Christianity, The World's Most Falsifiable Religion?

I find myself not writing about religion very often anymore mostly because I’ve got the gist of Christian apologetics at this point and am rather bored by it, so I’m much less often inspired to respond to something I read. Still, something extraordinary does occasionally drift by, like this article from Michael Patton, Th.M., (presumably not the Mike Patton from Faith No More) entitled “Christianity, The World’s Most Falsifiable Religion.” It struck me as odd that someone with a background in theology would write so confidently about the historicity of the core claims of the Christian faith. Then again, the major endeavor of Christian apologetics is to attempt to muster up some kind of argument other than “you just need to take it on faith,” even though most believers would not cite “the overwhelming persuasiveness of Christian apologetics” as the reason for their belief. Apologetics is not for convincing nonbelievers, it’s for reassuring believers that they have legitimate, non-laughable reasons for the beliefs that they already hold, beliefs that don’t actually have their origins in the cosmological argument, or the teleological argument, or the moral argument, or the [insert apologetic du jour] argument.

Here is Patton’s thesis:

“Christianity is the only viable worldview that is historically defensible. The central claims of the Bible demand historic inquiry, as they are based on public events that can be historically verified. In contrast, the central claims of all other religions cannot be historically tested and, therefore, are beyond falsifiability or inquiry. They just have to be believed with blind faith.”

The TL;DR version of my response: No, Christianity is not historically defensible. Its claims, like those of all other religions, are not falsifiable, and you do just have to take it on faith. Here’s the long-winded version:

What is History?

To explain why the claims of the Christian faith cannot be investigated historically, the first thing that needs to be done is to define what history is, and just as importantly what history is not. (I’m borrowing heavily here from the work of Dr. Bart Ehrman, New Testament scholar and historian.) History is not the past. History is what we can show probably happened in the past. This is not a trivial distinction; there are things that certainly happened in the past but cannot be shown to have happened with any high probability. For example, there is a factual answer to the question “What did Benjamin Franklin eat for dinner on October 23^rd, 1778?” Unless we’re fortunate enough to discover Franklin's journal meticulously detailing his prandial selections on that day, we have no method of seeking the answer to this question. So although the question asks about a particular event in the past, it is not a historical question – it can’t be investigated historically. Let’s look at the claims of the New Testament and determine if they are historical claims, i.e. claims that can be investigated historically.

History as a Genre

Not every piece of writing that talks about the past is historical. “History” is a specific literary designation, and any writing deemed to be “historical” must meet certain criteria, just as any writing claiming to be satire or science fiction or biography must meet certain criteria. So, what exactly is history? The word itself comes from Herodotus, the 5^th century BCE Greek writer commonly referred to as “The Father of History” (an honor conferred upon him by Cicero, no less.) Herodotus begins his famous work with the immortal words “Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε,” “This is the display of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” The Greek word whence comes our word history means an investigation or inquiry. In this hugely influential work, Herodotus establishes many basic features of the genre of historical writing. First of all, he clearly identifies himself by name and place. Second, he often gives multiple conflicting accounts of a story and identifies to which people each perspective belongs. In the case of events he didn’t witness himself, he tells the reader where he got his information and reports it neutrally, inviting the reader to decide which side is telling the truth, if any.

Thucydides, Herodotus’ 5^th century Greek contemporary wrote a detailed history of the war between Athens and Sparta as it was unfolding before his very eyes. His methods are even more mindfully scrupulous than those of Herodotus, and he tells us explicitly in Book I, section 22 how he gets his information:

“And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.”

Thucydides’ work is also noteworthy for his inclusion of long speeches, about which he gives the following disclaimer in the same section:

“With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.”

So, history as a genre was established more than four hundred years before the New Testament: a transparent inquiry into events by an author who identifies himself, dutifully reports on sources, and declares any biases. It should already be clear that the writers of the gospels make no effort to be historical in their approach to narration. But wait, there’s more!

Investigating the Historical Past

Having established what historical writing looks like from its ancient roots, we should mention what modern scholars of history look for when trying to determine what probably happened in the past. The most important resources in investigating the historical past are primary sources – first-hand accounts reported by people who witnessed the events. Historians want not only primary sources, but multiple primary sources that were created independently of one another, are consistent in their description of the events, and have no obvious bias in reporting. How do the gospels of the New Testament fare as desirable historical evidence? Let’s find out:

Are the gospels primary sources?

The stories narrated in the gospels are not eye-witness accounts and don’t even claim to be. Even worse, the original autographs of all New Testament books are lost. The earliest texts of the gospels we have are copies from a century later or more. Historians don’t know what the authors of the gospels originally wrote because the original texts don’t exist.

Are the gospels multiple independent sources?

Well, kind of. Multiple? Yes, technically. Independent? Definitely not. The first three gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) are plagued by a troublesome debate known as the synoptic problem, a veritable cluster-fuck of scholarly confusion as to where the hell the writers of these books got their information, because large parts are repeated verbatim across the three books, and the authors never mention their sources.

Are the gospels consistent in their descriptions of events?

When was Jesus executed? Mark (14:12, 15:25) and John (19:14-16) can’t agree on the hour or the day. Did Jesus carry his own cross, as John says (19:17), or did Simon of Cyrene carry it, as Mark (15:21), Matthew (27:32), and Luke (23:26) say? Were the women watching the crucifixion from far away, as Matthew (27:55), Mark (15:40), and Luke (23:49) say, or were Jesus’ mother Mary, her sister, and Mary Magdalene close at hand as John (19:25) says? What were Jesus’ last words before dying? Did he say “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as Mark (15:34) and Matthew (27:46) report, or “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” as Luke (23:46) reports, or “It is finished,” as John (19:30) reports? That’s just a small selection of the inconsistencies in the crucifixion story alone. The gospel writers don’t tell the same story about anything.

