"Man stands today at the top of a vast scientific edifice in his knowledge of the universe. But the horrifying thing, he discovers, is that it may belong to no one, and that no one is in charge. It is like a ghost town; no one lives there. When there is no vertical dimension to the world, only the straight line of the horizon, then there is no real mystery, no real depth to life, no real height to human aspirations."
James Houston, I Believe in the Creator, p. 22.
There are numerous "secular extentialists" who decry the loss of human meaning in a world without God, believing that natural science has eclipsed the Creator. The authors Camus, Sartre, Beckett, Kafka, Hesse etc. have expressed these despairing sentiments exquisitely.
Jacques Monod, the French biologist, concluded his book Chance and Necessity this way:
"The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose."
Few Christians have pursued the search for meaning in an alleged naturalistic world as relentlessly as Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Holy the Firm, Teaching a Stone to Talk.)