More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
January 21 - February 23, 2018
Apologetics Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense, as in a court of law. Christian apologetics involves making a case for the truth of the Christian faith.
TALK ABOUT IT Why are gentleness and respect essential when we talk with non-Christians about what we believe? Have you ever seen a Christian do this without gentleness and respect? What happened?
TALK ABOUT IT How do you typically feel when someone challenges or makes fun of your Christian beliefs?
TALK ABOUT IT What kinds of arguments does Paul use in Acts 17:22–31 to persuade non-Jews that the gospel is true? How are his arguments like and unlike those Peter uses when talking to Jews in Acts 2:14–29? What do you learn about the place of apologetics in evangelism?
Secularism Secularism is a worldview that allows no room for the supernatural: no miracles, no divine
revelation, no God.
TALK ABOUT IT Have you ever encountered someone who dismissed Christianity as mere superstition? If so, when? How did you respond?
TALK ABOUT IT Why do you think so many students abandon their faith during or just after high school? Who or what is to blame for this?
Relativism Relativism is the view that something is relative rather than absolute. That is to say, the thing in question (a truth, a moral value, a property) is the case only in relation to something else. For example, being rich is relative. Relative to most Americans, you’re probably not rich. But relative to the people of the Sudan, you are fabulously rich! By contrast, it is not just relatively true that the Cubs did not win the 2009 World Series. It is absolutely true that they did not win. Many people today think that moral principles and
religious beliefs are at best relative truths: true, as they say, for you, but not true for me.
TALK ABOUT IT How could apologetics help you?
When you’re going through hard times and God seems distant, apologetics can help you to remember that our faith is not based on emotions, but on the truth, and therefore you must hold on to it.
The Apostle to the Skeptics C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) rejected Christianity as a teenager for both personal and intellectual reasons. However, as an English professor at Oxford in his twenties and early thirties, Lewis was exposed to writers and friends who offered convincing reasons first for theism and eventually for Christianity. Lewis became a Christian and began to use his intellectual and literary talents to articulate and defend a Christian view of the world. He became one of the most influential Christian apologists of his generation. His books have sold more than one hundred million
...more
Premise The steps of an argument that lead to the conclusion are called the premises of the argument.
Objective versus Subjective Something is objective if it’s real or true independent of anyone’s opinion about it. “Water is H2O” is an objective fact. Something is subjective if it’s just a matter of personal opinion. “Vanilla tastes better than chocolate” is subjective. You can keep these terms straight by remembering that “objective” is like an object that is really there, whereas “subjective” is like a subject or a person on whose opinion something depends.
Meaning has to do with significance, why something matters. Value has to do with good and evil, right and wrong. Purpose has to do with a goal, a reason for something.
My claim is that if there is no God, then meaning, value, and purpose are ultimately human illusions. They’re just in our heads. If atheism is true, then life is really objectively meaningless, valueless, and purposeless, despite our subjective beliefs to the contrary.
If God does not exist, our lives are
ultimately meaningless, valueless, and purposeless despite how desperately we cling to the illusion to the contrary.
With no hope of immortality, man’s life leads only to the grave.
TALK ABOUT IT Have you ever felt the darkness of despair, that your life is meaningless? How did you cope?
So it’s not just immortality man needs if life is to be ultimately significant; he needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.
TALK ABOUT IT Name some characters in films who have exemplified the absurdity of life. How do they convey the idea that life is absurd?
TALK ABOUT IT How would you live if you believed that humans are simply machines for propagating their DNA?
In a world without God, who’s to say whose values are right and whose are wrong? There can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. Think of what that means! It means it’s impossible
to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can you praise generosity, self-sacrifice, and love as good. To kill someone or to love someone is morally equivalent. 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 you are right and I am wrong.
Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists. As for man, he’s a freak of nature—a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. If God does not exist, then you are just
a miscarriage of nature, thrust into a purposeless universe to live a purposeless life.
I hope you begin to understand the gravity of the alternatives before us. For if God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. As one writer has aptly put it, “If God is dead, then man is dead too.”
OZYMANDIAS Percy Bysshe Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things, The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless
...more
TALK ABOUT IT Are the people you know willing to face up to the consequences of atheism? Why are they or aren’t they?
TALK ABOUT IT Do you know anyone who thinks he can create his own meaning for his life? If so, how could you talk to him about whether this belief makes sense?
Now this is totally inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say you may create meaning for your life.
The point is this: If God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.
The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.” But man cannot live this way. So he makes a leap of faith and affirms values anyway. And when he does so, he reveals the inadequacy of a world without God.
And yet, if God does not exist, then in a sense, our world is Auschwitz: There is no right and wrong; all things are permitted.
TALK ABOUT IT Why do you suppose that even smart atheists often don’t care that their ideas about right and wrong are inconsistent?
Indeed, one will probably never find an atheist who lives consistently with his system. For a universe without moral accountability and devoid of value is unimaginably terrible.
TALK ABOUT IT Think of a movie you’ve seen recently. If you asked the main character, “Why does your life matter?” what do you think he or she would say?
Noble Lie A Noble Lie “is one that deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest, beyond ego, beyond family, nation, [and] race.”
TALK ABOUT IT Do you have a deep sense that your life matters? If so, what gives you that sense? If not, why do you suppose you don’t?
Biblical Christianity thus challenges the worldview of modern man. For according to the Christian worldview, God does exist, and life does not end at the grave. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life: God and immortality.
biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.
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 happily and consistently. Therefore, it makes a huge difference whether God exists.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
TALK ABOUT IT Which of the three premises have you heard atheists challenge? On what basis did they do so?
Necessary or Contingent Things that exist necessarily exist by a necessity of their own nature. It belongs to their very nature to exist. Things that exist contingently can fail to exist and so need an external cause to explain why they do in fact exist.
TALK ABOUT IT If He exists at all, why is it impossible for God to have a cause?
Fallacy A fallacy is an error in reasoning. Fallacies can be either formal or informal. A formal fallacy involves breaking the rules of logic. An informal fallacy involves an argumentative tactic that is illicit, such as reasoning in a circle. The “taxicab fallacy” would be an informal fallacy.
Cosmology Cosmology is the study of the large-scale structure and development of the universe. The Greek word kosmos means “orderly arrangement” or “world.” Pythagoras may have been the first person to use this word to refer to the universe.