Are the gospels unbiased in reporting events?

The gospels are stories narrated as if factual with no attempts whatsoever at impartiality. The authors of these books were 1^st century Christians who already believed these stories and disseminated them for the purpose of converting people to their religion.

So, the gospels display precisely none of the characteristics shown by actual writers of history, and the texts have none of the characteristics that modern historians look for when investigating historical events. I could stop here, but wait, there’s more!

The Nail in the Coffin (Stone in front of the Tomb?): Miracles

As if everything mentioned thus far wasn’t problematic enough for the historicity of the claims in the New Testament, Dr. Ehrman reminds us of an even bigger problem: miracles. What is a miracle? A miracle is a suspension of the natural order of the world - an event that transcends the very physical laws that govern our entire existence. A miracle is not just an improbable event, but an impossible one. It’s rolling a 7 on a six-sided die, or being raised from the dead, or correctly folding a fitted bed sheet. Historians, as we established earlier, have to try to demonstrate what probably happened in the past. Miracles are by definition the least probable things that have ever happened. Of course they are – if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be miraculous. The conflict should be obvious: the least probable occurrence can never be the most probable explanation for anything. Thus, for a historian, no miraculous story can ever be a historical one. This is why history text books do not mention gods, demons, angels, fairies, and hobgoblins when explaining the D-Day invasion, or the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the French Revolution. Highly improbable explanations have no historical explanatory power.

What About Other Sources?

There aren’t any. Jesus of Nazareth, whoever he was, wrote nothing. His disciples wrote nothing. His contemporary followers wrote nothing. (This shouldn’t be surprising – lower class people in Judea in the 1^st century were illiterate.) The earliest author we have is the apostle Paul, who never met Jesus. Everyone else, including the gospel writers, the Jewish historian Josephus, and the Roman historian Tacitus, came later. There are no verifiable historical witnesses to the crucifixion, to the empty tomb, to the resurrection. As far as historians are concerned, these claims cannot be evaluated, let alone shown to have probably happened.

Conclusions and Caveats

If you're a Christian and reading this (or if you're Michael Patton,Th.M. - Hi Mike!) and frothing at the mouth right now, please note that at no point have I said that the crucifixion, the empty tomb, and the resurrection did not happen. To say that a claim is not historical is NOT to say the event did not happen. Michael's claim is that the Christian stories about Jesus are historical, and I've explained why that isn't true.

I don't personally believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. I'm not even entirely convinced that anything reported about him in Christian texts is factually true, given how powerfully unhistorical they are. I cannot, however, state with absolute certainty that the claims are false, because they are unfalsifiable. The complete lack of evidence to substantiate any claims about Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection strongly suggests to me that the claims are false, but it does not prove that they are false. It could be that there was a 1^st century Palestinian Jew who performed miracles and survived his own murder, just as it could be that Benjamin Franklin had steak and eggs for dinner on October 23^rd, 1778. Both could be facts; neither is historical.

The Absurdity of Monogamy

Monogamy is ridiculous. There, I said it. This is something that I've been subconsciously aware of for my entire life but only recently had the clarity of mind and testicular fortitude to declare, and I do so confidently and without apology. I offer by way of introduction this short video by Dan Savage, noted sex columnist, in response to the question, "Does society need to rethink its views on love and commitment?" (NSFW language - it's Dan Savage)

He gets at the core of this issue, which is that we as a collective society have placed the utmost importance on the idea of sexual exclusivity in all serious, long-term relationships and marriages. Nearly everyone agrees that infidelity is wrong. I'm firmly in that camp as well - infidelity, after all, amounts to lying, and lying is generally wrong. There is a massive disconnect, however, between the number of people who condemn infidelity and who refrain from it, and this disparity is a major contributor to the failure of monogamous relationships.

Statistical Reality

Finding rigorous, reliable, and recent statistics on infidelity is annoyingly difficult. First of all, much of the current research is to be found behind paywalls in academic journals, so direct access to anything but abstracts has been impossible for me. There's also the problem that these statistics all rely on self-reporting, and given the general stigma attached to infidelity, many people are reluctant to admit to it even in an anonymous survey. This is particularly evident when looking at the stats for people who reported being cheated on vs. those who admit to cheating - there's a rather large gap between those two figures in any survey of these questions. So, here are some of the figures I have been able to access regarding the prevalence of infidelity:

• a Psychology Today article cites a research paper from the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy (Atwood & Schwartz, 2002) which completed a meta-analysis of existing research on marital infidelity. That analysis found that 45-55% of women and 50-60% of men engage in extramarital sex at some point during their marriages.
• Peggy Vaughan in her book The Monogamy Myth reports similar figures - around 40% of women and 60% of men will have an affair during marriage, and perhaps more shockingly, 40% of these affairs go on for more than 2 years. These aren't drunken mistakes on business trips, they're fulfilling, long-term relationships with people other than one's spouse.
• A recent survey of divorce professionals revealed that 28% of divorcing couples cite infidelity as the primary reason for separation.
• There are entire dating websites catering to married people looking to find extramarital partners. AshleyMadison.com has over 33 million registered users, all of whom are either married and looking to cheat or single and willing to be the home-wrecker.

So, nearly everyone agrees that cheating is wrong, yet better than 50% of all married people will do it anyway, and a quarter of all divorces will be a direct result of it. In order to try to understand why these problematic figures exist, we should examine why people place such an importance on monogamy in the first place.

