The honest atheist: Woody Allen

If nothing else, Woody Allen is candid.

In a recent interview with UPI (read it here), the director spoke about why his film's characters tend to have a meaningless view of life. It is because he has a meaningless view of life.

"I firmly believe -- and I don't say this as a criticism -- that life is meaningless.

"I'm not alone in thinking this. There have been many great minds far, far superior to mine that have come to that conclusion. Both early in life and after years of living and, unless somebody can come up with some proof or some example where it's not [meaningless,] I think it is. I think it is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. That's just the way I feel about it."

Many atheists who have plumbed the depths and implications of a universe with no God come to the same conclusion.

Atheist and biologist Stephen Jay Gould opined, "We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’– but none exists. This explanation, though superficially troubling, if not terrifying, is ultimately liberating and exhilarating.”

Atheist and author Aldous Huxley noted, "The philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political."

Atheist, philosopher, playwright, and author Jean-Paul Sartre reasoned, "Man simply is…Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself."

Allen continues,

"I'm not saying one should opt to kill oneself, but the truth of the matter is when you think of it, every 100 years... there is a big flush and everybody in the world is gone, then there is a new group of people, then that gets flushed, then there is a new group of people and this goes on interminably for no particular end -- I don't want to upset you -- there's no end and no rhyme or reason."

Interesting that he mentions suicide because if there is no objective purpose, one must wonder, "Why bother?" The endless repetition of life and death and life and death must give pause. Few of us will accomplish anything like Shakespeare, anything that will be remembered four minutes after our deaths much less four hundred years. He notes, though, that even Shakespeare's works in a universe void of God have no meaning.

"So, all of this achievement -- all of these Shakespearean plays and these symphonies and the height of human achievement -- will be gone completely. There will be nothing. Absolutely nothing. No time. No space. Nothing at all. Just zero. So, what does it really mean?"

If there is no Creator who will reveal to me his plan and purpose for my life, then I am left to firgure out the cosmos and my place therein within a span of eighty years. Good luck with that.

So what's the point? How does one cope with such a belief about the cosmos?

"What I would recommend is the solution I've come up with -- distraction. That's all you can do. You get up. You can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, by the movies, by the nonsense: 'Can I get my kid in this private school?' 'Will this girl go out with me Saturday night?' 'Can I think of an ending for the third act of my play?' 'Am I going to get the promotion in my office?' All of this stuff, but, in the end, the universe burns out. So, I think it is completely meaningless. And, to be honest, my characters portray this feeling."

Is it any wonder men refuse to grow up, frittering away the hours playing video games or getting lost in pornography? Is it a surprise that superstar after superstar overdoses or pulls the trigger to numb or end the pain? Just distract yourself from your meaningless, pitiful existence.

But this is the very conclusion that Solomon came to when he penned Ecclesiastes. "Meaningless, meaningless," he screams into the cosmos, "All is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). He, like Woody Allen tried to distract himself, but he found that, too, was meaningless. He tried great works (2:4). He accumulated possessions and wealth (2:7-8). "I kept from my heart no pleasure...then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun" (2:10-11)

Solomon anticipated Woody, "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever...What has been will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun" (1:4). Solomon's conclusion? "Behold all is vanity and a striving after the wind" (1:14).

Note that comment "under the sun." When man tries to find his way without looking "above the sun" to the God who created him, he finds no meaning.

But God has not left his creatures so bereft. In little snippets throughout Ecclesiastes, Solomon gets his mooring. No place is this better seen than at the very end when he declares, "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil." Man must seek after the God who is there. The God who revealed himself plainly in his word in time and space.

In the very creation, God gives man identity and purpose. He spoke space and time into being and reveals that in the first sentence of the Bible (Genesis 1:1). He created man unique compared to the rest of the creation in that man alone will bear God's image (Genesis 1:27). In that unique station, God commissioned man with the stewardship of the created realm (Genesis 1:28). This was only the beginning.

Why the pain, problems, and personality conflicts? That's one page over in Genesis 3, but even there, God has not left man without hope. Why is man so wonderful but can be at the same time so villainous? God's word alone explains this extraordinary schizophrenia. Man's rebellion against God has marred man, but God had a plan to restore what man had so absolutely devastated. In Jesus Christ, God gives man hope.

I appreciate Woody Allen's unashamed honesty. In rejecting God's testimony about what he has done, man has no hope of determining who he is or why he is. I hope and literally pray that God will give him eyes to see the God who is there and to see the true hope for this world and the next found at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ.