Secularism CANNOT Give You Meaning | Pastor Reacts

I think that if there is a meaning crisis, it can be described as the human condition.

And the solutions are not what we call belief systems.

They are systems or better make it more sort of dynamic ecologies of practices.

We're going to hear a conversation about trying to find meaning without God.

It's as if the non -believer wants to live in the world that God made without bending the knee to him.

What these men are seeking is a spiritual experience that they cannot account for.

What happens when you get two incredibly intelligent non -theists in a room to talk about meaning?

Cosmic skeptic Alex O 'Connor sits down with psychologist John Verveke to talk about finding meaning in the secular age.

But will they be able to truly find meaning?

Or will this be an intellectual exercise in groping around in the dark?

We're about to find out.

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Alex O 'Connor, is there a meaning crisis?

I want to say yes.

I want to say a misleading yes.

Because I think that people often like that.

I think that the title of this panel is the Christian says, yes, there absolutely is a meaning crisis, not only

in this country, but in the West and by extension across the world as well.

And I think that's evidently clear with the rise of people unaliving themselves in the West with the rise of

anxiety and depression and other mental health issues right now.

These are manifestations of a deeper issue, which is a crisis of meaning.

But how that crisis originated and what the solution is for such a crisis is probably going to be completely different than what O 'Connor

offers.

So let's hear him out.

Finding meaning in a secular age.

I'm not sure that the meaning crisis that we're in is strictly due to or related to secularism

in particular.

I think that if there is a meaning crisis, it can be described as the human condition.

If you look at what people say on some self -help YouTube video about Albert Camus talking about

going into work, coming home, tide comes in, tide goes out, sun up, sun down, and none of it means anything.

Sure, you can find that there, but you can also find it in the book of Ecclesiastes.

This isn't a new thing.

And so when people talk about meaning...

Well, that's interesting.

So O 'Connor brings up Camus and Ecclesiastes.

Camus and Jean -Paul Sartre were famously secular existentialists who believed that the

universe was absurd.

Why?

Because there is no God.

But if the universe is absurd, then why do we desire meaning in our lives?

That's precisely what led to the existential crisis in the first place.

It's this search for meaning, but not being able to discover it, right?

So Sartre had a solution.

Just go out and authenticate yourself.

Doesn't matter what you do to authenticate yourself.

It could be through a simple act of kindness, or it could be through a great act of evil.

Doesn't matter though, because the universe is absurd.

That's the kind of nonsensical conclusion that you must arrive at if you begin with the notion

that God does not exist.

Ecclesiastes appears to track this kind of thought.

That is, until its very last concluding moments, which then clearly drives home the point of the whole book,

which is this.

Take a look at this.

This is Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13.

The end of the matter, all has been heard.

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Does that sound like Sartre or Camus?

No.

So it's misleading to mention Ecclesiastes alongside Camus as if to suggest that they're both communicating

the same things.

They're not.

Is no new problem.

So you're an atheist.

Yes.

A proud atheist.

A reluctant atheist.

Where do you get?

That's interesting.

I wonder what that means.

Is he reluctant because he doesn't want to live in a world where God does not exist?

Or is he reluctant because a lot of folks in his camp have been proven to be difficult and curmudgeonly?

Your meaning from?

Well, I was trying to think about what meaning actually means.

And generally, when talking about it, I try to give some clever -sounding academic definition.

But I was reading Blaise Pascal's Pensee, The Thoughts.

It's a marvellous, marvellous volume.

And I don't think it was ever supposed to be published.

But in the first part, Man Without God, he talks about the concept of boredom.

This is a wonderful passage on the concept of boredom.

And he says, it's where you get this famous quote that all of man's troubles spring from his inability to sit alone in a room in silence.

And he imagines somebody who tries to pass their boredom by gambling.

Every day, he goes and places a stake in the hopes that he'll win some money.

And this is how he stops himself from being bored.

And Pascal says, well, give this man all of the money that he could have won in the gambling game on the condition

that he can't play anymore.

And you'll make him unhappy because there's no thrill in it.

There's no excitement.

OK, so he doesn't just want to win the money.

He wants to play the game.

OK, says Pascal, allow him to play the game.

But he's guaranteed not to win the money.

You're also going to make him upset.

OK, so what is it then?

You need something like not having the thing desired, along with the illusion that once you achieve the

thing that's desired, it's going to make you happy.

