Replies

But do these unchanging rules by which our 4D world is ordered have any meaning outside that 4D world? I would rather say that they are a reflection of God's nature as it impinges on a material world, a clue to his nature as important as is the permanent state of change, and motion, and creation that we see.

Great insight, marron. It strikes me as quite similar to Newton's insight regarding the sensorium Dei.

Perhaps these "unchanging rules" have no meaning outside of 4D spacetime because they are the means of 4D spacetime coming into existence, the principles that cause space, time and matter to come into existence. In other words, they are designed as the principles by which the world is incarnated. In other words, they are "prior" to spacetime; without a physical universe in which to express, they have no meaning for us; for without them, we would not be here in the first place to have an opinion of the matter. I don't know if that makes any sense! :^)

But now we are getting into the thorny problem of "anthropocentrism," aren't we? I'm too tuckered out to tackle that one tonight. Suffice it to say here that I don't know what conceivable alternative to anthropomorphism -- which scientists love to "tsk-tsk" -- there is.

Thank you oh so much for your perceptive reply, marron!

There is a distinction between anthropocentrism (and its variants) and the stoic nature analogy. And since mankind is and is not nature, anthropocentrism must be qualified.

The analogy of mind to nature is illustrated by space and time; it is often confused with the analogy of mankind to divinity. Plato and Augustine sometimes seem to confuse the two--perhaps Augustine more so--by adopting mathematics as analogous to both.

A step out of this quagmire is to recognize the kinds of analogies that are involved. The ontological argument is fair as far as it goes, but it only points to the creative design. It's an induction shared by Solomon and Aristotle alike and was appealing to Philo as Logos doctrine. Does it go much further, by itself and apart from any other addition?

Democritus was one of the first to indicate some analogy from the outside order to an interior within humankind: a microcosmos as image of the macrocosmos. Often these arguments from analogy were based on a kinship or commonality (so with Plato). The nature analogy was favored by the Stoics. Later in the Greek east Gregory of Nyssa, following the Platonic distinction between the physic and pneumatic parts of the human soul, admits this nature analogy of the micro-macro only to a point:

How mean and how unworthy of the majesty of man are the fancies of some heathen writers, who magnify humanity, as they suposed, by their comparison of it to this world! for they say that man is a little world, composed of the same elements with the universe. Those who bestow on human nature such praise as this by a high-sounding name, forget that they are dignifying man with the attributes of the gnat and the mouse: for they too are composed of these four elements,--because assuredly about the animated nature of every existing thing we behold a part, greater or less, of these elements without which it is not natural that any sensitive being should exist.

And yet at the other end, theological conceptions would fare no better. God was the antinomy of creation, the negation of being etc. FWIW