Theo Todman's Web Page - Paper Abstracts

• 0:00: If you're the kind of person who's interested enough in discussions surrounding atheism that you clicked on this video you've probably heard Abrahamic theists say something like this
  • 0:09: [William Lane Craig] So truly if God does not exist human beings find themselves in a horrible predicament life is ultimately without uh significance, meaning, value or purpose.
• 0:21: Often statements like these come down to the Abrahamic theist expressing that they don't feel a sense of purpose without it being handed down from God; that they need God to feel like there is some meaning to life.
• 0:33: I recently came across an article, though, that seemed to take this idea a step further in a tweet from the RF updates₂ twitter account
• 0:41: Christian apologist William Lane Craig shared an article along with the caption ‘Why on atheism life has no ultimate meaning value or purpose and why this view is unlivable’.
• 0:53: Now I’d heard the first part before but that final phrase is what caught my attention
• 0:58: Apparently this article demonstrates that life as an atheist who does not believe that there is any ultimate meaning or purpose in the universe is unlivable
• 1:09: Given that I’m an atheist who does not think that ultimate meaning or purpose exists but who also finds his life quite livable, I was curious to see the reasons given for this statement
• 1:19: I clicked the article and discovered that it was just William Lane Craig's presentation ‘The absurdity of life without God₃’.
• 1:25: As far as I can tell he's been making this presentation for over a decade now
• 1:30: The closest thing to an update it seems to have gotten since is it's condensing into a five-minute video posted in 2018.
• 1:37: Countless atheists have already publicly responded to both the full and condensed versions of this presentation so I won't be following suit
• 1:45: Instead I’d like to focus on Craig's claim that atheism is unlivable if you'd like to watch a well-reasoned response to the rest of the presentation one of my absolute favorite channels Paulogia has a response on his channel it's a great watch.
• 2:00: The link₄ is in the description. For our purposes here we're going to pick up the article in the middle where Craig speaks on the supposed real world implications of atheism.
• 2:10: Craig's claims here cease pertaining exclusively to theology and philosophy and extend into the realm of psychology.
• 2:16: This section is titled ‘the practical impossibility of atheism’.
• 2:20: Speaking on how an atheist can cope with the lack of God-given purpose in life Craig writes
  • ‘About the only solution the atheist can offer is that we face the absurdity of life and live bravely
  • 2:33: Bertrand Russell for example wrote that we must build our lives on the firm foundation of unyielding despair. Only by recognizing that the world really is a terrible place can we successfully come to terms with life.
  • 2:45: Albert Camus said that we should honestly recognize life's absurdity and then live in love for one another.
  • 2:50: The fundamental problem with this solution however is that it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a worldview.
  • 2:58: If one lives consistently he will not be happy. If one lives happily it is only because he's not consistent.
  • 3:04: Francis Schaeffer has explained this point well.
  • 3:07: 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.
  • 3:20: 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.
  • 3:27: 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.
• 3:38: Here's the part I find particularly interesting. He claims it is impossible to live consistently and happily within such a view: that world view being that God-given purpose and meaning do not exist.
• 3:49: If one lives consistently he will not be happy if one lives happily it is only because he is not consistent
• 3:56: To the best of my understanding Craig claims that one cannot live happily while recognizing the absence of God-given purpose and meaning in life.
• 4:03: This is a claim about the possibility of a psychological state. It is a testable claim which a body of data collected from a survey of atheists perhaps could confirm or fail to confirm.
• 4:17: Does Dr. Craig reference any data in favor of this claim about human psychology?
• 4:22: No. None whatsoever. It's nothing more than a claim and his point that atheism is unlivable is built upon this claim.
• 4:30: Curious to see if any scholarly literature within the field of psychology addressed this idea I did a bit of digging. The most recent and relevant article I could find was published in January 2019 in Interactions: Journal of Advances in Psychology. My apologies for reading all the titles in English here but my Spanish pronunciation would likely be subpar.
