Knowledge and truth - it's a Catch-22

There is a believable twist on this otherwise absurd scenario.

For a thousand generations the West has presumed its purpose is to solve the big issues. Does God exist? What is truth, love, virtue?

But what if this is misguided? What if human redemption is somehow tied to the more modest, wickedly subtle question of why it is we cannot answer such questions? What if our magnificent responsibility involves appreciating we cannot define existence or the self?

Though this mind-blowing proposition can’t be verified, its self-evident character can be coloured and shaped somewhat by painting a picture of what happens when we defy reality and systematically strive for what can’t be fully conceived.

The anguish and frustration, the blood, sweat and tears, of millennia of religious, imperialist, democratic and now scientific over-reaching, sustained by a misplaced optimism in reason, is that vast work of art. There are no literal answers, only a painful appreciation of our ignorance embodied in the meta-narrative that is our collective past.

Or, as Hitchens writes: “It is not so much that there are ironies of history, it is that history itself is ironic.”

To appreciate such, our consciousness must first let go of reason, as intellectual dogma and irony cannot co-exist.

This is where religion fails. Since the truth is intrinsically free and beyond identity and rules, exclusive doctrine will always sum, in the end, to a hapless paternalism.

Let’s say Jesus walked on water and rose again. For such events to have lasting value, for them to be authentic and heart-felt, they must be rendered intellectually meaningless. Revelation is simply a reminder that divine truth is “like catching water in a net”, as Christian writer Val Webb puts it. It is ultimately vain and foolhardy, akin to believing marriage vows or a wedding ceremony can engender love, to testify an orthodoxy built upon the transcendental is sufficient or infallible.

Hitchens and his allies won’t enlighten religious types if they themselves are defined by a similar unenlightened, self-important need to know.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins recalls (his emphasis) an encounter where certain “theologians were defining themselves into an epistemological Safe Zone where rational argument could not reach them because they had declared by fiat that it could not”.

Regardless of whether his colleagues were using divine ineffability as a shield for their existential fear and doubt, it’s irrational to employ aggressive reasoning against those deluded and dispirited by unchecked rationalism. The black-and-whiteness sees Dawkins practicing the very fundamentalism he wants others to be free of. The British biologist needs to land a winning bet just as much as the confused theist.

Hitchens is right to allege religion poisons everything and could well bring civilisation undone. The big historical picture now crafted, claims and counter-claims to the truth are no longer progressive. It’s up to each individual to take the final step themselves; to be righteous, not argue about it or demand others be corrected. The end of history marks a divine milestone for humanity: acknowledge the truth cannot be controlled or expressed as a formula for salvation, or perish in the resulting conflict.

Despite his professed affinity for irony, Hitchens’ deeply wounded psyche refuses to completely surrender the teleological. The secret hope of a definitive solution obscures the final dots to be joined between the emancipating implications of Hitch-22 and his own personal ideology-fuelled, learn-from-being-wrong odyssey. Frustrated more than humbled, he bears the contradiction of retaining one last hopeless cause, atheism.

Ambitiously defiant, Hitchens presses on blindly, eager to solve the enigma wrapped within the mystery, hoping one day to understand why history is ironic, why life will forever remain unknowable.