Why I Am Not an Atheist Part 2

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Support for this podcast comes from your generous gifts and donations. You can find out more about Ravi Zacharias and the team at www.rzim.org A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. That was a quote from a famous philosopher talking about the absurdity of a culture without truth.

In the absence of a god, can there be any foundation for truth or is everything without meaning? Hello and welcome to Let My People Think where today we're sharing with you the conclusion of a message from RZIM's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias. Last week, Ravi pointed out that denying God's existence leads to a contradictory life. He continues along those lines in today's episode and shows how divided and fragmented life becomes in the absence of God. If law ethics and man himself aren't based on an absolute God, what happens?

Let's join Ravi now as he takes a look at the result, a 21st century schizoid man. The first struggle that the atheist has is the espousing of a moral law. The second is the problem with no hope. Atheism basically as a personal philosophy of life offers no ultimate hope. Death is the end of personal existence as we know it. It is a snuffing out of the center of consciousness within the individual.

I think who was it? Was it Hobbes who said when I die, the worms will devour my body and I commit my soul to the great perhaps. Bertrand Russell himself talked about it as a random collocation of atoms, mindless, without ultimate destiny and ultimately in the collapse of the universe will bring all of our hopes crashing in disaster and pessimism. So said Bertrand Russell. And yet in the human experience, while Jean Paul Sartre, by the way, who on his deathbed, not too many people like to talk about it, who on his deathbed, this guru of the 60s in existential philosophy who became the ideological godfather of the ancala movement, they were all his godchildren ideologically, Sartre himself on his deathbed ultimately said he could not bring himself to believe anymore that this world was existent apart from an ultimate designer in mind.

And his mistress standing by his bedside said, see, he's gone senile. But Sartre had said it. He said death is philosophy's problem.

Camus said the same thing. They struggled with the idea of suicide back and forth because the hope that it did not accord to them in their avowed atheistic lifestyles. Now, you know, when death knocks at the door, it is funny how few people I know of who turn to the great philosophers for answers. I have buried a father and a mother and my mother died fairly early.

And I still recall standing by her bedside, seeing her in her last few moments of life. I didn't think of going to some great masterpiece of classical philosophy at that point. The big question I struggled with. And here it is, ladies and gentlemen, you see, life has a singular strength in each individual. Life does not come to you and me in a generic sense. Life comes in a singular sense. That's why we fall in love with a single individual. That's why you get the whole idea of loving your children in a way you probably love them in that singular commitment to that child or to the partner with whom you're wedded.

Or the romance where there's that singularity of love. It is just not replaced by another person taking on the generic nature of love itself. And when the person dies, the question has to be raised, is this the terminal point of my relationship with that individual? You see, it's also raised in terms of philosophy. If death is the end of everything that we know, what does that make of justice which is not carried out in our courts of law?

What does that make of any ultimate sense of right and wrong? I do recall talking to parents very often in my travels, whether it be somebody of a very sophisticated background intellectually or somebody who is just asking the simple questions of life. You can watch how Hindus observe their funerals, you can watch how Muslims observe their funerals, how Buddhists observe their funerals, and you look across the landscape of humanity with hundreds of millions trying to establish the rites of passage. One of my professors said this happened to him once. When he was talking about death, the atheist debating him said, ah, death is only nothing more than pattern baldness, it just comes, it happens. And he said, you know, I wanted to tell you that I just received a message from somebody to interrupt this debate because one of your family members has just died, but I told them not to worry about it, not to interrupt you, it's nothing more than pattern baldness.

And the point got home. What about this whole issue of what happens to a human being when he or she dies? The issue of a moral law, the issue of a loss of hope. Thirdly, without God, there is a complete loss of meaning.

There is no point of reference that defines what the meaning of life is all about. Whether you see the parable of the myth of Sisyphus rolling up the stones, as it were, up the mountain, only to roll it down again, and that repetitive, meaningless event goes on and on and on. And there's a fascinating philosophical response to how they deal with this. Do you know, in the scientific world, when they deal with the second law of thermodynamics, that things left to themselves move to entropy to heat death, you see the whole idea that things don't move from disorder to order. They move from order to disorder. And when you see how biological evolution is defended, they defend it by saying that the biological parts moved against the entropic stream. That what applied to the whole did not apply to the parts. That's what they tell you.

