If Stephen Fry's atheism is true, God cannot be evil

Stephen Fry's response to the question about what he would say if he came face to face with God has caused quite a stir. I suspect it's not just the content of Fry's response, but the visceral hatred it conveys; shocking to many because of Fry's better-known on-screen persona as a knowledgeable, congenial host of a myriad of highly watchable TV shows.

It's not the first time Fry has vented his feelings on the subject. Look up his reaction to Ann Widdecome's questions on the Ten Commandments. (PS I wonder if Fry's YouTube speech demolishing the Catholic Church in 8 minutes 53 seconds was recorded the same evening.) Less obvious are his persistent barbs towards anything God-like in the quiz series QI. (To be fair, many are justified, but the emerging picture is a one-way street.)

Unfortunately for Fry, and many atheists like him, his argument does not stack up. It rests more on emotive appeal, made the more forceful by Fry's undeniable wit, charm, intelligence and popularity, than on reason. I can't help but notice the irony, because it is the exact reflection of the criticisms levelled at Christianity by atheists only a few decades ago.

Allow me to explain, but to do so, I'm going to invoke Anselm, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of the Norman invasion of England in 1066. One of my reasons for raising Anselm's ghost is to demonstrate that these arguments are nothing new, but we quickly forget.

Anselm devised what he thought was an unbeatable argument for the existence of God. In a nutshell, he argued that God was the greatest conceivable being. That's a cursory summary that does the argument no justice, but most, if not all, philosophers have acknowledged the strength of Anselm's argument. Even so, we don't need to fully resolve it here. All we need, for the time-being, is the notion that God is the greatest conceivable being.

This is where Stephen Fry's objection shoots itself in the foot, and so do the same objections of most popular atheists, including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Professor Lawrence Krauss and the late Richard Hitchins. They cannot believe in God, they say, because He has acted immorally.

What these atheists have done is to judge God according to a particular moral standard and found Him wanting. It is incidental that their particular moral standard encompasses the Gay Rights agenda, and it might as well be some other issue that has gained popular currency. Whatever the higher moral standard that is applied, the God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is subjected to it. 

According to Anselm, the higher moral standard is greater than God. It follows, then, that God is not “God”; the higher moral standard is “God”. In other words, the higher moral standard is a God-pseudonym, and the “God” of the Judaeo-Christian tradition is demoted down the ranks. It's not an argument for a God-less cosmos, as atheism proper claims; it is actually an argument for a “God”. It's just not the “God” of the Judaeo-Christian tradition.

If we are to follow atheism proper, and jettison all beliefs in a purpose or direction for the universe, then we have no warrant to say that one thing is better than another. Even our sense of moral outrage is meaningless, because there are no morals that we could appeal to. In such a universe, we can justifiably say that we like this or that, or that some thing (God or religion) stops us getting what we want. But, we cannot justifiably say that that thing is “good” or “evil”, “right” or “wrong”. Even the argument against human suffering fails because there is nothing in the universe to say that human suffering is actually wrong; it's just inconvenient.

If there is no “evil”, then it is impossible to say that religion and/or God is “evil”. In other words, if atheism is true, God cannot be evil, even if He is fictional. By the same measure, atheism and the Gay Rights agenda cannot be good. It might be useful, it might even make the world a better place for people like Stephen Fry to live in. It is his prerogative to make the case, but that's not the same as claiming that it is “good” or “right”.

In an atheistic cosmos, then, Stephen Fry's outburst really does boil down to getting what he wants. There is nothing more to it than that. How can there be? Fry's appeals to morality only have substance in a theistic cosmos but, then, he would have to relinquish his avowed atheism. God gives us the warrant to make the kind of moral judgements that Fry has made. Without God, there is no morality to appeal to. Stephen Fry, and we, cannot have it both ways.

Scavenging

Unable to think,
out of habit,
I pick through the refuse of second-hand thoughts on social media.
Memes and expressions of outrage,
rag and bone,
tee shirt slogans
that beg to be picked up and waved
like tattered flags
rallying.

The week has left me tired.
Too much driving,
dodging the idiots
who think the safe gap between me and the car in front
is a vacuum they need to fill.

I groped my way home today.
The evening's conversation has safety gaps.

Incoming

You wonder why I don't react
When you point out the idiots who are
My brothers.

