Atheists Meaning and Purpose

Atheists are infamous for claiming two things:

. You can just invent meaning and purpose and voila, you’ve got them

. The Bible is written by ignorant bronze age goat herders

Well, there are people who know that the atheists are wrong. One of them was a man who lived about 3,000 years ago. And the rest are those who are today in their 80's and 90's who also once thought that you could just invent meaning and purpose, but are now either jaded in their cynicism or depressed in the futility of it all.

The person who lived in what atheists think was an age of ignorance wrote a book about finding meaning and purpose in this life. He too believed, for a time that one could search for meaning and purpose apart from God and find them with relative ease.

He tried to find meaning and purpose:

. In the pursuit of wealth. In fact he was perhaps one of the wealthiest people of all time.

. In the pursuit of knowledge. In fact he was world renowned for his wisdom and knowledge.

. In the pursuit of hedonism. This guy had more sexual encounters than most present day rock stars and sports super stars ever achieve. Thousands upon thousands of sexual encounters are recorded in his diary.

. In the pursuit of travel. No country was off limits.

. In the pursuit of entertainment.

. In the pursuit of collecting art.

. In the pursuit of education. Horticulture, biology, medicine, astronomy, you name it. He studied along with the leading authorities of the time accumulating knowledge in the hopes that it would bring meaning and purpose to his life.

. In the pursuit of social action, solving injustice and reaching out to those who were in need.

. In the pursuit of humanism and philosophy.

. In the pursuit of public works. His Temple and Gardens were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

. He distinguished wisdom from foolishness; compared the immediate with the ultimate and working hard with rest. All led to a conclusion of meaninglessness and purposeless living.

In the end he learned, as everyone does by the end of their lives something that present day atheists refuse to allow themselves to consider - Nothing that this life has to offer, even in the face of mental gymnastics, mind games and outright lies to oneself, can bring ultimate meaning or purpose.

All is like chasing after the wind.

By the end of his journey in the pursuit of meaning and purpose, looking everywhere under the sun left him deflated and disillusioned. He concluded that trying to find meaning and purpose in what this life had to offer left us no better off than the animals that live in the wild. With no end beyond this life, this man summed it up as “[We live] a few years of futile life.” This man concluded rightly, “Have reverence for your Creator and obey His commands, because this is all that man was created for.”

Ecclesiastes 12:13.

While arrogant and bigoted atheists just assume that they, the Brights of the 21^st century possess more wisdom than anyone who is not an atheist, particularly those who lived thousands of years ago. This man has shown what almost everyone but atheists know, ultimate meaning and purpose is something bestowed from an outside source. It is not invented. It is not found in anything this world has to offer.

Yet what do we find on university campuses around the country? Young people caught up in the thrill of their own intelligence, certain that they can invent meaning and purpose apart from God if only they become more politically active, greener, more tolerant of aberrant behaviour, try-harder humanism, and atheism. And decades down the road they repeat the cycle once more and end confused in the pit of pointless philosophies.

Atheists – those people who truly believe they are unique individuals conform precisely to the kind of futility reserved for the growing thousand of those who deny the existence of their Creator.

Sad but true.