Now, in meaning, they reverse the whole thing. In meaning, they tell you life ultimately has no meaning, it doesn't apply to the whole, but it does apply to the parts. Give your day-to-day activity tiny little meanings so that there are punctuated meanings under an arching overall meaninglessness. Do you understand what I'm saying here?

Give your day-to-day activities meanings. Roll the stone up, because maybe when you get it to the top of the mountain, you can build a building. But then what?

Don't ask then what. The building itself is meaningful. And so tiny little purposes with no ultimate purpose, tiny little meanings with no ultimate meanings.

This is why the King Crimson Rock Group says this. Cat's foot, iron claw, neurosurgeon, scream for more from paranoia, poison door, 21st century schizoid man. Blood rack, barbed wire, politicians, funeral pyre, innocence raped with napalm fire, 21st century schizoid man. Death seed, blind man's greed, poet starving, children bleed, nothing he's got he really needs, 21st century schizoid man.

Now listen to the connection, despite what David Hume would say. The walls on which the prophets wrote is cracking at the seams. Upon the instruments of death, the sunlight brightly gleams.

Will no one lay the laurel wreath as silence drowns the screams? Between the iron gates of fate, the seeds of time are sown and watered by the deeds of those who know and who are known. Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules. The fate of all mankind I see is in the hands of fools. Confusion will be my epitaph as I crawl a cracked and broken path.

If we make it, we can all sit back and laugh, but I'm afraid tomorrow I'll be crying. There's a second level philosophy for you. The moral philosophers of our time who are demonstrating the anguish. Listen to what one philosopher said of this conflict in which we live now, and that is the philosopher G.K. Chesterton. He wrote on this issue a long time ago describing modern man in revolt and the schizoid nature in which he lives.

Listen to what he says. The modern rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty, therefore he can never be a true revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything.

For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind. And the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. So he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women. Then he writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself.

He curses the sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he cries out that war is a waste of life, then as a philosopher that all life itself is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bubble, then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bubble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts.

Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own minds. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt by rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything. See the level one and the level two, the philosopher talking about the doctrine of contradiction that overrides this and the songwriter saying, 21st century schizoid man.

How do we find meaning? Can I give you two personal illustrations if you'll allow me to and then move to my final thought here. Do you know, as a father, you learn a few things about life that you never learn as a scholar. Because I've found that the scholarly world becomes a very safe escape from some of the real struggles that are bothering you inside and troubling your family.

It is the easiest thing in the world to happen. I've seen it happen time and time again and the sooner we learn that in academic circles the more real we will become. And my three children have forced me to be more real at home as I've talked to them than sometimes we tend to be in writing of our books and our lectureships and so on. My oldest daughter just went through a horrendous experience in her young 16th year of life and the last month has been one of me as a father trying to help her cope with this and watch her struggle and bear under the load of this painful experience she's just gone through. She had a friend of hers in class. He was a computer partner for her and very kind, very friendly, very nice to her.

Every time she'd come back and say, this fellow is such a fine fellow, daddy, always so friendly, always being kind to any new student who comes in and so on. Well, within the last month something tragic happened. That young boy, 16 years old, didn't show up in school one day.

We make our home in Atlanta, Georgia and that's where this story took place. And the police came to the school, said they were looking for him because he'd run away from home and everybody was shocked at this story. Finally, they said they would try to track him down. The principal started working on it and so on. Next day, three students in his class got a telephone call from him saying, I want to see you in a private setting.

Don't you dare tell anybody you're coming. So one teacher and I think about two or three students went to see him supposedly without telling anyone. They were in a secluded setting, a highly wooded area, and they were waiting for him.

All of a sudden comes a sleek Volvo with tinted glass windows and so on. And they knew immediately that the car was a stolen car in which he was pulling up. As they walked towards him, he rolled down a window.

They saw two handguns on his lap, a rifle by his side. They all immediately got nervous, not knowing what they were dealing with. Suddenly they saw a chopper above them and about 14 police cars and a SWAT team closing in on him.

It ensued in a chase. Several accidents finally trapped the 16-year-old fellow. He was at the hub of a major crack ring in Atlanta.

