The Meaning of the Universe

Your Life Has Meaning. But Do You Know What and Why?

Christopher Andrus

• Publisher: Christopher Andrus
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780578456140
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Why am I alive? Clearly, this has to be the most important question anyone could ask. But, amazingly, most people today either haven’t asked it at all or have just dismissed it as unanswerable or with the simple answer: “I have no real importance in the universe.” Now, having such a perspective may seem to be humble and, even, noble. But is it correct? Despite the paramount importance of this question, many people today in America and the rest of the developed world today have just accepted without any critical consideration the idea that, in the end, "I have no real importance in the universe" or that there is no possible way to answer the question for certain. But, how do you know this? So, the first thing that this book does is to invite many of you to do something you have never done before. And, if you are willing to do so, your life will be transformed! The nature of the question actually guarantees this. To borrow a line from the Star Wars character, Obi Wan Kenobi, to do this will be "your first step into a much larger world". Unless you were raised to be a believer in some sort of a religion and continue to be a believer, the chances are that you are a Humanist, whether you realize it or not. Perhaps the best way to summarize Humanism is that it consists mainly of these three beliefs:
1) that matter-energy and mindless forces of nature in space-time are all that exists
2) that humanity, not God, determines what is right and wrong
3) that belief in God and Christianity is outdated and incorrect. Whether they are right or not, most people just accept the basic ideas which we are taught and don’t think critically about them mainly because we aren’t taught to do this. And we weren’t taught mainly because our teachers weren’t taught to do so. For more than 50 years public education and the popular culture in most of America and most of the developed world has simply assumed that the 3 basic ideas given above are true. This is just the way education works. There must always be a foundation of basic ideas with any educational curriculum. And it is also true that a society in which there is disagreement over basic ideas will be a divided society. This is exactly why we are so divided today.

So, the first part of the book is a critique of Humanism. It will be shown that it is a philosophy which just doesn't hold up when examined carefully and, therefore, should be rejected. Many problems will be discussed, some of which are actually amazingly simple. Nevertheless, I am quite confident that many of us have never considered them. The second part of the book makes the case for going back to what was previously the dominant view of the developed world: Christianity. Along the way, reasons why Christianity is superior to the other possible alternatives will also be presented. These include other non-theistic approaches, approaches based on the existence of multi

Chapter 1

The Question That We All Need to Ask

You need to read this book.

“Really? Why?”

Because the chances are that you have never really asked yourself: “Why am I alive?” Not, “How did I come to be alive?” (which is a different question), but, “Why?”

That’s a rather important question, don’t you think? And to say that “My life is just an accident of Nature” and that none of our lives really has any meaning is not really an acceptable answer. Most people in the developed world today are taught that it is. But, none of us really believes that our life and the lives of others are meaningless.

Nor have most of us ever thought carefully about the basic nature of the universe, nor about the question of whether or not God exists.

And even if you have spent some time thinking about these things, it is unlikely that you have considered the perspective presented in this book. In short, this book is an invitation to think carefully and critically about the most basic questions in life. And this isn’t hard at all. It’s actually very easy. I promise! The problem is that most people today are never encouraged to start.¹

A common criticism of Christianity is that “Christians don’t know how to think critically”. And that is certainly true in some cases. But this is not only a problem with Christians or other religious people. The lack of careful and critical thinking is very widespread in society today. Conservatives, including many Christians often decry the lack of thought behind so many ideas which are considered “progressive” today. And on the other side, liberal writer Noam Chomsky describes the need to encourage critical thinking today:

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions. Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself.”²

If you have never really thought carefully about the question: “Why am I alive?” then you are not really a careful critical thinker on the most basic and most important level, regardless of your level of education.

Why am I alive? Shouldn’t this be one of the most important questions, if not the most important one anyone could ask? But, amazingly, most people today either haven’t asked it at all or have just dismissed it as unanswerable or with the simple answer: “I have no real importance in the universe.” Now, having such a perspective may seem to be humble and, even, noble. But is it correct?

Most people just accept the basic ideas which we are taught and don’t think critically about them mainly because we aren’t taught to do this. And we weren’t taught this mainly because our teachers weren’t taught to do so. For more than 50 years public education and the popular culture in most of America and most of the developed world has assumed that certain basic ideas are true. Most important among them are these three –

1) that matter-energy and mindless forces of nature and quantum fluctuation in space-time are all that exists

2) that humanity, not God, determines what is right and wrong

3) that belief in God and Christianity is outdated and incorrect

To question these ideas, while not strictly forbidden, is certainly not encouraged. But these ideas are beliefs. They are not proven facts, although many will claim that they are.³

This is where critical thinking comes in. But why is it that so many of us have never questioned and thought critically about these basic ideas, especially since they are foundations for everything else that we think and do? Part of the answer has to do with how education works. The only way we learn from others is to trust that they know better than us and also to trust that they are teaching us what is true.

