42 a poor alternative to Jesus

A race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings, fed up with the bickering, ask their super computer to determine the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything. Seven-and-half million years later, Deep Thought comes up with "42".

The 2012 Atheist Convention is finished, the sum total of its wisdom adding a few more days to the futile quest. Doubtless, numerous unengaged monologues, animated by bitterness and fear more than dispassionate reason, were delivered, yet still no news reports of a final answer for humanity. Perhaps Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and attendants would have been better served sitting down together to watch the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Slartibartfast: Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I think that the chances of finding out what's actually going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say, "Hang the sense of it," and keep yourself busy. I'd much rather be happy than right any day.

Arthur: And are you?

Slartibartfast: Ah, no.

He laughs, snorts.

Slartibartfast: Well, that's where it all falls down, of course.

Douglas Adams, who died four years before the film's release, was a staunch atheist. His fiction sought to undermine smug religious certainties by logically demonstrating that anything and everything is literally possible. That conviction of yours, well, no one, in truth, can be certain Jesus was the son of God, sent to redeem Humankind. Even if there was an historical Christ, it may still be a trick instigated by a bunch of very smart, intergalactic mice with a bigger yet unknown agenda.

Faced with innate uncertainty, the best option, should humanity have any chance of every grasping its cosmic purpose, is to subject all assertions to the levelling blade of reason.

In history, even though the understanding of events, of cause and effect, is a matter of interpretation, and even though interpretation is in many ways a matter of opinion, nevertheless those opinions and interpretations are honed to within an inch of their lives in the withering crossfire of argument and counterargument, and those that are still standing are then subjected to a whole new round of challenges of fact and logic from the next generation of historians – and so on.

All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.

Though fair enough, Adams, like most others, does not fully work through the paradoxical implications of this admirable worldview.

While Charles Darwin's scientific formulations on how you and I got here may be more compelling than the Biblical creation myth, faith in biological evolution is, from an intellectual standpoint, less than absolute. Just as there are missing links in the fossil record, the theory of natural selection, like all theories, is made whole by applying personal judgment. Moreover, for this process to succeed, it must be open and organic, as any coercion or forcing of the argument would imply human understanding is mechanical and formulaic.

"Explaining is a difficult art," wrote Dawkins in his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker.

"You can explain something so that your reader understands the words, and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones."

Ironically, this insight is exactly why atheists so despise organized religion. The locus of truth concerning God or anything else of importance, lies deep within each of us, an infinite distance from words, facts and figures. Bible-bashing is a closed and counter-productive strategy, since literalism prevents a sensing of the answer in one's bones.

The flip-side, of course, is that partisan treatment of religious supposition in the public square and school system – Darwin is taught exclusively because only science provides Answers – and atheistic counter-proselytizing – you stupid idiot, there is no God – is, in the end, profoundly prejudicial to the stated objective of human enlightenment.

Reason, you see, cuts both ways. Point out that Christian doctrine is conjectural, and you must also concede it would be contradictory to then expect another to relinquish their belief in the virgin birth or resurrection. Not all opinions are equal does not mean the best or most logical amounts to an objective, this-is-right-everyone-else-is-wrong truth. While OK to inform Tom Cruise, after beating various arguments to within an inch of their lives, that Scientology is a load of bullshit, it's another thing altogether to accuse him of being irrational should he continue to accept that eons ago a galactic warlord called Xenu brought aliens to our planet, placed them in volcanoes and then vaporized them with bombs, causing their souls (aka thetans) to disperse and attach to us humans.

An increasingly intolerant secular society and its militant splinter groups are so disillusioned at the unanswered question of Life, the Universe and Everything, so self-absorbed in conflict and the busyness of modernity, they miss a subtle explanation for the presumed wholesale ignorance.

What if religious extremists are merely servicing the ethereal truth about the truth, reminding us of the limits of reason and the fact that closing the gap between opinion and truth is an individual responsibility based on what ultimately feels right? Perhaps creationists cling to their absurd views despite all the evidence because they intuitively know that the annoyed, artless zealots calling them daft, the clever sophisticates promising to lead humanity to a better place using reason alone, clearly lack a coherent understanding of reality?

Human consciousness will never be completely explained in terms of neuro-science, while arguments regarding the non-existence of God are straw men designed to distract from the unsettling realization that 42, the best secular answer on offer, is a rather lame alternative to the hope and glory of Jesus Christ.

Want reason to reign? Want pointless hostilities to cease and for people to feel the truth within? Then admit reason is at its best when we acknowledge it's ultimately useless.