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2. Vital Questions A Modern and Moral Worldview Needs to Answer Answered in the text--brief answers are found in the chapter Answers to Vital Questions |
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Ancient Existential Questions
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how am I to face the odds Of man's bedevilment and God's? I, a stranger and afraid In a world I never made. A. E. Housman (1859-1936) What is reality? How real is it? Where did it all come from? How did it begin? How will it end? Who am I? Who are we? How should we live? What is the meaning of life? Who are our friends, our foes? What is knowledge? What is truth? Is a well-justified belief reliable knowledge? How true is it if it is in conformity with reality and reason--facts, experience, science--? Where does morality come from? How can we know right from wrong? Why should we be moral? Who has moral authority? How free or determined are we? If humanity's welfare and survival depends on a reconciliation of the world's conflicting religious and political ideologies, how can this be done? Why did the scientists' study of the "book" of nature, our most original and trustworthy text, yield only one, hence, humanity-unifying science? Why did the clerics' study of revealed texts yield thousands of distinct and separate, many claiming alone to be true, thus, humanity-dividing religions? Shall we "know them by their fruits"? How true are the world's religions? Are supernatural claims, sacred texts, miracles, and revelations trustworthy? What makes some claims irrefutable? If God is all-good and all-powerful, why is life "poor, nasty, brutish, and short" for so many, even innocent children and animals? If key claims of religions are untrue or contradict each other, yet they yield life-essential hope for many, does this indicate that erroneous beliefs may be vital for life? |
Contemporary Social Questions Why despite universal education are the many still deceived and exploited by the unjust-status quo-supporting special interests? Is it because educators produce submissively other-directed rather than self-directed citizens who could effectively participate in a democracy, that is, a government by, for, and of the people, thus, eliminate these evils? Why are societies still riddled with injustice, hypocrisy, dishonesty, stupidity, brutality, and wholesale killing for religion and politics? Is it because those in power of our political, religious, and educational institutions, are so sick, morally and intellectually speaking, that they are not aware of their infirmity? Why do in many democracies the majority party of undeserved losers keep the minority party of unmerited winners in control of their government, thus, their life chances? Is it because absorbed by the struggle for a living with little time for reflection about the struggle itself most losers--contrary to their self-interest--accept the winners' self-serving, bad-conscience-comforting, ideology? Why does the world's economic superpower, who wants to export its political and social ideology, rank at or near the bottom in health care, job security, violent crime, people in poverty, and affordable housing when compared to other advanced countries? Is it because its government has become the instrument of special interests whose idea of justice, the fair distribution of benefits and burdens, is that they get the lion's share of the fruit and pass on the risk and toil? Finally, if an intellectual and moral conscience is the ultimate guide and authority, and if one is sickened by the suffering caused by morally bankrupt traditional, philosophical, political, religious, and legal doctrines, must one not declare with A. E. Housman: The laws of God, the laws of man, He may keep that will and can; Not I: let God and man decree Laws for themselves and not for me. |