"Look at your brothers", you say
"Look at my brothers", my heart says.
"They are idiots", you say.
"They are idiots", my heart says.

I stand with them, ashamed.
They are my humanity.

The beanpole conundrum

Earlier today, I got pinged about what I referred to as the “abyss of popular atheism”. Here's a written response that, I hope, is better articulated than the verbal response that I fumbled through earlier.

Short version: Arguing for popular moralistic atheism is like arguing that your beanpole is more upright than my beanpole in a context where gravity does not exist. Where there is no gravity, there is no “up”, hence the abyss.

Much longer version: I can accept that some beanpoles are more upright than others. I can even accept that my beanpole might be heavily skewed and needs righting. However, I cannot accept your objection to the uprightness or otherwise of my beanpole in a context where gravity does not exist or is absent. If there is no gravity, the whole concept of uprightness is meaningless, and so the proposition that your beanpole is more upright than mine meaningless. In such a context, no beanpole can be more upright than any other beanpole, because there is no “up”.

It's a metaphor, of course, about what we choose to train our lives (bean-plants) on. What I'm trying to say is that the issue of the uprightness, or goodness of one beanpole or another (be it theism, atheism or whatever) only makes sense where gravity exists and is present. By gravity, I am referring to God, or at least a God-pseudonym. By God-pseudonym, I mean something along the lines of the ultimate truth or reality that sustains the cosmos in which we live, or perhaps the purpose and direction of life, the universe and everything.

My problem with popular atheism is that it often holds itself up as more upright than theism. You don't need to go far beyond the book titles from Richard Dawkins, Richard Hitchens, or the juvenile rants of I Love F******g Atheism to get that. This, to me, is utterly inconsistent with the intellectual constraints of atheism proper, but very few atheists seem to have thought it through to its logical conclusions. Or, if they have, they don't see a need to correct their colleagues.

These are not just my opinions. They are expressed by professors of philosophy who are far better informed than I, including Friedrich Nietsche on one side (if I understand him rightly) and the likes of William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga on the other. These guys are not intellectual lightweights, and it is irresponsible for popular atheism to gloss over them as if they had nothing relevant to say.

I'm not saying this because I dislike atheists. I genuinely cannot find a warrant for the moral superiority of anything in an atheistic cosmos. It's the problem of the uprightness of beanpoles where there is no gravity to point us “up”-ward.

Allow me to expand.

What I mean by meaning or morality is something fundamentally different to what I find significant or what I like. I accept that what I like is an expression of my genetic and sociological heritage. However, something that is good or right might well be something that I don't like – it doesn't necessarily map to the boundaries of my preferences and prejudices. So, my preferences and prejudices may need to be aligned to what is good and right, and you can name all manner of issues or scenarios in which this is true. I should align my beanpole to the true "up", not just whatever arbitrary direction your beanpole is pointing in.

Where it gets problematic is in what differentiates good from bad, up from down.

If atheism proper were true, then when we do good, we are only expressing our genetic and social heritage. The “only” part is important, because we cannot invoke a moral plane without crossing over into some kind of spirituality or theism, and that would annoy the hell out of Dawkins, Hitchens and I Love F******g Atheism.

However, it would also mean that when we do bad, we are only expressing our genetic and social heritage.

In other words, there is no difference, other than the differences that we perceive or project onto it.

But that doesn't solve it, because our perceptions are also only the expression of our genetic and social heritage. I like what I like because my genetic and social heritage tells me what I like, even if I get some degree of freedom in the matter (which is not as self-evident as you might suppose). The same goes for our our presuppositions, our prejudices and so on.

If this were the case, and atheism proper gives us no viable alternative, then there is nothing to commend one person's likes or dislikes over another's. We cannot say “you are wrong” because, in actuality, we just don't like what you are doing. Neither can we say “you are wrong” because what you're doing interferes with what we want or like. And, what we like broadens to encompass our self-survival which extends to the survival of our offspring. There's nothing to say that the survival of ourselves, or our offspring, is more morally justified than the survival of someone else and their offspring. In fact, we could even question the assumption that surviving and procreating is an inherently good thing. What I'm trying to say is that there is a very real problem in finding some kind of bedrock or warrant, apart from God, on which to build our moral edifices.

Its a confronting challenge, but who said that the ultimate reality of the situation would conform to our likes and preferences?