• 4:53: The article is titled ‘Are believers happier than atheists? Well-being measures in a sample of atheists and believers in Puerto Rico. The study involved 415 self-identified believers in a personal God and 405 self-identified atheists. Those who identified as agnostics, non-religious or deists were excluded.
• 5:11: Each participant completed a series of questionnaires developed to measure self-reported psychological flourishing and satisfaction in life.
• 5:19: Interestingly the first statement participants rated from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’ was ‘I lead a purposeful and meaningful life’.
• 5:27: As per the result section of the article a statistically significant difference was found in the level of life satisfaction between theists and atheists.
• 5:36: The authors write ‘these results imply that life satisfaction is higher among believers than in atheists but this result has a small effect size. However, both groups are within the range of what is considered a high level of life satisfaction’.
• 5:49: Further a statistically significant difference was found in a level of psychological flourishing between theists and atheists. ‘Unlike the data obtained in the life satisfaction analysis in this case atheists have a level of psychological flourishing which is statistically greater than that of believers in God. Nevertheless, the effect size is small and both groups are within a high level of psychological flourishing.’
• 6:12: Finally a portion of the discussion section of this article states ‘Regarding the practical implications, our study empirically strengthens certain postulates that are worth reviewing: first it suggests that in terms of psychological and subjective well-being religiosity is useful but it is not an essential factor in the pursuit of happiness. This outcome should promote respect and equanimity between people who profess different beliefs or seek different ways of attaining happiness. According to Zuckerman 2007 an atheist can make sense of life just by the pleasure of living it or because it is meaningful for his/her loved ones. In fact he found that atheists find happiness and meaning in their lives through family relationships in affinity with their community highlighting unique and pleasurable moments of their lives without waiting for any eschatological reward or eternal punishment after death. In this sense our study provides empirical evidence against the preconceived biases that presume that atheists are miserable people lacking meaning and are devoid of hope and purpose. Such affirmations perpetuate discrimination against atheists and promote the supremacy of faith over non-traditional or non-religious beliefs.’
• 7:27: interesting! but – Drew₅ – you say if you keep reading Dr. Craig's article you'll see why this research doesn't falsify his claim
• 7:35: Okay fair enough. Let's pick up from where we left off and see why Dr. Craig's claim has not been falsified.
• 7:41₆: ‘
  • First, the area of meaning. We saw that without God life has no meaning, 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. Sartre himself chose Marxism. 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. If life really is absurd then man is trapped in a lower story. To try to create meaning in his 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. 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.’
• 8:30: What Craig does here is equivocate₇ any form of meaning in life relevant to happiness with objective God-given meaning and then assert that since the latter does not exist on an atheistic view then neither can the former.
• 8:44: He does not consider that a subjective self-created sense of meaning can be held by an individual with full acknowledgement that God-given meaning does not exist.
• 8:54: Creating a subjective sense of meaning does not require the belief in objective meaning just as a subjective evaluation of a painting as beautiful does not require belief in an objective standard of beauty
• 9:05: So, Dr. Craig might object to the study we covered saying that any meaning or purpose the atheist participants felt was stolen from a theistic worldview; that they weren't truly thinking as atheists since they reported high levels of life satisfaction and psychological flourishing.
• 9:20: Do you see the problem here? Dr. Craig defines all meaning and purpose as God-given so when atheists report their own happiness as informed partly by a sense of meaning or purpose while also disbelieving in God-given meaning or purpose Dr. Craig can say … well those atheists are either confused or lying because meaning and purpose definitionally come from God.
• 9:44: This means that his claim that atheists can't be happy and philosophically consistent is one which has been crafted to exclude counter-examples – including scientific data – and maintain the implication that no true atheist can be happy.
• 9:58: We'll wrap up our look at this article with one more observation.
• 10:02: In his Conclusion, Dr. Craig writes:
  • ‘Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown Biblical Christianity to be true. But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist 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. 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.’
• 10:45: So, all evidence being equal, one could make the solely pragmatic and philosophically arbitrary choice to find meaning and purpose in the God of the Bible while remaining philosophically consistent. It's even supposedly rational to do so.
