Long and short of it

I’M an atheist with faith in the scientific method.

As I do not understand much science, “faith” seems the appropriate term. The paradoxes to be found within the realm of the quantum mechanical and the cosmological conundrums of Big Bangs and black holes make my neurons ache. Things are either counterintuitive or incomprehensible, or both. This despite the fact that I collaborated with Paul Davies on a dozen telly programs and two books called The Big Questions. At the end of all that effort I was none the wiser.

So I invented a word to describe my atheistic fundamentalism. I’m a faitheist. As such the likes of Einstein, Richard Dawkins and Niels Bohr are my high priests. And Bohr, that greatest of Danes, winner of both the Nobel Prize in Physics and the Max Planck medal, came up with a profound and puzzling aphorism: he stated that the opposite of a great truth was also true.

On one level that’s as incomprehensible and counterintuitive as quantum mechanics. Except that it sort of works. Take the great truth that life is short. No greater truth than that, given that the average human being, if such a creature exists, probably has an average life span of just 500,000 hours. It’s a little over 600,000 if you make it to the biblical allotment of 70. And I turned 75 a few weeks back. I remember Kerry Packer’s shock when, at the height of his wealth and power, I told him: “You may be the richest Australian, worth billions, but at birth you inherited far, far less than a million hours. And now you’re close to bankrupt.”

Seventy-five years equals just 3900 weeks. Or 27,300 days. Turn 27,300 into dollars and, yes, it’s a pittance. I once suggested this was another reason not to believe in God — or not to like him if you did. Given the vast reaches of eternity, how mean and miserly to give us such a lousy deal.

So, life is short. That’s a very great truth. Yet the opposite is also true. This became clear when shuffling through my “papers” for the National Library. (That splendid institution was silly enough to ask for them and now has almost 600 boxes, mostly of correspondence with readers.)

I came across documents as old and yellowed as the Dead Sea Scrolls, giving hard evidence of all but forgotten lives and loves, of abandoned and only dimly remembered careers, of involvements in a plethora of plans, political activities and sundry projects. There were kind words, anonymous diatribes and death threats — the latter relating to many overheated controversies in which I’d got embroiled.

It was at once saddening and astonishing. Some of the detritus of documentation, dating back over half a century, brought back precious memories, loved faces, treasured friendships. There were reminders of the odd success and many a failure. But the bulk could be considered to signify the insignificant — what Shakespeare called “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Another great truth for which the opposite is also true: as an atheist, a faitheist, I believe that life is meaningless. Without author, purpose or destiny. But life is also meaningful — as we all struggle to do something half decent with our days. For those of us without religion, without

a God-given rule book, there’s a need to give ourselves values, an ethical framework.

Life is short. Yet life is long. For my “Life. Be in it” campaign we invented Norm to sit forever staring at his telly, mumbling “bewdie Newk”. Multiply him by millions, add a variety of new screens, and the portrait of Norm remains the norm. For most of us, life’s so long we waste much of it. With monumental ingratitude, fighting boredom.

Short or long? Either way — life, be in it. Whatever your age, it passes at the same relentless speed. Ask Kerry.