(I am going to attempt to regurgitate the conference material from J.P. Moreland last weekend, to the best of my ability. Of course, it will be in my own words. I may miss a thing or two, but will try to get the main ideas that were presented, across.)Ecclesiastes 1
The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
WHY THE HOSTILITY
There has always been a hostility towards Christianity, particularly evangelical Christianity. In fact, I can recall my own hostility towards it in the not-so-distant past. But, a rather new trend is to consider evangelical Christianity immoral. If you worship Jesus as Lord and Savior and as the only way, you are not only considered ignorant, but also immoral and bigoted. That's relatively new. Lots of anger directed at evangelicals. Why? I mean, I can understand the ignorant claims, since they aren't new. But coupling it with immorality seems really weird....people who worship Jesus as the way, truth and life are immoral people? How has this new hostility come about and why? After all, there are good statistics out there that show that dedicated Christians are more apt to give to charities than their non-believing counterparts. Our work in the third world is unmatched in terms of providing basic needs. Even our ultimate example, Jesus Christ, taught us to be servants to all. So why are we singled out now as essentially immoral?
There are particular arguments raised, but I'd like to try to get behind the noise and see what the real reasons could be. I think the text above nails it better than anything else I have ever read. It isn't exhaustive but does give us some incredible insight into a big reason behind the hostility. And that reason being our current prevalent worldview and the logical implications of what holding that worldview will have on our outlook on life. The worldview is naturalism. I have brought this up in a few previous notes, but will define naturalism once more. It is the prevalent idea that nothing exists except the physical world and the only things you can know are through the scientific descriptions of that world. Things such as morals, religion, politics, philosophy...the entire humanities departments of all universities...are not engaged in real knowledge. The only knowledge attainable is that which can be reduced down to physics and chemistry. There is no supernatural, no God, no spirits. Just the physical world as observed through the five senses.
Now, it can be effectively argued that this worldview isn't defend-able nor a good one to hold, rationally. I am not going to get into that in this note because Solomon decides to take a different approach. He's talking from the standpoint of someone who has lived out all these views to their ultimate conclusion and is speaking as one with experiential knowledge, rather than just theoretical knowledge. And the conclusion is that there seems to be bad side effects on one's outlook on life by logically and fundamentally embracing naturalism as the only reasonable and available view of reality.
King Solomon illustrates that conclusion in chapter 1. First, he proclaims that 'under the sun', all is vanity. The word for vanity, in Hebrew, has two meanings. The first meaning is fleeting....quickly passing. The second is meaninglessness. The literal Hebrew word provides a visual of breathing on a spoon....fogs up and then quickly disappears. Under a view excluding everything except the physical world we see, our lives are, in the scheme of cosmic time, infinitesimal, fleeting and meaningless. What does a man or woman gain from his or her toil? It's implied: nothing.
Going down this text a bit further, we find something that does seem to last....the earth. Winds blow, rivers flow, suns rise and set, long before we are born and long after we die. One reason why environmentalism is a new religion and earth/nature the new goddess has alot to do with what Solomon has said here. Without God and only a view of the physical world as all reality, what lasts? Even though we don't, the earth does. So, our tendency is to diminish our own value and raise the value of the earth/nature.
"FIND A HAPPY PLACE....FIND A HAPPY PLACE....FIND A HAPPY PLACE...."
So, what sort of outlook does this view outlined by Solomon give him? Dissatisfaction and despair. Look at verses eight and nine. All things are full of weariness...eyes are not satisfied...ears are not satisfied. It reminds me of Turkish Delight in Chronicles of Narnia. The kids were given Turkish Delight, but the more they ate, the more they craved and became addicted. Likewise, by looking at reality as only natural, all the things seen, heard, done, result in dissatisfaction and then despair. Everything has been done, said...nothing new. And that causes us anxiety and depression, on a deep level.
Solomon brings up two conclusions: 1) whatever is crooked cannot be made straight. 2) what is lacking cannot be counted.
Consider a couple of quotes from atheistic scientists in this regard:
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. -- Richard Dawkins
Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth.... Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, `Love thy neighbor as thyself,' they think they are referring above and beyond themselves.... Nevertheless,... such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction,... and any deeper meaning is illusory.... -- Michael Ruse
If there is no straight stick, you can't really even call a crooked stick, 'crooked' and have it mean anything. Under a view that has no room except the physical universe, then there are no real moral values. We can't live as if they don't exist, but under naturalism, there just seems to be no place to put these undeniable things...so we explain them away as either relative or clever biological conventions. In either case, they are really just describing us, rather than making statements about real states of affairs, like 'torturing babies for pleasure is wrong'. We may feel that's an objective, universal, absolute moral value, but with naturalism, there's no room for it.
But that leads to knowledge, which is conclusion 2. You can't count what isn't really there. We can't deny morals, but we have no room to allow their existence under a naturalistic framework, which creates a weird mysticism....living against what we know because of what we don't know or understand. We fill in the gaps and try to make the best of it when the best of it isn't very good because, you can't count what is lacking...you can't explain what is unexplainable if your view of reality is only the physical universe. We know enough to agitate our curiosity and we are ignorant enough to make life miserable.
