Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? In the name of progress, modern man has
tried to answer those questions without reference to God, but the answers that
came back were not exhilarating, but dark and terrible. You are the accidental
byproduct of nature. There is no reason for your existence. All you face is death.
Modern man thought that in killing God he had freed himself from everything
that repressed and stifled him. Instead, he discovered that in killing God he had
unwittingly killed himself. For if God does not exist, man's life is
ultimately absurd. If God does not exist, then man and the universe are inevitably
doomed to death. Like all biological organisms, man must die. His life is but a
spark in the infinite darkness. The spark appears, flickers and then dies forever.
Scientists tell us that the universe is expanding, and as it does so, it grows
colder and colder. Eventually there will be no heat at all.
There will be no light. There will be no life. This is not science fiction. If God
does not exist, then we are inevitably doomed to extinction.
Now what does all this imply? It means that life itself is absurd.
It means that the life we do have is ultimately without meaning, value, or
purpose. If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, what
ultimate significance can be assigned to his life? His life might be important
relative to certain other events, but if all of the events are ultimately
meaningless, what can be the ultimate significance of influencing any of them?
Mankind is thus no more ultimately significant than a swarm of mosquitos,
for their end is all the same. This is the horror of modern man. Because he ends
in nothing, he ultimately is nothing. but it gets even more distressing. For if
life ends in the grave, it makes no ultimate difference whether
you live as Joseph Stalin or as a mother Teresa. If your destiny is ultimately
unrelated to your behavior, then you may as well just live as you please.
Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste, or else the byproducts
of biological evolution and social conditioning. Who's to say whose values
are right and whose are wrong? Now think of what that means. It means that it is
impossible to condemn war, oppression, or pride as evil. To kill someone or to love
someone is morally equivalent. Our predicament is that it is impossible to
live consistently and happily with such a worldview. The atheist philosopher
Bertrand Russell held that moral values are simply expressions of personal
tastes, and yet Russell admitted that he could not live that way. He therefore
found his own worldview, and I quote, "incredible. I do not know the solution," he
confessed.
If death stands with open arms at the end of life's trail, then what is the
goal of life? Is there no reason for life? If its destiny is a cold death in the
recesses of outer space, then the answer is yes; it is pointless. We need to wake
up and understand the gravity of the alternatives before us. If God exists,
then there is hope for man. But if God does not exist, then all we are left with
is despair. Faced with an atheistic worldview, the philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre realized that life is absurd. In his play "No Exit" he tragically portrayed
the life of man as hell. The final words of the play might serve as an atheistic
mantra: "Well, let's get on with it."