WHAT ARE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS AND WHY ARE THEY HARD TO ANSWER?

Dr Felicity McCutcheon

‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp – or what’s a heaven for?’

from 'Andrea del Sarto' by Robert Browning

MY AIM IN THIS PAPER

1. Explore the essential features of ultimate questions

2. Examine ways in which we might look for answers

3. Discuss the particular difficulties that arise when teachers address these questions in the classroom

THE QUESTIONS BEFORE US

• What does it mean to be human?• Why is there evil and suffering?• How do I find truth?• What is a good life?

Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art :

‘We are in a period in which scanning has replaced seeing and keeping track has replaced paying attention’ (quoted in The Age, 1 Aug, 2010)

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS – A PECULIAR SPECIMEN

• HUMANS ASK ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

• THE MOON CANNOT

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

Origins• Why is there something rather than nothing?• What caused the universe to exist?• Where did we come from?• What place do we have in the universe?

Meaning• Does life has meaning?• What is the meaning of human life?• Is there ultimate meaning behind the universe?• Does death cancel out meaning?

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

Guilt• Why do we feel guilty? Should we?• Is there a supernatural basis for moral behaviour?• Does following certain rules of conduct relieve our

guilt?• Which comes first: guilt or morality?

Death• What happens after death?• How does having-to-die affect our living?• What does it mean to ‘fear death’?• Does my life cease to have meaning once I die?

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

• Ultimate ground - metaphysical (philosophical/theological) - Reality

• Ultimate concern – existential/value – ‘meaning’ - Experience

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

HOW FAR CAN SCIENCE TAKE US?

SCIENCE IS DESCRIPTIVE

“Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, ‘I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2.20am on January 15th and saw so-and-so, or, ‘I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so. Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more I believe he will agree with me that this is the job of science – and a very useful and necessary job it is too.

But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes – something of a different kind – this is not a scientific question. If there is ‘something behind’, then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and there statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make…

…Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, ‘Why is there a universe?’ and ‘Why does it go on as it does?’ and ‘Has it any meaning?’ would remain just as they were? (C S Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 1, Ch 4)

RICHARD DAWKINS

• SCIENCE IS THE ONLY MENU

• THERE IS NO ‘WHY’

Belief and the brain's 'God spot'

‘Scientists say they have located the parts of the brain that control religious faith. And the research proves, they contend, that belief in a higher power is an evolutionary asset that helps human survival’.

FOUND! THE GOD-SPOT

“A belief in God is deeply embedded in the human brain, which is programmed for religious experiences, according to a study that analyses why religion is a universal human feature that has encompassed all cultures throughout history. Scientists searching for the neural God spot, which is supposed to control religious belief, believe that there is not just one but several areas of the brain that form the biological foundations of religious belief”.

A ‘that’ is not a ‘why’

“A brain state can be matched to a belief in God, and researches have found that the brain can be stimulated to have religious experiences, according to a study that suggests that religion is a universal human feature that has encompassed all cultures throughout history.”

THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES…

‘When we have incomplete knowledge of the world around us, it offers us opportunities to believe in God. When we don’t have a scientific explanation for something, we tend to rely on supernatural explanations’.

Asking Ultimate questions – the distinctly and deeply human?

Individuals ask ultimate questionsThe State cannot

Humans ask ultimate questionsHumanity cannot

ULTIMATE QUESTIONS – THE EXISTENTIAL COMPONENT

1. Ontic self-affirmation – threatened in terms of fate and absolutely in terms of death

2. Spiritual self-affirmation – threatened in terms of emptiness and absolutely in terms of meaninglessness

3. Moral self-affirmation – threatened in terms of guilt and absolutely in terms of condemnation

• “The safety which is guaranteed by well-functioning mechanisms for the technical control of nature, by the refined psychological control of the person, …this safety is bought as a high price; man, for whom all this was invented as means, becomes a means himself”

(Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.138).

Humans ask ultimate questions. Things cannot.

A BRAVE NEW WORLD?

“We prefer to do things comfortably’, said the Controller.‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want goodness. I want freedom’.‘In fact’, said the Controller, ‘you’re claiming the right to be unhappy’.‘Alright then’, said the Savage defiantly. ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy’.

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent…the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”There was a long silence.“I claim them all”, said the Savage at last.“The Controller shrugged his shoulders. “You’re welcome”, he said. (Brave New World)

WHERE ARE WE HEADING?

“Are we not, with this tremendous objective of obliterating all the sharp edges of life, well on the way to turning mankind into sand? Sand! Small, soft, round, unending sand!” (Nietzsche, Daybreak 174)

Teaching Ultimate questions

• Engage their minds, hearts and spirits• Present them with examples of how these

questions have been thought about and answered (the core of our curriculum) which is really a way of presenting them with possibilities

• Confirm in everything you do and say the importance of these questions

• Live the questions ourselves• Know that your answer need not be their answer

- they are not you!

“There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their masters by copying the answers out of a book, without having worked out the sum for themselves”

(Kierkegaard Journals, Jan 17th, 1837)

An Ultimate Horizon?

“In post-modern culture we tend increasingly to inhabit virtual reality rather than actual reality. More and more time is spent in the shadowlands of the computer world. The computer world is all foreground but has no background. Much of modern life is lived in the territory of externality; if we succumb completely to the external we will lose all sense of inner and personal presence. We will become the ultimate harvesters of absence, namely, ghosts in our own lives”.

(John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes)

1927- 1989

 Think about it…On a tombstone, the hyphen between the birth date and the death date stands for the life that was lived. What would you like your ‘hyphen’ to stand for? What do you want your life to have been like? Why? 

How can the gods meet us face to face until we have faces?’

(C.S. Lewis, Till we have Faces)

“The real mystery of life is not a problem to solved, but a reality to be experienced’.

(J.J.Van der Leeuw)