What are rebuttals to the argument that Christians only worship God to give their lives meaning?

Question

Many people argue that we only created God and religion to give our lives meaning, and that is why we worship God and other gods. However, we have to take into consideration that humans tend to worship everything, and it is in our nature, which is evidence that God exists. (If we are merely evolved from inanimate matter with no aspect of Design involved, why would we possess this big sense of spirituality, worship and believing in gods, when in reality believing in gods that do not exist does not matter and does not help us survive?)

How can we rebut the argument that we only worship God because we want meaning in our lives and to give an explanation for our existence?

Answer 1

God tackled this argument head on by inspiring Solomon to write the book of Ecclesiastes. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" It demolishes many sources of meaning that people turn to which fail them: sex, work, possessions, power, the pursuit of knowledge, the immortality of fame and even the madness of thrill-seeking. That book also addresses the futility of seeking meaning in religion:

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. 
Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, 
who do not know that they do wrong.

2 Do not be quick with your mouth,
    do not be hasty in your heart
    to utter anything before God.
God is in heaven
    and you are on earth,
    so let your words be few.
3 A dream comes when there are many cares,
    and many words mark the speech of a fool.

4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to fulfill it. 
He has no pleasure in fools; fulfill your vow. 
5 It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it. 
6 Do not let your mouth lead you into sin. 
And do not protest to the temple messenger, “My vow was a mistake.” 
Why should God be angry at what you say and destroy the work of your hands? 
7 Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. 
Therefore fear God. (Ecclesiastes 5:1-7)

Solomon teaches us that all meaning derived from attachment to this world will disappoint. All false religions and poor understanding of the true one fall into this category. Then Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount points us to the eternal treasures that will not disappoint.

When I was in my early twenties, like many people I hoped to pursue a distinguished career in science and find meaning in intellectual accomplishments. My greatest fear was of failure, of dying without ever accomplishing anything. In the Fall of 1985, I had a recurring dream in which I died by electrocution while using an electric razor. As the shock coursed through my body, my last though before I died was unexpected. Instead of feeling regret over living an unfinished life, I felt peace. My last thought was that I would be with Jesus.

I believe that these dreams were the fruit of memorizing a Bible passage a month before which speaks of finding a new identity in Christ:

20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

Our purpose for living is intimately tied up with Christ's purpose for dying. Since that month over thirty years ago I have not obsessed over finding meaning in my job. I found that contentment does not come from working hard; working hard is the outworking of a divinely gifted contentment powered by the joy of salvation.

So the conclusion is this: abandoning all temporal, materialistic sources of meaning - even religion as understood by many - is a necessary step on the way to acquiring an eternal, spiritual source of meaning.

Answer 2

I think you have rebutted the argument quite nicely in the body of your question but I will add a little to back up what you've said:

but we have to take into consideration that we, humans, tend to worship everything and it is in our nature which is an evidence that there must be God because if evolution is true why would it give us this big sense of spirituality, worship and believing in gods when in reality it does not even matter

One of C.S. Lewis's main arguments for the existence of God goes something like this: “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.”. He fleshes it out a little by saying, “If I find in myself desires which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”.

The Cognitive Science of Religion, which “is probably best known for its efforts to explain broad, cross-cultural questions concerning why people generally tend to be religious throughout history and around the globe.” comes to much the same conclusion: That our brains’ structure leads us toward a desire for more than this world has to offer.

Answer 3

I would suggest rebutting the argument by turning it on its head: Giving one's life meaning is a perfectly legitimate reason to choose to believe in God. Indeed, the first great Existentialist philosopher, Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard, saw faith in God as the key to finding meaning in a meaningless world:

Kierkegaard’s leap of faith is ultimately a subjective action against the world, against one’s inner despair. By definition, of course, faith involves something that cannot be objectively proven. It is a choice, to believe. A true-blue belief in a higher power, if one can reach it, does afford its boons. A benevolent God, of course, vanquishes death anxiety. He dissolves nihilism instantly.

Faith in God also empowers virtues such as morality, altruism, forgiveness and other "fruits of the spirit." Rational proofs of God rarely convince doubters, but once the "leap of faith" is taken, the results in terms of a life well lived are the best argument of all.

Answer 4

This argument is a classic example of a logical fallacy known as Bulverism (or "circumstantial ad hominem"). Quite simply, the argument has no relevance whatsoever to the question of God's existence because attacking someone's motives isn't the same thing as refuting their argument.

Answer 5

What are rebuttals to the argument that Christians only worship God to give their lives meaning?

God exists. It is an objective fact with many proofs.

That God created the Universe out of nothing is another objective fact.

God is wise and powerful.. he must be, he made this universe.. and is my Creator. He made me for a purpose. He made me, so I belong to him whether I acknowledge it or not:

The earth is the Lord's and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it: for he founded it on the seas, and established it on the waters. (Psalm 24:1-2)

My duty must be to find him and the purpose for which he made me. As someone has already said

God made men that they should seek him, if perhaps they might feel after him, and find him, though he is not far from every one of us.

My duty must include to worship him who is my maker and who is so great, powerful and wise. Finding him, how could I fail to worship him?

