Gerard Bodifée 0104
But science, on the other hand, talks about existence as we know it, as it is: incomplete, temporal, transient, morally limited, that’s what science talks about. So you could say, in a sort of ruthless scientific analysis, that religion speaks about a fantasy, a fairy tale, and maybe this is true, if you look at it from a narrow scientific perspective. Religion does not talk about the world as we find it. And if you call that (ie. the world as we find it) reality, then religion does not talk about reality.
But the question is: is this "reality", this world that we can touch and see, is that really reality? It looks a bit too ephemeral, a bit too transient, a bit too unfathomable to be the real, if you ask me. On the contrary, I think that what religion talks about could instead be the real reality, and that this one is only an incomplete and partial representation and reflection of it. And this is most apparent when you think about how impermanent everything is. After all, that is what religion talks about: the impermanent and the permanent. Science merely describes time as a sequence: moments that come one after another. In religion we are suffused with the realisation that we only exist for a fleeting moment, and every moment that moment passes (here one moment, gone the next).
This existence, in fact, does not really exist. It is a sort of appearance, which immediately disappears again. No sooner have I told you who I am than I am no longer who I was. It escapes me, it eludes me. I do not really exist. I am so short-lived, so ephemeral, something which cannot be defined before it is gone again! You should ask yourself the question – instead of asking whether God exists: do I exist? I do not really exist. While the religious person tries to speak about existence, but then real Existence, which is not short-lived, transient, unfathomable, but that is! As it has been formulated in every religion. In Exodus, Jahweh says: “I am that I am”. Stripped of all temporality, simply being. And this is not the human way of being. We are that which is ephemeral. And when we speak about God then we are trying to speak about this complete, unlimited, and imperishable being.
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