If we disabuse ourselves of sentimentality, we find with Nietsche that all objective morality collapses into the void, and we are left with nothing but the will to power. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that just as the moral universe collapses into the void, so the whole universe follows and we are left with nothing. We even find that our existence in the here and now is untenable.

You may counter by saying that that is not our experience. We know we are here. I could respond by saying that our experiences are nothing more than the delusions thrust upon us by our evolutionary heritage, and we actually know nothing at all, not even our own existence. That's what I mean by the abyss of atheism.

Or, I could respond by saying that as we are made in the image of our Creator, we have the capacity to perceive and reflect the ultimate reality that brought the cosmos into being. The difference between the two world-views is as profound as the difference between light and darkness.

Post-script: I sensed some resentment in the query I got earlier. If popular moralistic atheism makes someone happy, why not just leave them be? Why take such offence to it? Why not let sleeping dogs lie?

I think it's ironic that the shonky defences we theists used to put up against the challenges of atheism are now being put up against us.

Bad Sunday, good Sunday

Recently I was in a bad way emotionally. I've had a belly-full of being unemployed, suffering the humiliation of one job rejection after another, being unable to fulfil my hard-wired instincts to be a provider, and fighting off the thought that nobody wants what I have to offer. I was grumpy and depressed.

That same evening, my head had turned 180 degrees. None of my problems had gone away, and I knew I had to face them again the following morning. But, I had a different perspective and the feeling of hope. I actually enjoyed life. Morning-me was a crappy husband and father. Evening-me was a big improvement (still a long way to go, though). All this in the space of 12 hours.

So, what happened?

First, I got myself along to a Sails At Bayside event as a volunteer. It's a charity run under the auspices of the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane, and it provides sailing and life-skills experience to disadvantaged people and other groups. That Sunday morning, we were doing some kayaking with a church Sunday school group. When I turned up, I was just expecting to be another pair of hands to shift kayaks and stuff. However, we got to the point where everyone had got onto the water except for a mum with two young boys. She could take one, but needed someone else to take the other, who must have been about five years old. As I was available, I volunteered, so I sat him in the front and paddled from behind. He was terrified to start with, so we took it really slowly and easily. Slowly, he grew in confidence and started to enjoy it, especially as we paddled into the mangroves and talked about the trees that grew under the sea (it was high tide). We even paddled over the top of some of them, and dodged under the branches of others.

We then took a break, and I got talking to Helen, one of the older volunteers. She is a retired Maths Teacher- an intellectual and a Christian. She talked about recent studies that highlighted the damage our culture was doing to people - we tend to evaluate people by their extrinsic value (the value they have because of what they can give us) and, compared to more spiritually aware cultures, we are losing the ability to recognise intrinsic value (the value they have because of who they are). Call it the Consumer-Culture if you like, but it rules, and we let it. Yesterday, I had spent some time on a picnic with some blind people - some of whom also had learning difficulties - whom I knew from Church. These are people with little or no extrinsic value, yet they are of infinite worth because they have an indelible intrinsic value, and it's something we all share. It's something they need to hear, and I need to hear - we have value because we are made in the image of God (see Genesis 1:27) - all of us, including the people I don't necessarily like or admire or find useful. That's where we get our intrinsic value from - every one of us. If, as the secular forces in our culture would have us believe, we reduce ourselves to mere function (what we can offer), we lose the plot. Helen quoted Rene Descartes, who, when asked why as an intellectual, he still believed in God, replied that with God, there is hope, but without him, there is no hope. It's true. It's not a hope that things will miraculously turn out good by the wave of a magic wand, but that our lives have meaning and substance, even when things turn to crap. It's not saying that evil is good, but rather that our suffering, our ephemerality, our mortality has meaning, and it doesn't go unnoticed by a pitilessly indifferent cosmos (see what Richard Dawkins has to say on this - needless to say, I disagree).

After the break, my doughty five-year old came up to me and asked if we could go out on the kayak again. This is the same guy who was almost crying with fear when we first set out. How could I refuse! We had so much fun on the water together.

So, I have to thank the guys at Sails for their ministry (which is just a religious-sounding word for "service"). My five-year old kayaker got a boost, but I think I got the lion's share.

Then, I went church in the evening to play guitar with the music group. Again, we had fun, which even some of my badly misplaced chords could not stop.

