An Apology

I've got this teacher right now who in her lectures incessantly points out that "The answer is always in the question." She means on our multiple choice tests if the question is asking about a chronic condition, we should look for the answer with the word "chronic" in it. I think this is really interesting in light of the theology I've been reading on the side. I'm currently splitting my time between Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and Hans Kung's On Being a Christian. In the latter, I just got done with a long section on the modern sciences and humanism, with the challenge that they pose to religious faith. When it all comes around toward the end of the section, Kung takes a very courageous stand on the existence of God. First let me say by God he has no intention of implying 'God the Father'. By God he is starting with the simple idea of an absolute transcendent reality. A reality that ultimately gives meaning to existence, and in some way assigns a direction to life. Kung tries to give a firm, philisophically sound argument for the reality of God. The cool thing is the way he uses philosophers, especially Kant, to offer the structure to his argument.

The funny thing about it is that he ultimately comes to the conclusion that the answer is in the question. In short, the question of God relies on the presupposition that God is. Here's what that means: Man's attempt to apprehend God and God's existence is based on man's experience. We find ourselves in a world where by experience we learn to interpret what is "real". The problem is that in using ourselves as the absolute starting point, we have no means by which to justify our experience as being truly reflective of reality. (we could easily transition here to the Indian concept of samsara, but we'll save that for another day)

When man declares atheism in any of its forms, man ultimately is inadvertently placing himself at the universe's center as the true judge of what's real. The problem is that this leaves man as the ultimate end and purpose of existence. Man is thus required to supply his own meaning to existence. We revert back to the age old question of "What is the meaning of life?" The result is the same it has always been with one of two possible answers.

1) Nothing. That being, life has no ultimate purpose or direction and thus man's existence is one of absurdity. In this case we can take any number of ideologies to add whatever meaning we would like. Maybe Nietzsche suits us best and we delve into egocentric self-gratification that results in an inevitable competition between egos in which the fittest wins, and evolution proceeds on to the "superman". Maybe Thomas Jefferson is a better choice and we all need to pursue happiness as individuals among a society . . . even if at the mercy of capitalist ideology that results in oppressive imperialism, ecological violence resulting in a slow suffocation of the planet we live on, as well as generalized discontent with such human systems of "meaning". The 'maybes' could go on forever, and ultimately maybe they should, because it's all the same anyway: because any meaning that man supplies for himself is only a creation of his own and can never apply unilaterally, and if it is only partially applied, then it is hollow. Nihilism is then the fact that we may blind ourselves to, but which nonetheless remains the ultimate end of our existence.

2) God. Not automatically in any religious sense, but instead in the sense of a prevading reality that is the meaning of human existence. God is purpose and direction that is not merely our creation.

The problem is, if we ask the question of God's reality, we are supposing that our experience of existence carries some weight by which to make such a judgment, and in this we are presupposing that existence itself has meaning by which we can decide such a question. In essence, to ask the question of God rests in the authority that such a God provides to interpret our experiences.

One thing to keep in mind is that this doesn't lend the slightest weight or the least sense of victory to religious people. Just because God exists doesn't mean you know anything about him. All our metaphors, anthropomorphisms, myths, claims, creeds, and theories of God are not proved in the least by the simple reality of God. Such consequences of God have been warred over, and on a few rare occasions discussed respectfully between religious people. And at this point in the history of our planet, the last thing we need is more fanatacism over the human endeavor to understand the Reality on which we rely. Assurance of God does not afford us arrogance. Instead, with humility, we all can begin in the very least with assurance of God being the ulimacy of reality based on the fact that we even ask the question.