Congratulations, you are a student at the University of York! You are about to embark upon an experience that will change your life forvever. The time you spend at university will change you; sometimes in a good way, sometimes bad. University is character building. In a few short years you will (hopefully) emerge with a qualification. The world will be your oyster. You may get married, get a mortgage, have children, get a job, get another job, get a pension plan, retire from that job and then get a coffin. And apparently, University is the best bit. Surely there must be more to life than this?

What's the point?
For almost as long as there has been intelligent life on earth, the question has been asked "What's the point?". The recent LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment is a perfect example of this. Scientists are searching for a 'God particle' in order to understand more about where we came from.

Why are we here? What should I be doing with this short period I have on earth? What's that smell? What happens when we die?

• Life is for making babies, so that they too can have babies, so that those babies can also have babies...
• Life is to seek pleasure; we are to feel and experience and consume as much as we can.
• Life is for relationships; to have friends and family around us who we can share our lives with.
• Life is to gain wealth, resources and power; we are to get as much as we can so that we may live in comfort.
• Life is to find enlightenment; to become perfect, to attain a pure soul and to find God.
• Life is to do good; to leave the earth a better place than we found it, to feed the hungry, end suffering; to benefit others.
• Life is futile. Eat, drink and be merry.

Modern philosophers tell us that by themselves, these suggestions are all ultimately meaningless.

But what does it matter if this is true? If life has taught us anything, it's that people are nice and friendly, and it doesn't matter how you live your life as long as everyone cooperates.

That is why we have teenagers stabbing each other on the streets, why there are wars, why there is poverty. People are not nice, in fact people can be awful to each other, either intentionally or unintentionally.

If history has taught us anything, it is that people are nasty little blighters, and it's madness to assume that we're going to start being nice to each other all the time, by ourselves.

A majority of people in the Western World believe that they are good. A majority would also agree that they have done wrong things. Have you ever been angry with someone? Have you ever hurt someone (either by accident or on purpose)? Have you ever lied or cheated or stolen? If you can answer 'no' to all of these questions, you are definitely lying to yourself.

We are not perfect; none of us are. A lot of people would say that they have good intentions. Some of the worst mistakes in history have been made by people who believed that they were acting with good intentions.

Humans, by themselves, are corrupt and no amount of self-control, or moral or philosophical argument will ever change that. Christianity offers the answer for a corrupt world, corrupt nations and a corrupt person.