The Three Questions

Lets open this article up with a look at a piece of art. More specifically, lets look in the upper left corner of a painting by one of the French Post-Impressionists. In 1897 Paul Gauguin painted one of his most significant works, so significant that the artist supposedly wished to commit suicide after finishing the canvas. It depicts women in various stages of life with a blue statue of a goddess in the background. Scrawled in the upper left corner of the canvas are the following words: D'où Venons Nous / Que Sommes Nous / Où Allons Nous. This translates as: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Gauguin was wrestling with the three fundamental questions that all humans end up asking. These questions of origin, purpose and destiny are fundamental to human thought, and the worldview that we choose has at its core, answers to these three questions.

This is only natural as we are creatures with reason, and have the ability for observation, and the desire for truth. And it is “through the knowledge of necessary truths that we rise to acts of reflection, which make us think of what is called I.” When asking these questions we presuppose that, “I am.” As the well-known phrase goes: “I think, therefore I am.” This is a huge self-recognition that is unique to humans. Naturally following the “I am” is the question as to why?

The philosophers, metaphysicians, poets and theologians throughout history have spent countless eons contemplating, articulating, postulating, speculating and theorizing, intent on finding answers to origin, purpose and destiny. A short list of some of philosophies or beliefs that are derived from human thought might include: theism, humanism, relativism, deism, materialism, hedonism, nihilism, naturalism, politicalism, altruism, anarchism, individualism, selfism, solipsism, suitheism (self as a deity), socialism, capitalism. Theism itself has thousands of philosophies, all of which are the many various religions, both primitive and modern, such as Judaism, Islam, Christianity (and it’s thousands of derivatives), Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Satanism, Pantheism, Paganism and Neo-paganism and so on.

In modern western thought the summation of all the above ideas can be haphazardly lumped into three primary worldviews: theism, agnosticism and atheism. It is with one of these three worldviews that nearly all of us answer the three colossal questions on Gauguin’s painting.

I confess that I am very tempted to elaborate on some of the more interesting philosophies mentioned above, for many are fascinating and offer insight into human thought and behavior, but I will restrain myself. I don’t want to bore you to tears (if I already haven’t done so) with an in depth course in comparative religions and philosophy. Therefore I think it sufficient to cover some of the basics of the three primary worldviews that attempt to answer these questions.

Let’s start with the popular point of view today, especially for the educated masses, which is agnosticism. This worldview asserts that the existence or non-existence of any deity is unknowable. It does not hold the conviction that there is no God, nor does it maintain there is a God, but it insists that this question is unanswerable. This is commonly misinterpreted by casual adherents as a personal belief that one doesn’t really know if God exists. This is a very common view point (a sort of modern default for many) because it safely eludes theism and atheism, both of which espouse certainty with respect to the existence or none existence of a God.

Unlike the lack of committal in agnosticism, atheism is firmly committed to categorically rejecting the existence of God or deities. It is a specific belief that there is no God, and is critical of any notion of deity or Godhead. Atheism is rigid and dogmatic in its denial of God and the exclusion of anything supernatural, and believes exclusively in science and reason. In addition, many proponents believe that religion is primitive and harmful, and should be done away with.

Both of the above nontheistic worldviews are often accompanied with other philosophies, such as relativism, humanism, materialism, hedonism and naturalism. These other philosophies have an uncanny knack of making their way into just about everyone’s worldview to one degree or another. Naturalism is probably the most common for it seems to be accepted by devotees of the non-theisms (atheism and agnosticism) as well as theism. Naturalism is the belief that only natural laws and forces operate in the world and that nothing exists beyond the natural world. This view is opposed to supernatural concepts, as natural laws are the only rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural world.

Lastly we come to theism. This worldview espouses belief in the existence one or more deities. In theism God is the source of all things and is actively present in the world or universe. This is the system for all the world’s religions, both modern and primitive, with exception to Buddhism. Deism also lands in this category, however, deism doesn’t believe that the creator is an active participant in the universe.

So how do these systems answer our core questions about origin, purpose and destiny? Atheisms answer to these questions is simple: the universe and life originated by chance, there is no purpose aside from natural processes, and our destiny is the grave. The fundamental agnostic view is even simpler: no one knows so who cares? Since agnosticism is not even an answer, because it is not even a question it affords adherents the flexibility to arbitrarily create answers to these questions as one sees fit. These non-theisms (atheism and agnosticism) are incapable of providing concrete answers to the questions at hand. In fact they are quite dogmatic in their adherence to purposelessness.

Theism, or most of the world’s religions, have concrete answers to these questions. Although the level of truth in the claims of the various forms of theism vary dramatically from creed to creed, most generally answer these questions in the following way: God (pick any name or language) is the source of all created and uncreated things in the universe, our purpose is to love God and others, and our destiny as immortal living souls is to abide in heaven with God. I must admit that these are HUGE generalizations; however I think I’m pretty close in these generalizations.

No matter which of these worldviews you choose it is important to remember that it is precisely that—a choice. Although we are influenced by our upbringing and overall experience of the world in the formative years of our life, when we settle with either a theistic, atheistic or agnostic point of view it is a cognitive choice. It is a choice or decision to believe a certain way. The theist chooses to believe in God, the atheist chooses to believe there is no god, and the agnostic chooses to believe that we cannot know. This point is something that we quickly forget after we select our point of view. We forget this because, after choosing, we quickly establish our worldview as something that is unquestioningly true. After this there is no need for inquiry for the matter is settled.

There are many compelling philosophical arguments on both sides of the theism/atheism debate, all of which have been raging on for thousands of years. Getting bogged down is theoretical philosophical debates on ontology, epistemology, and morality can be interesting for some people, but these discussions are merely intellectual and are often circular, and as they spin around they don’t get to the heart of the matter—namely individual happiness and contentment. I will entirely avoid these arguments and skip to the next topic, which I find much more interesting—the concept of truth.