Musings

Do we often let our theories or understandings of things become confused with the actual thing itself? But perception of an object is not the object itself. My understanding is not exhaustive of the thing i am attempting to understand. When i engage with an idea or phenomenon of common knowledge that has had formulation over the millenia, and begin to apprehend the whole sum of what has been said and/or known/established thus far, i may or may not become adept at the subject, but still I will not be owner of the object itself. Most especially when that object is the Prime Mover, the Big Idea. For example, someone (one of the "New Atheists", I think) has posited that there are "4 components of the Judeo-Christian theory of God: omniscience, omnipotence, goodness and creator." Thus, they assume they have pinned god down succinctly, and may dispose or otherwise arbitrate over whether or not God is sufficient for their sanction. But, let one's idea of god not be thought sufficient to know God, but only as one's idea [Plato's chair notwithstanding]. God alone is God. How can a 4 dimensional being conceive of a being of a greater dimensional array? Let us stipulate that God is prior to all other being. By definition, God must be primal, eternal and self-existant. Because the universe exists, then, God, the cause of it, is its creator. My assertion, definition, dissection or disputation of god's omnipotence does not rise to the level of God's self-existance. If my human mind asks: can god create a rock so big that he cannot lift it? one may respond: well if he can do so, and then not lift it, then he's not omnipotent; or if he can't create such a rock then he's not omnipotent, and so disprove any assertion of god's omnipotence....sorry, but not so, the actual state of God's omnipotence is such that God can create such a rock AND lift it as well, Cartesian logic notwithstanding. Nor is God's omniscience flummoxed by the paradox of God's forgetfulness much less my dimensional finitude. This is not a case of "A" being equal to "not A". Pity the man who thinks of god as the created, finite, limited, several-dimensioned being created by craven mind of men. God is the uncreated infinite unlimited trans/poly-dimensional being forever beyond the pinching grasp of craven men, who nonetheless can, by mysterious grace, contemplate God. The "Judeo-Christian" "theory" of God is not some closed theory that exists within the covers of a theological textbook or even a bible. Be not quick to erect straw men that you then dissect as representing the god you suppose you have apprehended based on your reading of either scripture or the scribbled ravings of self-appointed intellectual elites. 9-09-07

"God" as a term must be understood to refer to a primal or primary reality, a fundamental, non-projected, incomprehensible, uncreated Transcendence.

For the truculent iconoclast we must point out that the term refers to something pre-dating all phenomenology & human conception, out-classing all categories of mind, thought, image, etc.

We are thus obliged to stipulate that all words and language employed are merely referent, symbolic, suggestive, reductionist....But also that all words, ideas, meanings so employed derive their utility from that irreducible & inescapable light that the infinite unknowable darkness casts on all else, conferring Meaning itself, if it is to be had, on any and all differentiated existence.

"Intelligibility... leads us in the final analysis....to that transcendant and primordial thought imprinted on all things" Pope John Paul II (re: Galileo) 1992. The intelligibility of the created universe is treated by the materialist philosopher as a "fait accompli" or a natural inevitability resulting from the evolution of our perceiving organ tissue in the environment of it's context. Of course things make sense because senses make things. Logic is logical because it exists as logic, therefore it must be logical to itself, else it wouldn't be adaptive to survival of the "species" or the dna or the whatever reductionist microcomponent agent directs the perpetuation of material being. 09-29-07

The mathematical phenomenon of the laws of motion, for instance, govern the physical motions of objects within a wide sphere of common experience, observed and tested, and proven to the mind of humanity, in such a way as to astound and surprise that mind with the coherence and orderly relationships of their associations. For example, the acceleration of falling objects (i.e. objects responding to gravity on earth) is such that their speed increases as the mathmatical square of the time traveled. 09-29-07

Why and how is it that it should be precisely and exactly that quantifiable and distinct proportion, linking time and space in a dynamically charged continuum? The self-revealing answer seems to indicate that it is because time & space, material and intelligibility, share some singularity of origin, and thus, relationship. 10-26-07