One reason for the high profile of science in our culture—apart from supposedly fathering our technology—is that, ultimately, no metaphysical assertions are capable of demonstration. Our wealth, thanks to fossil fuels, has temporarily eased our sufferings. Hence our intuitive faculties have been distracted. The small change that science offers, and in the grand scheme of things that’s all it is, suffices for our ordinary lives.
An example of a metaphysical assertion may be drawn from the first line of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” This assertion contains several others within it. One is that God exists. Others are that matter did not always exist, that it came into being at a certain point in time (“in the beginning”), and that an agency produced it out of nothing. Contrary claims—e.g. that the universe has always existed, that were is no God, that all that is is matter, or that the universe is God, etc.—are also metaphysical assertions and hence impossible of demonstration.
What serves as an alternative to proof is reasoning, but if we look at the products of reason, we find them to be empty. They rest on abstract ideas. These, carefully defined, are linked to one another and examined for logical coherence. All we get is formulae of which the terms are suspended in the air. We can understand the ideas—toss them back and forth in play—but we cannot demonstrate that they correspond to anything real. An example? Let’s take Aristotle’s definition of substance. Substance is a duality of matter and form. But this idea requires proof of unformed matter, what Aristotle called prime matter, and of disembodied form. We cannot find such things anywhere. The unbeliever cannot be forced to admit that substance, as here defined, exists by simply being shown prime matter and forms awaiting to be actualized.
Similar problems also plague our most cherished conception, namely that everything has a cause. The problem here is that causes cannot be tidily disentangled from the flux of reality. If we don’t separate them out, however, everything that happens is caused by—well, by everything that happens. The damage to the lamp post down the street was caused by the truck that hit it. Really? What about the driver’s drunkenness? And why did the driver drink? What caused a tavern to be opened so close to the driver’s last stop? Was it the incompetence of the restaurateur who occupied that space last? Why was he incompetent? What caused the current owner to post a sign saying, “Drinks at 1/2 price 5 to 7”? We could go on and on, of course. Modern scientific thought has drifted from the old-fashioned cause and has substituted for it concepts of probability. All change is thus due to random motion; but what we call “cause” is just a way of saying that certain outcomes are much more probable than others. Cause, once the property of agencies, has now become a servant in the house of Chance.
This sort of thing has radiations. Thus the various proofs for the existence of God were built on the older conceptions of cause and motion. Taking the last first, the proof from motion relies on the a priori assertion that nothing moves unless moved by another; a first and unmoved mover is thus necessary because an infinite regress is intolerable. But an infinite regress is only intolerable if we grant the first premise (“nothing moves unless…”). If that is true, yes. Motion then has no beginning, and the presumption is that it had to have had one. Indeed, the very definition of motion has, hiding within it, the denial of infinite regress. But that’s not immediately obvious. The problem is that we cannot demonstrate the first premise. What we observe is motion in everything, down to the hydrogen atom, and below. This motion—thus the motion or energy of hydrogen’s sole electron—seems to require no “fuel” or “push” at all. Nor does it gradually dissipate. Let’s turn to causes. If causes are impossible to package or quantize or separate out from the flux, the argument for an uncaused cause, God, also falls apart. Here, too, the argument depends on the notion that discreet, serial events are accurate definitions of reality. The contrary assertion is that everything has always moved and, indeed, motion is an aspect of reality; this motion clusters in various ways and has always done so, producing what we naively call “causes.”
Notice here how abstract concepts drive the metaphysical project. In one case we have an abstract definition of motion as the temporary property of things; hence they need to acquire motion from something else. This leads to the unmoved mover and the uncaused cause. In the other case, motion is ascribed to reality from the git go, as it were. Other arguments for God’s existence rely on concepts of order, teleology, law, or self-existence versus caused-existence. In none of these cases can we discover tangible proofs for the abstractions. All we find are hints.
This then leads to my premise today: Higher knowledge requires a faculty that transcends reasoning. Reason cannot give us answers to why questions. To the extent that it does, it relies upon the quiet collusion of our intuitive faculty. We have to grant standing or status to certain abstractions—such as they cannot obtain from demonstration or from logical reasoning. We do so, when we do, because we find the abstractions “intuitively true.” This in turn means that higher truth cannot be imposed; logical demonstration can never force us—as physical demonstration can. More importantly, the knowledge obtained will depend on the development of the intuitive power within us. It cannot be acquired by the usual brute means of hard work, memorization, and exercise—as reasoning can be.
For these reasons debate on religious or spiritual subjects has no merit whatsoever. The higher life is a realm of freedom. The compulsions present there must always come from within.
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