Honest Atheism: The Meaning of the Universe

Writer Joseph Campbell once wrote, “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” His words accurately express one of humanity’s favorite modern ideas—that the world has no inherent meaning. Instead, we as individuals are responsible for generating meaning.

To make sense of this philosophy, let’s take a brief trip backward in time. For centuries, mankind has believed in a metanarrative, or an overarching story that governs the history of the world. If you believe in a metanarrative, then you believe that every action has a point to it. There is nothing worthless, no meaningless event. Every person is a character, every happenstance is a plot point. Up until the second half of the 1800s, this prevailing belief brought hope to the soul of humanity. No evil event was so evil that it did not fit in the metanarrative. No occurrence was so bizarre as to be meaningless.

Postmodern philosophy began to destroy this notion, for postmodernism insists that not only is the metanarrative not ultimately good or hopeful, it does not exist at all. The world has no inherent meaning.

Friedrich Nietzsche was one of the first prominent thinkers to advocate this view of the world. Now, I have some respect for Nietzsche—and the reason for this is that I have always considered Nietzsche to be one of the very few “honest atheists.” I am drawn to Nietzsche’s honest, albeit depressing, appraisal of the world without God.

Atheists often paint a vision of a beautiful world with no religion and no wars—only facts, science, and unimaginable leaps in human progress. The trouble with this vision is that it is dishonest. To destroy the only system of moral values the world has ever had is to destroy humanity’s capacity for goodness. After all, the word “goodness” has no meaning if there is no objective standard. The word “progress” has no meaning if there is no paragon of perfection toward which humanity may strive. Atheism tends to be falsely optimistic.

But Nietzsche presents a different version of the world. He writes:

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Nietzsche’s torturous pain is evident in this passage. He believes, not that God was once alive and has now been killed, but that mankind has outlived its capacity to believe in God. God, according to Nietzsche, is like the blanket that comforts children in their youth, but means nothing in their adulthood. And yet he confesses that God is “what was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned.” He recognizes the immense crisis that the death of God poses—because God’s absence means the loss of all values, all morality. In fact, he compares the loss of God to the earth being unchained from the sun and plunging into a terrifying darkness.

This is an honest evaluation. If God is indeed dead, then Nietzsche is correct in the catastrophic language he uses. Hope is scarce where there is nothing to hope for.

But my respect for Nietzsche breaks down in the last two sentences of the passage I previously quoted:

“Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

This is where Nietzsche’s honesty fades. He makes the same mistake as practically every other atheist—he seems to think that although the universe has no inherent meaning, you can assign meaning to it. As Joseph Campbell might say, “you are the answer” to the invisible question of meaning.

This is called existentialism. Many modern stories are incredibly existentialist in nature. Look at The Fault in Our Stars, the immensely popular John Green novel about a girl with terminal cancer and her experience with love. At one point in the book, Augustus Waters, the main character’s love interest, says to her:

"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”

There is something poetically attractive about existentialism. Love itself may mean nothing—but the fact that I love you gives you meaning, if only in my lifetime, if only for a year or two. Meaning is mine. It belongs to me. It exists in my mind, but nowhere else. In this sense does the modern poet talk about owning the universe.

This idea is romantic. It is even beautiful—but it is a beautiful lie.

The honest atheist cannot both deny the existence of God and also keep meaning in the universe. You cannot have both. If you and the world are both meaningless, you cannot assign meaning to anything. If you are a pointless speck in the void, your feelings do not create any kind of value or significance. It is impossibly naïve to believe otherwise.

I would now like to introduce you to perhaps the only truly honest atheist I have ever known—a writer named Samuel Beckett. In 1953, Beckett wrote his most famous work, a “tragicomic” play called Waiting for Godot. This simple play follows the antics of two men, Vladimir and Estragon, who spend their entire lives waiting by a tree in the barren countryside for someone named Godot. Act I follows a single day of their absurd antics, which include meaningless conversations that trail off into nothing, discussions on whether or not to hang themselves from the tree (and how best to do it), and constant reminders that they cannot leave this place, because they are still “waiting for Godot.”

Vladimir, the more poetic of the two, describes the plot quite well: “What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come—or for night to fall.”