But because having the thing on its own isn't actually going to make you happy, you also need to not have it.

So meaning has to be something like that slightly self -deceptive position

of identifying happiness in something you don't have, believing that you can achieve it, and then constantly not achieve it.

Because so meaning then is a deception.

And searching for meaning is merely at base participating in a kind of self -deception.

Is that the that's the point that he's making, right?

That was the point of the illustration.

By the way, Pascal was a Christian.

So the point that O 'Connor is making is not Pascal's original point at all.

O 'Connor is taking a train of thought from the Pensees and using it to further something that Pascal was not ultimately

arguing at all.

Pascal was making the same point that Ecclesiastes is making, that the world is vain and those who seek to live for

amusement and distraction, you know, like the man in the example who wants to keep gambling, are at base unhappy and

downright miserable.

Why?

Because they reject their creator.

And by rejecting their creator, they reject the design for which they were made, which gives them ultimate meaning and

purpose.

That's literally what the title of the chapter is in the Pensees.

It's called The Misery of Man Without God.

O 'Connor just said that out loud a second ago.

And so he points to Pascal, but then he uses Pascal to say that the search for meaning is merely an

exercise in deception.

Pascal would not have agreed with that at all.

So it makes you wonder, like, why would O 'Connor use a Christian's argument to make a secular point that the same Christian would never

affirm?

That sounds a little deceptive to me.

I don't know.

What do you think?

It used to be the case that the things that, I mean, with the sort of senses of meaning, the self -help stuff that I was mentioning a moment ago, they say, you know, seek discomfort,

cold showers and go to the gym and eat healthily and this kind of thing.

And it's because, you know, it used to be that when you wake up, it was a gamble.

You don't know if you're going to have a shelter over your head.

You don't know if you're going to have food to eat every single day.

The thing resets.

Now you've got the money without the game.

You've got the food.

You've got the shelter.

You're fine.

So what people are doing is they're seeking out the game without the prize.

This is why religion does it so well, because religion is the definition of something which you don't have now and for your entire life will not have.

And yet believe that you can have and think that that thing is desirable.

That must be the thing that religion serves.

So this is a fascinating exercise to watch O 'Connor take something as deep

and meaningful, ironically, as what Pascal was saying, which, by the way, I think you should read Pascal's pensées.

Okay.

I think they actually hold up and give incredible insight into the crisis of meaning even today.

But to take Pascal and then run him through your atheist blender and then pour out something that

is unrecognizable to the Christian, it betrays the question begging that is going on in O 'Connor's answer.

Why?

Because he starts with his presupposition that God does not exist, filters his understanding of Pascal through this

presupposition, then draws his conclusion based on his understanding that was shaped by his presupposition.

Pascal would have said that the crisis of meaning boils down to people who reject God because that's what makes them

miserable because of that.

And then they seek to divert their misery through amusement and distraction.

And so then what's the solution?

Keep searching for something you'll never have.

That's what O 'Connor said.

No, Pascal's answer would be turn to God.

Be in relationship with your creator again.

You know, the way that humanity once did in the garden.

You realize Jesus taught that eternal life is not something you achieve at the end of your life, but it's a

relationship with God right now.

That's what John 17 3 means.

And this is eternal life that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have

sent that knowing that no word right there refers to relational knowledge, the kind that

Adam and Eve once had with God in the Garden of Eden.

The Christian has eternal life with God now.

That's the offer.

But O 'Connor wants you to believe that you'll search for this and you'll never find it.

That's not Christian.

Like, I don't know what he's talking about, but that's not Christianity.

Look, I was really happy to be invited and speak here, and I think it's wonderful.

But when somebody asked me, where do I find my meaning?

I'm like, I'm as much in this struggle as anybody else.

There's nothing that I can do to to help you find it, except for firstly helping to try and recognize what it is that we're actually looking for.

And I think it's maybe something like that, John.

Yeah, but he didn't help you.

O 'Connor made references to a few people, the Book of Ecclesiastes, but he didn't really define meaning

from a secular perspective.

And he certainly didn't help you understand the religion that he rejects either, because he didn't characterize it properly.

And then at the end, he kind of puts his shoulders up and he says, well, I can't help you find meaning.

Is this how secularism helps those having a crisis of meaning?

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Do you recognize that struggle, that description, or do you have a bit more of a sort of purposeful view of it?

Well, no, I mean, I respect Alex, what he's saying, and I think there's important truths in it.

