5: Community

This is the final chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into human longing. The earlier chapters can be viewed here:

1: Perception & Reality
2: Human Desire
3: The Nature of Truth
4: Morality

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Morality is truly our path to lasting joy, through the good we do toward one another. Through the principles of community we see that by doing good for others, by extension, we are doing good for ourselves. Yet we do not always take seriously just how important the good of our community is to each one of us.

The community of the human race, as we have seen, is the primary thing that validates our own reality. Without the interaction of others, we lose a grasp on ourselves. We truly need one another on a very basic level. Humanity has a great fear of being alone. Other than death, this may be our greatest fear, and indeed, much of our fear of death is connected to the fear of loneliness. Since the beginning of our history we have sought one another in community.

Companionship has been vital to the survival of our race. From the intimate (marriage, family) to the local (clan, tribe, or in modern times, co-workers and groups of friends) to the national and finally global levels, we rely on one another for success, and we expect others to behave in predictable ways. Part of this network comes from our acceptance of moral law. The reality is that we need one another. Our lives are intertwined in a fantastic and beautiful framework. Think of how we count on the work that others do, even as they count on our own work. The community of our groups and cities and globe work so smoothly that we take it for granted. But if one chain is broken, chaos ensues, leading to strikes, riots, famine, and war.

From this perspective, our work—our participation in the community of our world, is perhaps our most basic act of love. By providing our talents to the community, we give a gift, and accept the gift of another. It is a simple exchange of love. On a personal level, companionship is one of our greatest comforts, and the loss of it is a dreadful fear. We value our families and friends, even our mere acquaintances so much and greatly bemoan their loss. If other people are this important to us, then it must be recognized that the good of the community equates directly to our own good. We recognized earlier that love is the greatest of all human desires. Ironically, it is one desire which we cannot possibly achieve on our own. Love necessitates another. And only by giving love do we begin to receive love. Thus, the ability to give, the inclination toward unselfishness is the only way to come into possession of our greatest desire.

Because of our great dependence on love, we are necessarily a community people. Community provides both accountability and the opportunity to love. My acts of love benefit the community, and the community has tremendous power to refresh and renew me. This is true at every level of relationship, from the intimate to the global. With a spouse or lover, love is never complete until both parties give equally of themselves to the other. In the offering of oneself, love can be fulfilled. In friendship, nobody will put up with a friend only interested in himself. One must offer friendship before it can be reciprocated. In the community, this trade takes the form of compassion. We are all in the community of humanity together. If one person suffers, the rest must recognize that fact with compassion. In many cases, the suffering of the unfortunate can be directly traced to the selfishness of the fortunate. In our compassion and in our charity, we should recognize that we could just as easily be on the other side of the relationship. There is a thin line between those who need charity and those who give it. And the forces that may hold us in the more prosperous place are extremely fickle.

If we resent giving charity now, when we are able, who will be there to help us when we are thrown into poverty or despair? Compassion and charity are two way streets, even though our place may often seem to be only on one side or the other. Our whole lives may be spent on only one side of the street, but we never know. Things can change quickly. If we have lived selfishly, who will have sympathy for us in our need? If we do not give charity when we are able, who will give us alms when we are compelled to beg?

In every sense, love must be given if it is to be received. With individuals, our love is reciprocated with companionship and comfort. In the larger community, love is displayed through charity and compassion.

If our longing is fulfilled by giving love, then equally important is being able to open ourselves up to receive the love of others. Our pride often makes us reluctant to accept the very love which we know will satisfy our longing. If we are not able to accept love when it is given to us, we are doing all the work without claiming the reward. Learning to accept charity, generosity, and love can be hard, but the reward is wonderful. In no other way can we come closer to fulfilling our transcendental desires here on earth. In no other way can we fully experience the beauty which we seek so fiercely, than in love. Love is communion— it cannot be experienced alone. It exists between friends, lovers, or even strangers who treat each other with goodness and charity. Love is void without another to share it.

An example of the necessary give and take of charity was when Jesus washed the feet of his friends. In the culture of that time, a teacher would never have done this for his disciples. Peter’s response of “Lord, you will never wash my feet!” is what we would expect them all to say. This would have really been quite a scandal. But Jesus did this for two specific reasons: first, to show them that to be great in love, one must offer loving service to others. Secondly, as he told Peter, you must be able to accept the love which is offered to you. “You call me Teacher and Lord,” he told them, “and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” (John 13: 13-15) Nor was even Judas, his betrayer, excluded from the love of foot-washing. If Jesus could do such a service for the one whom he knew would betray him to his death, should we not also be able to do such a service for one another? Community is truly the give and take—the two way street—of love, generosity and charity.

What does religion mean in the context of community? Religion offers us a community of people, sharing love, and holding one another accountable as they strive to follow a shared morality. Religion recognizes how the morality we discussed in the previous chapter benefit both the individual and the whole. Without the structure of religion, and the support of the community, it is easy for one to lose track of the moral code which this group has recognized as the method of achieving our transcendental desires. Accountability and community are the fundamental reasons for the importance of religion. It may be possible to follow the path of love and charity, and to point ourselves toward our divine aspirations without religion, but it is far more difficult.

Through the shared principles of morality within religion–and the greatest of all morals is love— religion has become a vessel of charity in the world. The very first Christian writer, St. Paul, identified charity as one of the pre-eminent tasks of the church as an institution. “As you excel in everything,” he told the Corinthians, “so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.” He commends the Macedonian church for “voluntarily giving according to their means, and even beyond their means.” (II Corin. 8:3,7). The church of the immediately succeeding centuries well understood the place of charitable works in the very validity of the church. During the persecution in the Third Century of Christians in Rome, Deacon Lawrence was ordered to hand over all the treasure of the church to the authorities. Lawrence distributed all the church’s funds to the poor and then presented the poor themselves as the real treasure of the church. (St. Ambrose: De officiis ministrorum. II, 28, 140)

In the first days of Christianity, charity was fundamental to life as a follower of Jesus. We are told that they lived for awhile in an ideal community, for “there was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:34-35). Christianity has not changed so much since that time. Our community is larger, but we are still compelled to live with love and charity toward those who share this name. As the centuries have unfolded, organized charity has become one of the fundamental works of a church body. Thus did the Catholic Church establish the first hospitals and the first orphanages in the world. And today it takes a leading role in disaster relief, and the effort to ease hunger in the world.