So, where can we turn, if we insist on holding to naturalism, in light of this conclusion? Solomon first states we could pursue an education to try to give life meaning and purpose. Go to college, get a PhD and fill in the void with lots of scholarship. But Solomon doesn't give us a very hopeful or promising return if we decide to pursue education under a naturalistic point of view. Solomon says it creates sorrow. Not very promising. So, without God and only considering the physical world as all of reality, an education is a waste of time, because all it will conclude with is sorrow and meaninglessness. The more you know, the more depressed you get.
What's next? Pleasure. This is Hollywood. Wealth, notoriety, sex, drugs, rehab, satisfaction with having a name in lights. But Solomon concludes in chapter 2 that this leads to meaninglessness. In fact, the sad part about Hollywood (and even music industry) is that they ultimately realize that their jobs are worthless. That creates an overwhelming sense of guilt and then there's the enormous energy spent on all kinds of charities and causes....trying to make an empty life worthwhile after all. In the end, its all nervous activity, not to make the world a better place, per se, but to quell the anxiety and depression of a life that isn't really making alot of sense, even with all the wealth, notoriety, pleasure, etc.
Solomon goes on to get into money, work, etc., but you get the picture. By only focusing on life 'under the sun', everything is vanity and is a striving after the wind....striving after nothing. That makes people angry, depressed and hostile. Even Christians can get this way, but it isn't systemic and ultimate, like it is by holding to naturalism.
A SOURCE OF CONTENTION
So, then here comes a Christian wanting to talk about Jesus and eternal life, etc. For the naturalist, they don't want to hear it. It's the last thing in the world they want to hear. It invokes anger and hostility because it goes against the basic view of naturalism, which has led to nothing but despair, meaninglessness and that pisses them off. Why else would The Simpsons or Arrested Development portray Christians as pollyannish, insipid and naive people? Because we're generally happy with our view of reality and our faith in Christ, and we didn't have to strive at great lengths like they did...and it pisses them off. This is important to understanding Solomon's conclusion in everyday life. That anger reflects the despair of a bankrupt worldview, the pain and disappointment it causes, in light of someone smiling, happy, content....because, of all things, a God-Man who was born of a virgin, died on a cross, rose again and offers salvation for doing nothing more than admitting to weakness and placing all hope in His hands? They may claim these things violate rational thought, but that's not really the reason behind the anger, to be honest. In fact, giving good reasons doesn't seem to help much. You remember before Jesus how you used to feel about Christians? I know I can and I hope I can paint that picture clear enough.
In fact, the naturalistic worldview these days has a perverted sense of stoic virtue of having tried over and over, with pain and failure, as a proudly worn badge of honor. To come along and talk about Jesus pulling you out of darkness and meaninglessness, all the sudden, violates those stoic sensibilities. But since there is no real charge to stick on those who act consistently with the teaching of Jesus Christ, charges have to be invented. Among some; we are against science, rational thought, freedom and liberty, even a meaningful and moral life, to mention a few. In fact, let me give a few examples.
"When people say to me, 'You hate America,' I don't hate America. I love America. I am just embarrassed that it has been taken over by people like evangelicals, by people who do not believe in science and rationality. It is the 21st century. And I will tell you, my friend. The future does not belong to the evangelicals. The future does not belong to religion." -- Bill Maher
Today factual information is readily available so there is no valid excuse for believing in the myths and deceits so common two thousand years ago. There is no empirical evidence for supernatural beings or places. The evidence that the existence of all human life ends when the body dies is overwhelming.. This is the only life that humans will ever have and for the purveyors of religion to say otherwise is to engage in blatant deceit for their own benefit. -- Kieth Cornish
The only reason its not taken literally today is because science has advanced to a point where no sane human being can claim to believe in it literally without being ashamed of themselves and laughed at publicly by anyone who knows even an elementally level of natural science. Further more if they could get away with it, these same people would ban science, and impose ignorance on the population because it is only in a vacuum of knowledge that religion can exist, multiply, and flourish like a virus, because that is exactly what faith is, the worst case of bioterrorism in human history, a man made virus responsible for the ruining of more lives than any other known to man. -- blogger
Either Solomon was wiser than these guys or these guys are self-misguided. We can expect more hostility, more bullying. Yet, a defensive reaction to such behavior will not work. In fact, they'll smell blood. Confidence...a quiet and obvious confidence in our beliefs is required and provides the best response to this hostility. You can't have that confidence unless you have very good reasons behind your knowledge of God, in general, and Christ, in particular. This isn't 'smart guy' knowledge but more like stripping away alot of the window dressing we're taught most of our life (public schools teach naturalism as a staple) and realizing that outside of Scripture, God has given us enormous evidence of His existence and our responsibility to respond to such evidence. I'll regurgitate three basic (and very obvious) things that not only provide a far more adequate alternative to naturalism, but a confidence in this evidence that will help ease you more if (more like when) you get blindsided by this hostility.
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