Christian apologists have made a great deal of hay out of the “is to ought” problem the atheist has. Any naturalist view of reality, that suggests that all that exists is matter and energy erases any foundation for ethics. “Ought” is neither matter nor energy. And neither can produce it. “Is” describes how things are. “Ought” describes how things should be. If all there is is is, well then, naught can be said about ought.
Don’t be fooled by this common countermove of the atheist. “We don’t need God to tell us it’s better to help old ladies across the street than to mug them.” This, however, is not a statement about what is good. It is a statement, a false one at that, about what is needed to determine the good. Atheists may be correct from time to time on what is right and what wrong, but their worldview doesn’t have room for it. They have no reason to privilege helping over mugging.
A second strategy they take is to try to sneak in their ought while obscuring it as something else. “Of course,” they’ll say, “there can be no objective moral standard. We know, however that what we ought to do is that which is conducive to human flourishing.” Which is like saying, “There is no such thing as a bachelor. I am, however, an unmarried man.” Survival or flourishing of the species may win a popularity contest against destruction and the agony of the species. But that still doesn’t make it an ought.
The wisest man, apart from Jesus, to ever walk the planet, made the same point millenia ago. He said “under the sun,” that is, in a naturalist universe, all we have is vanity, striving after the wind. If there is nothing beyond this world, everything in this world comes to its end, and thus has no end.
Huh? Whatever we pursue, whether wealth, power, wisdom, human flourishing, comes crashing down when we die, when we end. Which means it has no telos, purpose, or end. My father was fond of reminding us that “right now counts forever.” Under the sun, right now not only doesn’t count forever, but doesn’t count at all. Only when purpose is grounded in the eternal can it have any temporal meaning.
Which is one more reason we ought to have pity on those who deny their Maker. They’re not terribly bright (“The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’” (Proverbs 14:1). Worse, they are aimless, fruitless, pointless. They not only have no reason to do what they do, but in denying God they themselves deny they have a reason to do what they do. We proclaim a good news that not only can they have peace with the living God, but they can have direction on both where to go and how to get there.
We exist to make manifest the glory of God. That is our ultimate purpose. There can be none greater. May we walk in joy knowing His purposes are always met, and that He is pleased to use us along the way.