No, seriously. Where’s the question mark?
Ravi Zacharias’ Can Man Live Without God
explores the moral and material, not spiritual, consequences of atheism, particularly on a cultural scale. I think Zacharias intends to explain that atheism (he terms it “antitheism”), flowering to its logical consequences, intrinsically leads to philosophical and existential despair. The book’s audience seems to be people of various belief systems, not just Christians, but whether or not the arguments can be acceptable to non-Christians depends on the “due process” of the individual skeptic’s intellect.
I first heard, and heard of, Zacharias on a Christian-oriented AM radio station in Connecticut. I appreciated his broadcast, which were really recorded speeches, because he was an academic lecturer and not a pastor or preacher. The western church in general has an abysmal record for placing effective people in academia, and it was a relief to hear Zacharias, with his Indian lilt and persuasive cadence, on a Christian station where the norm is having an radio-vangelist bore to tears anyone under the age of 70 with droning JAYSUS talk.
The bulk of the book has Zacharias explaining how atheism will lead to existential despair, and how theism—Christianity in particular—can provide the meaning that searching souls are looking for. In a broader, more cultural and political sense I think this is accurate: when the metaphysical foundations for morality are done away with, a la Nietzsche, man as a heroic being has to recreate and affirm morality. This was kind of Nietzsche’s prediction and warning to those that have found God “dead”. Unfortunately, the desire to recreate intrinsic moral laws is a delightful prospect for politicians (usually despots) as a way to expand the state to obscene, lethal proportions at the expense of the individual.
It seems that Zacharias believes that the despair of atheists is inevitable. In fact, he spends a chapter or so on the loss of meaning in the atheist’s life and later attempts to remedy that with a metaphysical solution. But I don’t think it’s necessarily true on an individual level. It’s not that complicated, really: the theist finds meaning in life through divine revelation and it stretches beyond the material universe. The atheist finds meaning in life through material epistemologies and intellectual apprehension, and it doesn’t go beyond physical death*. The new Christian can experience similar despair when he abandons a former belief system and enters into the Christian one, however short-lived it may be.
If it sounds like I’m just badmouthing the book, I don’t intend to. There’s lots of little pulses of information and arguments to to be found scattered around the whole book, wrapped in Zacharias’ endearing expository prose. The most informative section, for me, was Zacharias’ sectioned summary of intellectual skepticism through mini-biographies of philosophers past, from Descartes up to Sartre and Russell. He did a great job of summarizing the scope of skepticism of belief in absolute morality and demonstrating the weaknesses in each thinker’s philosophy (he thankfully didn’t hold back on the theistic philosophers, either). Because some of the book presupposes theism to be true in order to accept some of the arguments, this section is more objective and can hold the most value for any reader.
*It’s important to remember that there are different kinds of atheism that allow for a supernatural reality or a type of god. Buddhism is technically atheist because it does not posit a God, but asserts some kind of metaphysical reality. Additionally, there can be some atheists who believe in some sort of god, though it has to be wholly material (Zacharias, at some points, seems to annoyingly conflate atheism with materialism).