Session One: Okay, So God Does Not Exist. What Does?

Retreat Series: Spirituality for Atheists, Agnostics, Druids, Pagans, and Seekers

The First Conversation

Introduction

Welcome. This is a private retreat for anyone who finds the usual religious language unhelpful or irrelevant. The theme is simple: Okay, so God does not exist. What does? We begin with six questions that have appeared again and again in human experience. They do not require belief in any particular tradition. They ask only that you answer from your own life, using reason, observation, and the experiences you have already lived.

Scientists and philosophers have long noted a limit: science measures what can be seen, weighed, or calculated, yet many of the questions that shape a life remain invisible. Galileo urged us to measure what we can and make measurable what we cannot. Einstein called the world’s comprehensibility an eternal mystery. Hawking observed that a mathematical model cannot answer why there should be a universe for the model to describe. These thinkers do not close the questions. They leave them open for each person to face.

No one here can tell you whether your answer is right or wrong. The only test is whether your response makes sense to you when you look honestly at what has happened in your days. You may change your answers later. You may keep them. They belong to you.

The six questions are: What is the purpose of life? What is your purpose of life within that purpose? What does reality look like? How does it all fit together? How do you love fiercely? You know you are going to die; now what? For this first conversation, we place them before you. You are invited to sit with them using only what you already know from living.

Take your time. If you are housebound, ill, or simply tired, that is not a barrier. The upper room of the inner self is available wherever you are. Read what follows slowly. Then set the words aside and sit with whatever has stirred.

Meditation

Begin with the first question: What is the purpose of life? Aristotle spoke of telos, the end or purpose toward which a thing moves. For human beings, he located that end in eudaimonia—flourishing that comes through the exercise of reason and virtue. Yet he also knew that purpose is not visible in the same way a stone falls or a star moves. What has your own experience suggested? Think of a time when something felt meaningful and a time when it felt empty. What was different?

The second question narrows the field: What is your purpose of life within that larger purpose? Abraham Maslow described a hierarchy of needs that moves from survival toward self-actualization—the urge to become more fully what one is capable of being. That urge is not a laboratory measurement. It shows up in what a person protects and what a person accepts as loss. What have you protected? What have you been willing to lose? Those patterns reveal the Center you have already placed at the middle of your days.

What does reality look like? Edmund Husserl invited us to return to the lifeworld—the ordinary, pre-scientific experience of the world before it is reduced to numbers and laws. Reality includes the body that ages, the mind that worries, the relationships that nourish or wound. Some describe it as indifferent. Others find patterns of care. Use the language that fits what you have seen.

How does it all fit together? Martin Heidegger asked what it means to be, and noted that human existence is always already thrown into a world of projects, relationships, and the awareness of death. The pieces do not always form a single scientific picture. You are free to say that the pieces do not yet fit, or that they fit only provisionally.

How do you love fiercely? Erich Fromm wrote that love is not a feeling that happens to us but a practice that requires discipline, concentration, patience, and the overcoming of narcissism. Fierce love often looks ordinary: showing up when it is inconvenient, speaking truth without cruelty, staying when leaving would be easier. What has fierce love required of you?

Finally: You know you are going to die; now what? Heidegger called authentic existence being-toward-death—recognizing that time is limited and that this limit can clarify what matters. Some respond by intensifying present relationships. Others turn toward legacy or the wish that their remaining days reduce someone else’s pain. How do your choices change when you remember that time is limited?

These six questions do not form a system that must be solved. They are thresholds. Each person crosses them at different times and with different resources. The only requirement for this first conversation is that you answer from your own experience and that you use reason and logic as you understand them. No external authority is invited to grade the results.

If a memory rises while you read, let it stay. If a resistance appears, notice it. The inner self’s upper room is patient. Sit with one question if that is all that fits. The others will wait.

Three Reflections on What Science Cannot Measure

“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.” — Albert Einstein.

“The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” — Stephen Hawking

“The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.” — Martin Buber.

Contemplative Time of Fifteen Minutes

Find a quiet place. Sit or lie down comfortably. Go to the upper room of your inner self and shut the door on commentary. Stay in silence and solitude for fifteen minutes. If thoughts come, notice them gently and return to the quiet. There is nothing to achieve. Be present to your own experience and to the questions that remain after measurement ends. If fifteen minutes feels long today, stay as long as you can. Begin again when you are ready.

Action

After the silence, choose one small, concrete action that arises from what you have noticed in these reflections. It may be as simple as writing one sentence about one of the questions, contacting someone you have been meaning to reach, or sitting in silence again tomorrow. Do one thing, small enough to complete before the day ends. Then notice what happens.

Copyright of Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All rights reserved, with collaboration from Grok.