Act II tells the events of the second day, which perfectly parallel those of the first day. And at the end of both days (and presumably every day before and after), a messenger from Godot comes and informs Vladimir and Estragon that he will not be coming today—they must wait until tomorrow.

And so, Beckett implies, their lives continue, day after day after day. Beckett does not pretend that there is some meaning in their absurd existence. No matter how many times they talk about it, they cannot leave the tree. They cannot do anything at all without the arrival of Godot, who represents truth, goodness, beauty—meaning. There is no generation of meaning in Beckett’s world. No poetic effusions on the subject of finite infinities. Just endless pointlessness.

Waiting for Godot mostly comments dryly and humorously on this state of the world—but at one point, as his more innocent friend Estragon sleeps on the ground, Vladimir shifts the tone as he speaks to himself in the most raw and emotional monologue in the play.

He asks, “Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot?”

This is atheism with the relentless optimism stripped away. There is no God, but we cannot help but wait for him. There is no universal meaning, but we cannot create meaning for ourselves. We spend our lives eternally waiting “for Godot to come, or for night to fall.” Beckett’s absurdism is a more honest atheism than Nietzsche’s existentialism, because at least absurdism confesses that there can be no answer unless there was first a question.

This idea—pure, unadulterated, honest atheism—is enough to drive one mad.

But what if Godot were to come?

What if we were to return to the days of old, before Campbell, before Beckett, before Nietzsche? For classic literature affirms constantly the fact that the world is indeed full of meaning. From Dostoyevsky to Hugo to Dickens to Tolkien to Lewis to Chesterton, the best writers of all time have written worlds in which there is purpose in every step, life in every death, hope in every journey.

And the strange truth is that these worlds, no matter how fantastical, no matter how imaginative, somehow resonate more deeply in our hearts than the worlds of Nietzsche or Beckett.

This is where the postmodernists, the existentialists, and the absurdists all have it wrong. We are not drawn to meaning in stories because we are filled with false optimism. We are drawn to meaning in stories because that is what is real. And the reality of purpose touches our spirits more wholly than any declaration of meaninglessness.

Even the existentialist universe of John Green is more beautiful to us than the absurd world of Samuel Beckett, because Green’s existentialism, even if it is dishonest, promises some kind of meaning. The meaning is what we latch onto, what we believe—because it is natural. The knowledge that we mean something is as deeply engrained within our hearts as the knowledge that we exist at all.

John Green’s character, Augustus, says that love is only “a shout into the void.” But if it is, then it should not be a comfort to us. It should not make life worth living. The atheist’s most logical treatise cannot explain away the fact that words, events, experiences, feelings, individuals, are all inherently meaningful. To claim otherwise is to deny existence.

There are times when we love without hope, sing without reason, laugh without motivation. If love, music, and laughter are all inherently meaningless, then why should we find joy in them, even without cause?

In the end, even Beckett, however hard he may try, cannot deny the existence of this eternal question. Although he strives to present a world with no question and no answer, the very fact that Vladimir and Estragon wait day after day points to a question. It points to a longing that cannot be swept aside.

Augustus’s void certainly exists. There is no question of that. But the truth, which the atheist cannot explain away and the fairy tale affirms effortlessly, is that some things are more powerful than the void. Love defeats hate. Life conquers death. Over and over again.

G.K. Chesterton put it this way: “The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”

This is the truth that the lost wanderers of Waiting for Godot are missing—but that they continuously wait for. They understand, unlike the existentialist, that absurdity is all that remains…unless Godot should come.

One of the last exchanges of the play goes as follows:

VLADIMIR: We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.

ESTRAGON: And if he comes?

VLADIMIR: We'll be saved.

Vladimir’s simple wisdom speaks to all of us. We are all waiting, or have waited, for Godot—and his coming would bring salvation.

The question is whether or not we have yet recognized his arrival. For perhaps Godot has already come. Perhaps the universe has meaning because it was created by the Eternal Cause.

Perhaps our lives resemble a story because our father is the great Author of all.

I like to imagine that, one day, Vladimir and Estragon will meet Godot by that tree in the countryside. And when they do, they will understand what it was they waited for, and why they have waited. They will at last know the answer to the question which they have been asking all their lives, whether they knew it or not.

They will say, along with C.S. Lewis, “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”