Sixteen years old. They got him, put him into a detention center. That was Thursday. Sunday morning the principal went to visit him to find out he'd hanged himself. And now the television is covering it there saying he didn't hang himself.

He was murdered because he was at the heart of a major ring that was going to be broken open. My daughter has sobbed for hours over this. And she says, I don't understand how somebody so young could have gone so wrong so soon in his life. And I won't give you the details of what brought it about. But the wrongheadedness and the confusion and the emptiness in the teenage world is at an all-time high. You can be sure secularism has not given them any answers.

It is at an all-time high. In fact, the recent study of the educational process has revealed that two-thirds of our teenagers are basically unteachable. Not because they don't have their minds intact, but because they are so preoccupied with the fears in their home and their struggles in their personal lives that when they come to school their minds are not thinking about the studies that are on hand. They are torn up about what's going on in the home.

Did you follow that? Two-thirds of them are unteachable, not because they don't have the mental capacities, but their minds are just so preoccupied with the fears and worries with which they live. How is contemporary man going to respond to this? How is he going to respond to the emptiness and loss of meaning? Lee Iacocca said this in his book Straight Talk, as I start the twilight years of my life, I try to look back and figure out what it was all about. I'm still not sure what is meant by good fortune and success.

I know fame and power are for the birds. But then life suddenly comes into focus and he gives us three or four lines on what has helped him. Let me move to my personal illustration to sustain that and then my final thought here. When our second little girl, Naomi, was barely two, I had been away for five weeks. I think I'd been preaching in one of the either Cambodia, Vietnam, somewhere there, just shortly before it fell. And I came back home and she was in my in-law's place, tiny little baby, just a little more than that I guess, just trying to learn to walk in a walker. And as I walked into the house, she was there in her walker. She brought me in. I looked at her for about 30 seconds and we got into a bit of a staring contest. She stared at me. I stared back at her. I think for a moment she was wondering who I was.

I'd been gone for five weeks. I've often described her. She was one of the cutest little ones you'd ever wanted to see. She was born with her hair at a 45 degree angle and it didn't come to rest for at least a year or so. Her cheeks were so pudgy it made her eyes look like an afterthought.

It was the absolute delight of an innocent little life. There she was with her bulging arms, pudgy cheeks, her bright eyes and her hair struggling to lie down. And as I walked in, she looked at me and I looked back. Suddenly her arms shot out.

I knelt down, picked her up and wrapped my arms around her as she nestled on my shoulder for about a minute or so. Ladies and gentlemen, let me say this to you without apology. In that one minute I had more intimations on the meaning of life than all the books and philosophy I have ever read.

Bertrand Russell said this, one of the greatest longings of his life which was never achieved was the longing for love. And I challenge you to bear these questions at the back of your mind. But Lee Iacocca said this, but then life suddenly comes into focus.

There stand my kids and I love them and they love me and maybe that's what life is all about. So he says, if you observe the expressions of the people just released in Lebanon from those who held them hostage, if you go back to the days of Desert Storm where some of our fellows and girls were held prisoner, what are the messages that were coming back? And I spoke to many POWs during the Vietnam War, some of the Viet Cong prisoners of war in South Vietnam. You listen to what they're saying. They're really not, when you talk to somebody in that situation, they don't talk about a car.

They don't talk about a comfort of all that they possessed. It is generally to give love to a husband, to a wife, to a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, a son, a daughter. Ladies and gentlemen, here's my thought. Is it possible that there is a clue to meaning in life found in relationships? It is relationships that ultimately give us a clue to meaning in life.

And I leave that thought with you as I move to my final. But without God, there is no law. Without God, there is no hope. Without God, there is no meaning. And without God, if the atheist has taken his stance and said there is no God and he turns out to be wrong, and he turns out to be wrong when he dies and finds out there is a God, an atheist has made a kind of a commitment that is so unreasonable because there is no recovery. Bertrand Russell was asked, what will you say? If when you die you do stand face to face with God, what will be your explanation to him? Russell says very plainly, I'll tell him you didn't give me enough evidence. Interesting answer.