Pope Benedict XVI, in Part II of his encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, gives strong and challenging support to those working in charitable organizations under the name of the Church, following the first example of the apostles, that “all who believed were together and had all things in common.” (Acts 2:44). By these words it is inconceivable to selfishly hold back charity from those in our community. His predecessor, Pope John Paul II makes a clear distinction between the work carried out by the community as a whole (charitable organizations), which involves “larger tasks, requiring cooperation and the use of technical means, [and] no less valuable–individual activity, especially by people who are better prepared for it in regard to the various kinds of human suffering which can only be alleviated in an individual or personal way.” (Salvifici Doloris, VII, 29). While a community (the church) has an intrinsic role in, to use John Paul’s definition, “the work of human solidarity,” we must each be equally prepared to give our love at a moment’s notice when it is called for, in the same way that we would hope for others to give it in our own time of need.

Love is the greatest desire of our hearts. Every person with whom we share the human condition is a potential vessel of love. We can unlock this love through a vigilance of compassion, readying ourselves for charity whenever and wherever the need arises.

But although love is our greatest human desire, a blessing we value even more than life itself, our search for it so often leaves us empty. Even if we are diligent in the love we give, vigilant in compassion, and generous with the charity we offer to those in need, we may not be reciprocated the love we desire. Without a hope for a life beyond, even these virtues can lead us to despair. But by believing in a God who created us out of love, we hope that our death will bring us into a perfect experience of love, and a perfect community which we will share with all the saints.

Yet even on earth, where the reward of virtue is unfairly skewed, love, charity and compassion are the closest answers we will find to achieving our transcendental desire. There truly is no substitute for the comfort and companionship of human love, and the camaraderie of a caring community. No other of our dreams and ambitions find satisfaction in as tangible a way as love. Without love, religion is vain. Without love, life is vain.

IN CONCLUSION

To conclude the present inquiry, we have seen that whether speaking in science or philosophy, we must continually remember that ultimately our discussion must relate to what is real. We know what is real through our perceptions and our interactions with those who share in the community of humanity. Through this knowledge, and through the scientific principles of evolution and physical symmetry, we can be sure that our transcendental desires such as hope and love, may also be treated as real. Thus it is not foolish to have a hope for something greater than our present experience.

We have looked at the relationship between faith and truth, understanding that the two must embrace one another, whether in religion, philosophy or science. Indeed, the present distancing of the three fields named is the work of recent times, and ideally, the three must be linked if any is to succeed. Faith is to truth what theory is to experiment. Our faithful search for truth leads us to believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, whether or not we will find it in this life, and this knowledge leads us to believe in a moral law.

The efforts we have made to experience pleasure and beauty have left us unfulfilled. By breaking the morality we so often despise, we end up more despairing than before. Only by practicing morality, and entering into the communion of love, do we find satiation for our desire.

Whether morality is given only by religion, or is learned through culture and our observance of the long term good of the community, it cannot be argued that morality is good for humanity as a whole. And this necessitates our respect for community. On all levels of relationship, from the intimate to the global, the community of other human beings is vital to our success, and the closest we may come to achieving our transcendental desires in this life. Through love we see that the only way to gain our greatest desire, is first to give. This may be considered morality at its most basic level. The reciprocation of love is our closest experience to heaven on earth. Yet even human love so often disappoints, leading us to sorrow and despair. Thus, we are promised that our love will be reciprocated, that the life beyond holds a greater promise of love than we can possibly imagine. The answer to all our transcendental desires waits in the loving embrace of God.

4: Morality

This is the fourth of five chapters in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into human longing.

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Our reflection now forces us to ask, if there is such a thing as truth, then is there a moral absolute? In today’s world, morality is often viewed as something promulgated by religion, and thus its concept, in word at least, is written off in favor of what is perceived as freedom. Yet only the utterly lawless and perverse actually dispense morality from their lives. Even void of religion, morality’s value to a social structure and good personal health is valued.

For this reason, as humanism spread through the western world, many feared what the reduction of religion would lead to. Voltaire, even after rejecting religion for himself, continued to encourage Christianity amongst his servants, fearing lest the loss of Christian morals would diminish their respect for his authority. Clearly, even Voltaire understood that humanism is intrinsically selfish, while Christianity, and by connection—religious morals, are intrinsically unselfish. It was well enough for Voltaire to believe in a selfish creed, but he recognized that social structure would not allow everyone to live selfishly.

In modern times, some scientists who have themselves rejected religion, admit fearing the results if the full extent of their teachings—that being the non-existence of God and by extension, all religious truth—is accepted by the masses. In a conversation recorded by Werner Heisenberg, he quotes another esteemed young physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who fears lest “Western culture come to the point at which the parables and images that religion has used up to now are no longer convincing, even for simple folk; and then, I fear, traditional morality will also very rapidly break down, and things will happen that are more frightful than anything we can yet imagine.” (Heisenberg: Physics & Beyond: Encounters & Conversations. 1969, p. 295). The fallacy shared by Voltaire and Pauli is that they advocate a different truth for the learned than for the masses. By such an admission something is necessarily lacking in the truth they profess. The Christian view of the world, by contrast, presents a truth valid for all walks of life, all social stations, and all levels of intellect.

An alternate view of morality would be that it is antecedent to religion: that religion developed in history as a method of containing the morality, the innate sense of right and wrong, which humanity has ingrained in the depths of our very being. By this view, even if we were to disband all religion, there would still be a sense of right and wrong within each of our hearts, preventing society from spiraling into chaos. This would no doubt prove comforting to Wolfgang Pauli.

Interestingly, this is not far off from what Judaism and Christianity profess. Religion, if you will, did not come into the world until the time of Abraham, yet God ingrained right and wrong into the first man and woman, and long before Abraham’s time deemed it necessary to punish those who strayed from it. And so we can all agree that religion did indeed come into the world as a tool for containing morality. The only difference is that the atheist believes it was done to regulate social behavior, while the religious believe it was handed down by God.