But how can anyone find him? Seeing he is so wise, he must also be patient to allow mankind to live lives ignoring him and lived in rebellion against him.

Seeing he is patient he must be good. He must then have provided a way for us to come to know him.

Looking inwards, I find myself to be often living for myself and not for him. I find this is the spirit of the age, the spirit of the world.. everyone I know is self-seeking. We seek our own glory and ease. We are proud, deceitful, loving the things of pleasure, survival and reputation.

God in his grace leads me to his word, the Bible. I find there a message, the only message, that can provide a way back to God for someone so helpless and sinful as me. It is a way that does not depend on my ability, my uprightness, or power.. it takes for granted I am a needy, helpless, sinner.

The Bible tells me life has meaning because it does not end at death.. it tells me God is perfect in holiness and has appointed a Day when he will judge the world in perfect righteousness and holiness.. there will be a recompense for all sin. This echos in my heart as the truth. Surely life is not meaningless?

But the Bible also tells me God loves me and wants to forgive me and give me a new life. It shows me a mechanism, a way by which a good, perfect God - who hates all sin with an infinite, holy hatred - can forgive a bad person like me. It tells me he gave his only begotten Son to die for my sins, to take the punishment I deserve: in short, to die for me!

And then he rose from the dead to prove his death was a full payment, to prove he is who he said he was, the Son of God.

The truth is the message of the Bible is such great news for a sinner like me that I want to believe it even before I know for sure it is true.

There is no other message in the world like this. All other religious teaching fails to acknowledge the depths of man's lostness and helplessness. They all suppose man can get back to God by efforts of their own.

Receiving his pardon by believing in Christ and what he has done for me and worshipping God through Jesus Christ I receive his Holy Spirit, the gift he promises all his people. And so I enter a new life in which I know my faith is real. I now know it is the truth because my experience is just like what is promised in the Bible.

In short, a Christian worships God not because it gives a subjective meaning to life, not because he has found a truth which appeals to him (though of course it does appeal to him very much) but because he has found The Truth, the objective truth of the meaning of life, and the true way back to God his Creator and Redeemer. The life he now lives he lives by faith in the Son of God "who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20).

Seeing as what I have written so far is a summary of the Gospel, my answer to your question is: present the Gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of all who will believe it. The questioner gives you on a plate a perfect opportunity to share the essentials of your faith. So follow our example, the apostle Paul: I determined to know nothing amongst you except Jesus Christ and him crucified, and who was crucified, why he was crucified, and what should be our response.

Answer 6

The challenge seems to presuppose the non-existence of God. If the purpose is to form an argument for or against the existence of God, this is improper and can only lead to circular reasoning.

We can lay this out with simple classical logic as follows.

• If God does not exist, then the only possible benefit to serving God is what directly results from that service in this life. And for many people, the costs far outweigh the benefits, due to persecution, etc. As Paul wrote, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." (1 Corinthians 15:19)
• If God does exist, and is interested in us as the Bible teaches, then any rational cost/benefit analysis should conclude that serving God is far to be preferred over not. "Blessed is the one who walks not in the council of the ungodly..." (Psalm 1)

Pascal made his famous wager based on these considerations, but that doesn't really prove anything. I think this line of thought is uninteresting to someone who is genuinely searching for truth, because it will in effect only yield our initial premise back to us, along with its fairly obvious conclusions. The real question is, Who is Jesus? As several influential Christian thinkers have asked, is he Lord, or a liar, or a lunatic? Each skeptic must answer this question for himself.

Answer 7

Some argue that our moral beliefs have been produced by evolution, and therefore we cannot have confidence in their truth1. However, this argument presupposes atheism and naturalism, and there is no compelling evidence that our moral beliefs are the products of biological evolution.

If we consider the "God gene" argument of Dean Hamer. The main argument of the book "The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired Into Our Genes" is that spirituality is influenced by heredity and that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences. Then we as non-naturalists should've no argument in embracing our natural evolutionary inclination or thirst for God, that is what explained by C S Lewis. We are indeed created with an inbuilt need for God. Thus, atheism is counter-intuitive, counter-evolutionary.

However, this objection of naturalistic world-view proves naturalism inconsistent, since under naturalism we cannot have confidence in our beliefs. See evolutionary argument against naturalism by Plantinga. Dr. Craig mentions this frequently:

"Moreover, naturalism faces severe problems of its own. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued persuasively that naturalism cannot even be rationally affirmed. For if naturalism was true, the probability that our cognitive faculties would be reliable is pretty low. For those faculties have been shaped by a process of natural selection which does not select for truth but merely for survival. There are many ways in which an organism could survive without its beliefs’ being true. Hence, if naturalism were true, we could not have any confidence that our beliefs are true, including the belief in naturalism itself! Thus, naturalism seems to have a built-in defeater that renders it incapable of being rationally affirmed."

Either way, the theist has a reasonable position, and the atheist proves to be having a cognitive dissonance. You can also give the rhetorical answers to such objections that say, belief in God is merely a crutch or emotionally caused, by saying that atheism is a crutch for a comfort and suppression of the guilt conscience, as John Lennox explains.

