Read Somewhere Towards the End for Free Online

moored, I said that though I was unable to believe in the god I had been taught to believe in, I supposed that some kind of First Cause had to be accepted. To which Duncan replied ‘Why? Might it not be that beginnings and endings are things we think in terms of simply because our minds are too primitive to conceive of anything else?’
    Did I answer? I can remember only tilting my head back and gazing up into the star-filled sky with a feeling of extreme, almost dizzy elation, as though for the first time my eyes were capable of seeing space as it deserved to be seen. I made no attempt to plumb the implications of this idea, but neither did I hesitate to accept it as the truth. And for a long time that was the extent of my thinking about religion.
    I was brought back to it when I was beginning to be old by John Updike, when he was analysing (I don’t remember where) his own religious belief, and said, or rather wrote: ‘Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ambiguity, the ingenuity, the humanity (in the Harvard sense) of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we’re dead we’re dead?’ Thisbaffled me. Perhaps it is uninteresting intellectually to believe that the nature of the universe is far, far beyond grasping, not only by oneself as an individual but by oneself as a member of our species; but emotionally, or poetically, it seems to me vastly more exciting and more beautiful than exercising any amount of ingenuity in making up fairy stories.
    John Updike would agree that our planet is a mere speck in that small part of the universe which we are capable of perceiving, and that Homo sapiens has existed for only a tiny fraction of that planet’s tiny time, and has not the slightest idea of what 90 per cent of the universe is made of (I like scientists calling what they don’t know ‘dark matter’); so how can he, or any other intelligent person, fail to agree that men are being absurdly kind to themselves when they suppose that something thought by them is universally relevant (those religious people who believe in one god do seem to see him as universal, not as local to Earth)? Faith – the decision to act as though you believe something you have no reason to believe, hoping that the decision will bring on belief and then you will feel better – that seems to me mumbo-jumbo. I can’t feel anything but sure that when men form ideas about God, creation, eternity, they are making no more sense in relation to what lies beyond the range of their comprehension than the cheeping of sparrows. And given that the universe continues to be what it is, regardless of what we believe, and what it is has always been and will continue to be the condition of our existence, why should the thought of our smallness in it be boring – or, for that matter, frightening?
    I have heard people bewailing man’s landing on the moon, asthough before it was touched by an astronaut’s foot it was made of silver or mother-of-pearl, and that footprint turned it into grey dust. But the moon never was made of silver or mother-of-pearl, and it still shines as though it were so made. Whether we know less or more about it, it remains itself and continues to reflect the sun’s light in a way that is beautiful in men’s eyes. Surely the part of life which is within our range, the mere fact of life, is mysterious and exciting enough in itself? And surely the urgent practical necessity of trying to order it so that its cruelties are minimized and its beauties are allowed their fullest possibly play is compelling enough without being seen as a duty laid on us by a god?
    People of faith so often seem to forget that a god who gives their lives meaning too often provides them with justification when they want to wipe out other people who believe in other gods, or in nothing. My own belief