Following up upon yesterday's post, "God Belongs to No Genus," I want to make a related observation about atheism. If you missed it, reading that prior post will help you understand this one. Here's the point. If you have a proper of understanding of how God relates to existence doubting the existence of God is ruled out. Simply put, atheism is impossible. You cannot doubt the existence of God.
This idea of God being nothing(not thing) or even being beyond nothing and being tends to come up in a lot of the meditative implications in the mystical tradition. But abstracting it to the theoretical to deny that denial is possible I think is an interesting and wise way to draw upon it.
Existence is a mystery to science because it can only produce knowledge by setting up chains of contingencies derived from spacial and temporal contiguities or well defined statistical regularities that have no known exceptions. Existence per se is a precondition of such knowledge.
But then atheists who critique metaphysical faith because science does not support it and theists who try to to use the science of their day to "prove" that God exists make the same false move: attempting to prove a brute fact.
Atheists who critique faith in a Reality behind the forms of existence that science can know have not taken the time to appreciate that the question of whether the brute fact of existence includes a Reality that transcends scientific understanding is a forced, yes-or-no question, precisely because scientific knowledge does not bear on the question that our contingent existence poses for us.
If you've read Thomas' "five ways," you know that he finished each with the rhetorical flourish "and this all [persons] call God." Today not all persons call speculation about what transcends scientific understanding "God." So the question of whether there is a question that is inherently beyond science is crucial for avoiding an ambiguity that, IMO, Richard did not...
The mystery of being is inherently beyond the forms of contingent being that science can explain, simply because nothing can be contingent on nothing. Brilliant scientists such as Stephen Hawking have run amok of the simple point by, for instance, hypothisizing that if particles and antiparticles cancel each other out and a quantum fluctuation upsets that balance that universes can arise from nothing. But he described a theoretical apparatus based on his present understanding of physics to explain his hypothesis, and his hypothesis not only requires something to precede the forms of matter and energy that comprise our universe, but hypothesizes about the something, which is not nothing. Obviously enough!
The difference that Richard did not account for is that for scientific explanations to be forthcoming the contingencies that assume existence of which the explanations are comprised necessarily assume existence as a brute fact. And "brute" is relative to the explanations science can give.
Whether the veil of ignorance created by the brute fact of existence conceals a Reality that would inform our understanding of Reality if our understanding were not confined to contingent realities is the question. It's a coin flip, since science does not bear on the question. Obviously.
This idea of God being nothing(not thing) or even being beyond nothing and being tends to come up in a lot of the meditative implications in the mystical tradition. But abstracting it to the theoretical to deny that denial is possible I think is an interesting and wise way to draw upon it.
Existence is a mystery to science because it can only produce knowledge by setting up chains of contingencies derived from spacial and temporal contiguities or well defined statistical regularities that have no known exceptions. Existence per se is a precondition of such knowledge.
But then atheists who critique metaphysical faith because science does not support it and theists who try to to use the science of their day to "prove" that God exists make the same false move: attempting to prove a brute fact.
Atheists who critique faith in a Reality behind the forms of existence that science can know have not taken the time to appreciate that the question of whether the brute fact of existence includes a Reality that transcends scientific understanding is a forced, yes-or-no question, precisely because scientific knowledge does not bear on the question that our contingent existence poses for us.
But one can also reject that “God” is the source of this “Being,” right?
Important point.
If you've read Thomas' "five ways," you know that he finished each with the rhetorical flourish "and this all [persons] call God." Today not all persons call speculation about what transcends scientific understanding "God." So the question of whether there is a question that is inherently beyond science is crucial for avoiding an ambiguity that, IMO, Richard did not...
The mystery of being is inherently beyond the forms of contingent being that science can explain, simply because nothing can be contingent on nothing. Brilliant scientists such as Stephen Hawking have run amok of the simple point by, for instance, hypothisizing that if particles and antiparticles cancel each other out and a quantum fluctuation upsets that balance that universes can arise from nothing. But he described a theoretical apparatus based on his present understanding of physics to explain his hypothesis, and his hypothesis not only requires something to precede the forms of matter and energy that comprise our universe, but hypothesizes about the something, which is not nothing. Obviously enough!
The difference that Richard did not account for is that for scientific explanations to be forthcoming the contingencies that assume existence of which the explanations are comprised necessarily assume existence as a brute fact. And "brute" is relative to the explanations science can give.
Whether the veil of ignorance created by the brute fact of existence conceals a Reality that would inform our understanding of Reality if our understanding were not confined to contingent realities is the question. It's a coin flip, since science does not bear on the question. Obviously.
Good points. Requires some abstract philosophical thought!
Thank God!