C. S. Lewis uses the ingrained moral sense as his primary argument for the truth of religion. The law of human nature, he rightly claims, appeals to an understood sense that it is right to do good to others, and wrong to do them harm—to put it even simpler, unselfishness is better than selfishness. (Mere Christianity, chap 1, 1943). This ingrained sense, argues Lewis, is proof of God’s hand in the makeup of every human being. Though this argument is intriguing, on its own it comes up short, for the unselfishness of doing what is right rather than wrong is vital for any functioning society. Anybody in a position of authority, whether a king, or even Voltaire with his servants, would have the motivation to promote this “law of human nature” as the just social order. When this order breaks down, so does society. In primitive social structures, morality could even have existed simply as a tool of survival, where humans knew their success depended on cultivating the companionship and respect of others. Thus it would be beneficial to do good to others, so as to gain the protection of the group in time of trial. As such, morality can be seen as much to be a learned law as an ingrained natural sense.

If the sense of right and wrong were a true law of nature, we would see its evidence in the smallest of children, but this is not the case. Indeed, a baby, though we do not blame it, is by nature the most selfish of creatures. It cries and scolds for what it wants and becomes indignant when it does not get its way. Even as it begins to grow, the child learns its first morality by desiring to avoid punishment. Only over the years do they learn to live by a principal of unselfishness for its own sake. If the child grew to adulthood completely uninfluenced by society and religion, would an unselfish morality ever be learned? By God’s mercy we may hope it would, but by the evidence of our observation, we cannot be sure that an unselfish nature would necessarily prevail. Previously I argued that the transcendental longing within us, that which strives for love, and an answer beyond this life, is ingrained within our makeup, thus necessitating its being treated as real. Though a sense of right and wrong often leads one in this same direction, it is more difficult to argue that it is written into our very makeup in the same way, based on our observation of children. Even children who know not right from wrong have a fantastic and transcendental imagination.

Even in society, where morality benefits the group as a whole, this law is not necessarily intuitive. The human will is naturally more disposed toward selfishness, seeking comfort and pleasure at the expense of others. The Bible gives us several examples of early humanity’s failure to incorporate morality. Before sending the flood, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil.” (Genesis 5:5) Later on, when he looked at the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, The Lord said “How very grave is their sin!” (Genesis 18:20) To Abraham, God gave religion, and from him it spread through the world, because God saw how humanity tended away from moral law without the structure of religion. So although, even free from religion, we can see how morality benefits society, history’s example shows that we are still more inclined toward selfishness unless a moral law is given. Religion provides this law.

Whether morality is an ingrained sense, a learned law, or a tool of survival, its value would be foolish to argue. However we believe it came into humanity, and whatever it might tell us about God, the simpler reality is that over time, doing good will have a better result for the individual and the society than doing ill. Even the most selfishly oriented individual, if wise with foresight, can see that some unselfishness must be incorporated in his actions if he is ever to achieve his selfish goals. If an individual never exercises right toward his fellows, his subsequent isolation will torture all his selfish intent.

Modern society values freedom more than anything else. Morality is often seen as an obstruction to freedom, religion as an enemy of pleasure. But truly what religion is attempting to convey is that morality, while restricting some freedoms in the short term, prevents one from becoming a slave to pleasure later on. Further, the individual freedoms, and individual quests for pleasure that we have come to value, has caused much of the pain and chaos of the world. Truly, we cannot all achieve a complete and equal freedom. If I wish to be free from work, yet still live in society, another person will necessarily need to work harder. If I wish always to be free from hunger, another person will be hungry. Morality is a code of action designed to put the good of others ahead of the good of ourselves. Thus, morality is not a concept which can be discussed in an individual vacuum, but requires others besides ourselves to make it complete. Morality deals with a community, and our knowledge that the good of the community is by extension the good of ourselves. To steal is good for me, but bad for the community. I avoid the immoral act of theft because I know that the break-down in social order and trust, resulting from my action will be a net negative on me as well. Similarly, my laziness forces another to work harder, and my greed takes double the blessing I need rather than sharing with one who has none. These actions are detrimental to the community as a whole.

We must always keep in mind as we seek a life of freedom and pleasure, that there are those whose freedom and pleasure is restricted. More often than not, it is the selfishness that hoards all the good we can for ourselves, and are loath to share it with those who have less, which places this restriction upon the blessings of others. There is so much good in our world, so much to give pleasure in full to everyone, but by those who are able hoarding it from those who cannot gain it, either through power and might, or simply by selfishness, we pervert the good of the world. Freedom and pleasure can become an addiction to us, where the more we have, the more we desire, never gaining contentment, and only further isolating those who have not from those who have.

We have come into a culture that attempts to move on from morality by claiming that freedom is the greatest value to be achieved. People now behave in depraved and abominable ways, justifying it by claiming it is their “right” and their “freedom” to do whatever gives them pleasure. In primitive and oppressive societies the strong have freedom and the weak have none. Yet modern culture has created, on a smaller scale, the same dichotomy. Unless freedom is enjoined with other principals, it becomes meaningless, and what the capable call freedom, the weak call oppression.

Morality is often looked upon as a restriction, but that is to miss its essence. Truly, morality is a guide to greater freedom, greater enjoyment of life, and greater love. Immoral deeds, those things which go against our understood natural moral law, may bring pleasure in the short term, but leave us sadly unfulfilled after the deed is done. Think how the pleasure of food, when leading to the immoral behavior of gluttony, brings far more displeasure through loss of health and energy than the pleasure of the taste brought in the beginning. Or think of how immoral sexual acts complicate our lives and relationships, and can also prove detrimental to our health in ways which sex housed in pure and moral love do not. Momentary experiences of pleasure so often lead to despair in the consequences.

God did not give us moral law to test us, but because he loves us and knows with his perfect foresight, how much happier we will be in the future if we practice morality now. Morality is a law of love. In the words of St. Augustine, “all of God’s commandments are embraced in love.” (Enchiridion. 121). Moral law gives two gifts: the gift from God to us with the ordered method for our own happiness, health, and peace, and the gift from us to our neighbors to think of their good before our own.

Let us now return to the question which opened this chapter: does our understanding that truth is real lead us to the necessity of a moral absolute? Can our transcendental desires which, if incorporated into the symmetry of existence, lead us to a knowledge of right and wrong? And if we accept morality, must we also accept a religious creed? What an honest examination of freedom and pleasure shows us is that morality is even more basic than religious structure itself. Biblical history shows us the same thing, that morality was established in the world prior to religion. Religion gives a framework for morality. But it gives something else as well. It answers the question of why. Why is it good to be unselfish? Why is it good to be loving and charitable? Why is virtue to be admired? Religious morality is the road map to the achievement of our transcendental desires. We can see how unselfishness toward our neighbor today can benefit us tomorrow. In Christianity, we are told how it can be true on a much larger scale.