Josh Dinale, our Rector, spoke about what it means to put down roots, based on the reflections of Psalm 1 - especially putting down roots into God. You could think of this as a loss of freedom because it means getting fixed in one place, and allowing yourself to become limited. However, it also means that you can grow, become established. It means you can become mature enough not just to withstand life's storms, but to be strong enough and big enough to offer shelter for others, should they want it. It means you can live a life of meaning and weight - true prosperity. Again, this is not meaning and weight that we have because of our extrinsic value (what we have to offer), but because of our intrinsic value - what we have because we bear the image of God (what we are). If you can sort out what you are, you can sort out what you can do.

Then, after the service, I got talking to a couple of people about the ministry and service they are offering to refugees - some of this is just being a friendly neighbour, or helping them understand English, or a rudimentary introduction to the practicalities of living in an unfamiliar country. Some of this is rock-climbing, or doing stuff that creates fun and friendships.

Now, I'm thinking I'd like to get my blind friends and refugees onto the kayaks and catamarans. I've got outside myself, and I prefer it outside. Yes, I'll get a buzz from it but, more importantly, they are worth it.

If you've read this far, thank you for following me as I unload.

That Sunday morning, I felt unwanted by the world. I realise that's harsh on the people who love me, and I apologise to them. However, there are far more people in this world who don't.

We live in a world that thinks God is either irrelevant, or that he is an evil imp that hides around corners ready to trip us up, or that he is an excuse to do bad stuff. That's not the God I believe in, and it hurts me when I get told by self-righteous atheist propaganda that it is. It's not the God my friends believe in. This isn't about God v Evolution (I'm OK with evolutionary processes, incidentally). Or, about feeling OK about the shit-ness of life because everybody's life is shit and they feel OK about it, too (an idiot's philosophy, undergirded by dogma, presumption and acquired tradition, but believed by millions). It's about whether life - my life, your life, the lives of those blind guys, the refugees, a scared 5 year old boy, an intellectual woman, the guys who can sing in church and the guys who can't - whether all these lives have value and meaning.

Yes they do.

Let's go exploring and find out what it is.

Confounded by God and the Trinity? Let the Song of Songs lead the way

I have read plenty of explanations and descriptions of God and the Trinity. It seems to me that many of them are unhelpful because they fail to address either the interactions between us, the world and God, or the different-ness of the Father from the Son from the Holy Spirit. It also seems to me that if we want to understand the meaning of the mystery of life, we need to bring all those concerns to the same place. I have a rudimentary instinct that the answer to all these concerns can be found in a Trinitarian perspective of God, but how do we even begin to understand it?

My suggestion, in this post, is to approach it from a new angle; this time through one of the most enigmatic books of the Bible – the Song of Songs (or Song of Solomon). This is not about presenting a commentary or an explanation of the book, but about using it to open up these confounding mysteries.

Firstly, what I suggest you do, if you're not already familiar with it, is to read through the Song of Songs in it's entirety. It's only eight chapters, and it won't take long. When you read it, keep in mind that it describes both an earthly scenario (the urgent, sexual tension between the two lovers, witnessed by their friends) and the heavenly reality that this scenario signifies.

Secondly, when you have read the Song of Songs, consider the following

• Do we see God in the origin, sustenance and validation of the scenario that the two lovers find themselves in? Yes, and in this we see something of God the Father
• Do we see God in the beloved prince; the one that the lover can tangibly and physically embrace and apprehend? Yes, and in this we see something of God the Son.
• Do we see God in the urgent, vibrant love that drips from the lovers' hands like myrrh, and fills their every breath with perfume? Yes, and in this we see something of God the Holy Spirit. 

In considering these questions, we might begin to understand the different-ness of God the Father from God the Son from God the Holy Spirit. The illustration does not allow us to think of them as three different “people”, because it is difficult to describe this kind of “Father” and this kind of “Holy Spirit” in the same way that we could describe the “Son”. Further, we would struggle to understand the three as different “faces” or “modes” of the same person. They are different, and an acknowledgement of their different-ness is fundamental to a basic understanding the Trinity.

