A Key Worldview Issue: Does Christianity Meet Our Deepest Needs?

1. A Key Worldview Issue:Does Christianity Meet Our Deepest Needs?

2. Key Questions • What is meant by a “deep human need”? • What are some of the most important deep human needs? • What role should such needs play when committing oneself to a worldview? • Are such needs relevant to Christian apologetics?

3. Deep Human Needs • What do I mean by a “deep human need”? • It’s a need for something that is of ultimate concern to us (even if we don’t have it in this life to the degree that we’d like)… • If we lack such a need, we are missing something crucially important in our lives. Our lives are not all that we sense they ought to be. • What do you think would be a deep human need (DHN)?

4. Some Key Deep Human Needs • Cosmic security • Life beyond the grave • Heaven • Goodness • Meaning • Forgiveness • Justice and fairness • To love and be loved • Being present • A larger life • Awe Are these legitimate DHNs? Why? Clifford Williams

5. DHNs and Worldview • Do you think that if a certain worldview satisfies DHNs better than all other worldviews, then that alone is a good reason for thinking that the worldview is true?

6. DHNs and Worldview • Do you think that if a certain worldview satisfies DHNs better than all other worldviews, then that is at least a factor that one should strongly consider when deciding whether or not to accept that worldview?

7. DHNs and Worldview • Imagine someone says: “My deepest need is for people to be tortured. So I am going to accept a worldview in which I eternally get to torture others for fun.” • Does this example make you doubt that DHNs should play a role in which worldview one should select? • No. (1) The WV we pick does need to have good evidence. (2) We also need some criteria for legitimate DHNs…

8. Criteria for DHNs • Criteria for DHNs proposed by Williams: • Felt by numerous people • Long-term rather than a short-term need • Significant need that matters greatly • Interconnected with other needs • Strongly felt need • The DHNs proposed earlier meet these criteria. The need for torture does not.

9. Coming to Christian Faith • Williams does not deny the value of evidence in apologetics, BUT… • He thinks “the ideal way to acquire faith in God is through both need and reason, and that faith should consist of both emotions and assent.” He says: “Need without reason is blind, but reason without need is sterile.” (sterile = dull, lifeless, or empty) • What does the above mean? Do you agree?

10. Coming to Christian Faith • How many of you who are Christians originally decided to become a Christian mostly because you felt that Christianity met your DHNs or satisfied your emotions and you wanted it to be true? • That is a huge part of how I came to faith in Christ. • Emotions and DHNs are key for many people.

11. Coming to Christian Faith • Jesus: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Mt 11:28-30). • Is Jesus appealing to certain DHNs? Explain. • Compare to Jn 14:8-11 and Mt 11:2-6

12. Comparing Worldviews • Get into groups of three or four. How well do each of the worldviews in the grid that you are given satisfy the DHNs in the grid?

13. Comparing Worldviews • Compare Christianity to atheism in terms of how well it meets the DHNs (the four on your grid or any other DHNs). Share some of your thoughts!

14. Comparing Worldviews • Consider what some atheists themselves have said… • It is true that some atheists portray atheism as a worldview that is consistent with happiness and optimism:

15. Comparing Worldviews • But the atheist philosopher Julian Baggini finds such optimism misguided. So do many other atheists. Baggini quotes: • “Yes, life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that.” • Words like “positive, warm, cheerful” do not fit with atheism as a worldview. He says that “although many atheists are all those things, atheism itself is none of them.” *Atheists can’t be optimistic & consistent!

16. Comparing Worldviews Baggini: • “Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life?”

17. Comparing Worldviews Baggini: • “Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point. The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy.”

18. Comparing Worldviews • The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel also thinks there is no ultimate meaning in life. Nagel quotes: • “The problem is that although there are justifications and explanations for most of the things, big and small, that we do within life, none of these explanations explain the point of your life as a whole—the whole of which all these activities, successes and failures, strivings and disappointments are parts. If you think about the whole thing, there seems to be no point to it at all. Looking at it from the outside, it wouldn’t matter if you had never existed. And after you have gone out of existence, it won’t matter that you did exist.”

19. Comparing Worldviews Nagel: • “The trick is to keep your eyes on what’s in front of you, and allow justifications to come to an end inside your life, and inside the lives of others to whom you are connected. If you ever ask yourself the question, ‘But what’s the point of being alive at all?’—leading the particular life of a student or bartender or whatever you happen to be—you’ll answer, ‘There’s no point. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t exist at all, or if I didn’t care about anything. But I do. That’s all there is to it.’”

20. Comparing Worldviews Nagel: • “We want to matter to ourselves ‘from the outside.’ If our lives as a whole seem pointless, then a part of us is dissatisfied... Perhaps we just have to put up with being ridiculous. Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.”

21. Comparing Worldviews • If Christianity comes out way ahead of atheism in meeting our DHNs, is that a good reason to choose Christianity over atheism if one is 50% confident that Christianity is true and 50% confident that atheism is true? • What about 90% atheism and 10% Christianity?

22. Comparing Worldviews • Compare Christianity to Buddhism in terms of how well it meets the DHNs (the four on your grid or any other DHNs). Share some of your thoughts.

23. Comparing Worldviews • Tour of the Chua Phat Phap Buddhist temple in Florida • Key quote… “I like the idea that I have many different lives ahead of me and will get to have many different experiences and many opportunities to go through life in various forms. But I have to admit that achieving nirvana kind of scares me. I don’t really like the idea of me being lost forever to the oneness of all reality.”

24. Comparing Worldviews • If Christianity comes out ahead of Buddhism in meeting our DHNs, is that a good reason to choose Christianity over Buddhism if these religions were equally likely to be true?

25. DHNs and Apologetics • How might DHNs be relevant in apologetics? • How might DHNs be especially important if an unbeliever is disinterested in religious issues and claims that she does not care about what happens to her when she dies?

26. DHNs and Apologetics • Appealing to DHNs may help a “volitional doubter” who is not interested in God or Christianity. • Jolt the doubter out of her disinterest by helping her to see how her disinterest affects herself and others: • A few years of living her own way is not worth what she will lose (in this life and for eternity) • Consider the impact her life is (not) making on others having their DHNs met

27. Questions?

28. Comparing Worldviews • Islam accounts for some divine attributes needed to meet our DHNs (e.g., personal and powerful) • But only in Christianity is God: 1. known to be unconditionally loving (even loves sinners) 2. a God who offers firm promises that, if accepted, satisfy all of these needs 3. a God who offers grace apart from works

29. Comparing Worldviews • Compare Islam to Christianity in terms of how well it meets these DHNs: cosmic security, forgiveness, and loving and being loved • Never sure if saved; have to earn it • Allah’s love is limited and depends upon your works • Merit rather than forgiveness • Might this advantage in meeting needs be significant if one thinks that neither Christianity nor Islam has as a major advantage in terms of evidence?

30. Lewis’s Argument • Mere Christianity Book 3 – Ch 10 on hope of heaven • “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.” • People have a sex drive...Sex exists • Ducklings desire to swim...water exists • Babies get hungry...food exists • Humans have crucial desires that nothing in this world satisfies and that can only be satisfied if God and an afterlife exist. • So the most probable explanation is that “I was made for another world”—an afterlife with God. • Our needs and desires are only partially met on earth. Plausibly this is meant to propel us toward pursuing the ultimate fulfillment of our desires and needs.