Is this all there is?

As my first post I want to get to the very heart of the matter. Most of my quotes will come from a speech given by Hugh Nibley entitled “The Terrible Questions” which can be found in print in vol. 12 of the collected works of Hugh Nibley, Temples and the Cosmos. He, of course, addresses this subject more eloquently and far deeper than myself. I previously addressed this same topic in a letter I wrote in response to an atheist some time ago which I will post as well. I’ll start with a quote from Mr. Nibley:

“There is only one question, the sole question for religion, the only reason for religion existing at all. Religion alone is supposed to answer it, and if religion can’t then religion can’t do anything–let us forget religion….There is only one justification for religion, one sole question, so let us not talk about the endless, abstract problems (for example, the nature of God). In the hereafter, what difference will these questions make? The real question, of course, is, Is this all there is? That is what everyone wants to know, the only question that bothers us. If you answer that definitely, then our troubles are over; there is nothing left to worry about…..Who cares about how politics turns out? Or the economy? Or even the military threat? We’re going to die anyway; what difference do any of these things make?…if we exist only to drop into a sea of Nirvana, a sea of nothing–if we are to vanish entirely, we don’t care whether there is one god or thousands; whether he’s fierce and ferocious, or kind and loving. It makes no difference to you at all; you won’t be there. You won’t be anything.”

I think all inquiry about religion and God begins with the bookend reality of life, that miracle of vitality, diversity, complexity, expansive minds, individual personalities, and death, the seeming end-all, a cold, dark and unknown disappearance of that life.

I get the sense from some that focusing on death is some sort of sadistic, death-cult obsession but I argue it is the most poignant question in our existence. I think that in our society in the West, with our improvements in healthcare and our isolation of the sick and elderly in the corners of society, that the reality of death is not constantly before us and so we are not faced as frequently or poignantly with this tough question. In its absence we get comfortable in our daily living, assuming all is well, that Western innovation and technology can conquer all, and we simply don’t ask the tough questions.

Compare this to the communities I was living with in Cambodia and rural Ghana where many children die before their fifth birthday, where mothers routinely die in childbirth, where the threat of death is ever present in the form of malaria or AIDS or a host of diseases that we rarely see in the West. In such cultures we find the people extremely devote to their deceased, we see those tough questions at the forefront of their existence and so we find grand funeral rites and pious ancestor worship, searching for something to address this ultimate question.

So you have the religious. On the opposite end you have the scientists who tell us we “should grow up, become mature and adult, leave off these religious superstitions and be willing to face reality, the truth…the cold scientific facts”. But science has no answer to the question, their answer is despair. A thought provoking passage from C.P. Snow which Nibley quotes. (C.P. Snow was a novelist at Cambridge in the 1930′s who was rubbing shoulders with the great scientific heroes of our age):

“The tone of science at Cambridge in 1932 was the tone of Rutherford. Magniloquently boastful, creatively confident, generous, argumentative and full of hope. Science and rutherford were on top of the world. Worldly success–he loved every minute of it: flattery, titles, the company of the high official world. He was superbly and magnificently vain as well as wise, and he enjoyed his own personality. He enjoyed a life of miraculous success. But I am sure that even late in life he felt stabs of sickening insecurity…Does anyone really believe that Bertrand Russell, G.H. Hardy [the great mathmatition], Rutherford, Blackett, and the rest were bemused by cheerfulness as they faced their own individuval state? In the crowd they were leaders; they were worshipped. But by themselves, they believed with the same certainty that they believed in Rutherford’s atom that they were going after this life into annihilation. Against this, they had only to offer the nature of scientific activity, its complete success on its own terms. In itself it was a source of happiness. But it is whistling in the dark when they are alone.”

The despair is not immediate, in fact such scientists seem quite elated to receive their awards, but when it boils down to it, the answer of science is that life is utterly meaningless, life is an statistical anomaly. Truman Madsen used the analogy of a soap bubble: you rub your soapy hands together and blow, there is a exciting wonderful creation that glimmers in the light and then…pops into oblivion. All the aspects of personality and love are simply chemical reactions in a mechanical brain. In my experience, it simply doesn’t ring true.

And so my challenge with this post is for one to drive out away from the city and spend some time looking at the stars, thinking about the vastness of the universe or visit a cemetery and try to imagine each individual with a long history, a family, a personality and then ponder the questions of ‘is there all there is?” “what is it all for?” “why?”