The greatest pleasure we can possibly hope for is love. As we have already seen, love is more important to us than life itself. In Christianity we are told that our God not only loves us, but in fact is love! By practicing unselfish morality, we are acting with love toward others. Even in a purely atheistic society, it is easy to see how giving love is the only way to get love. Yet by believing in a God who is love, we are assured that the reward for our present love and compassion for one another will be to share in a great heaven of love.

We have looked at how morality benefits not only the community, but us by extension. Why, then, are we so intent on our selfish desires?

So much of our immorality comes from an insatiable desire within each one of us for beauty. It is not enough for us to see beauty in the world, appreciate it, and enjoy our place in it. We feel the need to grasp it, to own it, and fulfill it with what we know as pleasure. Much of the pain in the world comes through this selfish pursuit for beauty and pleasure by some, at the expense of others. Pleasure is a manifestation of the beauty and love of the world through experience. Pleasure is a wonderful thing, and it is well for us to desire it. Yet our perversion of it throughout the ages has given pleasure a bad name. We have come to misinterpret both the meaning of pleasure and our desire for it. The world is so beautiful it would be absurd to suggest that we are not meant to appreciate it. The danger is that we might become so addicted to our pleasure that we seek it even at the expense of those around us. It is in the over-indulgence of pleasure, and in our obstinate quest for it that we, in selfishness and disdain for the good of others, pervert the beauty of the world.

We are meant to enjoy the things which give pleasure to our hearts and bodies. The joy that is brought from well-earned pleasure is a wonderful blessing, but we only feel the reward if we also seek to share that joy with others. As long as we seek the good of others along with ourselves, pleasure will never become corrupt. This is living by the moral law discussed earlier. Invariably, the good of the whole will also be good for me. Some religious leaders have given up their own pleasures for the sake of their ministry, often thinking that sacrificing all pleasure is the truest path to righteousness. But personal gratification need not be forsaken, only subordinated to the gratification of others. If we are only thinking of ourselves, then our desire for excesses can bring great harm both to the community, and by extension, to ourselves.

All of our pleasure and desire springs from our love for good and beautiful things. But when we seek to possess the beauty around us rather than just appreciating it, we allow our desire to overwhelm us, and it kills the beauty we loved. In everything we must keep mindful that beauty is a gift from God, not just to us individually, but to all. Thus, we would do well to share with those around us. Quoting again the venerable Bishop of Hippo, “All the good that you love is from the Creator, but unjustly is it loved if God be forsaken for it!” (St. Augustine: Confessions, IV, 18) Let us strive to enjoy the gifts of the world without letting our addiction for their beauty take hold.

Addictions are usually thought of in terms of substance abuses. Once the addict has tasted a little, they desire more and more, and will never be content, no matter how much of it they have. But even if we do not struggle with such vices as drugs and alcohol, we should honestly face our addictions for the pleasures of beauty, experience, possessions, even acclaim and success. Few of us can deny having felt the addictive influence of all of these. These are the desires of our senses. The longing for more… never feeling content… this is the addiction. Have you ever eaten food for which you had no hunger, only because it was there? Or have you bought something you did not need, because you saw it and suddenly wanted it? Or have you found someone attractive and suddenly felt an intense desire to know them sexually? What are such longings if not addictions?

Such desires drive us constantly to be fulfilled, when it is really only the quest itself that brings us any glimpse of happiness. The pleasure fades as soon as the experience is over. Thomas Merton wrote, “The earthly desires men cherish are shadows. There is no true happiness in fulfilling them. Why then do we continue to pursue joys without substance? Because the pursuit itself has become our only substitute for joy. Unable to rest in anything we achieve, we determine to forget our discontent in a ceaseless quest for new satisfaction. In the pursuit, desire itself becomes our chief satisfaction.” (The Ascent to Truth, 1951)

How then, can we hope to fulfill our desire for pleasure, and the acute human longing for beauty and love, if not in these ways?

For the answer we must look at another type of desire which we all have felt. We are so addicted to our selfish desires that we forget the joy we get from unselfishness, and even the desire we have for the joy it brings. Have you ever labored to prepare the perfect gift for a loved one, or given such a gift to a child at Christmas? How eagerly you anticipated the look of joy on their faces! Think of a time when you may have brightened the life of a person in despair, be it from poverty, age, weakness of body or depression of mind. The smile returned from such a person is a joy unparalleled by the fulfillment of any selfish desire. The practice of charity and compassion is one of the greatest experiences of the world’s beauty.

Morality may sometimes seem difficult, but the reward is great. If indeed moral law was given to us by God, then we should trust that God knew what was best for us, and that our greatest pleasure comes from following the very law under which we reluctantly chafe.

3: The Nature of Truth

This is the third of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into human longing. In the first chapter we looked at what is real, and in the second chapter we investigated how our desires fit into that reality. This led us to the idea of faith. In this chapter we shall look further into faith, and the nature of truth.

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At the end of the last chapter, we addressed the argument that faith is a positivistic view of life. Another argument that is often made against faith is that it is used to avoid truth, specifically the types of truth which can be factually documented, and that faith is used to make leaps across gulfs in knowledge which further study might be able to bridge. Again, one hears also the objection of positivism, that faith allows one to establish the conclusion they are hoping for, and then declare that faith guided them to that “truth” even in the face of hard evidence against it.

Most often, such objections are raised when either real truth, or real faith has already been compromised. At their pinnacle of meaning, truth and faith must go hand in hand. In religion, faith is to truth, what theory is to experiment in science. We can have one of two opinions on truth. Either it is something within the ability of human thought and speculation to completely and fully unravel. Or it is something which we are incapable of ever knowing completely, however close we think we may come. If we hold the latter view, then faith must be part of the equation. Faith is not a substitute for truth, or a bandage we put on truth, but the glue that holds truth together. If one uses their idea of faith to stubbornly hold onto the conclusion they hoped for, then their faith is not real. It is no better than opinion. Opinions should no more be called faith than they should be called true.