Animals are Naturally Monogamous

This is one of those "science facts" that you've known for a really long time - that many animals "mate for life."(The Onion has even recently had some fun with this) The problem with "science facts" that you've known for a really long time is that most of them are actually wrong, including this one. Many species of birds, for example, appear to be monogamous, as they tend to form persistent "pair bonds." These are social bonds rather than sexual, though - genetic analysis of offspring frequently reveals that a percentage of them weren't fathered by the social mates. There are perfectly reasonable evolutionary explanations for why it's advantageous for birds to do this, and the same factors may explain human tendencies toward polygamy as well.

We have anthropological and biological evidence to suggest strongly that homo sapiens is not a naturally monogamous species, although biologists have trouble pinning us down on the monogamy/polygamy spectrum. Polygamy is generally abhorrent in the modern, civilized world, probably because the advantages it offers are no longer relevant to centralized, industrial societies. George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas reports that, of the 800+ different cultures he cataloged throughout the world, only 137 of them, or 16.1%, were monogamous. Even without definitive answers to these questions of human sexuality from science, a glance back at those statistics above should dispel any notion that we are naturally monogamous.

Religion

One reason many people will insist on monogamy is that it's some sort of moral imperative as decreed by Almighty God. Of course, if actually asked to substantiate this strongly-held belief with specific citations of passages in holy books, the people spouting this tired argument will generally fumble and equivocate. The Bible says quite a lot of things about marriage, most of them the sort of laughable, irrelevant, contradictory nonsense that one typically finds in its pages. Deuteronomy 21:15, for example, addresses men with two wives (and not for the purposes of telling them not to have two wives.) Abraham has "concubines" (Genesis 25:6), Esau takes two wives (Genesis 26:34) and then another one (28:9). 1 Kings 11:3 notes that King Solomon, the greatest player in human history, had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Those are suspiciously round numbers, but apparently God was cool with K-Sol slamming 1,000 bitches, give or take.

"Yes, but," you retort, "those verses are all from Ye Olde Testamente, that forgotten opening act to the triumphant and glorious GOSPELS overflowing with the WISDOM OF JESUS OUR LORD AND SAVIOR!" Well, in Matthew 19, Jesus and his disciples discuss how, since divorce isn't allowed (19:9), it's probably best not to marry. Jesus suggests castration as another viable option (19:12). Jesus also advocates abandoning one's wife to follow him (19:29). In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says it's best for men and women not to touch each other, and people who aren't already married shouldn't bother (7:27). I mean, the world is coming to an end really soon, you guys. There's no time to get married. So actually, the God of the Bible is perfectly fine with polygamy, and Jesus doesn't seem to give a shit either way, because he's more important than your marriage, and the world is ending soon anyway. The idea that monogamy is a Biblical imperative from God is simply false.

Exclusive Sex is More Special

And yet, the idea of monogamy is pervasive even among scientifically literate, secular people. Sure, the misguided religious folk have a monopoly on crazy reasons for insisting on it, but even your super progressive, Green party-voting, Chomsky-reading, Trader Joe's-shopping, vegan girlfriend would probably dump your ass the second she came home early from her barista shift and saw a pair of someone else's TOMS on the floor.

We're just doing yoga, I swear!

Certainly there are pragmatic reasons to prefer monogamy, like mitigated risk of STIs/need to go on the Maury Povich Show. [This of course only applies when both partners are actually monogamous, which, as we know, they often are not.] But this is not generally the justification given for monogamy, especially among unmarried couples who have no legal obligations to one another. In this case, so the argument goes, sex is a special thing because two partners decide only to do it with each other.

This argument could be persuasive, in the same way that communism could be a viable economic model. If two people go to their graves having only had sex with each other, then yes, sex was a special thing. Mission accomplished, criticism retracted. This accurately describes something like 0% of the population. In reality, most people will have multiple sexual partners in their lifetimes; hell, many people will even get married multiple times. The argument that sex is somehow special because you're only doing it with one person at a time becomes difficult to take seriously when you remember that you and your partner both likely had other sexual partners before the current relationship and will likely have more still after it's over. This argument from "special...ness" becomes less persuasive with each new sexually exclusive relationship.

Note also that it would be patently absurd to talk about other aspects of human relationships in this way. Parents don't decide against having a second child because they're afraid they won't have enough love for both of them. No parent looks forlornly at an ultrasound revealing twins and laments, "oh, now they're each only half as special." We don't put a limit on the number of friends we have because we're afraid that we're going to run out of love, or that our existing friendships won't be as valid anymore because we've made new ones. One can assert that having multiple concurrent sexual partners somehow renders the act less special, whatever that means, but the fact remains that there are no practical implications for this, and I'd defy anyone to demonstrate otherwise. The meaningfulness of sex is not inversely proportional to the number of partners, current or historical. (Einstein came up with that, I think. Look it up.) Just as we all have unlimited capacity to love our kids and love our friends, we also have unlimited capacity to have maximally meaningful sex.

Pretty sure it's that bit on the left there.

The Intimacy Fallacy

Sex is almost inextricably mated to intimacy, despite the fact that most sexually active people know from experience that the two aren't necessarily synonymous. Sex is not an inherently intimate act. (If you don't agree, consider sex workers of all kinds - are porn stars enjoying intimate moments when they saw away at each other on camera as a vocation? What about non-consensual sex? Incest? Bestiality? Necrophilia? Wow that escalated quickly...) Sex is a biological imperative; this we know for certain. What the act means, though, is entirely up to the individuals engaging in it, and it could be entirely different for each person engaged in the act. Sex can be powerfully intimate, completely meaningless, and every single nuance of difference in between. Simply combining one's genitals with someone else's does not in itself mean anything at all - it means whatever the people to whom those genitals are attached feel it means.

Two airplanes share a powerfully intimate moment.