I would say, initially, I agree with Alex.

There's a perennial problem of meaning, Ecclesiastes or books of the same ilk.

And I think this has to do with the fact that we are perennially prone to despair, because the very processes that make us

intelligently adaptive also make us perpetually susceptible to self -deception.

And we can get bound up and cut off and disconnected from ourselves and other people.

So I think there's definitely a perennial aspect, cross -cultural, cross -historical aspect to it.

I'm not very familiar with Verveke, but notice what he's assuming in

order to say what he's saying.

So I won't front -load you too much here.

I'm just calling attention to it so you can try to listen out for his assumptions, because it's as clear as day to me.

But I'm wondering if you recognize it.

Let's keep going.

I think what's specific about what I call the meaning crisis is that those perennial problems usually have had perennial

solutions.

There have been, and the solutions are not what we call belief systems.

They are systems, or better, make it more sort of dynamic, ecologies of practices, ways of transforming consciousness,

cognition, character, community.

They give people a sense that they're ameliorating this self -deception and enhancing their connectedness to

themselves, to other people, to the world.

And those ecologies of practices have been housed in various things, or homed is better.

They've been homed in religions, but they've also been homed in these things that sort of hang on the border between philosophy and religion,

like Buddhism and Daoism and maybe Stoicism.

And so what seems to be the case though, is we don't have

a socially recognized, legitimated home outside of the religions for people who want

to ameliorate their foolishness, who want to enhance their connectedness.

If you'll allow me a little bit, a highfalutin word, who want to cultivate wisdom.

Yeah, but whose fault is that?

Let me back up.

When I hear Verweycky and maybe even O 'Connor, although it's more obvious in Verweycky, I hear

Kant.

I hear Kierkegaard.

I hear the Romanticists and the Transcendentalists.

I hear the effects of post -enlightenment skepticism with regard to epistemology and maybe even

to ontology.

Now, there's a way to say all of this as a Christian, and I'm sure I'll get there.

But it sounds like these gentlemen are more concerned with philosophy.

So let's speak their language for a moment.

The only reason that you can assert that meaning is merely an exercise in ameliorating self -deception is

because you assume that your senses are trapped inside your own body.

That you cannot engage the noumenal, as Kant called it, because all you know is the phenomenal.

And that's what Kant said, that there is a noumenal realm out there where objects exist as

they really are.

And then there is a phenomenal realm where we, as the observer, engage with these objects through the lens of our

senses.

But Kant was a bit carried away, in my opinion, like his contemporaries, with determining what he could doubt.

And so there became this dividing line between objects as they really are, which we can never truly know,

and those same objects as we perceive them through our senses.

And so, are you with me?

And so everyone after Kant started to say, well, we could only know the phenomenal.

We cannot really know the noumenal.

But once you do that, you've just locked yourself inside your own head, so to speak.

And if you don't believe in God, you don't believe in a soul, you don't believe in an immaterial mind, then you've just put

yourself in a very awkward position.

Because now everything has to be explained subjectively.

Why?

Because you just locked yourself inside your own body.

And you have no means or method to engage anything in an objective sense.

And that's how it seems Verwenky is trying to describe meaning.

We're self -deceived.

So both he and O 'Connor seem to agree.

We're self -deceived because we only know the phenomenal realm.

We don't know the noumenal.

And so then meaning becomes a way of transforming your consciousness, of ameliorating self

-deception, according to Verwenky.

But what the heck does that mean?

And how is that even possible if you're locked inside your own head, right?

And because of that, and that has to do with some very important historical factors.

Do you think it's new, though?

I mean, Alex was saying it's been around forever.

Just a mile away, we have the Columbia campus.

It has nothing to do with this conversation in a way, but the intensity of the political disagreement, the sense that

people are fundamentally unreconciled.

Do you think that is just another manifestation of this?

Do you think we are in a particular...

Very much.

And I think from an anthropological point of view, not a theological point of view, from an anthropological point of view, these are religious events.

These are people...

Well, I want to do what Alex said.

What is it that we're seeking?

We're seeking meaning.

So in cognitive science and psychology, we try to distinguish between the meaning of life, which is some grand metaphysical claim, and meaning

in life, and philosophers like Susan Wolf and others.

So...

Did you hear that?

Again, you can't just hear the words and take them at face value.

You have to hear the assumptions that inform the words.

