I’m going to comment on this article:
Craig never defends his claim that nothing temporary has significance or its implication that all temporary things are equally insignificant. He only repeats it, many times, as if it should be obvious. But is it true that nothing temporary has significance?
Has Craig argued that nothing temporary has significance? Or has he argued that human life lacks significance if we pass into oblivion? I don’t see why Craig’s contention wouldn't be true unless it's a special case of a general claim about all temporary things. That would only follow if human lives are analogous to everything else. For instance, a human being is not a falling leaf.
Think about great music or drama. Does a world-class performance of Tosca or King Lear lack significance just because it lasts only a few hours? Would it have more significance if it never ended? Hardly. Its significance in fact depends on its having a finite arc; it would lose its significance and become unbearably tedious if it went on forever. Nor does its finite length make it just as insignificant as an equally long nap. Clearly, then, we need a better measure of significance than mere duration.
That comparison is simplistic. What if, an hour after the performance, the audience suffered collective amnesia. No one remembered the performance. What’s the point of a world-class performance of Tosca or King Lear if it’s instantly forgotten?
There’s a reason we invented recording technology. We think it’s a waste if a great performance comes and goes without a trace. We try to preserve the past.
Likewise, we record (or photograph) things because we often want to hear or see the same thing more than one.
We know that people often try to make their lives significant by seeking purposes “greater than themselves.”...This version of the argument starts with the question “What’s so great about feeding starving children?” An answer comes pretty easily: “It relieves suffering by innocents and gives them a chance to flourish.” But notice that we can use our imagination to “step back” from that answer: imagine looking at Earth from a billion miles away or looking back from a billion years in the future. Having stepped back, we can ask: “What is (or was) so great about doing that?” Step back far enough and any purpose can begin to look small and trivial in the vastness of time and space. It’s a familiar enough idea that you can make something look insignificant, or even reveal its true insignificance, by stepping back from it. Think of parents who try to convince their tearful child that an embarrassing incident at school isn’t really a reason to stop living.
The argument exploits our ability to take the long view—to occupy a standpoint that makes any purpose questionable, no matter how significant it seems: Why bother pursuing that purpose? It’s not hard to get going down this path, as we’ve seen, and soon we may find ourselves seeking a purpose that transcends the limits of our earthly existence. “Our lives can’t have significance,” we may conclude, “unless their significance goes beyond our time on Earth.”
Several problems with Maitzen’s objection:
i) It isn’t clear how Maitzen went from ultimate significance to greatness. Something doesn’t have to be great to be good or worthwhile.
ii) Doing something “greater than ourselves” is a way of saying it serves a larger purpose. “Greater,” not in the sense of excellence, but teleology. What makes it important is that it’s part of something important. It contributes to something beyond itself. A part/whole, means/ends relation.
iii) Maitzen overlooks the asymmetry between a secular outlook and a Christian outlook at this juncture. From his atheistic standpoint, taking the long-range view of any particular event dilutes the significance of that event: “Step back far enough and any purpose can begin to look small and trivial in the vastness of time and space.”
But it’s just the opposite from a Christian standpoint: Because our little lives are purposeful in the great scheme of things, the long-range view enhances rather than diminishes the significance of our tiny lives and deeds. Even the lives of the damned are significance.
From a Calvinistic perspective, every life is special, for God wrote the story of everybody’s life. He wrote the story of your life. And my life. Customized. A unique narrative for each and every life. God planned every experience you have, down to the last detail.
And each life-story is part of a larger story. Interlocking stories. Synchronic and diachronic stories.
The smallness of our lives doesn’t make them insignificant. There can be meaning in miniature. God made us small. That’s good.
God’s story for the world is like the Mandelbrot set. There are lower scales of meaning as well as higher scales of meaning. Microscopic meaning as well as macroscopic meaning. Just what happens in one place on one day is packed with meaning. Higher resolution discloses ever more detail.
You can’t put an end to those pesky questions, no matter what you do. Any purpose that we can begin to understand, we can step back from and question. Consider what theistic religions offer as God’s actual purpose for our lives: glorifying him and enjoying his presence forever. Surely we can ask—I hereby do ask—“What’s so great about that?”
i) Even if it weren’t “so great,” something doesn’t have to be the greatest to be significant.
ii) If we were made to glorify God, if our fulfillment lies in doing what we were designed to do, then that’s significant.
For instance, a homosexual is physically and emotionally frustrated, for he wasn’t designed to find sexual fulfillment in another man.
Now, my opponent might offer this proposal: “Sure, we’d be disappointed to discover that we’re mere CO2 factories, so that can’t be our ultimate purpose. But if God had made us merely to produce CO2, then we’d find that purpose satisfying and would feel no inclination to question it. God adjusts our intellects and aspirations to fit the purpose he gives us.” But this reply is just speculation...
i) There’s a sense in which the whole debate is speculative. So what? That’s what philosophers do. Maitzen is a philosophy prof.
ii) But what’s so speculative? If, in fact, we were merely designed to produce CO2, then we’d find that satisfying. Then again, we might lack the intellect to find it either satisfying or dissatisfying. Does a clam find life satisfying? The question is inapplicable.
Conversely, if we find it boring to merely produce CO2, that’s because we were designed to find other things interesting. So Maitzen has postulated a false dilemma.
If we seek an absolute stopping point in our quest for purpose and significance, we’ll inevitably come up empty. Ultimate purpose can’t exist even if God does; it’s a fantasy that shouldn’t draw anyone to theism.
If human nature was designed by a wise Creator, then doing what we were made to do is, indeed, ultimately significant.
That’s hardly analogous to atheism, where men are the incidental byproduct of a mindless amoral process.