WHAT ARE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS AND
WHY ARE THEY HARD TO ANSWER?
Dr Felicity McCutcheon
‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp – or
what’s a heaven for?’
from 'Andrea del Sarto' by Robert Browning
MY AIM IN THIS PAPER
1. Explore the essential features of
ultimate questions
2. Examine ways in which we might look
for answers
3. Discuss the particular difficulties that
arise when teachers address these
questions in the classroom
THE QUESTIONS BEFORE US
•
•
•
•
What does it mean to be human?
Why is there evil and suffering?
How do I find truth?
What is a good life?
Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art :
‘We are in a period in which scanning
has replaced seeing and keeping track
has replaced paying attention’
(quoted in The Age, 1 Aug, 2010)
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS – A PECULIAR
SPECIMEN
• HUMANS ASK ULTIMATE QUESTIONS
• THE MOON CANNOT
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS
Origins
• Why is there something
rather than nothing?
• What caused the
universe to exist?
• Where did we come
from?
• What place do we have
in the universe?
Meaning
• Does life has meaning?
• What is the meaning of
human life?
• Is there ultimate
meaning behind the
universe?
• Does death cancel out
meaning?
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS
Guilt
• Why do we feel guilty?
Should we?
• Is there a supernatural
basis for moral
behaviour?
• Does following certain
rules of conduct relieve
our guilt?
• Which comes first: guilt
or morality?
Death
• What happens after
death?
• How does having-to-die
affect our living?
• What does it mean to
‘fear death’?
• Does my life cease to
have meaning once I
die?
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS
• Ultimate ground - metaphysical
(philosophical/theological) - Reality
• Ultimate concern – existential/value –
‘meaning’ - Experience
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS
HOW FAR CAN SCIENCE TAKE US?
SCIENCE IS DESCRIPTIVE
“Every scientific statement in the long run, however
complicated it looks, really means something like, ‘I
pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the
sky at 2.20am on January 15th and saw so-and-so,
or, ‘I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to
such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.
Do not think I am saying anything against science: I
am only saying what its job is. And the more
scientific a man is, the more I believe he will agree
with me that this is the job of science – and a very
useful and necessary job it is too.
But why anything comes to be there at all, and
whether there is anything behind the things science
observes – something of a different kind – this is
not a scientific question. If there is ‘something
behind’, then either it will have to remain altogether
unknown to men or else make itself known in some
different way. The statement that there is any such
thing, and there statement that there is no such
thing, are neither of them statements that science
can make…
…Supposing science ever became complete so that
it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it
not plain that the questions, ‘Why is there a
universe?’ and ‘Why does it go on as it does?’ and
‘Has it any meaning?’ would remain just as they
were? (C S Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 1, Ch 4)
RICHARD DAWKINS
• SCIENCE IS THE ONLY MENU
• THERE IS NO ‘WHY’
Belief and the brain's 'God spot'
‘Scientists say they have located the
parts of the brain that control religious
faith. And the research proves, they
contend, that belief in a higher power is
an evolutionary asset that helps human
survival’.
FOUND! THE GOD-SPOT
“A belief in God is deeply embedded in the
human brain, which is programmed for religious
experiences, according to a study that analyses
why religion is a universal human feature that
has encompassed all cultures throughout
history. Scientists searching for the neural God
spot, which is supposed to control religious
belief, believe that there is not just one but
several areas of the brain that form the
biological foundations of religious belief”.
A ‘that’ is not a ‘why’
“A brain state can be matched to a belief
in God, and researches have found that
the brain can be stimulated to have
religious experiences, according to a
study that suggests that religion is a
universal human feature that has
encompassed all cultures throughout
history.”
THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES…
‘When we have incomplete knowledge of
the world around us, it offers us
opportunities to believe in God. When we
don’t have a scientific explanation for
something, we tend to rely on
supernatural explanations’.
Asking Ultimate questions – the distinctly
and deeply human?
Individuals ask ultimate questions
The State cannot
Humans ask ultimate questions
Humanity cannot
ULTIMATE QUESTIONS – THE EXISTENTIAL
COMPONENT
1. Ontic self-affirmation – threatened in terms
of fate and absolutely in terms of death
2. Spiritual self-affirmation – threatened in
terms of emptiness and absolutely in terms
of meaninglessness
3. Moral self-affirmation – threatened in terms
of guilt and absolutely in terms of
condemnation
• “The safety which is guaranteed by wellfunctioning mechanisms for the technical
control of nature, by the refined psychological
control of the person, …this safety is bought
as a high price; man, for whom all this was
invented as means, becomes a means
himself”
(Tillich, The Courage to Be, p.138).
Humans ask ultimate questions.
Things cannot.
A BRAVE NEW WORLD?
“We prefer to do things comfortably’, said the
Controller.
‘But I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want
poetry. I want real danger. I want goodness. I
want freedom’.
‘In fact’, said the Controller, ‘you’re claiming the
right to be unhappy’.
‘Alright then’, said the Savage defiantly. ‘I’m
claiming the right to be unhappy’.
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly
and impotent…the right to be tortured by
unspeakable pains of every kind.”
There was a long silence.
“I claim them all”, said the Savage at last.
“The Controller shrugged his shoulders. “You’re
welcome”, he said.
(Brave New World)
WHERE ARE WE HEADING?
“Are we not, with this tremendous
objective of obliterating all the sharp
edges of life, well on the way to
turning mankind into sand? Sand!
Small, soft, round, unending sand!”
(Nietzsche, Daybreak 174)
Teaching Ultimate questions
• Engage their minds, hearts and spirits
• Present them with examples of how these
questions have been thought about and
answered (the core of our curriculum) which is
really a way of presenting them with possibilities
• Confirm in everything you do and say the
importance of these questions
• Live the questions ourselves
• Know that your answer need not be their answer
- they are not you!
“There are many people who reach their
conclusions about life like schoolboys;
they cheat their masters by copying the
answers out of a book, without having
worked out the sum for themselves”
(Kierkegaard Journals, Jan 17th, 1837)
An Ultimate Horizon?
“In post-modern culture we tend increasingly to inhabit
virtual reality rather than actual reality. More and more
time is spent in the shadowlands of the computer world.
The computer world is all foreground but has no
background. Much of modern life is lived in the territory
of externality; if we succumb completely to the external
we will lose all sense of inner and personal presence.
We will become the ultimate harvesters of absence,
namely, ghosts in our own lives”.
(John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes)
1927- 1989
Think about it…
On a tombstone, the hyphen between the
birth date and the death date stands for the
life that was lived.
What would you like your ‘hyphen’ to
stand for? What do you want your life to
have been like? Why?
How can the gods meet us face to
face until we have faces?’
(C.S. Lewis, Till we have Faces)
“The real mystery of life is not a
problem to solved, but a reality to
be experienced’.
(J.J.Van der Leeuw)