I recently viewed Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker". Some other viewers' comments as to what "The Thinker" was thinking were...(of the naked figure)..."Where did I leave my clothes?" and "Maybe I should try laxatives?". This work of art would initially have been modelled in clay, before being cast in bronze.

Perhaps this representation of "universal man" was thinking the fundamental question: "Is there life after death?" or even "Who am I?" The story is told of Arthur Schopenhauer, the pessimistic philosopher who one day was sitting in the Tiergarten in Frankfurt. He was dishevelled and poorly dressed, so the grounds-man mistook him for a vagrant and asked him roughly, "Who are you?" In despair, Schopenhauer replied, "I wish to God I knew!"

The Bible tells us that after the first man's initial act of disobedience to God, his spiritual condition of being "made in the image of God" fell from its noble and honoured position of being in a companionable relationship with God. The result: God passed judgement on him and said, "Dust (clay) you are, and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). In other words, Adam (the first man) became alienated and separated from friendship with God and experienced death (which previously had been unknown in a state of perfect, pure communion with the eternal Creator).

For millennia since then, writers, artists, philosophers and even children have asked "Who am I?" and "Is there life after death?"

Singer Peggy Lee sang the disenchanted lyric "Is that all there is?" Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, lamented that, for all her luxury and fine food, "Nothing tastes!". You see, without that relationship with God (which Adam lost, and consequently all of humanity) being restored to us by our personal acceptance of God's offer of friendship, then everything will be tasteless, bland, boring and ultimately meaningless.

John Paul Sartre, existential philosopher and life-long atheist, considered that, essentially, life was absurd. Even moral values were meaningless to him as there was, according to him, no ultimate authority or God-given basis for morality. In his eighties, virtually blind and having suffered a series of strokes, a reporter asked him: "Do you believe there is a life here- after?" Sartre replied, "I hope so!" The saying "Hope springs eternal" comes to mind! The very existence of this hope within Sartre - as he faced death - is compelling evidence of his being "Made in the image of God" (Genesis 1: 27). How do atheists account for this hope, that - suppressed or not - is in all humanity?

The Christian theologian Augustine wrote: "You [God] have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in You". The Bible tells us to "seek the Lord while He may be found" (Isaiah 55:6). As sure as light is better than darkness - and life better than death - so is the quality of friendship with God better than "belief" in the fatalistic absurd-ism that is atheism.

Barry Cummings, Abbey Road Baptist Church, Barrow