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1 Faith Fides quaerens intellectum “Faith seeking understanding” –Anselm, PROSLOGIUM The camel snorted and moaned gently as it made its way along the starlit gravel path. The Bedouin camel driver sang gently to his charge to keep him moving. As I gently rocked back in forth in the tight camel saddle, I gazed up at the desert night sky, moonless, with stars so bright, numerous, and appearing so close that one was tempted to reach up and pluck one down. As my gaze dropped onto the hulking, dark monolith that we were traversing, I saw fellow pilgrims, flashlights in hand, wending their way up the sides, looking much like a single strand of golden Christmas-tree lights cascading down a darkened canyon. We were clinging to the sides of Mount Sinai, and in the darkness time drifted away and we became one with the spiritual pilgrims of countless ages who had, since Moses and even before him, sought insight and solace on this mountain. When we look up and gaze at the approximately three thousand stars that the naked eye can see on a moonless night, the questions inevitably come. Who are we? What is it all about? Where did it or we come from? And, of course, What is the meaning of it all? Mountaintops, especially at sunrise, cultivate such questions in the massive and yet delicate beauty of an apricot sunrise. These are quintessential human questions. They are the questions that inevitably arise as we contemplate our origins and become aware of our own finitude and mortality, the concrete awareness that we need not be. We are always pilgrims in this life. The wonder of existence has impelled philosophy, theology, and science for millennia. It is at the heart of the quote above from St. Anselm of Canterbury. We seek greater understanding. But while enhancing 7 faith, understanding will never be a substitute for faith. Wonder always drives us back to the questions of faith, particularly the basic question, Why are we here? 1. Why Are We Here? “Why are you here?” All of us have been asked, or have asked, that question of ourselves many times. As one of the most basic questions we can ask, every word is important. Why? The foundational interrogative raises the question of meaning and purpose. All of us begin to enunciate this basic question early in life. It is the root question of meaning for the human condition and the foundation for both philosophy and theology. Are? The verb of being cuts to the core of human life. We exist, but we will not exist forever, and so begins the foundational question of being. What does it mean “to be”? and, somewhat insidiously, to “not be,” as Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet would have us reflect. “To be, or not to be? That is the question!” You? This question is of subjective identity. It is my “you” and not your “you” that is in question here. To what does this “you” refer? Is there an enduring “I” or only an ephemeral passing presence of neurotransmitters that camouflages the absence of self by providing a continuity of experience that appears to have permanence and identity? Who are we really? Here? Where is here as opposed to there? How do we define time and space, especially in a relativistic, expanding universe? Can you only be at one here at a time, or are there multiple “heres” (the multiverse) that we inhabit simultaneously, only one of which we are conscious of? This one little question in many ways encapsulates the profound questions of human life and provides the context for this book. A. MYSTERY OF EXISTENCE The above question is one of the most profound questions that the human being can ask. As we mature, the thought finally occurs to us that there is no immediately evident reason that we should exist. We encounter the mystery of our life and its radical contingency. We need not be, and yet we are, and we realize this is true of everything that we encounter, from stars to butterflies. All existence is contingent, which leads us to ask whether there is something beyond the contingency. We have a profound awareness of something beyond ourselves upon which we and all that exists depend. Many cultures and individuals name this the Holy or the sacred. Rudolf Otto, in his classic, early-twentieth-century work The Idea of the Holy, called this the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the tremendous (awe inspiring...

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