Member-only story
In Search of the Ultimate
Does God exist? If so, is God the Ultimate? Is nothing higher, greater or more valuable possible? If there is an Ultimate, what is its nature or what characteristics does it have? Does it create? Does it act? Is it intentional? Does it care? Is it a being in any sense we understand as a being? Is it personal or impersonal? Personal or impersonal, how does it relate to nature? Is it good, evil or neither?
These are recent questions.
The universe, we are told, is nearly 14 billion years old. Through all the collisions, violence, birthing and dying, there was no one or no thing within that universe to ask these questions, at least as far as we know. Until the very recent past. Maybe 200,000 years ago bi-pedal creatures looked into the night sky and asked: Is anyone there? Is any thing there?
Many thousands of years later we still ask that question. The urgency of it, the significance of it and the answers offered have provided endless conversations, ecstatic mystical experiences, the deepest consolations and some of the greatest violence and cruelty visited on this planet passing through this vast cosmos. An estimated 70 billion humans have inhabited this brilliant blue planet in the past 200,000 years. Most have at one time or another have asked the question. And many millions have suffered terribly and died often unimaginable deaths because of…
