Man cannot survive without conceiving of God; His manifest reality is known to every tribe, nation, and tongue or civilization. Man isn't naturally an atheist or agnostic, but religious to the core; he has been dubbed Homo religiosus or the religious being. They also call him Homo divinus, or the divine being (in the image of God or imago Dei). Man is meant or hard-wired for worship, and if he doesn't find God, he will worship someone or something else, which is idolatry. There is a gap or vacuum that must be filled and only God can adequately do the job. Pascal did say that only God can fill this empty space and Augustine said that we are restless till we find our peace or rest in God.
When you take God out of the reckoning, man becomes uncivilized, as witnessed and documented in Romans 1, where God gives man up to his perversions. Yes, we need God, He doesn't need us! We can only find our fulfillment in Him and serving Him. There is indeed purpose in life when one knows the Lord and serves Him; the chief end of man, according to The Westminster Shorter Catechism, is "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever"--taken from Isaiah 43:7, which says we're created for His glory. We are the icons of God, bearing His image to the world and God has something to say through us; we are His voice to spread the Word, not angels!
Without God, man has come from nothing, has no meaning in life, and is heading nowhere! We must be able to answer the ultimate questions of life to have meaning and fulfillment: Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I headed or going to? What is man's destiny? Is there a difference between right and wrong? The Bible answers all these questions and science cannot because they are out of its domain or turf. Science cannot make philosophical, religious, ethical, nor metaphysical judgments--neither can it make any value judgments, it is the "know-how," not the "know-why." Yes, science is limited and we must not put our ultimate faith in it to solve all our problems or answer all our questions.
The scientific method doesn't apply to the metaphysical answers to the physical and to the spiritual, religious, ethical, nor moral domains. For example, you cannot measure three feet of love, nor five pounds of justice, yet they exist and are real. Love exists, yet you cannot prove or disprove it either! In science, you have to have laboratory conditions, be able to measure, observe, and repeat an experiment with variables and controls to get a working hypothesis and finally a theory, and then a scientific, verifiable fact.
Note that it's only because of the Christian worldview that science was made possible and the first scientists were Christians--there's no final conflict between science and the Bible, which is not a science text, but has no scientific absurdities or erroneous ideas. Where it does make scientific claims, the info is correct and has been proven ahead of its time--such as the discovery of the water cycle, and ocean currents, the fact that the earth is round and is hung on nothing in space! When science alienates Christians and becomes their enemy, they become unscientific and dogmatic, which is not scientific.
When we try to establish ethics without God, it is impossible to have a foundation. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that without God all things are permissible or up for grabs. God is the source of absolute truth with a capital T and if there is no God, there can be no absolute Truth! And so, without God, man is like a ship without a rudder with no anchor nor moral compass! We are a law unto ourselves and each of us can make up our own ethical system as we go along, and morality is simply what we decide it is as a group, and it changes over time as we get more "civilized." The Ten Commandments are then obsolete and too binding for our free lifestyle, which has no restraints nor limits.
"Law is merely the majority vote that licks all others," to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes. The Bible says in Psalm 11:3 that "when the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" We have then lost our moral fiber as a nation and become free spirits, each man doing his own thing and what is right in his own eyes, the way Israel did before it had a king (cf. Judges 21:25). God cares a lot about right and wrong and we have His moral law in our hearts in the form of conscience (cf. Rom. 2:15)--unfortunately, some choose to ignore it do evil. We were meant for something better than anarchy and immoral, unethical society.
The end result is that man worships himself, fame, fortune, power, popularity, success, possessions, and even does hero worship, all of which are unfulfilling false gods and idolatry, that cannot meet man's inner longing for a relationship with God, not merely acknowledging or knowing He exists. Jesus promised abundant life to all sincere seekers and God will authenticate Himself to everyone who diligently searches for Him (cf. Heb. 11:6)--He's not playing cosmic hide-and-seek, but will not reveal Himself to triflers!
An so the biggest question and issue facing man today is whether he can live without God, according to humanist historian/philosopher Will Durant, and our government becomes the highest law, in the land and is accountable to no one as final Judge. Consequently, there is no Judgment Day, no Lawgiver, and no Ruler of man, no hell to shun, and no motive to be good, all because man doesn't put God in the equation.
Just like Friedrich Nietzsche declared God dead, or irrelevant and unnecessary, we must find out for ourselves the hard way, because man refuses to listen to the modern-day prophets and heed what Scripture says; man is ultimately headed nowhere and history has no meaning or purpose, with no climax, conclusion, or consummation either. Man becomes a glorified ape or hominid, without the dignity of being in God's image, having any restraint on evil, and being able to communicate and know Him.
Soli Deo Gloria!
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