1006. Speaking of his "favorite arguments for belief . . .

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Speaking of his "favorite arguments for belief"—namely, "the argument from order and the argument from what Kant called the summum bonum and [he calls] the rational aim: what rational beings could reasonably accept as the final purpose of their existence and activity"—Hartshorne says: "I am not saying, Unless God exists life has no meaning or rational aim and the cosmos no order. I am sure life has meaning and the cosmos order. I am saying that I can understand how there is meaning and order only by believing in God as enriched by our experiences" ("Our Knowledge of God": 60, 62).

I take this to indicate that, in Hartshorne's view, the beliefs that the world has order and that life has meaning are as ultimate or unavoidable beliefs as the belief that there is a God. Consequently, it's not the case that, unless I believe in God, I cannot believe that the world has order and that life has meaning. I can and must believe the second two beliefs simply by the fact that I exist and act at all. But I believe in God because only by so believing can I understand how or why there is the order and meaning in which I cannot fail to believe. Otherwise, as Hartshorne says in speaking of atheism in relation to "the regularity of nature," my beliefs in the order of the world and in the meaning of life are matters of "a mere brute fact or blind mystery" (61).