"Sex" as a lexical item is woefully inadequate to express the innumerable manifestations of the act, which is why we consequently have innumerable colorful phrases to fill the gaps. Making love is different from fucking is different from shagging is different from going all the way, et cetera ad infinitum. Intimacy does not come from an act, it comes from the feelings that people have for each other, which they bring to any act. Two lifelong lovers gazing poignantly into each other's eyes is infinitely more intimate than two practical strangers drunkenly porking in a dance club bathroom. The idea that an unfaithful partner has shared a profoundly intimate moment with someone else is not necessarily true simply by virtue of the act itself.

Infidelity as an Extinction-Level Event

The lamentable consequence of these unrealistic expectations about sexual exclusivity is that countless otherwise healthy, loving relationships are destroyed simply because one partner, for whatever reason, has sex with someone else. Terminating a relationship based on the revelation that one partner was unfaithful sends the absurd message that a singular act can be more important than potentially decades of love and commitment. Marriages are destroyed and families are fractured because we have decided that unfaithfulness is the worst possible transgression in a monogamous relationship, and we see the unfortunate results of this in the divorce statistics.

This persistent attitude combined with the fact that around half of all married people will at some moment be unfaithful paints a terribly grim picture for the future of monogamous relationships. The solution, of course, is plainly visible, although most seem dogmatically unwilling to embrace it: we simply must be more realistic about sexual exclusivity. No amount of preaching morality and the sanctity of marriage, of swearing oaths before God and man, of insisting intransigently on uninterrupted monogamy will change the fact that people desire other people. Making a sexually exclusive commitment to one person does not palliate one's innate sexual desire to fuck other people. A lot of other people. As many other people as will agree to it. And yet many partners act completely surprised when they discover that they haven't been the sole object of sexual desire of their spouses.

Completely lost in the shame-and-blame hysterics about infidelity is the fact that cheating can actually save relationships rather than destroy them. It's not the solution for every struggling couple, but sometimes simply getting a need met elsewhere is preferable to ending an otherwise healthy relationship. Having an affair can also bring a trenchant and novel perspective to one's relationship by the inevitable comparison it engenders. This Psychology Today article describes how this is possible:

Why is this? Well, if we go back to the original premise -- stepping out of our primary relationship because certain needs aren't getting met -- and we are then finding those needs met in a secondary relationship -- the secondary relationship, by its very nature, stands in contrast to the first. By way of comparison, this contrast can prompt a shift in perspective that brings us from a place of seeing what were missing in our primary relationship to a place of recognizing what we have in that relationship. This shift in perspective provides us with a crucible for determining what it is that we actually need in a social relationship to feel satisfied.

We tend to hear about the relationships that are destroyed by cheating but never about those saved by it. From a pragmatic perspective, declaring infidelity to be implicitly, unambiguously wrong seems at least slightly misguided.

Honest Attitudes about Sexual Exclusivity

By no means am I contending that monogamy is impossible, or that it's even undesirable. There are happily monogamous couples who will remain happily monogamous for the duration of their relationships, and they wouldn't have it any other way, and that's perfectly fine. There are a great many people, however, who enter into monogamous relationships because they feel that they don't actually have a choice - a serious relationship generally entails, implicitly or explicitly, sexual exclusivity. Whether it's just a serious, committed relationship or a legal contract between two people who have promised in front of witnesses to be faithful, many people are making these vows knowing full-well that they're not likely to uphold them, at least not perfectly, not indefinitely. It behooves us to acknowledge that this obsession with monogamy is at odds with our nature, and this acknowledgment must color our perception of the importance of unbroken sexual exclusivity in relationships.

γνῶϑι σεαυτόν reads the sign at the Oracle at Delphi - know thyself. If you make a commitment to another person to be monogamous, you're obligated to uphold that commitment - a promise to a loved one is a promise, and broken at one's peril. If strict monogamy doesn't sound particularly attractive, or fulfilling, or even possible to you, then don't make any such commitments. Understand that this is a part of who you are and what you need to be happy and fulfilled, and be honest about it. Speaking openly and honestly about our desires in matters as important as these is imperative in order to destigmatize relationships that aren't strictly monogamous. Many people have these relationships now - whether their partner knows it or not - and we'd all benefit from a less hostile space in which to talk about them.

(A special thank you to many of my married friends who provided valuable insight on this matter as I was writing.)

A Response to William Lane Craig

Dr. William Lane Craig is a well-known Christian Apologist philosopher and theologian. He operates a website called (and I assume he means this without irony) reasonablefaith.org. On his website you can listen to podcasts about how awful atheism is, why gay marriage is bad, and even buy books for children with clever titles like "What Is God Like? God Is All-Good!" (not making this up.)

He also has several compositions available to read, one of which is entitled "The Absurdity of Life Without God." Since I will probably never be invited to debate with Dr. Craig in person (although many people much smarter than I have been - just search for Dr. Craig on YouTube), I'll just publish my reactions to his assertions here in my own webspace.

Now, this particular article of Dr. Craig's is rather lengthy, and it contains several extended quotes from other authors and philosophers, as well as some anecdotes, so for the sake of brevity I won't reproduce the entire thing here. Rather, I'll quote parts of Dr. Craig's writings directly and then respond thereafter, keeping the order of the original text. Please don't accuse me of cherry-picking; I could respond to every single sentence.

Or, if you'd simply like the Reader's Digest version of what Dr. Craig thinks and why I think he has the brain of a six year old, I can sum it up like this:

• Dr. Craig thinks that life without God would be so utterly hopeless and terrible that it cannot in fact be true, so therefore Biblical Christianity is the only reasonable choice.
• I accuse Dr. Craig of repeatedly employing two logical fallacies in putting forth his arguments: the so-called argument from personal incredulity and false dichotomy.

That's everything in a nutshell. The slightly longer-winded version goes like this, with Dr. Craig's text in italics and my reactions immediately following.