• 11:00: But on an atheistic view we cannot make the solely pragmatic and philosophically arbitrary choice to find meaning and purpose within ourselves while remaining philosophically consistent.
• 11:12: Now this is what inconsistency looks like. In this hypothetical scenario the believer is making the philosophically arbitrary choice to define meaning and purpose as God-given for pragmatic reasons.
• 11:24: Why then can't atheists define meaning and purpose for ourselves for pragmatic reasons?
• 11:32: Growing up as a Christian I was taught – as informed by apologists including William Lane Craig – that all true atheists are hopelessly depressed believing in nothing and seeing no value, meaning or purpose in anything.
• 11:43: If you really stop believing in God, I was told, you will lose everything and see no reason to go on living.
• 11:51: Naturally, when I eventually became an atheist it was traumatic at first as I’ve said on this channel dozens of times before.
• 11:58: For a long time I didn't tell anyone but my wife that I’d left Christianity because doing so would cost me my job₈ and would put me at risk of losing every personal relationship I had.
• 12:08: While in that initial state of isolation I began to think that there was no point to living anymore.
• 12:15: I won't go into detail, but things were not good for me at that point.
• 12:22: I believed I would never find any meaning in life or any reason to keep living.
• 12:27: After some reflection, though, I realized that this was a lingering Christian perspective I hadn't yet confronted. I did some digging on my own and realized that atheists can be happy as evidenced by research much like that which I presented in this video.
• 12:42: I decided I would try working out what was meaningful to me and seeing if a subjective sense of purpose served me well enough to allow me to live.
• 12:51: Happily, it took some time and patience but it did work. Plenty of those who leave Christianity share that initial experience with me: that existential crisis where you think that – since there's no God-given purpose to anything – happiness or personal fulfillment is impossible.
• 13:08: It's a traumatic time where many of us struggle with severe depression, self-harm or worse until we come to realize that our thinking is still being dictated by our former faith, by the words of those like William Lane Craig.
• 13:23: By promoting such demonstrable falsehoods as ‘it's impossible for atheists to be philosophically consistent and happy therefore atheism is unlivable’ – and encouraging Christian communities to repeat such falsehoods – William Lane Craig is complicit in the undermining of former believer's mental health.
• 13:40: He is partly responsible for the despair which he claims atheism necessitates.
• 13:46: One doesn't have to be an atheist to see that this claim of his is false, harmful and serves to motivate people to keep believing in the Christian God for one terrible reason – fear of losing all hope.
• 14:00: As someone who has gone through the painful process of coming to see through these scare tactics and has come out on the other side just as happy, I invite you to investigate the ‘God question’ freely. However well utilized its power is in this debate, fear is no reason to keep yourself from questioning.
• 14:20: Thanks for watching. Now if you'd like to learn about happiness from a scholarly perspective where data is actually taken into account I’d like to recommend a book that has helped and taught me quite a bit. It's The Happiness Hypothesis by psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
• 14:35: Using relevant research from the field of psychology Jonathan Haidt reveals what events, ideas and practices contribute to a happy meaningful life.
• 14:44: He even addresses from a naturalistic perspective why atheists can have transcendentally meaningful experiences.
• 14:51: Read the book either way but if you'd like to listen to The Happiness Hypothesis as an audiobook like I did you can do so for free by going to Audible Trial - GM Skeptic, clicking that link in the description and getting a 30-day free trial with Audible is like donating directly to my channel and I greatly appreciate it.
• 15:10: All right. I’ve been Drew of Genetically Modified Skeptic. A special thanks to my patrons for their constant love and support.
• 15:16: Another thanks to the authors of the research article I used here.
• 15:19: There's not a lot of research on atheism and mental health so thank you all so much for taking the time to lend your scholarship to the topic.
• 15:28: If you want to hear more from me subscribe and follow me on social media at the handles below. As always, if you're an apostate in need there are resources linked in the description to help you find community and mental health support. Remember to be kind to others in the comments and until next time stay skeptical.

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1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
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