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.

Quote of the Day: Anti-theism

Antitheism provides every reason to be immoral and is bereft of any objective point of reference with which to condemn any choice.   

Any antitheist who lives a moral life merely lives better than his or her philosophy warrants.   

All denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind, and the antitheist is forever engaged in undermining his own mines.

Ravi Zacharias

"Can Man Live Without God?" 

(italics in the original

QotD: Pascal's Wager, the atheist, and the agnostic

I have heard Pascal's Wager in the past, but it struck me afresh last night as Dinesh D'Souza unpacked it in his book, What's so great about Christianity?

Pascal's Wager considers the existence of God philosophically (really, Pascal directed it toward the atheist, the apatheist, and the agnostic).  He looks to death and considers, what's the risk? Dinesh D'Souza takes it from here (italics mine):

If we have faith in God and it turns out that God does not exist, we have a downside risk: metaphysical error. But if we reject God during our lives, and it turns out God does exist, there is much more serious risk: eternal separation from God.  Based on these two possible outcomes, Pascal declares that it is much less risky to have faith in God. In the face of an uncertain outcome, no rational person would refuse to give up something that is finite if there is the possibility of gaining an infinite prize. In fact, under these conditions it is unreasonable not to believe. Pascal writes, "let us weigh up the gain and loss involved in calling heads that God exists. If you win, you win everything. If you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate, then: wager that He does exist."


The ingenuity of Pascal's argument is that it emphasizes the practical necessity of making a choice. This necessity is imposed by death. There comes a day when there are no tomorrows, and then we all have to cast our votes for or against the proposition on the ballot.  The unavoidability of the decision exposes the sheer stupidity of "apatheism," the pretense that something doesn't matter when it is quite literally a matter of life and death.  The apatheist and the agnostic refuse to choose when there is no option to abstain.  So the refusal to choose becomes a choice--a choice against God.


Pascal also exposes the pose of the atheist who fancies himself as a brave and lonely man facing the abyss. We admire a man who is steadfast in the face of unavoidable adversity. If we knew we were alone in the universe and that death was the end, then there is no alternative but to stand tough in our mortal skins and curse the darkness. But what would we think of a man who stands ready to face a horrible fate that he has a chance to avert? If you are trapped in the den with a hungry lion, and there is a door that may offer a way out, what sane person would refuse to jump through the door? Viewed this way, the atheist position becomes a kind of intransigence, a reckless man's decision to play Russian roulette with his soul.


Atheists sometimes express their bafflement over why God would not make his presence more obvious. Carl Sagan helpfully suggests that in order to dispel all doubts about his existence, "God could have engraved the Ten Commandments on the moon."  Pascal supplies a plausible reason for what he calls the hiddenness of God.  Perhaps, he writes, God wants to hide himself from those who have no desire to encounter him while revealing himself to those whose hearts are open to him. If God were to declare himself beyond our ability to reject him, then he would be forcing himself on us. Pascal remarks that perhaps God wants to be known not by everyone but only by the creatures who seek him.

Dinesh D'Souza, What's so great about Christianity, pp. 202-203 

The atheist's brother

I find it interesting when two brothers growing up in the same house end up on different forks in the road. When did that happen? What brought it to pass?

My brother and I find ourselves on different roads politically. On the one hand, when it comes to employment, he believes "The Man" (business leadership) is out to get you, but when it comes to politics, he is absolutely convinced "The Man" (government leadership this time) will save us.

Me? If you've read a few posts, you know that I'm big on personal responsibility in the workplace and in government. You also know that I come to those positions not from my own thinking but from what I read in the Bible. If God went to the effort to reveal himself to us through the written word, wouldn't we do well to live our lives in a manner pleasing to our Creator?

My brother and I are not the only two on opposite paths. Take the Hitchens brothers. Christopher is an unashamed, unabashed atheist and thinks you should be, too. Really, that latter position is a great position. If you know your way to jive with reality, why don't you try and convince others of that position? Hitchens has tried to convince the masses by penning "god is not Great" (the actual title capitalization) and "The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer."

Did you know Hitchens has a brother named Peter? Do you know that Peter is a Christian? Did you know that he, like his brother, grew up in a religious home but rejected the Bible in favor of rabid atheism?  For Peter, the very thing he embraced turned bitter in his stomach and led him to assert, "That in the end, what I rejected (the God of the Bible) was right." In the following 8-minute video, Peter describes his upbringing, his God rejecting and his God embracing.



About half way through the video, he describes realizing that he would face judgment and that the floor upon which he stood, a floor which was no floor at all in reality, had begun to collapse.

Why does Peter see with such crystal clarity but his brother Christopher, a man whose death is fast approaching due to cancer, has his eyes shut tight? I cannot answer that question, but this I do know, if Peter could do anything to open Christopher's eyes to the truth of man's standing before God and God's provision for man, he would. He understands the implications as illustrated by his own horror at seeing the painting "The Last Judgment" by Rogier van der Weyden, man will die and face the judgment (Hebrews 9:27).

Consider the atheist's passion for the believer. Why does he desire that he not believe? To what end? That he might eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die? Really, Paul said the same thing to the Christian--IF the resurrection had been a farce (1 Corinthians 15:32). But the resurrection is an historical event.

Christopher and Peter

So we face the passion of the believer for the atheist. It's a passion for his very existence, for his life. All mankind will know eternal life for we are not merely corporeal beings. But all of us by our very nature stand in open rebellion against God. Paul makes that eminently plain in Romans 3:10-18 and caps it off with "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" in Romans 3:23. The Christian as exemplified by Peter Hitchens here wants to do everything in his power to illuminate the judgment ahead, call the lost to turn around and ultimately point them to the one who has made the way for restoration and eternal life (John 14:6, 17:3).

It bums me out that my brother and I stand on different political roads, but it bums Peter Hitchens out far worse that he and his brother, Christopher, stand on different roads as they hurtle toward eternity.

Abolishing God in the name of tolerance

The atheists are at it again and they won't be happy until the last vestige of anything remotely supernatural is driven from public view.

The military is getting hammered again for having invocations and benedictions at various ceremonies (here). The powers that be have so scrubbed the prayers to make them nothing more potent then a Deepak Chopra ramble on Larry King Live. And--egad! -- the military advocates spiritual solace for those who've struggled with suicidal tendencies. Hmmm. Am I to read that to say the atheists find suicide more palatable than theism?

This is getting so absurd I expect to see Elmer Fudd round the corner. Now the anti-gods are in a full-court press to have scrub God from the Presidential Inauguration (here). Can't ask His blessing at the lead-in. Can't ask His blessing on the out-go. And--get this--no "so help me God" from the lips of the oath-taking President.

These folks believe it's an infringement upon their freedoms to ask God's blessing upon our President. And it's illegal for the President to seek God's assistance in his life and in his role as our nation's leader.

Judges must dismiss these Looney-Toons from their courtrooms with a vigorous Doc Marten to the posterior. Buckling to the God-haters supported by high priced lawyers has corrupted the intent of our Founders to have free exercise of religion within our society, all aspects of our society, to include our government.

Time to say "No" when confronted by such ridiculous threats. They can abide, freely, in their disbelief with their heads buried deep in their rabbit hole. The great majority of our nation, those who believe in a living God, cannot buckle to those who wish to eradicate things religious from public view or soon they'll be asking churches to remove the crosses from their steeples.

(Apologies to Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and the whole LT team. I love 'em).