Ultimate Reference Points?:
For our acts to have significance, there must be an 'Ultimate Reference Point'(URP) that is NOT in the context of the universe, but that FORMS the context of the universe. The existentialists saw this most clearly, in my opinion. If there is nothing 'out there', then we are simply awash among a sea of 'finite' moral notions, epistemic acts, truth-views...and we arbitrarily 'deify' one by the sheer act of will (it is not clear to me how will has this much power...). On the value/significance side, this became vivid for me one night in 1972. I had been reading Francis Schaeffer's original trilogy over and over, but the notion of URP had escaped my appropriation. Then it 'hit' me...it was an issue of that which is 'farthest back'. To illustrate this to myself, I took a chalkboard, drew a rectangle and labeled it 'the universe'. The universe is characterized by 'ethical neutrality' if you will. It runs like a Newtonian machine (for the most part--miracles, 'virtual particles', and mind-body interactions being possible exceptions). It takes no 'notice' of its creatures...it simply hums on.

Now, draw a stick-figure, inject a person, maybe even me. I have moral notions that I consider VERY important--I get outraged at vandalism, crimes against the elderly, child abuse, ethnic violence. I struggle with person moral decisions everyday...sometimes agonize over them, if they affect my kids, or my friends, or other loyalties that I have. But...the universe doesn't even notice these, and in a million years or so, my moral choices will have made NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER--the machine will have keep on grinding away. In fact, my moral notions just don't fit in such a universe at all. And NO 'value' can even find definition in such a universe...survival of the species, altruism, selfishness, religion--NOTHING makes any difference whatsoever.

Now, let's try adding 'gods'...superhuman, but finite deities, perhaps like the gods of Greece or Egypt or Babylon...if they are INSIDE the universe (and subject to it), we have gained nothing--they are just in this meaningless stew as well!

But if we add a real God...beyond the universe, (graphically surrounding the rectangle) dwarfing its mechanism, forming the CONTEXT for that universe...with hyper-consciousness, moral notions, personal actions, things-that-are-valued...ALL OF A SUDDEN I FIT! My choices and agony and struggles and acts of kindness and acts of justice BELONG IN THIS UNIVERSE! Everything I approach as a person has significance now!--work, play, love, social action, thinking--because the URP does the same things...

Notice that this only works if the URP is sufficiently 'personal'. IF said URP were simply an impersonal force (e.g. gravity, evolution) I AM STILL ALONE. And, IF said URP were 'beyond personality', I would likewise be still out-of-place. For example, if the URP were a Cat, then all cats would 'fit' and have significance, but the best I could do to would be to emulate a cat (?).

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/what.html glenn miller