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There is a famous scene found in a paragraph from the great atheist existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea that almost perfectly sums up the dilemma of modern man.  Here the book’s protagonist, Roquentin, spends most of his days living out a humdrum existence – frequenting coffee shops, the public library and just general aimless wandering, all the while attempting to write a book.  Throughout much of the narrative he is frequently struck by feelings of intense nausea that unexpectedly well up within him – mostly they are caused by the various inanimate objects he observes (i.e. a pebble, a newspaper page etc.).

Sartre & Roquentin

One evening, after having dinner at a restaurant and being overcome by an especially intense bout of nausea, he goes for a walk and ends up sitting on a park bench under a chestnut tree, where, in a sort of epiphany moment, he comes to the realization of why he has been afflicted with such sickness.  In essence Roquentin realizes that all of existence is completely meaningless and every object that exists has no reason for doing so.

All life is meaningless?

His nausea was actually the unconscious realization that those objects had no actual reason for existing – the trees, the pebbles, the park bench and even himself.  His contemplation of suicide only served to highlight the fact that death was just as pointless, or ’superfluous’, as life, as existence.  This realization was, for Sartre, the fundamental absurdity at the heart of the cosmos – that everything that does exist should do so for no reason, and that existence and non-existence are equally as meaningless.

Similarly, another famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote an oft-quoted line in his essay A Free Man’s Worship:

‘That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.’

Meaningless but purposeful – a contradiction?

Yet, despite such pessimistic views of the ultimate nature of existence, both Sartre and Russell lived what seemed to be immensely full and productive lives – both wrote prolifically and were highly esteemed philosophers in their day, with a continuing influence on the academy years after their deaths.  Both were also active in many of the political and social issues of their time, from Sartre’s activity in the French Resistance of World War II to Russell’s championing of the poor and vulnerable of society.

In a similar way, we can see that many atheists, agnostics etc. can and do live full, meaningful and productive lives – they have successful careers, family and friends, as well as being involved in many pressing social issues.  Indeed they can, and often do, live life as fully as any religious believer and, perhaps in many cases, take hold of such aspects of life with even more enthusiasm.  Yet the paradox remains that, when pressed into the deeper meaning of existence, it appears that most atheists and agnostics have as similar a nihilistic view of meaning and purpose as do Russell and Sartre.

An Inconsistent Worldview

This kind of schizophrenia was famously described by Francis Schaeffer as a ‘two-story existence’, where people live their lives like a kind of two floored building.  On the one hand people no longer believe in a higher power or deity to guide them and give any intrinsic meaning to their existence (call that intrinsic meaning the lower story or ‘the basement’ where the foundations are).  On the other, however, they carry on with their day-to-day lives as if it had all the meaning of just such a fact – everything they do is done as if it really meant something in the grand scheme of existence (call this the upper story or ‘living room’ area).  The problem is when, if ever, they go downstairs to the basement that floor is completely empty and the structure that holds it all together is frail and wasting away.  In other words there is no real foundation for the beliefs and actions that constitute many people’s existence – but as long as they don’t go down into the basement and scrutinize the basis of their lives it can be easily ignored.

Does consistency matter?

But is there anything wrong with living as if life had value while, ultimately, holding that it actually doesn’t?  After all should atheists have such a consistency between their beliefs and their actions? Perhaps an atheist could suggest here that such a consistency is of no real virtue because if life has no ultimate meaning then living with such a consistency is equally as pointless as living with an inconsistency.  But if this is the case then it must also be acknowledged that there is no objective difference between, to borrow an illustration from Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland, a man who spends his entire life playing tiddlywinks or a Mother Theresa who devotes her life to helping the poor and needy.  Both lives are equally as pointless.  But can anyone really and truly believe such a thing?  This is the practical impossibility of atheism.

Humanism – Self-delusion

Sartre himself attempted to overcome the inherent meaninglessness of existence by inspiring a great existential project for humans to create their own meaning in the face of a cosmos devoid of purpose.  This is what the word ‘existentialism’ ultimately derives from – that ‘existence’ comes before ‘essence’ – that human beings create their own meaning and purpose through the way they live their lives (or the way they ‘exist’) and the choices they make, as opposed to some fixed essence of being which gives them a preordained purpose to life.  The obvious contradiction here is with Sartre’s own admittance in Nausea that every action we do and every action we choose is just as pointless as that which we choose not to do instead.  In other words Sartre’s project, and the project of modern atheistic humanism in general, is nothing but a grand act of self-delusion.

Indeed it seems that when confronted with ultimate reality the atheist cannot but admit that human life, qualitatively speaking, is no different from that of a dog – and perhaps the dog’s existence is actually more desirable as it has no true capacity for self-reflection and abstract thought and cannot come to this realization of the inherent meaninglessness of its existence.

Solomon and Nihilism?

The writer of the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes made this point almost three thousand years ago:

“The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All come from the dust and all return to the dust” (Eccl. 3:19-20).

Indeed the writer of the book, which reads more like a modern existentialist tract than a book of the Bible, passes judgment on all the world has to offer to provide some kind of meaning in the face of meaninglessness: pleasure, wealth, fame, honour etc. etc..  His verdict on all these things is simple: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2).  For him a life that ends in death and has no God and no immortality is sheer absurdity.

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