The Absurdity of Life without God

William Lane Craig

Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning, value, or purpose, and why this view is unlivable.

The Necessity of God and Immortality

Since the Enlightenment, when he threw off the shackles of religion, man has tried to answer these questions without reference to God. But the answers that came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible.

"Dark and terrible" is simply a matter of opinion. There is certainly no consensus that the answers to fundamental questions with God are flowery and cheerful, and without, dark and terrible. 

Modern man thought that when he had gotten rid of God, he had freed himself from all that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God, he had also killed himself. For if there is no God, then man's life becomes absurd.

Let me just stop you at the phrase "killing God," because that falsely implies that modern man has collectively ceased to believe in God. For many people, there was never a belief in God to begin with, so the killing metaphor is not apt. 

If God does not exist, then both man and the universe are inevitably doomed to death.

This implies that, if God does exist, then somehow both man and the universe are not inevitably doomed to death. Perhaps this follows logically in Dr. Craig's brain, but he offers no evidence for this assertion whatsoever, and so it can be as freely dismissed as false as he freely asserts it to be true. Since this is basically the thesis of his entire article, I should really just stop here. I won't, though; the rest of it is just too silly to ignore. 

For though I know now that I exist, that I am alive, I also know that someday I will no longer exist, that I will no longer be, that I will die. This thought is staggering and threatening: to think that the person I call "myself" will cease to exist, that I will be no more!

Yeah, Epicurus solved this problem back in the 4th century BCE, but apparently Dr. Craig is still having some difficulty. The idea is pretty simple: once you're dead, you can't lament the fact that you're dead, because you're dead. You won't care that you're dead, because you can't. As long as you're alive, death is no concern, because you're not dead; when death comes, you're no longer alive. The fear of death is irrational, and any time spent freaking out about it, like Dr. Craig is doing, is wasted time.

And the universe, too, faces death. Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and everything in it is growing farther and farther apart. As it does so, it grows colder and colder, and its energy is used up. Eventually all the stars will burn out and all matter will collapse into dead stars and black holes. There will be no light at all; there will be no heat; there will be no life; only the corpses of dead stars and galaxies, ever expanding into the endless darkness and the cold recesses of space—a universe in ruins. So not only is the life of each individual person doomed; the entire human race is doomed. There is no escape. There is no hope.

...and? What if this is the truth? It seems to be true, from what we can observe about the natural world. This is the conclusion reached from the data we have. Sorry if this is somehow upsetting to Dr. Craig - that doesn't make it any less possible. 

The Absurdity of Life without God and Immortality

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

...and? What if this is the truth? This is also a fallacy of false dichotomy. Dr. Craig seems to think that there are two possibilities, and two alone: there's no God and life is absurd, or there's a God and life has meaning. This ignores the possibilities that there is no God and life has meaning from some other source, and there is a God but life still has no meaning. Dr. Craig must explain away these other two possibilities if we're to accept his dichotomy. He does address the first one later, but the second - that a God exists but life is still absurd - is never addressed. He also offers no positive evidence to support the link between God existing and life having "ultimate significance, value, [and] purpose." Apparently to him one entails the other, but this is simply assumed to be true and never proven. 

No Ultimate Meaning without Immortality and God

If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? His life may be important relative to certain other events, but what is the ultimate significance of any of those events? If all the events are meaningless, then what can be the ultimate meaning of influencing any of them? Ultimately it makes no difference.

 ...and? What if this is the truth? Dr. Craig seems to demand that each individual life have ultimate significance and meaning, as if the universe owes this to us. There is no rational motivation for making this claim; he simply finds the negation of it so utterly depressing that it can't possibly be true. This is the fallacy of argument from personal incredulity, which may as well be renamed the Dr. William Lane Craig fallacy, for as often as he succumbs to it.

And the same is true of each individual person. The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race--all these come to nothing. This is the horror of modern man: because he ends in nothing, he is nothing.

The failure here is in separating ultimate meaning (defined as something which persists not just after the death of the individual, but after the death of the universe) and meaning while we're alive. This is the popular claim that atheism leads to nihilism, which is manifestly not true (as a great many atheists are not nihilists.) While it's apparently true that, ultimately, none of our actions means anything, it is not true that they are meaningless while we're alive. I do not agree that the fact that eventually we'll all be gone means that there's no point in any of us doing anything while we're here. I see great value in contributing to the general happiness and prosperity of mankind while we're all permitted existence during this brief period. Dr. Craig finds it impossible to do this without invoking God, and again I'll reiterate that he never makes explicit exactly how God's existence remedies this supposed problem. 

But it is important to see that it is not just immortality that man needs if life is to be meaningful. Mere duration of existence does not make that existence meaningful. If man and the universe could exist forever, but if there were no God, their existence would still have no ultimate significance. Now if God does not exist, our lives are just like that. They could go on and on and still be utterly without meaning. We could still ask of life, "So what?" So it is not just immortality man needs if life is to be ultimately significant; he needs God and immortality. And if God does not exist, then he has neither.

Dr. Craig believes that he has somehow established that immortality is necessary for meaning in life, even though he has only offered negative evidence for the opposite of his claim and no positive evidence for the affirmation of it. Nevertheless, he makes a second leap, namely that we also need God for meaning, not just immortality. Again, please note that nowhere in here does he even come close to attempting to explain just why God's existence equals meaning in our lives. This goes utterly unexplained, as if it's so obvious that it needn't be expressed.

French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus understood this, too. Sartre portrayed life in his play No Exit as hell—the final line of the play are the words of resignation, "Well, let's get on with it." Hence, Sartre writes elsewhere of the "nausea" of existence. Camus, too, saw life as absurd. At the end of his brief novel The Stranger, Camus's hero discovers in a flash of insight that the universe has no meaning and there is no God to give it one.

