Debating with Ark Times Bloggers on “The Meaning of Life” Part 1 “Can someone find a lasting meaning to their life apart from God?”
Ecclesiastes 1
Published on Sep 4, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
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I have enjoyed going back and forth with the Arkansas Times Bloggers on many subjects over the years. Now I have discussed the subject of “The Meaning of Life” with them recently and I wanted to share some of this with you.
I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back into the picture. This is the same exact case with Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Three thousand years ago, Solomon took a look at life “under the sun” in his book of Ecclesiastes. Christian scholar Ravi Zacharias has noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term ‘under the sun.’ What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system, and you are left with only this world of time plus chance plus matter.”
On May 28, 2013 on the Arkansas Times Blog I posted the following:
Chris Martin of Coldplay revealed in his interview with Howard Stern that he was raised an evangelical Christian but he has left the church. I believe that many words that he puts in his songs today are generated from the deep seated Christian beliefs from his childhood that find their way out in his songs. The fact Coldplay’s songs deal so much with death and the search for meaning and purpose of life (similar to Solomon’s search in Ecclesiastes), and that our actions are being watched, and Chris describes different ways God tries to reveal himself to us, and many songs deal with trying to find a way to an afterlife and heaven, and he stills uses Christian terms like being “blessed” and “grateful.”
People are looking for a purpose for their lives even if they have millions in the bank and have the world at their finger tips.
https://thedailyhatch.org/2013/05/28/the-mo…
My usual opponent who I do respect goes by the username “Elwood” and he responded on May 28, 2013:
Saline I personally know a few folks with millions in the bank, a couple are close relatives, and what they’re looking for is the best buy on their next airplane and exceptional bargain on a good yacht plus good masseurs and the latest hot spot in the Caribbean.
One of them cannot find a good trainer for her horses. Seems all the good trainers are taken and well-paid. When people become skilled horse trainers, they have a good purpose in life.
On May 29, 2013 on the Arkansas Times Blog I responded with the following:
Elwood, you are right that anybody can have a good purpose to their short finite life, but the real question that Solomon was struggling with in the Book of Ecclesiastes was “Can anyone find lasting meaning to their life and that meaning is one that death can not take away.” His concluded that was impossible in “life under the sun.” However, in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes he brings God back into the picture and then he concludes that a person’s response to God is the key to finding a lasting meaning to life.
Those who do not recognize God exists can not even dream to find a lasting meaning to their lives. Take a look at these quotes below from philosophers who don’t recognize the existence of God:
The humanist leader H. J. Blackham said, “On humanist assumptions [the assumption that there is no God and life has evolved by time and chance alone], life leads to nothing, and every pretense that it does notis a deceit. If there is a bridge over a gorge which spans only half the distance andends in mid-air, and if the bridge is crowded with human beings pressing on, oneafter another they fall into the abyss. The bridge leads to nowhere, and those who are pressing forward to cross it are going nowhere. . . It does not matter where they think they are going, what preparations for the journey they may have made, how much they may be enjoying it all . . . such a situation is a model of futility (H. J. Blackham et al., Objections to Humanism (Riverside, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1967).)
“That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that 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 not quite 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.”
– Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship”
Given Russell’s worldview and presuppositions, his conclusions seem to be right on target. HOW YOU DISPUTE BERTRAND RUSSELL ON THESE POINTS ELWOOD?
http://greatcloud.wordpress.com/2009/10/06…cA
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