Answer 8

It is an indisputable fact that some people do only worship God to give their lives meaning. Their view of worship, and of God, and of meaning, and of Christianity is such that if that charge was laid against them, it would be proven true. They would even agree that they do what they do to give their lives meaning.

Of course, they might say that other things also give their lives meaning, such as caring for children, or having a satisfying job of work, or academic pursuit, or attaining heights of musicality... This is beginning to make the question sound a bit indistinct, to me at any rate. Further, people do not tend to worship everything (as claimed). They tend to worship anything, and seem to avoid worshiping nothing. But Christians who willingly give exclusive worship to the one God who created everything know that their Maker forbids worshipping anything, or anyone other than himself.

As a Christian, I for one cheerfully state that my exclusive worship of my Maker does, indeed, give my life meaning. What's wrong with that? I also happily claim that this Creator God has revealed to humanity through a three-fold witness that he deliberately created everything in this universe. Existence is explained by God through a three-fold 'strand' of evidence as to his reality, and his purposes. What's wrong with that?

The only thing I object to by those 'many people' who make such charges against Christians, is their use of the word 'only'. It is inserted so as to imply that, without Christian worship, Christians would be unable to find their lives meaningful. The reasoning has been employed that if there is no God who created all life, then life is, indeed, meaningless. That actually may be true, but that is another question. This question, as it stands, points the finger at Christians to make them squirm at the idea that they invented belief in Christianity in order to invent meaning for their lives. Yet if Christianity is true, there's nothing to squirm about. Neither is there anything to defend. Our Maker has revealed himself to us and we willingly follow him, and our lives are deeply meaningful.

Could it be that these 'many people' wanting to make us squirm are only pointing their fingers at us to detract from the sad fact of their eventually meaningless lives lived without God and Christ ending in death, that they say is annihilation?

True Christian worship is given voluntarily to God because he is our Maker and is worthy of worship. Knowing that, and doing that, fills our lives with joy unspeakable, even in the face of awful situations, and our lives are, indeed, filled with meaning. It's a pity some people strive to find meaning in Christianity without first having found meaning in God himself.

Answer 9

John 6: 25-27 speaks of a soul stirring incident:

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”.

< Finding a meaning for life is one noble cause of belief, as compared to quest for materialistic wellbeing and rise. The disturbing fact is that many Christians who do not strongly believe in a life after life, still believe in God, in the capacity of a provider of food, health and USA Visa ! One sees the Novena centres crowded by believers and Sunday worship sparsely attended ! It is high time we Christians have a soul search on the motivations of our belief, before we endeavour convincing non- believers . Well, to answer the Question, belief in God is a personal choice. Each may have his/ her own reason to believe. And it is up to God to reward each on merit or otherwise .St Augustine has this to say:
> " The Good Thief kept on stealing his entire life, and stopped by stealing Heaven itself ! "

Answer 10

Christians only worship God to Give their Lives Meaning (?) We must for now, ignore this overly broad painting of the Christian landscape! (Other questions have been known to have been deleted as overly broad.) Certainly Christendom is filled with its disciples who worship God for various other reasons...or no human-originated reason at all!

Talking God Christians believe in the sacred scriptures, the Holy Bible, and from the very first pages of that book, God (who made the ear and the mouth) is seen communicating with His creation. The Book of Genesis shows man talking with God, and God talking with man! Many, many times! [See Dialogue with Deity by Raymond Grant, which examines each incident where divine dialogue took place.]

People worshipped God, from the git go, because they had intimate relationship with their Creator---not because of any psychological dearth that needed watering...nor any unmet existential longing that needed fulfilment...nor any pathological conundrum that needed to be solved.

Meaning of Man From the beginning of recorded history man has had purpose and meaning. Created a little below the angels, he was a masterpiece of the creative powers and wisdom of an Almighty God. And, as the psalmist wrote,

You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. I give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made...My frame was not hid from You, when I was made in secret, and intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes have seen my unshaped substance; and in your book all of them were written the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was not one of them.
How precious are Your thoughts to me, O God! (Psalm 139:13-17)

With an understanding about God's Providence from even when he is first conceived, the farthest thing from the Christian's mind is the question about life having meaning! And with an comprehension of God's watchfulness even unto old age, the Christian exults in worship to such an awesome God.

Specious Argument It is a feckless argument by atheists to reduce "belief in God" to a psychological aberration. True Christians worship God because God is God! And He worthy of worship because of His attributes...His wonderful works...His compassion for His people...and His sending Christ to redeem the sinner.

Prevenient Benefits Purpose in life, meaning to existence, joy in work, charity in community, happiness in soul, excitement in future hope...etc. are already written down in the baby book of the new-born Christian.

Atheists simply have "the cart before the horse." 'Meaning' exists even before a babe makes its first cry. Worship is a subsequent act of devotion in a lifetime.

The New Testament writers wrote that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world. (as the redemptive Lamb of God). In other words God had given humanity dignity and worth even before Creation. Therefore no Christian ever needs to worship in order to get meaning to his life!