Kudos for defaulting to the experts on the absurd life, as the existentialists really do it best. Still, this is not an argument that the existentialist position is false, but rather that it's quite unpleasant. This is an assertion that many existentialists would agree with anyway. The question of whether or not the existentialist position is true is affected in no way by whether or not it is pleasant. Dr. Craig still can't seem to divorce the two in his head. For him, it's impossible that we live in a word which sucks, so therefore we don't. At this point the most difficult thing to understand is why so many people take this man's opinions seriously. 

No Ultimate Value Without Immortality and God

If life ends at the grave, then it makes no difference whether one has lived as a Stalin or as a saint. Since one's destiny is ultimately unrelated to one's behavior, you may as well just live as you please. Sacrifice for another person would be stupid.

See my above retort about life having no meaning because it is not eternal. I see nothing inherently problematic about a statement like "sacrifice for another person would be stupid" regardless of the immortality of man. There's another large problem with this argument, which actually makes Dr. Craig look like the far less moral person: which is the more morally-sound person of these two - the man who doesn't murder his neighbor because he feels that this is somehow inherently unjust and damaging to society, or the man who doesn't murder his neighbor because the Bible says not to, and he fears celestial retribution? If you really need to be told by God that murder is wrong, then it sounds to me like you're really just a frustrated would-be murderer, not a moral person. The idea that we get our morality from God or the Bible (two different arguments entirely, by the way) is a joke. This is yet another false dichotomy as well: Dr. Craig does not allow the possibility that an unjust God would exist, or a God who was completely indifferent about the issue of morality. There's no reason to dismiss these possibilities and only grant that, either there's no God and we live in a moral free-for-all, or there is a God and there is ultimate moral value.

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there can be no objective standards of right and wrong. Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of socio-biological evolution and conditioning.

Again, this makes the assumption that if God exists, he will without question be a moral authority. There is no good reason to assume this and dismiss any other possibilities. What if God exists, but he is completely indifferent to what we do? What if he exists, but he is patently evil, and what he thinks is right is generally the opposite of what most people hold as moral? If Dr. Craig is offering the Bible as his version of objective standards of right and wrong (a reasonable assumption, since he's a Christian Apologist), then he must be an extremely warped person of whom I would be rather distrusting. Seriously, if you really want to make the argument that moral standards come from the Bible, read the Bible. There's no way you'll get through the Pentateuch with that view still firmly intact.

In a world without God, who is to say which values are right and which are wrong?

Lots of people. Parents, judicial systems, our own biological instincts, as Dr. Craig mentioned above...

The concept of morality loses all meaning in a universe without God. In a world without God, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments.

This is an utter non-sequitur. The concept of morality will always exist, because people will always have an idea about what is right and what is wrong. They may not agree, but this is not the same as there being no meaning to anyone's opinion. Why denigrate our "culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments?" What happens when God and his moral authority say that, for example, homosexuality is a sin, but society starts to feel differently? Many, many people in the US firmly disagree with God on this issue, and an increasing number of state legislatures as well. It is not unreasonable to assume that, after some time, gay marriage will be legal everywhere in the US. What about when equality for everyone seems to be the morally correct course of action to society at large, but God and his moral authority say no? Evolutionary biology provides some insights as to why we might inherently find murder and stealing to be wrong. In this case it's even easier than usual to dismiss Dr. Craig's assertion as manifestly false.

This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good.

No, it isn't. The question of whence comes our ultimate knowledge of right and wrong is an extremely complicated one. There are over seven billion people in the world, and the vast majority of those people are not Christians. They obviously get their morality from somewhere other than the Bible. I've never heard of a society that doesn't have basic laws like "don't murder" and "don't steal," including those in ancient times which predated the Abrahamic religions.

For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say you are right and I am wrong.

...and? What if this is the truth? Sorry to sound like a broken record, but just because you don't want to live in a world with no moral absolutes doesn't mean that you don't, or that you can't. 

No Ultimate Purpose Without Immortality and God

If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail, then what is the goal of life? Is it all for nothing? Is there no reason for life? And what of the universe? Is it utterly pointless? If its destiny is a cold grave in the recesses of outer space the answer must be, yes—it is pointless.

...and? What if this is the truth? Yet again, false dichotomy. Dr. Craig never spells out exactly how the existence of God somehow automatically provides meaning to life.

But more than that: even if it did not end in death, without God life would still be without purpose. For man and the universe would then be simple accidents of chance, thrust into existence for no reason. Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists.

Yes, this is a much better explanation: God created the entire expanse of the universe so that a small collection of people on one planet could worship him for a short amount of time before they are destroyed by the universe he created. Very meaningful.

As for man, he is a freak of nature— a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. Man is just a lump of slime that evolved rationality.

This is merely one way of looking at it, and a quite morose one at that. Evidence does suggest that we are indeed a "lump of slime that evolved rationally," although I'd rather spend my time marveling at the incredible events which had to take place for life to exist rather than reducing it all to nothing simply because God had nothing to do with it. 

Do you understand the gravity of the alternatives before us? For if God exists, then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with is despair. Do you understand why the question of God's existence is so vital to man?

Do you understand that you haven't even proven the premises of your argument, so that it does not produce a valid conclusion? Why is there hope for man simply because God exists? Do you understand that it's entirely possible that "all we are left with is despair?" Do you understand why the question of God's existence must be answered by facts and evidence, not emotions and wishful thinking?

Unfortunately, the mass of mankind do not realize this fact.

Unfortunately, Dr. Craig does not know the meaning of the word "fact."

They continue on as though nothing has changed.

That's because nothing has changed. Some people believe in God, some people don't. This has been the case for every culture in the history of mankind.

