Let’s play make believe for a moment and assume that the atheist is right after all and that there actually is no God. With his victory won, our atheist friend can now enjoy the comfort of not having to argue anymore with the many around him who believe that God indeed does exist.
Our atheist friend is now free to relax in the teachings of evolutionary science and secular humanism. He feels confident that he can now embark on a truly logical search for real meaning in life no longer having to invoke some imaginary God in his search. He is now the sole captain of his own destiny.
There is only one slight catch for our non-believing friend. Without God, he needs to find this meaning in life pretty quickly since at best he may only have 70 – 90 years in which to do so, and at worst maybe just one or two days left!
Being quite logical has allowed our atheist friend to now fully embrace the teachings of modern science as his mentor. Since evolution is the mode of transport that science has given him, as the explanation as to how he came into being, he can now devote his full attention to meditating on the following scenario:
One day, billions of years ago there existed absolutely nothing in the universe. Then in the course of time, out of this nothingness, an incredible amount of matter came into existence. Either through some “big bang” explosion or some other mysterious unknown process matter came on the scene and by itself this matter formed over vast eons of time the incredibly complex and orderly universe we have today. To sum up we started with nothing and nothing by itself became everything. In turn everything, by itself, developed into our magnificent universe. And don’t forget that, in addition, all of these amazingly creative processes were guided by blind chance.
The atheist must therefore conclude that he came into existence from nothing and when he dies he will go back to nothing. And somehow in between these two states of nothingness he is supposed to find meaning in life!
Being just one of seven billion human beings on planet earth helps provide our atheist friend with the realization that he is only a tiny speck in comparison to this vast sea of humanity.
As a student of astronomy our high tech traveler also knows that the number of stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy alone, number 100 billion. He also knows that our own galaxy is but one of perhaps billions of others. As a result, our own planet Earth is but one heavenly body amidst countless trillions of others. Just imagine how minute a speck the atheist must feel his own planet Earth becomes among untold trillions of other heavenly bodies.
Of course, being a speck on a speck can be a little disheartening. But when our atheist believer adds to this knowledge, the fact that because he believes in evolution, he is only a speck on a speck that came about by chance, vast eons ago, he now begins to get a clearer picture of who he really is and the role he plays in universal history.
Since the atheist has no god to believe in he places himself as the supreme person in his universe and spends the rest of his life searching for a reason for his existence. Searching every pathway, every byway, overturning every stone, examining every philosophy, and experiencing every feeling, as he comes to the end of his journey, the answer he finds is that none exists!
Sadly, as we now return from this world of make believe, the atheist must now take inventory of his life. Without a belief in a divine Creator, he must indeed lead a lonely life. By definition he must believe he has no soul and no immortality. Since he came into existence by chance, and not divine design, any meaning he finds in life is but a by-product of random occurrences. Even the great mysteries of our universe, that cause one to ponder just who we are and why we are here, are a closed corridor of thought to those who place God as something that exists only in one’s imagination.
The struggles of life for all of us, without the existence of a rational creative force in the background, makes our journey here on earth a mere exercise in futility. The only reality we can all count on is physical death. For the atheist, he will die, sadly without ever knowing why he was born in the first place; if it is only to shortly die soon after!
But praise the Lord, that there is a God called Jesus Christ. And it is this Jesus we can share with our atheist friends to help them reverse this bleak outlook they are chained into believing in.