Education begins with our parents or guardians or older siblings and continues when we start going to school. It even continues throughout our lives whenever it is necessary for us to learn something new. Education only works when the students are willing to accept what we are taught. Or, at least, to accept much of what we are taught. Otherwise, we could not get along in the world we live in.

But, it’s not that we are completely uncritical learners by nature. Along with our necessary tendency to believe what we are taught, we also are born with a natural tendency to doubt. This, too, is necessary to protect us from believing things that would hurt us. So our mothers have said things like this to us: “If your brother told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it just because he told you to?” So we are taught to doubt and question many things in life.

But some things are presented to us as unquestionable. And for most 21^st century residents in the developed world, these include the 3 basic ideas I just gave: 1) that matter-energy and mindless forces of nature and quantum fluctuation in space-time are all that exists, 2) that humanity, not God, determines what is right and wrong, and 3) that belief in God and Christianity is outdated and incorrect.

There are certainly practical reasons why questioning these ideas is discouraged, despite the fact that these ideas are only beliefs, not proven facts. They are the foundations on which a lot of other ideas are built. So, if one was to question these basic ideas it would lead us to question a lot of other things which we are supposed to learn and accept. This is considered dangerous both for individuals and for society.

Individuals who question things we aren’t supposed to question will be considered weird, at best, if not dangerous. And societies in which there are disagreements on very basic ideas will have many conflicts and will be in danger of falling apart. And like it or not, this is our situation today in the developed world in the early 21^st century. But this has also been true for many societies in the past.

In every society there will always be an enormous amount of pressure to accept the basic beliefs of the society and not to question them. But, sometimes the basic beliefs of societies are problematic. History is filled with examples, but Nazi Germany is perhaps the most obvious example in recent history.

We now recognize quite clearly that Nazism was evil. Quite surprisingly, though, the actual reasons why it was evil are actually unclear if one accepts the 3 basic ideas just listed, which are generally accepted today. This is mainly because of idea #2. If we alone determine what is good and evil, then how can we really know for certain when we are right or when someone else is wrong? After all, the Nazi’s claimed they were right and everyone else wrong. (But more on this later)

Our understanding of Nazism today is what has been called “20-20 hindsight”. It is often much easier to understand many situations later on, rather than “in the moment”. This is true for our individual lives, but also for societies. People living in Germany in the 1920’s, during the rise of the Nazi Party, and during the 1930’s, when it took over Germany, were morally wrong to accept where their culture was going and were actually morally obligated not only to question it, but to oppose it.

However, it’s a big mistake to assume that this was as clear to most Germans at that time as it is to us today. For, Germany’s “Third Reich” did not spring up overnight in its fully-developed form. It was a gradual process of many steps, most of them small and easy to overlook, which occurred over many years. This is usually the way things change.

But when change happens this way, it often escapes the notice of many. It is like the often-cited example of the frog in the pot. One can take a live frog and put it in a pot of room-temperature water and begin slowly heating it. If one does it slowly enough the frog will simply stay in the water until it cooks. This is because it is unable to recognize the danger.

So, it was with most in Germany until it was too late. A very common reaction to Adolf Hitler was that he was too crazy to take seriously and it was unthinkable that he could possibly succeed with his plans. Surely it was inevitable that the decent people of Germany would eventually rise up and stop him. But, unfortunately, most Germans didn’t consider that they needed to play a role in this. They assumed other people would do this. But it never happened. And as time passed it became harder and harder to oppose the Nazi’s.

It’s rather like cancer. When people discover strange growths on their skin, some are motivated to have it looked at, but others are afraid to do so. Of course, if it is cancerous it will not go away and will become worse and worse and may eventually be fatal. But, it may have been relatively easy and painless to deal with it in the beginning. And, more importantly, it may well have been curable.

So, Adolf Hitler could have been defeated without much difficulty if enough people had been willing to stand up to him and his thugs in the 1920’s. But by the 1930’s he had grown powerful enough that it had become much more dangerous and difficult to do so; too dangerous for most Germans to even think about challenging Hitler’s ideas and actions.

Germany succumbed to evil mainly because it failed to question changes to some of the basic ideas accepted by society. Once those ideas became established it became very hard for people even to question them, much less fight against them. This is because another common human tendency is for us “to go along in order to get along”. In other words, most people will accept things which they admit are wrong in order to avoid harm to themselves and their families. This is just an undeniable (and understandable) fact of human nature. But it is where critical thinking and courage are absolutely necessary in order to stop evil.