But Nietzsche predicted that someday people would realize the implications of their atheism; and this realization would usher in an age of nihilism—the destruction of all meaning and value in life.

People who are atheists are perfectly happy with the implications of atheism, because we're living in a world which is reconciled with observable reality. The only people who see utter despair in a world without God are sheep like Dr. Craig, who is simply incapable of being an adult and accepting reality. I assume as an 8 year old he wrote books about how absurd life would be if there were no Santa Claus. Dr. Craig here invokes Nietzsche as if to suggest that we're now living in an age of nihilism, where there is no meaning and value in life. He provides no evidence of any sort to suggest that this is true.

Most people still do not reflect on the consequences of atheism and so, like the crowd in the marketplace, go unknowingly on their way. But when we realize, as did Nietzsche, what atheism implies, then his question presses hard upon us: how shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves?

Have you spoken with "most people," Dr. Craig? Atheists don't go "unknowingly" in any way. Atheism is the result of a systematic evaluation of the nature of reality and the conclusion that the God hypothesis is unnecessary to account for anything in it. How shall we comfort ourselves? However we'd like. I have friends and family, hobbies, things that make me happy. I have the comfort of knowing that I've given serious thought to the nature of the universe and my place in it, and I've come to a conclusion that not only makes sense to me but doesn't rely on faith, bad evidence, and self-delusion. 

The Practical Impossibility of Atheism

The fundamental problem with this solution, however, is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a world view. If one lives consistently, he will not be happy; if one lives happily, it is only because he is not consistent. Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well. Modern man, says Schaeffer, resides in a two-story universe. In the lower story is the finite world without God; here life is absurd, as we have seen. In the upper story are meaning, value, and purpose. Now modern man lives in the lower story because he believes there is no God. But he cannot live happily in such an absurd world; therefore, he continually makes leaps of faith into the upper story to affirm meaning, value, and purpose, even though he has no right to, since he does not believe in God.

Falsest of false dichotomies. This entire argument hinges on the unestablished premise that all meaning, value, and purpose come from God. Dr. Craig has done no work whatsoever to establish this as true, and so no argument can be built upon it. Sorry, but there's nothing preventing an atheist from finding meaning, value, and purpose in his life. It is not a contradiction, not an inconsistency. 

Meaning of Life

First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God, life has no meaning.

We did? I don't recall seeing that, because you didn't do anything to explain it. You also didn't even consider the possibility that God could exist and still there could be no meaning in life.

Yet philosophers continue to live as though life does have meaning. For example, Sartre argued that one may create meaning for his life by freely choosing to follow a certain course of action.

The audacity! How dare someone live life as though it has meaning when he doesn't believe in God? You atheists go over there in the corner and be miserable; happiness and meaning are only for us, the deluded!

Now this is utterly inconsistent. It is inconsistent to say life is objectively absurd and then to say one may create meaning for his life.

Why? Dr. Craig seems to think that atheists must be punished for their denial of God by not being allowed to have any meaning in their lives.

If life is really absurd, then man is trapped in the lower story. To try to create meaning in life represents a leap to the upper story. But Sartre has no basis for this leap. Without God, there can be no objective meaning in life.

Again, this bit about the lower story and the upper story. Why does God have a monopoly on the upper story, the part where we get meaning and value? It is never established how or why God and God alone leads to these things.

Sartre's program is actually an exercise in self-delusion. Sartre is really saying, "Let's pretend the universe has meaning." And this is just fooling ourselves.

At this point I considered that Dr. Craig is actually an atheist, and all of this is just a giant joke. A Christian of all people should have absolutely no problem with self-delusion, since it's the only way he can even get out of bed in the morning. 

Value of Life

Turn now to the problem of value. Here is where the most blatant inconsistencies occur. First of all, atheistic humanists are totally inconsistent in affirming the traditional values of love and brotherhood. Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding both to the absurdity of life and the ethics of human love and brotherhood. The two are logically incompatible.

I feel like in Dr. Craig's mind, atheists are like Darth Vader, and Christians are like Luke Skywalker. The dark side (atheism) has to be about death and anger and fear and hate, but the Christian side is all about love and generosity and self-sacrifice. God does not have a monopoly on virtue. People value things like love and brotherhood because it makes us feel good; these things are intrinsically and self-evidently positive. I see no contradiction in being nice to each other in a world that ultimately has no meaning. Dr. Craig seems to think that denial of God must by necessity lead to a chaotic world of anarchy in which people just go around murdering each other at will. Since the world is not this way, all he can do is accuse atheists and humanists of a contradiction. Well gee, sorry we're not conforming to your ridiculous notions of what a Godless world must look like.

A second problem is that if God does not exist and there is no immortality, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished and all the sacrifices of good men go unrewarded. But who can live with such a view?

This is why we have a judicial system. We don't rely on God's judgment, because actions need to have consequences in this lifetime, and so they do. We don't simply wag our fingers at a murderer and say "God's gonna get you, fella!" Nor do we pass over the good deeds of the generous and say, "We don't really care about what you did, but God will grant you many blessings in the afterlife!" The evil acts of men don't go unpunished, nor the sacrifices of good men unrewarded. 

Purpose of Life

We often find the same inconsistency among those who say that man and the universe came to exist for no reason or purpose, but just by chance. Unable to live in an impersonal universe in which everything is the product of blind chance, these persons begin to ascribe personality and motives to the physical processes themselves. It is a bizarre way of speaking and represents a leap from the lower to the upper story. For example, Francis Crick halfway through his book The Origin of the Genetic Code begins to spell nature with a capital "N" and elsewhere speaks of natural selection as being "clever" and as "thinking" of what it will do. Fred Hoyle, the English astronomer, attributes to the universe itself the qualities of God. For Carl Sagan the "Cosmos," which he always spells with a capital letter, obviously fills the role of a God-substitute. Though all these men profess not to believe in God, they smuggle in a God-substitute through the back door because they cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the chance result of impersonal forces.

