D
espite major advances in science and all efforts to understand, much remains unknown, and some things may never be known.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why are natural laws as they are?
How do thoughts and feelings come from neurons in our brains?
It can be uncomfortable to consider unanswered Big Questions. Western religion addresses these through images of God. In religious naturalism, the unknown is acknowledged and may be embraced; and feelings that come with this can be part of a religious sense,
“It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion.
A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate,
of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty,
which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms –
it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude;
in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”
…..Albert Einstein
Links
Ursula Goodenough. My covenant with mystery.
Steven Pinker. The mystery of consciousness.
John Horgan. Science will never explain why there’s something rather than nothing.
Sarah Boxer. Science confronts the unknowable; less is known than people think.