Nor it is appropriate to think of them in terms of hierarchy. Which one of these three “persons” is in charge? Does the Son direct the Holy Spirit, or is he born along in it? (Incidentally, I generally dislike referring to the Holy Spirit as an “it”, but it's appropriate in this case.) The best we can say is that there is a reciprocation between the Son and the Holy Spirit. But, such a reciprocation can only occur if the Son is not the same “person” as the Holy Spirit. And yet, there are not three “gods”, but One (Deuteronomy 6:4 etc).

These meditations might seem somewhat theoretical and other-worldy, but I think they also open up the mystery of the relationships between us, the world and God. Thus, they become highly relevant and this-worldly.

It seems to me that the most popular understanding of God is that he is some kind of singular entity, closed in on himself, who occasionally invades and interferes with our existence (often to our detriment). Technically and historically, this is the Pythagorean view of God as a monad. By considering God as Trinity, we are presented, instead, with an open, reciprocal union that we are invited to join. The Trinity also provides us with the means to move from the negative descriptions of God to the positive; from descriptions like “closed”, “static”, “detached”, “uncreative”, to “open”, “dynamic”, “engaged”, “creative”. 

Most of all, as the Song of Songs describes, we see love, something that is only possible if the beloved is not the lover. In the Trinity, then, we find the fulfilment of our humanity and the essence of the God whose image we reflect (God is love, 1 John 4:8). That should be no surprise because, if Genesis 1:27 is right in saying that we are made in the image of God, it follows that we are made in the image of the Trinity.

Acknowledgement

I ought to acknowledge the inspiration for this blog, which came from my recent reading of the Song of Songs, and Boris Bobrinskoy's weighty theological tome The Mystery of the Trinity: Trinitarian Experience and Vision in the Biblical and Patristic Tradition. The following extract is Bobrinskoy's reflection on the Song of Songs;

… The Jews view the Song of Songs as the high point of Scripture. In the Introduction to his French Translation of the Song, André Chouraqui emphasises that, for the spiritual masters of Israel, it forms the crown of the Bible, its most necessary book. He quotes Rabbi Akiba as saying, “The world had neither value or meaning before the Song was given to Israel.” Likewise, the Zohar states

(In the song) is to be found that summary of the whole Torah, of the whole work of Creation, of the mystery of the Patriarchs, of the story of the Egyptian exile, and the Exodus therefrom, and of the Song of the Sea. It is the quintessence of the Decalogue, of the Sinaitic covenant, of the significance of Israel's wandering through the desert, until their arrival in the Promised Land and the building of the Temple. It contains the crowning of the Holy Name with love and joy, the prophecy of Israel's exile among the nations, of their redemption, of the resurrection of the dead and of all else until that Day which is 'Sabbath of the Lord.' All that was, and is, and shall be, is contained in it; and, indeed even that which will take place on the 'Seventh Day,' which will be the 'Lord's Sabbath,' is indicated in this song

Tradition tells us that when someone recites a verse from the Song as a profane verse, the Torah complains about it before the Holy One, as of a defilement. For the Kabbalists the Song is a synthesis of the mystery of oneness. It encompasses, at once, a cosmogony and and apocalypse.

The destiny of this theme from the Song, first in the Psalms and the prophets, and then in the New Testament is well known (see Eph 5).

Here, we should specify that the anthropological themes are not used to explain God according to psychological modes proper to us. They are not secondary, archaic, outdated metaphors. On the contrary, by donning works and feelings, God validates them, reveals their true ontology, manifests their infinite source and finality, describes man in his total natural reality, and attracts him to Himself through the alliance and the love in which God and man share the same feelings. The sentiment that best expresses the relation of God and man is that of sharing. In the Hellenistic vocabulary, faith (pistis) means only the faith man has in God. From a Semitic point of view, faith is reciprocal; God loves man first, and believes in him; and man finds the stability of his own faith in a reciprocal faithfulness. The same could be said of the benediction: God blesses, and we return His blessing to Him. It is always a matter of reciprocal knowledge, of a love that is shared.

This endeavour of sharing is, at the same time, unilateral, progressive and reciprocal. Unilateral, because God is first sovereign grace, hesed (mercy), creative paternal love, forgiveness. God has saved us, we who were in sin, and under His anger. These words are to be understood in the strong sense. God has loved us in our sin, like the adulterous wife whom the divine Bridegroom leads out into the desert to meet her once more. Unilateral, the grace of God comes like a refreshing dew, and appeasing breeze, a warming fire, a holiness that sanctifies, a glory that glorifies, a purity that purifies, a justice that justifies, a life that vivifies, a paternity that adopts, a maternity that gives birth and matures – and all this freely, without remuneration, just as a father behaves.