This is why we must always be willing to question the basic ideas of our society. Are you willing to do this with the 3 basic ideas I have listed? This is not to say that we are in the same situation that Germany was in (although a number of troubling parallels can be seen). But it would be a dangerous mistake to assume that we are immune from going down a path similar to what happened to Germany in the 1920’s and 1930’s. It always takes a deliberate effort to think critically because of two things which have already been mentioned: our natural tendency to accept what we are taught and also pressure coming from around us not to think critically, especially about our most basic beliefs.

But there is a third reason why we are inclined not to think critically about these ideas and to just accept them. This one comes from inside of us. It’s not only because we are taught to accept these ideas. It’s also because human beings have a natural tendency to resist and reject the idea that there is a God Who made us, along with everything else that exists (contrary to basic idea #1), and Who also defines what is true and good (contrary to basic idea #2). Instead, we are naturally inclined to believe other things, as if God (or, at least, the idea of God) is our Enemy. But, the Christian message is that God is only your Enemy if you treat Him as such. Rather, He wants to be your perfectly-loving Father, His Son Jesus Christ your Savior and His Holy Spirit your Guide.

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1This book is about what we think and about whether or not we are right in our thinking. But it is not an introduction to Philosophy. How boring! And I’m a Philosophy graduate! Nor is it an introduction to Theology. Most introductions to Philosophy and Theology are complicated, hard to read and, thus, quite boring. Besides, there are too many out there already.

Also, this book is not a book about Christian “Apologetics”. God knows (and I mean that literally), we have enough of these already! However, it is an “Apology” for Christianity in the theological meaning of the term – A defense of Christianity against the attacks made against it and a critique of rival religions and philosophies which seeks to show their flaws. We will look at many specific failures of alternatives to Christianity (especially Humanism, which is the dominant philosophy of the developed world today). But the main reason that all non-Christian approaches fail is because they reject as their starting point The One True God, Who reveals Himself in our minds and consciences, in the world around us and, definitively, in His Word, the Bible.

2Noam Chomsky, from a 2010 interview with Chris Hedges. However, one can’t help but wonder if Chomsky will ever truly be willing to apply his own good advice to his own assumptions. Progressives (and, especially atheists) are quite prone to the hypocrisy of being critical of others’ views, but quite unwilling to be critical of their own.

3For those of you who would claim that these ideas are not just beliefs, they’re facts, consider this: It is actually logically impossible to prove that only matter-energy and mindless forces in space-time exist. This is because in making this claim one is saying that nothing else can possibly exist. But this is what is known as a negative universal claim. And such claims just aren’t provable in practice. This is also true about the claim that God doesn’t exist. At the least, it must always be allowed that future evidence might disprove such beliefs.

Part 2

Up until about 100 years ago things were very different in the developed world than they are today. Contrary to today’s 3 basic beliefs (which, again, are not proven facts), most people in Europe and the United States viewed their lives in relation to the Creator God, the same One Who is described in the Bible and Who was believed to exist by the vast majority of people. Other than a minority consisting of Jews, Atheists/Agnostics, Muslims and people of other faiths, almost everyone saw himself or herself either as a Christian or a sinner before God.⁴

But over the course of the previous century a new view had been gaining strength in intellectual circles, slowly supplanting Christianity, first in the halls of academia and, eventually, in the entire culture. This approach came to be known as Humanism and was openly admitted to be a religious alternative to Christianity and other supernatural religions in a Manifesto authored by a grou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1 The Question That We All Need to Ask
• Chapter 2 How We Got To Where We Are Today
• Chapter 3 We All Believe (One Way or Another) in Order to Understand the World.
• Chapter 4 Our Worldviews Are What Divide Us and “Them”
• Chapter 5 Humanism’s Moral Problems
• Chapter 6 Humanism’s Intellectual Problems
• Chapter 7 Humanists’ Objections to Christianity are Fallacies.
• PART 2
• Chapter 8 Why Christianity Is True And Approaches Which Do Not Begin With One God Fail.
• Chapter 9 Why Christianity Is True And Other Approaches Which Begin With One God Fail.
• Chapter 10 More Ways in which Christianity Shows its Superiority Over Other Approaches
• Chapter 11 Christianity Both Defines and Promotes Freedom.
• Chapter 12 Freedom, Capitalism and Socialism
• Appendix 1 A Response to a Hindu
• Appendix 2 Suggestions For Further Study
• Appendix 3 Key Statements in Each Chapter