Defiant faith

The artist Paul Gauguin was in despair when he painted his final masterpiece - a cry of bewilderment at the riddle of existence. He slashed three dramatic exclamations at the top left hand corner of the painting: 'Where do we come from - What are we - Where are going.' These are not so much a title as a signature, a testament to the quest that comes with our humanity.

When the first of these three big questions is asked innocently by a puzzled child or reflected upon in awe and amazement by parents at the birth of a baby, it is not a scientific but a religious/philosophical understanding that is being sought. It is a question about the ultimate source of our being.

The second question is of most immediate concern to us in everyday life. What are we meant to do with our life? It is an invitation to ethical and moral responsibility. How should we live? How should we relate to others and the world at large? The injunction is to 'know thyself and know thy world.' The urge is to discover what, if anything, is the purpose of our life and how to live in accordance with that purpose.

The final question has been asked from time immemorial whenever we are confronted by the recognition of our own mortality and the death of loved ones. What happens to our (and our loved one's) precious being after death? Is this temporal, finite existence all there is? Does life matter ultimately? Is it simply 'a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.'?

People tend to answer these questions along a very broad continuum of belief, depending on whether they are religious, agnostic, atheistic or nihilistic.

At one end of the continuum are the religious fundamentalists of all denominations. Typically, they have a certain belief in the existence of a real, external, omnipotent God who created the universe, who determined its physical laws and moral rules, and who has issued clear, final answers to each of these big questions which are to be interpreted by religious authorities and followed by the faithful.

Less dogmatic are those who also believe God's Word is true but who argue that discerning its truth requires caution and involves interpretation, which is ultimately a matter of individual judgment and conscience. They recognise a need to be more open to other interpretations as our knowledge of the world increases.

Somewhere near the middle are the agnostics. They have difficulty believing in this God because science convinces them that the traditional religious beliefs about the nature of our world cannot be true. They also recoil from the many abuses which have been perpetrated in the name of religion. They prefer to keep an open mind and/or make no personal commitment one way or another.

For some people the above analysis of faith as a matter of belief or disbelief in certain fixed religious concepts is not at all adequate to their experience. They are aware of something 'bigger' but find it hard to talk about. John Robinson gave voice to this in his liberating book Honest to God in the 1960s.

There are depths of revelation, intimations of eternity, judgments of the holy and the sacred, awareness of the unconditional, the numinous and the ecstatic which cannot be explained in purely naturalistic categories without being reduced to something else.

The question of God is the question whether this depth of being is a reality or an illusion, not whether a being exists beyond the bright blue sky or anywhere else. Belief in God is a matter of what you take seriously without any reservation, of what for you is ultimate reality.

With a changing cosmology, belief in a separate omnipotent being beyond the sky became impossible for many religious people. Radical theologian Paul Tillich, in Dynamics of Faith, emphasized the need to re-conceptualize God as 'Being itself'. God, for Tillich and many modern progressive religious people, is the name we give 'to this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being.' As Shakespeare recognised: 'To be, or not to be. That is the question!'

For people who think about Being in this way, the religious dimension of life is the experience of being attracted to and grasped by a power that continually transcends all human categories of knowledge and understanding.

Such a person believes the Universe rightly evokes a sense of wonder and awe. During heightened experiences, they sense the presence of some kind of greater power at work, beyond our limited comprehension.

It is this experience of 'the Numinous' that we are responding to when we look up into the night sky ablaze with stars. It is this sense of 'the Other' that we are most aware of when we hold our child at the moment of birth or the hand of a long-lived family member or friend as they die. It is this experience of 'Grace' that strikes us at those moments of profound forgiveness and reconciliation after deep hurt and estrangement.

Indeed, the mere presence of another person heralds something greater than the sum of all that person's parts. And a quiet moment's inner reflection on the infinite and inexhaustible depths within our own limited being points to the same conclusion.

At such precious moments, life is recognised intuitively as some kind of sacred mystery. It is a gift from above and beyond, the proper response to which is one of humility, reverence and gratitude.

Idealists believe it is this transcendental power which grounds all our best endeavours to contribute to the highest Good. For them, such things as Beauty, Truth and Justice are ideals worth aspiring to. They believe that what we most love and value in people, nature, ethics, morality, science, literature, art, music etc derives ultimately from this mysterious, inexplicable power.