The search for truth has inspired and frustrated humanity since history began. Philosophy has grown and changed through the ages, but the questions are the same as they have always been. How are we to know what is true? The clue is in our desires: those transcendental longings which point us beyond our own life. And this, as pointed out at the end of the previous chapter, brings us back to faith. Faith is the beginning of our being able to experience the satisfaction of our desires, including, our desire for truth. This desire, this quest for truth is one of those inexplicable tendencies of humanity which must make sense, must have an answer, and must be treated every bit as real as our flesh and bones. If we listen to our desires, listen to our faith, the truth of our existence becomes plain. Returning to the question of what is real, to each of us, we ourselves are the most real and the best arbiter of truth. To this point, St. Augustine admonishes the philosophers “not to wander far and wide but return into yourself. Deep within humanity dwells the truth.” (De Vera Religione, 39)

In the current culture of the world, the search for truth has become less of a virtuous quest and more of a personal experience, in which truth for one person may not be truth for another. Such a thing as absolute truth is no longer sought, and often not even considered possible. What’s more, these modern philosophers label those who make claims of absolute truth as intolerant, self-righteous, and even downright naïve. The questions of philosophy are no different than the questions grappled over by the ancient philosophers of Greece, but while Plato and Aristotle sought answers (often unsuccessfully) today’s philosophy considers the questions themselves as the beauty of the philosophical practice. The questions are more revered than the answers. Holding to this pattern, when a viable answer is proposed, it is dismissed as unknowable or unproveable. The problem with this is that by denying the possibility of truthful answers, the questions themselves become meaningless, and the entire practice of philosophy is rendered useless.

Speaking of philosophy, Aristotle says “Knowledge and understanding have always something else as their object, and themselves are only the way. Further, if thinking and being thought are different, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought?” (Metaphysics, 1076)

The focus on questions rather than answers, on thinking rather than being thought, is a new pattern for philosophy. When Christianity sprang upon the world, it engaged in dialogue with philosophy. When the Apostle Paul went to Athens he argued for the Christian answer to the questions of the Epicureans and Stoics (Acts 17:18). St. Augustine hammered out Christian dogma from a reason steeped in Greek and Roman thought. St. Thomas Aquinas reinvented the teachings of Aristotle from a perspective of Christianity, simultaneously engaging in dialogue with the great thinkers of Judaism and Islam, who had at the time far surpassed the Christian teachers in knowledge of philosophy and science. Christianity gained strong footing in the medieval world because it offered an answer to the questions which had troubled humanity from the beginning of time. In all these eras, the Christian fathers joined scientists on the cusp of knowledge, eagerly looking to unlock the secrets of the world as clues toward understanding the language of God. There was never a dispute between the ideas of philosophy and reason. Indeed, they were considered indispensable to each other, and faith (religion) was tightly woven between.

But the Age of Enlightenment seemed to change all of that. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the three practices gradually drifted apart until now, they are considered wholly independent fields of study. Science no longer has much use for philosophy, and philosophy certainly has no use for faith. In response, Christians try to prove all aspects of their faith with science and reason, while scientists fight to disprove it. Both reactions are silly and futile. Yet the world no longer has a place for a student of all three fields. Their value, as relating to the others, is vehemently denied.

How did this come about, and why? That is a difficult question. Part of it comes with the advancement in learning which occurred during the Renaissance. As humans began to think they could find all the answers through science, they squeezed out the responsibility that comes from religion. Yet while scientific knowledge has made huge strides toward understanding our world, five centuries have not been enough time to answer the key questions of existence. But instead of returning to religion as the giver of those answers, modern philosophy embraces something of an agnostic nihilism, preferring to believe that nothing can be known, rather than taking an answer that brings with it responsibility.

This being said, much of the blame also rests with the Church. Rather than embracing scientific knowledge as it had done in the past, during the Renaissance the church stifled it. Continually, over the last half millennium, as one scientist after another explains a new facet to the workings of the universe, the Church blindly declares the discoveries to be false. The fear comes from the attempt by humanism to use new scientific discoveries to explain away the need for a creator. Rather than addressing this challenge head on, the Church takes its aim at science. The Church should eagerly support the work of science, yearning for greater knowledge of our creator. The search for truth is always a worthy pursuit, and one which the Christian, the philosopher, and the scientist should be happy to share.

But instead, in the face of insurmountable scientific evidence, many Christians refuse to acknowledge the facts of science, clinging to an idea of the world which was born in the middle ages and is not even based on scripture. Ironically, it is most closely related to the scientific knowledge of the time. Christians have become a laughing stock for what they perceive as faith, when instead it is ignorance. Because of their bravado in linking their ignorance to their religion, the world now also perceives this as faith, and this perception has become a detriment both to faith and, cripplingly, to philosophy.

Just as many Christians refuse to acknowledge the answers which science gives to their questions, so today’s philosophers ignore the answers provided by religion. What is it about the modern thinker that allows him to ask “What does it mean?” without expecting or even legitimately desiring an answer? If there were no answer to such a question it would cast doubt on whether our very existence was real. Just as humanity’s transcendental desires, so deeply rooted in our make-up, must be considered real, so too must our quest for truth be considered real.

In his encyclical letter on faith and reason, Pope John Paul II considered it “unthinkable that a search so deeply rooted in human nature would be completely vain and useless. The capacity to search for truth and to pose questions itself implies the rudiments of a response. Human beings would not even begin to search for something of which they knew nothing or which they thought was wholly beyond them. Only the sense that they can arrive at an answer leads them to take the first step.” (Fides et Ratio, 29) In the same way that scientists who believe a theory are not swayed by set-back in experimentation, so philosophers must hold steadily to their search for truth.

Our search for truth is actually tied into our life-long desires. These human longings cannot be satisfactorily explained unless they point to something real. Thus I would argue that absolute truth is real, and whether or not the complete realm of it can be known by the human mind, there are aspects of it which can be known and which would be foolish to deny. Many of these facets of absolute truth are proven to us by science and reason, yet many more are given to us by faith.

Without a perception of truth, philosophy loses its traction. Without employing the wisdom of philosophy and faith, the truth of science will be incomplete. And without acknowledging the accomplishments of science and philosophy, the truth of faith will be naïve. The church should lead the way by admitting its past failures in the arena of truth and embracing modern science as the paint brush of God. The church has attempted to reconcile these fields, even if thus far, only half-heartedly. Notably at the First Vatican Council in 1869, when the church attempted both to address current modernist challenges and heal some of the wounds of the reformation. The Cardinals addressed the union of faith and reason. “Even if faith is superior to reason,” they wrote, “there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth.” (Vatican I, Dei Filius IV) If reconciliation can be made between the three fields–science, philosophy and faith–each will be benefited, and the world will become a much wiser place.

