The Quest for God

8/9/2019 The Quest for God

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The Quest for God

Alex Conradie

Undoubtedly, Australopithecus or an earlierhominid gave no thought to history whilst takingthe first bipedal steps across open savannah orshallow-water marshland. No less momentousthan Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon,bipedalism began a journey irrevocably settinghominids further apart from their primatecousins. A later ancestor, Homo Erectus was astone-tool and fire user, possessing a braintwice the size of Australopithecus . Nevertheless,in a surprising lack of imagination, Homo

Erectus constructed the same all-purpose axefor almost two million years. After theemergence of Homo Sapience some 100 000years ago, there is an explosion in the varietyand design of tools from fish hooks, harpoons,bows and arrows, baskets, lamps, flints, sewingneedles and knives with handles. However,what truly distinguished us from Homo Erectus is the fact that we are a symbolic species,evident from elaborate cave wall paintings andcarved figurines. Alongside this new-foundawareness of a past and a future, evolution has

left us deficient in genetic programming. UnlikeTheseus, we do not have Ariadne’s ball of thread to guide us through the labyrinth of life.

Without specific behavioural instructions as beesdo possess; we’re left with general instructions torather be inventive. Our magnificent brains areforced to compensate for our lack of programmedsocietal structure by supplementing with culture. Assuch, value-loaded behavioural systems arepeculiar to the human species. Indeed, our abilityto invent cultural constructs is what our highintelligence is for. 1

The Time Magazine cover for 8 December 1952asks the question “Will man outgrow the Earth?”,nine years prior to the first space flight andseventeen years prior to a man landing on themoon. Though still unanswered, it needs to beimagined and qualified long before it can beachieved. All aspects of human societies are strungtogether around figments of human imagination.Humans simply assert and behave that certain

1Pre-Industrial Societies is a magnificent work by Patricia Crone. In un-Dawkinsian fashion, her chapter

on religion is a testament to a remarkably clear mind.





been humankind’s problem. It may well be argued that prevailing science-based worldviews are rather a response to humankind’s frustration at an inability to harness thepower of God. We’ve harnessed the power of the wind to great effect, but Elijah’s God is

a whisper on the wind and harnessing a whisper is yet quite beyond us.

The enduring feature of theist views may relate to its seeming monopoly on providingmeaning. Genetic instructions do not require cultural justification; the instructions makesense without there being a need to think about the instructions. However, culturallyimposed rules require meaning as such rulesso often go against our limited geneticprogramming. There is no human societywithout the practice of self control viaelaborate mating systems and regulation ofaggression. Self awareness may partiallyhave its origin in such practices of self control,

self-awareness bringing an awareness ofdeath. In turn, death is a source ofmeaninglessness so profound that itthreatens to undermine the entire enterpriseof its purpose. Religion exists preciselybecause it is an answer to a very humansearch for meaning. That said, the human mind may have hit upon the reality of thesupernatural no less than natural matters, but again this is not a scientific question as itis not amenable to empirical proof.

The great paradox of our age is that in a time whenwe search for the purpose and understanding of

everything, all this logic leads us to believe that theUniverse has no meaning or purpose. Refusing toaccept a purposeless world, perhaps all Christiansare Romantics. Thankfully, even in this present ageof reason the world is ever turning. Intuition,imagination and feeling are regaining ground againstthe pure reason and logic fostered during theEnlightenment. Who admires a sunset and sees onlycolour and Newton? Science provides modelsthrough which we understand the world, but thesemodels are not the world, and should not dictate howwe experience the world. Solely relying on scientific

models would be like experiencing the world in blackand white and claiming that there is no such thing ascolour.

Even Voltaire, that most enigmatic of men who embodied the Enlightenment and reviledthe existence of a personal God, wrote “what is this being? Does he exist in immensity?Is space one of his attributes? Is he in a place or in all places or in no place? May I beforever preserved from entering into his metaphysical subtleties? I should too muchabuse my feeble reason if I tried fully to understand the being who, by his nature andmine, must be incomprehensible to me.” Thinking millennia, God has passions andmotivations, stretching beyond the meagre understanding of humankind’s imagination.



Our rational andconventional view of

mathematics may also bechallenged by intuition. Thenumber 37 may not only beunderstood as one greaterthan 36 and one less than38. A high functioningsavant has described how

the number 37 feels lumpy like oatmeal within his mind. For some, mathematics may befelt even more so than understood. Such a recasting of science may have delighted boththe scientist and philosopher in Blaise Pascal, bringing a sense of the unquantifiable toan otherwise uncompromising discipline.

One may recognise Pascal as the Romantic vanguard in advance of the Enlightenment,“In rare moments of inspiration we discover a reality which is absurd to dissect by reason,which shows that Christ still operates in the world.Reason’s final step is the recognition that there arean infinite number of things that are quite beyondreason. There is nothing more reasonable than therejection of reason. We come to know truth not onlyby reason, but still more so through our hearts.”Immanuel Kant echoed Pascal in his belief thatinsight is more important than exact scientificknowledge and moral experience carries us furtherthan the truth revealed by phenomena.

Unlike Pascal, I don’t think I could rejoice in theimplausibility of Christianity or God. Likewise,Immanuel Kant’s conclusion, “I have therefore foundit necessary to deny knowledge in order to leaveroom for faith”, is too much like Marx’ opium. I haveno appetite for delusion, self-imposed or otherwise.God either exists or He does not. We have anintellectual obligation to try to believe what is true andto avoid believing what is false. All I can sayobjectively regarding my own Pascalian moments ofinspiration is that it felt like Jesus. So, to the

agnostics I say; “Come, sit there no longer. Let usseek Him out in quiet places”. Admittedly a knight-errant rooted in rational implausibility; but is it notwritten that the Shepherd will leave the ninety nine insearch of the one who is wandering? Through Hisgrace, Jesus would tear down the sky for his friends.Beyond the realms of reason, He would bring all of Creation to a fall for the least ofthese.

The quest for God continues, for above all the rhyme and the reason of this world, wesense that it is the heart that matters. The unreason of the heart has a poetry all its ownand through its meter, maybe we’ll meet Him today.

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The Quest for God