The faith of the idealist is the affirmation that their deepest experience is valid and that the power they are attracted to is not an illusion but something real, notwithstanding that they cannot adequately account for it.

Many people live with the intimation that this temporal, finite existence which we inhabit is but one dimension of an eternal, infinite ultimate reality-a reality which some believe is grounded in the mystery of Love. Like the twin in the story, they place their trust in this: we come from God and to God we shall return.

Further along the continuum are those who, in a sense, come 'after' religion. They do not believe in the existence of a God out there. They do not regard the Scriptures as God-given revelation. But they do regard them as powerful historical narratives, which explain to us the nature of the human condition in all its glory and horror-like great works of art.

At the other end of the continuum are those people for whom religion is nonsense. For atheists, like Richard Dawkins, God is an illusion and religion needs to be consigned to the scrapheap. Its answers have become totally discredited by science. It is dangerously dysfunctional and antithetical to the moral good it once claimed to serve. The sooner we get rid of it the better.

For atheists, the big questions may still be worth trying to answer but religion has nothing to offer in response to them. While there is truth to be had, only science will lead us to it. They are quite certain that there is no 'mystery' that science cannot account for. There is nothing beyond this finite, material reality to encounter-they ridicule all religious or mystical experiences as fanciful.

At the tip of this continuum-or perhaps off the scale-are those people for whom these big questions have no meaning whatsoever in their lives. For nihilists nothing matters, so why bother about anything other than having a good time?

Just where we situate ourselves along this continuum of belief is more likely than not to depend on factors which are largely beyond our control-our temperament, our upbringing, the hand we have been dealt by Fate, our community of significant others etc. And it is clear that these positions are fluid: at different times, or at any one time, a person might occupy several positions. For example, Phillip Adams is a lifelong atheist, yet believes passionately in 'the Numinous' and is fond of asking questions about 'life after death'.

Consciously or subconsciously, we all live out some 'answers' to these questions in everything we do.

Most people live by some faith, though not necessarily 'religious' faith, as that term is generally understood. They concentrate on the second question and are content to leave the first and the third in the 'too hard basket'. Nearly everybody, whether overtly religious or not, believes that it is important to live a good life, to be kind to (at least some) others, to work towards the common good (at least some of the time) etc. It is enough to try to do Good, without worrying too much about God.

But even those committed to living a good life sometimes wonder: what if our faith in and commitment to such 'Goodness' is ultimately just as meaningless to the universe as belief in the traditional God?

The author and teacher CS Lewis recalls an encounter late in his life with an American doctoral student who asked him about his faith: 'What if it was proved to be wrong? What if there wasn't anything to which it corresponded?' And Lewis replied: 'Why then, you would have paid the universe a compliment it doesn't deserve! Your error, even so, would be more interesting and important than the reality. And yet, how could that be? How could an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?'

The person who best sums up this quest for me is Richard Holloway-an intelligent, generous spirited, religious person who has thought a lot about these big questions. His attitude is one of respectful engagement. He eschews dogmatism and certainty. He pleads for 'a bit more modesty in the way we debate these issues, a bit more magnanimity towards the people with whom we disagree.'

I am reminded of the moving plea by scientist Jacob Bronowski, quoted in my earlier article In Search of Wisdom:

There is no absolute knowledge and those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. That is the human condition…

It is possible to disagree strongly with people's religious beliefs without being disrespectful-something we would all do well to reflect upon before commenting.

At the 2009 Sydney Writers' Festival, Richard Holloway traced his own personal history of engagement with these big questions, which had haunted him, as they had Gauguin, since childhood.

Holloway, a former Anglican Bishop of Edinburgh, started from a position of strong religious faith, went through a dark night of the soul and came out an agnostic/atheist. He finally arrived at this last ditch of faith: faith as passionate defiance.

If it is only abyss-if we come from the abyss, if we go to the abyss, if the abyss is all we have- then let us so live that we will put meaning into that abyss … I like the idea of living as though the universe did mean something. And if it doesn't, we'll show it that we are better than it!

He finds inspiration in this, his favourite, quote from existentialist philosopher Castilian Miguel de Unamuno:

Man is perishing- that may be. But if it is nothingness that awaits us, then let us so live that it will be an unjust fate!

There is something great and indomitable about the human spirit, whether it is expressed through noble defiance or quiet humility and reverence.

But does living by such faith have any ultimate meaning or value beyond this finite existence?

Goodness knows!