It is a progressive endeavour, because this grace is not poured into inert vessels; it transforms them gradually into itself, into light, fire, breath, it restores human progress.

Finally, it is a reciprocal endeavour, because this transformation of man into the divine life, this establishment of an ontological relation of man to God makes the fulfilment of the human being possible in a free, infinite reciprocity. Man – through the transformation, and not the abolishing of his humanity – becomes spirit, a breath of eternity. Here, the image of love is expressed in the multiple terms of a reciprocity of which the Song of Songs represents the culmination.

Arguing Folk

In defending theism, many theists have said some stupid things. I know. I've done it. I'll probably do it again, despite my best efforts.

Theism's noisiest opponents (Dawkins, Krauss, et al) frequently use this to attack any form of belief in God, or to defend their own belief in no God. It's what I call the Folk Argument. Does it work? My response is a qualified “no”.

Let me illustrate with an example. It seems to me that most people don't understand evolution, particularly when they say things like “I'm evolving into a better person”.

It's a hideous thing to say. If I were a proper atheist, I might even say it's blasphemous. Evolution does not make you (individual you, that is) into anything. What it does do is that if your children are better suited to the environment in which they find themselves, they are more likely to survive and produce more children with their genes. By the time any significant change has happened in the gene pool, you will be long dead.

Then, there's the whole problem of  “better”. What is "better"? Better suited to the environment? But that might mean a radical departure from the values that we hold dear. For instance, it might mean the removal of all inhibitions in killing your neighbour's children. That's a very unpleasant possibility that won't suit our current environment (for which I am very thankful). But, how do we know what possible future environments we might find ourselves in, and what makes these environments better or worse than ours? Why assume that what is “good” today will be “good” tomorrow? Are these future environments "better" because they suit us better? What an ironic inversion of evolutionary theory! 

I digress. My point is that though evolution is not making me (or anyone else) into a better person, many people believe it. It's a folk argument, but does it make evolution untrue? Of course, no.

(Incidentally, the only way you can argue that evolution or circumstance is making you into a better person is by believing that there is a purpose or meaning that has given rise to these processes and circumstances, and as soon as you do that, you assume that there is a God, or at least a God-pseudonym.)

Now, if we shouldn't use the folk-argument against evolution, we also shouldn't use it against theism. It's not an excuse to stop enquiry, but it does clear away much of the clutter. It's also wide-ranging in it's scope. It means that you cannot argue that belief in God is ridiculous because Mrs Smith believes that God always gives her a car-parking space whenever she goes to the shopping mall, and that's a ridiculous thing to believe. You also can't argue the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the junk-yard of gods (where all the gods go after their respective religions have died out).

In fact, the next time an angry atheist holds forth on the folk-argument, I will be strongly tempted to respond with a folk-argument of my own – that most atheists believe that their criticism of religion serves some sort of meaningful purpose. It doesn't – if proper atheism (as distinct from folk atheism) were true, nothing would have meaning or purpose, including the atheists' dislike of religion. Our perceptions of meaning and purpose would be mere delusions that have been thrust on us randomly by a pitiless and indifferent universe that, frankly, could not care less about what you think, believe or do. The reason I might hold back with this strategy is that I know it is a folk argument.

So, the folk-argument does not settle the issue. It's good rhetoric, but poor logic.

But it does present a dilemma, hence the qualification to my initial “no”. 

The dilemma is this – it's easy to dismiss Mrs Smith's God-of-the-car-park as wishful thinking, or affirmation-bias, pattern-reinforcement or whatever you'd like to call it. But Mrs Smith is not qualitatively different from anyone else in her perceptions, including the finest Oxbridge dons. If Mrs Smith cannot perceive reality, can anyone? I'd like to think that we (that means all of us, including the Mrs Smiths and the finest Oxbridge dons of the world) have the capacity to perceive the reality, even though that capacity is often flawed and is necessarily limited. If we didn't, all our enquiries and all our science are necessarily doomed from the start. We would not be able to perceive anything because our perceptions are irredeemably lost and broken.

To me, this means two things; one is that we can, and should continue to search, and the other is that the ultimate goal of that search is God. Heaven help us find Him.