelligent (and not a bit ironic, presuppositional or loaded, of course) questions from William Lane Craig;
1. If all of life is meaningless, and ultimately absurd, why bother to march straight forward, why stand in the queue as though life as a whole makes sense?
Learning. Life has evolved to a sense of selfawareness and as someone said: We are the voice that looks up at that universe that brought it forth and asks: why?
2. If everyone completely passes out of existence when they die, what ultimate meaning has life? They aren’t related. The fact that all life (and non-life) dies or ultimately falls to entropy, doesn’t discern with the meaning we give to our lives. Because that is ultimately what we do: Only with our cognition we distinguish that it helps to feel there is meaning. Nowhere from the start of this universe to now, there is any moment that states that an event happened for a meaning, let alone a reason. But that doesn’t make life less beautiful now you are here. To think so is yet another self deception religions want you to hold.
3. Even if a man’s life is important because of his influence on others or by his effect on the course of history, of what ultimate significance is that if there is no immortality and all other lives, events, and even history itself is ultimately meaningless? Because there isn’t. A man can feel important. Others can feel the man is/was important, but eventually there is the here and now. History is past so it is ultimately always meaningless. It is a done deed. Looking forward, an individual, as well as a whole group or species like ourselves can look say: Look, this is the road that would benefit the most to individuals and groups, lets go this direction. Meaning is what the aware gives to a pattern.
4. In a universe without God or immortality, how is mankind ultimately different from a swarm of mosquitoes or a barnyard of pigs? An empty presupposition. Immortality would (if all life forms could attain such state) be disastrous to the universe. As we know the universe contains a limited amount of resources. So if nothing would perish to make way for new, all would eventually become really ‘meaningless’. Ultimately we aren’t different from a swarm of mosquitoes, or pigs (though a barnyard is a created environment and pigs are ‘bred’). We can choose to be different. That is where we are beyond them. But if we choose to keep to the same embedded fear to ancient ignorance, we won’t go beyond anything further.
5. What viable basis exists for justice or law if man is nothing but a sophisticated, programmed machine? Justice exists based on the fact that man is not a sophisticated programmed machine. Nature programs, but the awareness of man has put it in the place where it can use its empathy but also methodical deduction and induction to decide what is ethically (and in religious words: morally) correct for the greater good. That greater good is the limitations of awareness of the individual, group and civilization. IE. the more each becomes aware, the broader the justice will be for the greater part of the ecosystem/biosystem.
6. Why does research, discovery, diplomacy, art, music, sacrifice, compassion, feelings of love, or affectionate and caring relationships mean anything if it all ultimately comes to naught anyway? Because we can. Why would a microbe feed and multiply, if eventually he doesn’t live to see any outcome on the organism it attacks? Man is able to learn. We are able to improve and since we have become aware, we have been searching. Life has been adapting (learning) since the first selfreplicating RNA. Our cognition was only waiting to be come (either in us or some other species). But even our mind evolves. We have a meaning, as we can choose it to have a meaning.
7. Without absolute morals, what ultimate difference is there between Saddam Hussein and Billy Graham? They were both human. But whether they are different can be observed from many different perspectives. So, the ‘implicated’ absolute morals have no use.
8. If there is no immortality, why shouldn’t all things be permitted? Actually if immortality would exist for humanity, why shouldn’t all things be permitted. Is it not true that if you couldn’t die, not really, you had no end, so you could be ruler of everything for ever if you chose to? And again, immortality would mean organic material would not be able to reproduce without the risk of running out of energy.
9. If morality is only a relative social construct, on what basis could or should anyone ever move to interfere with cultures that practice apartheid, female circumcision, cannibalism, or ethnic cleansing? Post hoc, morality is an observation OF the social construct. When the construct changes, so does morality. History has shown this in every aspect. Exactly FOR the examples you give.
10. If there is no God, on what basis is there any meaning or hope for fairness, comfort, or better times? There is no if. Humanity, despite the believing in over 5000 gods have survived itself up to now. It is pretty clear that hope for fairness and comfort or better times come from becoming aware of the ignorance in what religion has left humanity with.
11. Without a personal Creator-God, how are you anything other than the coincidental, purposeless miscarriage of nature, spinning round and round on a lonely planet in the blackness of space for just a little while before you and all memory of your futile, pointless, meaningless life finally blinks out forever in the endless darkness? What a strange ad hominem kind of call from ignorance. If one was a miscarriage, you would not exist. So the question fails in sentence one. We all have a creator. Our parents. They are proven to have created us, and from that both coincident (and often purposelessness) falls from the equation. They (our parents) didn’t choose the biosystem either. They are as much a victim as we are. Yes, we are on a ball of magma and rock, iron and heavy materials that kill us over time, with a huge amount of water that we can’t really live ‘on’, but can’t live without either. We live here in this thin layer of solution we call air, that is kept to the surface of this planet, by the universal force of gravity (weak force at that too). Luckily we are not the start of any ecosystem, we are the result of millions of years of evolving plantlife and microbiotic life, that found a balance creating a sustainable environment where we are now ‘rulers’. And yes, if something disastrous would happen, it would all be over in a blink and there had been no reason and nothing is left. But that doesn’t change, that you have been able to ask this question on retrospect.
12. Suppose the universe had never existed. Apart from God, what ultimate difference would that make? Nonsensical question. If the universe had never existed. There would have been nothing. So what would there have been use for any idea of a god? It requires a mind to imagine a god, so that would ultimately have not existed either.
And these are my short answers to these questions.