2: Human Desire

This is the second of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into the true nature of human longing.

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We have established that humanity’s longing for something more must be treated as real. One could go so far as to argue that it is the defining characteristic of our race. Let us take a moment to explore the nature of this longing.

We have an insatiable desire for more—more money, more things, more joy, more knowledge, more love, more life. It is not in human nature to ever be entirely content. No matter how much anyone has, they want more. This tendency should not only be viewed on the negative side of the spectrum. Certainly, greed is a terrible thing which causes great evil, but the desire for more can also lead people to greater love, greater goodness, greater compassion, etc. Ultimately, this human desire is built into each and every one of us. It is up to us whether we will turn it to good or to ill. The main similarity we find in all our longings is that we are never content. Our greatest longings, even in finding intermediate satiation, are never fully satisfied. We soon discover that the answers to our desires cannot be found in this life. This can lead us to one of two courses. We can give up, either in despair or a contented cynicism, or we can look to an answer beyond this life, beyond this present perception of reality.

In humanity’s most acute desire, which is love, we see the proof that the latter answer is not in vain. Countless men and women, both religious and completely unreligious, have treated love as more important than life. A parent will eagerly give his or her life to save their child. A soldier will stand to the death to protect his homeland. Centuries of tragic drama has glorified the ideal of love which transcends death. These examples have nothing to do with a religious belief in an after-life, but speak of the reality that to forsake love is worse by far than death. Yet what love, however precious, has ever given a full, unwanting contentment? This desire, which promises our greatest reward, still more often than not fails to satisfy. Yet it is through love that we get our closest glimpse at that realm to which all our desires point—a realm which waits beyond this life.

Surely, the vast majority of our desires are ultimately hopeless. Our childhood dreams seldom come true, the experiences we lust after often give no reward, even our greatest passions often leave us discontented. Those of us who seemingly mount the greatest heights are the least content. If this life cannot fulfill these longings, shouldn’t we have learned to give them up by now? Would not a few generations have been enough to set us on a more practical course: following our animal friends on a quest for the very achievable rewards of survival, sustenance, pleasure and comfort? Yet instead we spurn such logical rewards on a quest for more abstract things such as glory, love and righteousness. These abstractions we value more than life itself. What fool-hardy beings we have become! Are we really the most intelligent animal? If this life is all there is, and our desires are only our imagination, our abstract goals of virtue and love nothing but a wild misplacement of value, then we have nothing to brag about to the practical ant, whose life is surely better spent than ours. Our divine longing, and by divine I am simply referring to that which is beyond this life, is what separates us from the animals. If it is a false longing, then it is a detriment, a theatre in which the animals’ practicality has tooled them better for their existence than we.

Why would such a desire, which without an answer would be nothing but misery, be written into our very natures? Is it a cruel trick of evolution that humanity developed into someone who could long for something they could never have? Are we so utterly stupid that we willingly give up life for a hope which does not exist, for an ideal of love which is nothing but a joke? Does the beautiful symmetry of nature, while containing the answers to all the mysteries of physics, laugh at the desire which motivated us to unravel those laws? Does physical symmetry stop short of encompassing the laws of the human soul? Human beings are smart. Our intuitions are often accurate. Our desires are customarily for things tangible and real. Could we have gotten this one thing so wrong? Could we be so stupid that three quarters or more of our race believe an unfounded myth?

What cruelty it would be if love is only a thing of this short life. That our great hope, which we never fully grasp in this life, and which for some, eludes them altogether, could be only a phantom myth—this would be the cruelest world imaginable. Nor would it be consistent with the world we know, which despite its shortcomings has given us wonder, beauty, pleasure, excitement, life. How then, could its’ greatest gift—love, which we value more than our life and all the wonders of the world, be a joke?

Human evolution has consistently brought us to higher points of being, whether it is in our physical makeup—such as the development of locking knees that permitted us to walk upright, or the development of opposable thumbs, allowing us to grasp tools—or through our increasing mental capacity, which eventually allowed us to reason and plan. We have not taken any major visible steps backward in evolution. The homo sapien has advanced to greater ability and maturity throughout our existence. At some juncture in this development, a transition occurred, an evolutionary step, “mutation” if you must, which was just as dramatic as the development in knee or thumb. This step was the advent of our longing for such things as virtue, goodness and love—desires which found no acceptable answer in the human experience, but for which we tirelessly strive. Why would this tendency to long for something outside of this life have developed in us and survived through the millennia? We see no such desire in animals; it is a strictly human tendency.

Evolution does not work that way. If a trait develops which is not beneficial to the species, it is weeded out. Such a universal human tendency would not have been able to spread throughout our race unless there was some validity to it. And back to the idea of symmetry—if all the scientific laws are somehow interconnected, in a manner which shows the necessity of each and every observed behavior, then could such symmetry not be applied to humanity? We can see how well the systems within our body work: our cells and organs, circulatory and nervous systems. It makes sense to suppose that we also contain such symmetrical operations, and if so, then our desires and longings, which guide so many of our actions, must be included in the equation.

Those who wish to reason away from belief in any deity should approach their rejection of God along with a rejection for any desire which transcends this life, including love, fame, virtue, honor, and even the innocent dreams of childhood. For when we believe in God we are simply believing in a love which answers the longing that earthly love has failed. God has promised us the satisfaction of each of our abstract desires. If someone wishes to refute the existence of God, they should first refute the validity of humanity’s innate, transcendental longing, which even the atheist shares.

What despair, if failed earthly love, failed earthly glory, and hollow earthly pleasure are all to which our longings take us! All the accomplishments of humanity would be in vain. We would have been better off pursuing animalistic desires of survival and comfort.

In the first chapter we discussed the idea of reality, stating that any philosophy or theology must reference reality if it is to be considered valid. Surely this transcendental desire must either be the ultimate mirage, a big joke of the human mind, or else be the most real thing of all our experiences, for if there is indeed another existence which follows this one, then that one must be more real even than this. Thus does the Apostle state: “what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.” (II Corin. 4:18) There can be no in between. Either our transcendental desires are a figment of our collective imaginations, an evolutionary “blip” which destines a terrible human misconception, and should all be discarded, or else it points toward something true—something so real it surpasses even the visible reality of our world.

Yes, love is real. And it does transcend death. Our lifelong hope, which lives through the worst of our hardships, will not be in vain.