And again, those influences and assumptions are most likely Kant, Kierkegaard, maybe Hegel,

such that when Vervaeke approaches the question of meaning, he has no category for objective meaning.

So he immediately just dismisses it.

Did you see what he just did?

He waved his hand and he said, well, you know, that's just the grand metaphysical claim.

As if to suggest that...

Well, that sense of meaning cannot be known, guys.

Why?

Because either it doesn't exist at all, or it exists but is part of the noumenal realm that nobody can truly engage.

So Vervaeke wants us to sidestep that and focus on the phenomenal realm, the meaning of

my own subjective life and experience.

And now probably we're going to hear a bunch of intelligent words and psychological descriptors that are

drastically reduced down to a person's subjective experience.

As a Christian, we're going to hear a conversation about trying to find meaning without God.

But wait, Pascal says where that leads, right?

Despair and misery.

That is then never dealt with because people try to amuse and distract themselves from feeling despair.

By the way, that's exactly what people are still wrestling with today.

Why is anxiety, depression, suicidality, all these things on the rise?

It's the same reason, guys.

And for people looking for answers, they might hear intelligent sounding things being said on that stage, but the

answer is not in this conversation because the answer is God.

Seeking real relationship with the one who made you and letting your life be an expression of that.

That's where you find understanding and real meaning.

What this is is that it sort of has a bunch of factors, but one is, does the world make sense to you?

Think of all the things you have in a video game and why people want to be in video games.

Does the world make sense to you?

Is there a story that you can play a part in?

And is there a way for you to level up, for you to get better as a person, that would like to enhance your agency?

And so it's this fundamental sense of connectedness.

And so you can determine meaning in life by asking people three questions.

What do you want to exist even if you don't?

How really real is it?

And how much of a difference do you make to it now?

These people in these events, they want to connect to something, a cause, that's bigger than themselves.

They want it to exist.

They think the universe is a better place if this cause is there.

They think it's really real.

They think these are real events.

This is significant, important.

This isn't like going to the store and buying milk.

And they think they can make a difference by participating in it, committing to it.

And so I think it's very much, and the fact, I think it's very much an act about trying to get this connectedness.

And the fervor means that it's being driven by a tinge of anxiety, a tinge of hunger, a tinge even of

potential despair.

I mean, they would...

It's interesting because he poses these guiding questions that actually sound very Christian in nature.

It's as if the non -believer wants to live in the world that God made without bending the knee to him.

It's as if they want to act like the world is filled with objectivity and ultimates and absolutes, while at

the same time claiming.

That these things do not exist.

Say, if they were here right now on this panel, they'd be pretty cross by that suggestion, I think, because they would say there are big

problems.

These are issues which they're engaged with in a practical way.

Alex, do you look at the news?

Do you look at stuff happening like in Colombia every day?

There are now these, what feel to be, appear to be completely unreconcilable battles.

Do you see something existential in them?

Or do you think it's just politics or cultural war or...

Well, existentialism is always sort of at the basis of political and cultural disputes.

There's always something, there's always some like bedrock that people are working from.

So if there weren't, then you could just solve these disputes by using reason.

You could just sort of figure out what the disagreement is, figure out who most agrees with the bedrock that you both share, and there you go, problem solved.

But no, there's some kind of philosophical bedrock.

The thing that people are looking for, the reason why you can't just argue people out of this stuff, and it's something that I've spoken to John about before, and I think we'll agree on, is that

wherever this meaning thing exists, if you look at traditional centers of meaning, art and poetry and religion,

like one of the unifying features is that it is non -propositional.

It's not something that you put into a syllogism.

It's not something that you sort of rationalize and argue.

Will you just explain what that means?

That's actually false.

Which, by the way, let this be the beginning of a longer conversation that perhaps spills over into another

video, or even just the comments, because I'd love to hear from you on this, but I'm also running out of time and I need to

get back to the classroom, okay?

So O 'Connor just said that meaning is non -propositional.

Says who?

Him?

I mean, that is, again, just a, this is a wonderful exercise in identifying the assumptions that undergird the words

themselves.

Meaning is propositional, ladies and gentlemen, according to the Christian.

We understand a person's objective meaning because we are given this in a propositional structure through God's special revelation.

Mankind was made in the image of God, given certain commands by God in Genesis.

Look at this, Genesis 1, verse 26.

Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the

birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.

And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have

dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

More than that, we were made to love God and love the people around us.

