Mitteilungen 49/2009 - Fachverband Philosophie e.v.

Jan Seidel (Jgst. 13, Landfermann-Gymnasium Duisburg)
Thema: In der unaussprechbaren Herrlichkeit des Sternhimmels war irgendwie Gott
gegenwärtig. Zugleich aber wusste ich, dass die Sterne Gaskugeln sind, aus Atomen
bestehend, die den Gesetzen der Physik genügen. Die Spannung zwischen
diesen beiden Wahrheiten kann nicht unauflöslich sein. Wie aber kann man sie lösen?
(Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker)
Staring or seeing
Somehow it seems to be hopeless for religion and philosophy nowadays.
Today the perspective of sciences has played a decisive role in any kind of
explanation which formerly exclusively belonged to interpretations by humanities or
religion. Neither the cosmos nor the subject itself is safe against an abstract
explanation by means of functions and correlations between different objects like
neurons or molecules, thus giving the impression of an existence “as it is” or as it is
constructed by the human brain. Philosophy or religion are disfigured to no more
than a helpful or useful way of thinking in everyday life, almost fully explicable in
evolutionary terms and dependent on the development of sciences: it is only a
matter of time when the ancient astonishment about an incomprehensible world will
be replaced by a system of abstract formulas and descriptions which give the
impression of objectivity and rationality: in spite of quantum mechanics and chaos
theory, future technological and scientific progress will solve these bothering inexplicable
rests of nature.
Is there even a possible, conceivable place for the meaning of God and his creation
in a world without an escape, without the possibility of a flight into the infinite? Can
we simply put God between the indeterminable conditions of quanta, between the
contradicting correlation of chance and necessity in the chaos theory, between being
and not-being? Or is this “between” not a category which is only of transitive
use, which will be replaced sooner or later by rational scientific explanations?
Thus: is the decision between sciences and religion finally an Either – Or (Entweder
- Oder) or a Both – And (Sowohl als auch)?
Weizsäcker tries to find words for the contradictory feeling of both presence and
absence, of astonishment and indifference, of the infinity of an unspeakable, quiet
truthand the finiteness of the formal laws of physics, which all accompany his existence.
The lack of one category seems to be balanced by the other category: While
scientific discourses have an unquestionable truth-claim, rationalizing both world
and human being, banishing any kind of religious interpretation from the beginning,
they lack giving man a reason to live (“Seinsgrund”), an explanation of his being on
earth and his hope for the future: human existence suffers from his own explanations.
But what is the basis of sciences if not the existence of the human being itself, the
centre of which any kind of explanation begins to make sense? If we distinguish between
the present experiences of our consciousness and an objective world, which
has to have its legitimacy without an observer, we separate our present existence
from a distant world, thus repeat the Cartesian separation of “res cogitans” and “res
MITTEILUNGEN 49/2009
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