This is a new and exciting logical fallacy introduced by Dr. Craig, namely the tu quoque fallacy. Basically Dr. Craig tacitly admits that the idea of God the Creator is stupid by calling attention to the fact that some atheists have done it with Nature and the Cosmos. Nevermind the fact that Carl Sagan spelling Cosmos with a capital letter because he "cannot bear to live in a universe in which everything is the chance result of impersonal forces" is an extremely spurious notion. Dr. Craig is being incredibly irresponsible in attributing thoughts to Carl Sagan which he certainly never expressed. Suddenly Dr. Craig has some particular insight into the true inner-workings of Carl Sagan's mind that the rest of us missed somehow.

And it's interesting to see many thinkers betray their views when they're pushed to their logical conclusions. For example, certain feminists have raised a storm of protest over Freudian sexual psychology because it is chauvinistic and degrading to women. And some psychologists have knuckled under and revised their theories. Now this is totally inconsistent. If Freudian psychology is really true, then it doesn't matter if it's degrading to women. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. But people cannot live consistently and happily in a world where other persons are devalued. Yet if God does not exist, then nobody has any value. Only if God exists can a person consistently support women's rights.

 At this point I just want to run to the nearest thing and kill it. You need only pay attention to the sections I've bolded here. You can't change the truth because you don't like what it leads to. That's right, Dr. Craig. You can't change the truth at all, in fact, because it's the truth, and it's immutable. The irony of a Christian invoking such an argument against someone else is so staggering that I think Dr. Craig must have a learning disability of some sort. The last statement is so utterly inconsistent with reality that it's laugh-out-loud ridiculous: Only if God exists can a person consistently support women's rights. This statement is patently false. The Abrahamic religions are unapologetically oppressive to women.  The only worldview which advocates equality is one in which we needn't listen to a bigoted, narcissistic, asshole God who doesn't believe that everyone is created equal. 

The dilemma of modern man is thus truly terrible. The atheistic world view is insufficient to maintain a happy and consistent life. Man cannot live consistently and happily as though life were ultimately without meaning, value, or purpose. If we try to live consistently within the atheistic world view, we shall find ourselves profoundly unhappy. If instead we manage to live happily, it is only by giving the lie to our world view.

Dr. Craig seems really upset at the notion that an atheist could live happily. This idea is obviously profoundly disturbing to him, that someone could actually be happy without God, and so he accuses happy atheists of being inconsistent, deluded liars. If you don't find meaning and value in your life in the extremely small-minded and arbitrary way that Dr. Craig allows it, then you're a liar. 

The Success of Biblical Christianity

But if atheism fails in this regard, what about biblical Christianity? According to the Christian world view, God does exist, and man's life does not end at the grave. In the resurrection body man may enjoy eternal life and fellowship with God. Biblical Christianity therefore provides the two conditions necessary for a meaningful, valuable, and purposeful life for man: God and immortality.

Ah, finally! There it is. This is the exciting alternative to despair offered by Biblical Christianity: fellowship with God forever. What does that even mean? We all just sit around talking or whatever? This idea of eternal life in heaven is such an obvious man-made by-product of our irrational fear of death that I can't believe people still actually believe it to be true.

Because of this, we can live consistently and happily. Thus, biblical Christianity succeeds precisely where atheism breaks down.

I can think of no more inconsistent and contradictory life than that of the Christian. Every single Christian cherry-picks verses from the Bible to follow dutifully while ignoring the vast amount of their sacred, holy, infallible text. Christians preach tolerance and yet on the whole are the least tolerant people in America. In fact, to be a Christian in America is from its very onset a contradiction: the First Commandment says "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me." The First Amendment to the Constitution: Freedom of Speech, Assembly, Religion, and Press. Atheism doesn't break down. It simply leads to conclusions which Dr. Craig is unable to accept, and so he basically throws a tantrum and says "no!" 

Conclusion

Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown biblical Christianity to be true.

Oh don't feel bad about that; nobody else has yet done that either.

But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives.

You've spelled out one alternative, to the unjustified exclusion of others.

If God does not exist, then life is futile.

Nothing about this statement has any bearing on the truth of it.

If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful.

This is not in any way an affirmation that the God of the Bible does exist, and so we can literally replace the if clause in this statement with anything at all. If the flying spaghetti monster exists, then life is meaningful. If Arrested Development is renewed for another season, then life is meaningful.

Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity.

The evidence for these two options is not absolutely equal. There's no evidence whatsoever for Biblical Christianity. This is a pointless hypothetical because it will never be realized. Yes, perhaps it would make more sense if the evidence were equal, but the whole point of the matter is that the evidence is not equal!

It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain.

No rational person would say "I prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness." The use of the verb prefer here is ridiculous. Atheists are simply concerned with what is true, and then we accept whatever consequences follow from the truth of reality. If it happens that life really is the result of random chance, then we need to deal with that reality and accept the conclusions which come from it. Unlike Dr. Craig and his Christian brethren, the atheist doesn't start with the conclusion and work backwards, desperately trying to reassure himself that it's true.

Dr. Craig seems completely unable to imagine a world in which there is meaning without God, and so he spends a great deal of time trying to prove that somehow it really is impossible. This is utter nonsense. I picture him walking around trying to make sure that people who don't believe in God aren't happy. "Hey, hey you over there! You weren't in church this morning! Be all despondent and melancholy! Otherwise you're living a lie!"

What an asshole. Fuck you, Dr. Craig.