The voyage

One of my regular web reads is The New English Journal and one of the reasons I read it is because Theodore Dalrymple often appears there. He and Paul Johnson were the main reasons I liked to read The Spectator. But while Paul Johnson, a Catholic, is very religious it turns out that Dalrymple is an atheist. This surprising (to me) news he revealed in a NEJ article in a previous issue, and now elaborates on in the current issue. It surprises me because I don't understand how an intelligent person can not believe in God. There's lots of room for disagreement on the nature of God- whether he is good or not, male or female or does not apply, omniscient and omnipotent or limited in powers and knowledge just as we are but at a higher level, but that our reality could be anything other than the product of some great thought by a great being I don't even question anymore. That our physical being is not animated by some empyrean spark is impossible for me to believe whether it's called the soul, spirit or what. John Donne put it precisely in Air and Angels,

But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,


To me the ultimate questions revolve around why we and the world were made, and while it may be nice to benefit from scientific reasoning which brings us airplanes and computers and such, its main interest to me is to help me pursue those ultimate questions. Atheists always demand proof. If God exists, prove it, they say, and since proof of the kind they want is wanting they say gottcha. One of the reasons I have come to believe in God is precisely because I cannot prove it. In fact, I cannot prove anything by their rules of the game. Where is yesterday, for example? Can I really prove by direct measurement and observation that there is such a thing as the past? If, as so-called philosopher Daniel Dennett explains, science -ie, proof- consists of things that can be weighed and measured, then what happens when I die? I won't be able to weigh and measure anything then, will I. No, just about everything we believe we believe on faith. The only things we know are the things we feel...pain and pleasure. Everything else is a constructed image in our thoughts and we believe the truth of that image because our senses convince us.
Even the most atheistic scientist has to believe in certain principles, among them that the universe always and everywhere has a consistency of behavior that can be calculated using mathematical reasoning. I happen to believe they are right in this assumption, and I also believe science to be the most precise instrument so far invented to examine the works of God. Unlike Muslims, I am convinced that he wants us to examine his works.
I also believe that God is good and loves us all. How is that possible, some atheists ask, when even innocent children suffer? Some religions have noted that the world is filled with suffering. Animals kill and eat each other in most horrific ways. I always think of a monstrous tarantula injecting its poison into a beautifully coloured song bird, cutting short his lovely melodies. The venom is actually digestive juice that liquifies the victim's insides which the spider then sucks out. It does seem as if a principle of evil has triumphed over a principle of beauty and goodness, doesn't it? And it isn't simply an accidental, contingent event. To live on this planet one must kill to eat. It's built into the system. So the Manichees (my label for what are usually called gnostics) erected an elaborate belief system on the premise that God (the God who created this world) was an evil being, a falolen angel, Satan, but that we humans were created by him using divine sparks of the real God. This theology has survived into recent times taking the forms known as Bogomils, Cathars and others.
In his latest article, I am glad that Dalrymple is at least an honest atheist, the only honorable kind. He is suspicious of theories that try to explain everything. The subject of his piece was a lecture on neuroscience that he lauded for its excellence. But he had reservations about the professor's confidence that neuroscience would soon explain everything about human behaviour, comparing it to previous secular theories-of-everyrthing such as Marxism and Freudianism which he rightly compares to religious fundamentalism.
He ends the article thus: Ergo, self-understanding is not around the corner and never will be. We shall never be able seamlessly to join knowledge and action. To which I add, not in a religious sense: thank God.
But isn't that a circular argument that comes around and bites its tail? Acting without principle is impossible. We do what we do for reasons, never mind how strange they may seem. And do I detect a sneaky version of a liars paradox in his statement? In saying we cannot join knowledge to action isn't he doing precisely that and making a liar out of himself?
Actually, I do not really believe that the only things we know are the things our senses tell us. There is something else. Why do we want to live if life is more often than not a terrible ordeal? We do, and we know instinctively that taking one's own life is very wrong. Not only do we desire to live, but we desire certain things of life. Mere eating and screwing is not enough. Accumulating worldly goods is not enough. Achieving great power and wealth is not enough. (or so I've heard) There is something else we desire from life- beauty, fulfillment, love, accomplishment, wisdom. We have an inborn knowledge of something we cannot satisfy through worldly means. Some take that lesson to heart and renounce the world. I believe we are not meant to renounce it. I believe life is precious and important..not just my own but life itself, your life, the life of the world. And we are meant to see it and learn about it and try to understand it even though we are doomed to always fall short.