Once we have placed our belief in that for which we hope, even if it is something not immediately perceptible, and make the claim that this hope is real, we have made a profession of faith. We cannot show through logical discourse that our desires find their answer in a realm beyond this life, but through the logic I have laid out, we begin to see that it is probable, and that is the point at which we must take a “leap of faith.” Faith is not a cliché of religion, but simply the assurance that love and life are transcendental, that the intrinsic longing of human nature is not void, but has an answer which waits for us in another life. Finally, faith is the patience to wait for that answer.

The beauty of faith is that it allows us to enjoy the desires which otherwise would be a drudgery. Without faith our desires lead us to the window through which we strain to behold the object of our longing, and despair that we cannot. Our side of the window is a prison. But faith brings us to the window with eyes eager to behold the promised reward. Our desires, both exercised and suppressed, give us a taste of the goodness which awaits us. Faith provides a sampling of the transcendental realm for which we long. Faith is already the beginning of the experience of the afterlife. (Catech. 163)

There are two commonly used definitions of faith which should be clarified. In a certain context, the word “faith” is used almost in exchange with the word “religion.” When someone speaks of their faith, they may simply mean the particular religion they have chosen to follow. But this is not how I am using the word. By faith I mean the conscious and trusting belief in things not seen or proven. Faith is not only a function of religion, but is likewise a necessary tool of science. Scientists must have faith in a theory until experimentation can prove the expected results. As theoretical physics reaches further and further into unknown arenas of space and time, faith becomes more vital in giving theories weight. There is a horizon to our current scientific ability, limiting how far, how small, and how short of measurements in spacetime we can probe, yet through what we have been able to observe, we make confident predictions about the realms beyond. This is faith as used in science.

Faith gives us confidence in our hopes and dreams. It is our comfort for the desires which are never fulfilled in this life, and allows us to believe even when no hope can be gleaned from commonly observable facts. Finally, faith leads us to an assurance in absolute truth, even pertaining to realms beyond our ability to see. Facts on their own will always lead us into frustration when seeking truth, but faith, based on fact can transcend those facts and guide us to truth.

It has been argued that faith, as presented in religion, is a positivistic approach to life—that in going beyond what can be proven, and having hopeful faith in a benevolent creator and a life based on love, we have decided what we want to believe and then formed our arguments accordingly. There is an aspect of truth to this accusation, and while not denying it, I also wish to embrace it. For the God of the Christian is a God who is good beyond our imagination. If we betake to believe in such a God at all, we have already expressed a stance of positivism, viz., having faith because we want to believe. Yet I would turn back the argument upon those who say there is no God because it cannot be proven. For it equally cannot be proven that there is no creator. Just as the Christian believes because they want a God of love, so the atheist rejects God because they want to believe in humanity’s glory. The atheist takes just as positivistic a stance as the theist. Nobody will ever believe something they do not want to believe in. Inquiry and evidence can always be arranged to fit the opinion.

But faith must go beyond what can be known through inquiry. Even science employs faith when speaking in theory, antecedent to experiment. Thus does Cardinal Newman identify faith as “an act of the intellect, opening a way for inquiry, comparison and inference, that is, for science in religion.” (Development of Christian Doctrine. Chap. VII, 1, 4). Even St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest of all theologians in his arguments for God’s existence and law, makes no apology for supplementing inquiry with faith in speaking of the divine. “It is necessary for man to receive as articles of faith not only the things which are above reason, but even those that for their certainty may be known by reason. For human reason is very deficient in things divine.” (Summa Theologiæ).

We have seen that the rules of nature and evolution support the idea that our hope and longing must be considered real. Thus, that our transcendental desire has led us to have faith in a love greater than that which we now know, should not be cause for shame. Rather, we should embrace faith as the promise of our desire.

1: Perception & Reality

This is the first of five chapter in HUMANÆ DESIDERIÆ, a philosophical inquiry into the true nature of human longing. I will post one chapter each Tuesday for the next five weeks.

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Life is unbelievable. Every detail of existence, when probed, seems beyond comprehension, too exotic to take seriously, too beautiful to really believe. Yet it is here. We are. This incredible fact demands to be pondered, and on it, humanity has pondered throughout its history. Life is not intuitive. While some are satisfied to live their lives without asking why or how, the philosophers among us cannot let these questions rest.

Humanity is always on a quest for greater knowledge, our desire spurred by these most basic questions: Who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean? Unfortunately, as our knowledge continues to grow, so do our questions. This can be seen so clearly in the scientific fields, where the answer to one question, sometimes thought to be the final path to these basic questions, opens up not only new questions, but new fields of science. This is absolutely clear when one reviews the history of physics in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, as physicists seek a “final theory,” the so-called “theory of everything,” which would be the Holy Grail of scientific discovery. Albert Einstein spent the last thirty years of his life unsuccessfully seeking this unified theory, and dozens of the world’s top physicists have continued his search.

Humanity, with our infinite questions, is forever shackled by our finite knowledge. The very finite idea of a “theory of everything” is a comfort to us, in that it cases our questions in a graspable goal. Yet by making the answer finite, we have limited it. Thus, if our epistemological history has taught us anything, it is the absurdity of the idea of a “final theory,” after which there will be no more questions. I certainly share the hope of modern physicists that one day (and soon!) we will find a way to explain in one theory, the four forces of nature, and to unite the concepts of general relativity with quantum mechanics—this is usually what is meant by the “theory of everything.” But this answer will by no means end our questions. I would warrant to guess that such an answer will burst open an entirely new field of physics, replete with a host of new paths of inquiry and theory, just as Max Planck, by “answering” the question of heat waves, opened up the field of quantum mechanics, with more questions than he could ever have imagined.

Our questioning will never end. The more answers we find, the more questions we will ask. Karl Rahner compares knowledge to “a small island in a vast sea that has not been traveled. It is a floating island, and it might be more familiar to us than the sea, but ultimately it is borne by the sea and only because it is can we be borne by it.” The sea he calls mystery. (Foundations of Christian Faith. Into: 3) Any “theory of everything” may turn out only to be valid for everything on the island.