You didn't give me enough evidence. And how that was countered was even more interesting. But listen to what Pascal said. This great philosopher-scientist who died at the age of 39, the father of the modern computer, the inventor of the barometer, Pascal in his pensees where he talked so much about the things of God and the soul, he said this, should a man be in error in supposing the Christian religion to be true, he could not be a loser by mistake. But how irreparable is his loss and how inexpressible his danger, who should err in supposing it to be false? Let me repeat that because this is often misunderstood when people talk about the Pascalian wager. Should a man be in error in supposing the Christian religion to be true, he could not be a loser by mistake.

But how irreparable is his loss and how inexpressible his danger, who should err in supposing it to be false? Pascal's argument is purely existential, and we must understand that. Because you see, if a person believes in Christ to be who Christ claimed he was, and this person turns out to be wrong, and at the end of his life he becomes nothing, and the random qualification of atoms disintegrates into dust there as it were, do you realize he has lost nothing because the existential pursuit was still contentment and happiness and he found it?

The argument is purely existential. It is not a kind of a stupid idea saying, I'm going this route because I've basically got nothing to lose. That's not what he's saying. He's saying the alternative offer is if you deny God, authenticate yourself, be your own person, find your fulfillment.

Well, the Christian counters by saying, I found it, albeit in believing something that wasn't so. But at the end of it, no regrets because dust doesn't regret. I think Aristotle gave us a perfect definition of what nothing is. He said, nothing is that which rocks dream about. And that's what Pascal is saying here, that at the end I become nothing.

Basically had nothing to lose in the process. But with God, you deal with these four issues. Without him, no absolute moral law, no ultimate hope, no point of reference or meaning.

And if it is wrong, turns out to be no recovery. Chances are many atheists have probably never looked at their philosophy logically and realized the stakes they're playing for. It just reinforces the need to provide solid reasons for a biblical world view. You've been listening to Ravi Zacharias and the conclusion of his message titled Why I Am Not an Atheist. To purchase a copy of this entire message or other content from Ravi or the RZIM team, call us at 1-800-448-6766. You can also order online where you can find more resources to help you in your search for truth.

That web address is rzim.org or rzim.ca for those in Canada. As Michael Ramsden said at the beginning of this program, we're so thankful for your support both financial and through prayer. We also consider it an honor when we can pray for the things going on in your life.

If you have prayer requests you'd like to share, be sure to call us or email us at rzim at rzim.org. Have you ever wondered whether the Christian faith actually holds up to scrutiny, like real scrutiny? The kind of scrutiny that a trial lawyer would give it?

Well, on the defense rests, we're going to put you in the jury box. You'll decide whether the Christian faith actually does hold water when it's put to the test through the rules of evidence and a legal procedure. I'm Avdou Murray and I'm a trial lawyer and I can tell you that I put the Christian faith to that kind of scrutiny and ended up coming on the other end a Christian. Now, we're going to hear how juries think on every episode. We're going to think about witnesses, eyewitness testimony, expert witness testimony as well. We'll think about how judges make their rulings on objections as they weigh the rules of procedure and evidence. All along the way, you'll be the juror and you'll decide, do the objections hold water or does the Christian faith hold water?

So join me, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, on the defense rests wherever you get your podcasts. At RZIM, we're in the business of answering questions. Can you articulate why you reject any possible blend of reincarnation with Christian faith? How can I establish truth with somebody that thinks absolute truth is outside the realm of human knowledge? Where and how do you draw a line between pluralism and relativism?

I'd like to know what are the ontological differences between the Christian God and the God of the Quran? Great question. RZIM, helping the thinker believe and the believer think.

Let My People Think is a listener supported radio ministry and is furnished by RZIM in Atlanta, Georgia. Have you ever wondered whether the Christian faith actually holds up to scrutiny, like real scrutiny, the kind of scrutiny that a trial lawyer would give it? Well, on the defense rests, we're going to put you in the jury box. You'll decide whether the Christian faith actually does hold water when it's put to the test through the rules of evidence and legal procedure. I'm Abdu Murray, and I'm a trial lawyer.

And I can tell you that I put the Christian faith to that kind of scrutiny and ended up coming on the other end a Christian. Now, we're going to hear how juries think on every episode. We're going to think about witnesses, eyewitness testimony, expert witness testimony as well. We'll think about how judges make their rulings on objections as they weigh the rules of procedure and evidence. All along the way, you'll be the juror, and you'll decide, do the objections hold water or does the Christian faith hold water? So join me, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, on the defense rests wherever you get your podcasts.