This is delineated in not only the Shema and Deuteronomy 6, but also Leviticus 19 and

also Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

As a matter of fact, you wanna know what your purpose in life looks like?

Read Matthew chapter five through seven.

That's God in human flesh describing to you what your purpose looks like, practically, like in your circles of

influence, it's an eye opener.

And so to live according to our purpose, it's really to uniquely express these biblical descriptors

in our everyday context today.

Why?

Well, because the one who designed us determines how we fulfill our design.

That's propositional, okay?

You can either assent to these things being true or false.

But for the one who rejects God and must admit that the sense of meaning in their life is

something worth exploring, the only thing they can say and be philosophically consistent

at this point is that meaning is non -propositional.

Why?

Because the sense of meaning and lacking that is definitely felt, but they have no

explanation for it.

No grounding for it.

Certainly no objective grounding for meaning.

So it can't be rational because rationality is only something that comes from our minds.

And since we're locked inside our own minds, then objective meaning is non -rational and non -propositional.

That's where all of this leads.

If you reject your creator, do you see that?

What these men are seeking is a spiritual experience that they cannot account for.

To understand your purpose and meaning in life is to receive these things from the God who is there and to

sense that deep down and then resonate with that is to engage with aspects of yourself that are

immaterial.

Again, these are things that materialists cannot account for.

So in my opinion, what these two men have done is that they have inadvertently shown us that there is a God.

To those of us who have the eyes to see these things, that's just what they've done.

Why?

Well, because they're acknowledging this sense of meaning.

This non -propositional sense or qualia that they struggle to define, but they have no real explanation for it.

They cannot live as mere biological machines, even though that's precisely what materialism leaves you with.

They cannot, like, they recognize that meaning is there, but they don't know how it got there or what, if at

all, its purpose is.

All of this, really, it betrays what Francis Schaeffer identified as

the line of despair.

I've mentioned Schaeffer before.

It'd be a great read for these gentlemen to take a look at, actually, because I think Schaeffer has a lot to offer, especially O 'Connor.

So maybe that could be his next book that he reads, right?

But Schaeffer mentioned this, like, the line of despair is this arbitrary division

that has been slowly created and furthered by folks who refuse to accept the Christian worldview.

As Christians, we understand that reality is ordered, it's logical, and that objective truth is

a legitimate metaphysical reality precisely because God exists.

Logic, for example, is stated propositionally, right?

Think of the three laws of logic, law of identity, non -contradiction, and excluded middle.

It all depends on a God who speaks propositionally to his creation.

And Christians have God's propositional revelation recorded in our Bibles.

And what does the Bible say?

That God, the God who has a mind that is ordered, created

an ordered world.

We should not expect any of this if God does not exist, and yet that's exactly what we find in reality.

But for those who reject the Bible and the God of the Bible and are materialists, which I'm not

sure if O 'Connor and Vivecki are, but they sure sound like they are, these folks are relegated to saying that

there is no objective truth.

And by extension, there is no objective meaning, but they still act like it exists.

They know that it does because somewhere deep down, we all know that it does, we all feel it.

But for those who wanna live in a world where there is no God and objective meaning, they must relegate it to some kind of concept that

is like outside the realm of logic.

Why?

Because it cannot be justified by any kind of objective argument or evidence.

And so to seek it is actually more of a deceptive practice, right?

That's at least what O 'Connor and Vivecki are trying to suggest.

Not only is none of this true, that is also like deeply

unsatisfying for the genuine seeker of meaning and truth to say what we're really looking for

actually doesn't exist at all.

It's like the, this is like the cynical person who's been through a few bad relationships and then pronounces at the end, well, there

is no such thing as true love.

Wow, you know?

In the same way, I would see the, you know, if I heard somebody say that about love, I would

immediately recognize the assumptions that underlie that kind of a statement.

I also see the same kinds of assumptions that underlie O 'Connor's and Vivecki's statements as well.

All right, well, anyway, those are some of my thoughts.

You should definitely take a look at the full video.

I'll leave the link for that in the notes.

But now it's your turn.

What do you think?

Are O 'Connor and Vivecki onto something?

Let me know in the comments below.

Definitely, I would love to hear from you.

If you have not, let's jump into the conversation and continue it on YouTube.

I think both men are incredibly intelligent.

So I'll also further that.

And my prayer is that they do find ultimate meaning in life.

But as a Christian, I recognize that they'll only find it when they repent and forsake all to follow after

Jesus.

Amen.

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