We are now brought to the point of asking what is, and is not, real. Indeed, this is where our inquiry must begin. As philosophers, we often lose touch with everyday reality. If a philosophy stretches out of the realm of human experience and thought, it becomes essentially a philosophy of nothing. Nor are scientists free from this accusation, much as they may insist that they deal only with the truly real. But as theoretical physics attempts to probe reality on a smaller and smaller scale, and things suddenly seem to become very bizarre, the question must be asked, as some top physicists even have, whether distance scales that small even can be considered to exist. Ultimately, philosophy, science, and certainly religion, must provide answers to the questions of everyday life (relationships, health of one’s body and soul, the structure and well-being of the world, etc.) if they are to be considered at all valid. Sometimes, in all three of these fields, the utter depths must be probed in order to gain an understand of reality. I am hardly one to shy away from probing to the depths. Yet it is when we have probed to the point that we are no longer seeking to understand reality, but a strange new theoretical world of our own creation, when we know we have gone too far. And so at each point of our inquiry, we should be able to ask whether it concerns what is truly real; if we cannot honestly answer “yes,” then it is time to redirect our course. Philosophy must keep itself firmly pointed toward reality.

Philosophy is natural, and necessary to us. A philosopher cannot bear to live without inquiry, and is perpetually fascinated and tormented by the most basic questions of existence: Who are we? Why are we here? What does it mean? Yet an equal or greater number of those who share the human condition feel no need to inquire into these questions. Oftentimes the philosophers (with whom I include any who seek answers to the questions above) wonder and marvel at what they consider the simple thought of the masses. But this simplicity, which is more in touch with reality than we are, is not only valid. There is truly a majesty to those who do not inquire. Theirs is the truth, in that they live what is real without the burden of needing to probe its depths. They already understand.

What is real? At what juncture does science or philosophy usher us round a corner where reality is no more? Obviously, this could be a hotly contested question. Some would argue that it is only the depths which are real, and what we see, the everyday life we perceive, is the mirage. Some theologians claim that the heavenly, blessed life to which we are aspiring is reality, and our lives on earth are nothing but a stage on which our greater destinies are played. This existence, they say, has meaning only in context with the next.

There is an old adage that says, “Perception is Reality.” And there is vital truth to this phrase. The depths of existence have meaning only in the context of what we perceive. In the current study, reality shall be treated as that which we perceive. As science breaks the world down into ever minuter fractions, the ingredients of the world only make sense as applied to the whole. Similarly, religion makes sense only in regard to the presently perceived reality. The depths of inquiry must be understood in their context of seeking answers to the questions we face in every day life.

Of all that is real, most real of all is the relationships we have with others who share this existence. Based on the premise that perception is reality, my relationships prove my own existence. Without others who perceive me, I run the risk of becoming confused by my own perceptions, where dream and reality become unclear. But the attention of others validates my own perceptions.

The entire world and life itself is a miracle. But greatest of all is the miracle of love: that human hearts may bond in companionship and bliss. If anything should be treated as real, it is this. Even the reality of self is dulled without shared human contact. Without another to justify my place, I would begin to doubt my own reality. All religion, and all science only make sense in the context of the bonding human hearts, what I shall refer to hereafter as community. The assurance of a loving smile, or the comfort of a warm embrace, are the truest of the human experiences. It is the human bond that makes life worth living, assuring us that this is not a dream, or a mirage, but the greatest reality imaginable. Love is real, based on our perceptions and interactions with one another. If it is real at all, then it must be treated as such, both with in philosophy and science.

Now in regards to religion, since indeed that is the primary focus of this exploration. Some may have already questioned my statement that religion makes sense only in regard to the present perception. But think of the full spectrum of human perception, including and beyond that of community. It does not only involve flesh and blood, matter, and the senses. It also involves emotions such as hope, fear, anger, love. All of these feelings are imminently real, and religion addresses them in ways that science cannot. Even if science identifies a chemical reaction in your brain which causes love, how real is that based on our present definition. It is a clue as to the inner workings of reality, but the love you feel is already real based on your perception. Science may be able to tell you how, but it cannot tell you why.

Let us focus on the emotion of hope. Humanity has a very real longing for meaning, for something which is more powerful than this present life. At first sight, human existence looks to be completely meaningless. If suffering behaves randomly, as it appears to, if our desires can find no satisfactory gratification, and if we have no hope for a great equalizing afterlife, then the most basic questions of the meaning of life grovel for answers. (John Paul II: Fides et Ratio. 26) But instead, hope drives us in almost everything we do. If we believe in a religion, it drives us to adhere to sometimes uncomfortable creeds. If we do not believe in a religion, it haunts us as a dark unknown. Morality trumps selfishness in human behavior exclusively due to this longing, which makes us fear the consequences of ill behavior. Based on our definition of reality, hope, along with love, must be considered real.

We have looked briefly at the idea in science of a “final theory” or a “theory of everything.” This search has arisen out of a grand symmetry which has been observed in the universe. It has not yet been proven that the world is physically symmetric, but most physicists agree that there is truth to the idea that all the laws of nature are somehow interconnected, and that all the forces of nature work together in a way that essentially has to work. Albert Einstein saw in the universe the necessity of logical simplicity, such that he doubted God could have made the universe in any other way than what it is. Any study of science will eventually convince the student that the universe has an incredibly grand order. Everything that we perceive as real works together in an intricate framework that is beautiful beyond anything we could imagine.

How does this fit into the concepts of hope and love, along with our human longing for meaning and something beyond this present? Well, as these emotions are indeed real, if there is a physical symmetry to the universe, then these emotions, must fit into that symmetry. An empty answer to the desire of humanity would be inconsistent with the beauty, order and elegance of the universe. Whether we see emotions as something contained in a soul separate in essence from the human body, or as something triggered by chemical reactions in the brain, these feelings are as real as the matter which makes up our bodies. The same scientific and philosophical laws should apply to both physical and emotional reality. And if emotions of the heart and soul can be combined into this physical symmetry which science is striving to prove, then the questions of humanity must necessarily point to an answer which is more than an illusion, ergo, an answer which is real.

Can that answer be given by what we call God? If so, then God must also be real, not in an intangible sense, as a distant supremity outside this universe, but real by our present definition. God must be so close that we can touch him, feel him, and interact with him in a manner consistent with the reality we perceive.

Let me summarize the preceding argument. If our perception is indeed reality, as opposed to being an illusion shone by something entirely else, then our emotions must be treated as equally real, including the emotion of hope, which is the human longing for something which transcends this perceived reality. Further, if science can succeed to show that the laws of the universe are physical symmetric, than the human longing must be included in this symmetry, necessitating an answer which is greater than nothing.