Speaking with atheist Alex O’Connor on The Diary of a CEO, Greg Koukl argues that humanity’s search for meaning reflects more than a psychological need. It reveals an awareness of something transcendent.
Transcript
Greg: We are aware of all kinds of different options for us spiritually. That doesn’t necessarily suggest that none of the options are actually accurate.
Alex: I’m making a psychological case.
Greg: So, there’s an implication there, and this is what creates kind of the angst because all we have is our own personal, subjective point of view.
Alex: I think that’s why people experience that. Now, of course, as a matter of truth, you could say—for example, yourself—you could say, yes, I’m constantly confronted by different religious traditions, but I believe that Christianity is true—I think has the best evidence and whatnot.
Greg: This is even true in even in the scientific realm. All kinds of different ideas, but no one wants to say—just because there are so many different ideas to explain things—that nobody can be correct.
Alex: Which is why what I’m saying is insensitive to the truth or falsity of any of the traditions. What I’m saying is—
Greg: Okay. That’s good, because I want to go to that next.
Alex: As an explanation for the psychological phenomenon—the literal feeling that people have. Because, likewise, you would say that there is a meaning crisis. You would say that lots of people—the statistics we just heard—you would say lots of people, you know, don’t feel meaning in their life, and you’d want to offer an explanation for why that’s the case. You think their lives are meaningful, right? You think that all of those people who say, “My life has no meaning,” they’re wrong. Their lives actually do have meaning.
Steven Bartlett: Is that what you think?
Greg: Well, this was the subjective response. They feel like they don’t have meaning, but they were made for a purpose. If they’re not in in touch with that meaning and purpose, then they’re going to feel bereft and adrift.
Alex: Exactly. So, you believe there really is a purpose for their life, but, subjectively, they haven’t either found it or they don’t feel it. What I’m doing is I’m offering a psychological explanation for why they don’t feel it, which is completely insensitive to whether or not there’s a truth of the matter.
Greg: I’m so glad you put it that way because this is exactly my point. I don’t want anybody to miss it. We’re really offering two different pictures of reality here, okay? People have to ask themselves two questions, I think. One is, they reflect on their own personal awareness of the need for meaning and significance. Does it seem to them that this is just a psychological thing that people can satisfy in all kinds of different ways depending on the individual, or does it seem to them, I’m asking these questions because I suspect there is a truth about life that might be discovered? Okay. That’s the first question. And I think most people’s awareness of this is that there’s something transcendent—something bigger than them. Okay? And any kind of naturalistic explanation is not going to ultimately satisfy that. The other thing is, is there any reason to believe that there is a transcendent reality—that God exists, that souls exist, that there is an objective morality that guides our life, and if we’re living virtuously, that’s going to be satisfying even if we don’t believe in God or not? Those are the two things at stake here, you know?
And now, this description—the story of reality I just described that I hold to—it seems to me completely coherent. Maybe not true, but it certainly is coherent—that if there is a God who made us for himself and places eternity in our hearts, that we’re going to yearn for that. And he made the way for us to live, and then we’re going to find good ways to live as opposed to unsatisfying ways to live. That makes sense. Doesn’t make any sense to me at all to say that my molecules are moving in a certain way to create in my conscious mind—which Darwinism cannot offer an explanation for. It hasn’t. That’s why Daniel Dennett said consciousness is an illusion, you know? Because he couldn’t do anything with it. Thomas Nagel wrote his book Mind and Cosmos (you’re familiar with this, I’m sure) on why the neo-Darwinian, materialistic view of the world is almost certainly false (and he’s an atheist, for goodness’ sake) because he can’t explain consciousness, not in a Darwinian way. So, how is it that this mystery of consciousness, which contains propositional thoughts, ideas, and purposes—if consciousness can’t be explained a Darwinian way—how can some characterization of molecules in motion accomplish that same end? That’s my concern. This is why I’m not convinced at all about the naturalist one, and this one seems so much more plausible.