From Nothing to Nothing Without Anything In Between:
This is the opportunity for some of atheism's best and brightest to give us their take on the purpose, values and meaning of man. I will be pulling material from some of the speeches and writings of some of the best scholars this worldview has to offer. I refuse to give men like Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens the right to embarrass atheistic philosophers in my allotted space.
Loren Eiseley wrote, "Man is the cosmic orphan. He's the only creature in the universe who asks, 'Why?' Other animals have instincts to guide them, but man has learned to ask questions" 'Who am I?' 'Why am I here?' "Where am I going?'" The answer for the atheist is horrifying and hard to bear. To the atheist, man is simply an accidental by product of nature. The sad and pathetic result of matter plus time plus chance. Atheists set out to be free of finding these answers within the constraints of religion, but instead of being free they ended up being orphaned and alone with nothing but the doom of death at the end of every question.
Meaningless:
The first point at which atheism fails is in an attempt to define meaning in life for the human being. John-Paul Sartre decided that a man can find meaning in the universe by simply assigning it one and then following that course, but this cannot be consistent. What if I assign it one meaning and you assign it another? Which meaning is right and who are you to decide that meaning (relativism in action)? What if your meaning is to live a a long and healthy life and my meaning is to kill you? Simple duration of your existence is not meaning. If you came from nothing and end in nothing then what does it matter if you existed at all? If man is doomed to an eternal nothingness then absolutely nothing you can do on this planet in your short life will matter.
Some might argue here and say something like, "well what if I cure cancer?" Well so what if you do. While your pursuit is noble, you're still not doing anything by curing cancer. You're just delaying the inevitable progression into nothingness that we're all doomed to. All you've done is kept people around longer that are still doomed to an eternal blackout. As for the years you've added to the lives of millions of people, well, their lives were meaningless when they were short and now their meaningless for that much longer. So what did you really accomplish? Again, simple duration of existence is not meaning. You see nothing, again nothing, has meaning if all you have are a few short years on a dying planet. No matter how much you accomplish, no matter how many lives you save, no matter what you do you cannot stop what's coming. Death.
Going Forward:
Next I will discuss values and purpose briefly because it will be quite redundant to try and drag these out for too long. I think you can tell from the segment on meaning where I'll be going with the other two. While these points sound harsh, I want to re-establish that I'm writing as if the lack of a creator is a given and not discussing God as if He were an option until later. At that time it will be clear that Biblical Christianity fills in all of the holes that atheism can't. If you're dealing with a true atheist then remember the Gospel is still at the heart of your discussion, but they certainly won't accept the Gospel until they have accepted that there is a creator. I know a lot of people that claim to be atheists, but their claim is usually because of their desire to understand the beginning of creation and they feel the Bible fails. It's really rare that you meet an atheist that's truly thought all of this out. So as you engage in conversations and start to bring some of these points up it's important to know that this subject matter might not come out in a loving manner. That doesn't mean we shouldn't take them down this road, it just means we need to drive slowly.
I don't mean to sound like I'm giving you talking points here, but apologetics offers structure in which to present your content so I would be doing you a disservice not to give you some guidance for handling this topic. I'm writing this series on atheism and then plugging in God at the end because my assumption is that the majority of people reading are believers, but if you're talking to an atheist you need to fill in the gaps with God throughout the conversation and not at the end. You might not make it to the end of the conversation or they could shut you out before you have the opportunity to define the meaning that you, the believer, have and why. After all, the goal in breaking down this wall is to share the Gospel, not just make them "religious." Making someone religious apart from Christ might be worse than just leaving them in their atheistic state.