Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
TWO REVOLUTIONS, TWO VIEWS OF MAN
By Jean F. Drew
As every American schoolchild has been taught, in Western history there were two great sociopolitical revolutions that took place near the end of the eighteenth century: The American Revolution of 1775; and the French, of 1789. Children are taught that both revolutions were fought because of human rights in some way; thus bloody warfare possibly could be justified, condoned so long as the blood and treasure were shed to protect the rights of man. The American schoolchild is assured that the American and French revolutions were both devoted to the expansion of human rights and thus were equally noble revolutions. Moreover, it is widely believed that the French Revolution was an evolution from the American one.
Rather than simply accept these ideas uncritically, comparison and contrast of the two revolutions can shed some light on what turns out to be their stark differences as to inceptions, ostensible goals, foundational ideology, and respective outcomes.
Inceptions
There is a famous Pythagorean maxim (c. sixth century B.C.): The beginning is the half of the whole. That is to say, inception events have a way of profoundly influencing the course of events that follow from them; and so their analysis can give insight into the character of their development in time, and even of the motivations they configure. Less obviously, an inception event is itself the culmination of a train of social, political, and cultural development that finally erupts, or takes evident shape, as a concrete beginning, or precipitating event of what follows. At that point, a situation of no return has been reached: The fat is in the fire. There is no turning back
.
And so, let us take a look at the beginnings of two revolutions:
The American:
In London George III and his cabinet, their confidence bolstered by their huge majority in Parliament, moved toward a confrontation with the Americans. On February 2, 1775, [Prime Minister Frederick, Lord] North introduced a motion to declare the province of Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and asked the King to take steps to support the sovereignty of England. The opposition, led by Edmund Burke, decried this move as a declaration of war. But the measure passed by a majority of three to one. George III was immensely pleased .
The King decided to send some 1,000 reinforcements to Boston, far short of the number that Governor General Thomas Gage had wanted.
The King and his ministers still refused to believe Gages assessment of the odds he faced . Colonel James Grant who had served in America, at one point in the same army with George Washington [in the French and Indian Wars] declared he was certain the Americans would never dare to face an English army. In this spirit the King ordered Lord Dartmouth to draft a letter telling Gage that it was time to act.
Gage promptly acted. Thanks to his spies, he knew that the Colonials were accumulating military stores at Concord, including large quantities of gunpowder. So Gage decided that a swift march on Concord to seize the powder as well as the fourteen cannon said to be in the town would have a crippling, even demoralizing impact on the Provincial Congresss plans to form an Army of Observation to pen the British inside Boston.
From this decision ensued, on April 19, 1775, the opening shot the shot heard round the world of the American Revolutionary War, at North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts at about 8 oclock in the morning.
Although the Colonials already knew the British were coming to Concord and Lexington sooner or later, and for what purpose, and that the incursion would come by a night march (rare in that day) the Americans proved early to be remarkably effective spies what they did not know was the specific date, or whether the British forces would be moving by land over Boston Neck or by sea in longboats across the Back Bay. Hence the famous signal of one if by land, two if by sea posted at the Old North Church, wherein observers were keeping an eye on British troop movements.
It turned out to be two: The British forces, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were subsequently debarked at Cambridge across the Charles River, from longboats attached to H.M.S. Somerset then standing guard over the Boston Harbor ferryway. This was a force of some 700 men composed of light infantrymen and fearsome grenadiers. From thence the body proceeded overland, on a much shorter march than would have been the case had they approached Concord via Boston Neck. The route from Cambridge to Concord led straight through the heart of the neighboring town of Lexington.
As soon as the news came that the British were moving, Paul Revere set upon his famous midnight ride on a fast mare, traveling west at high speed to warn the people of Concord and the surrounding towns that the British were coming. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes likewise fanned out on horseback, spreading the alert to all within earshot.
The folks at Concord, having thus been warned, working feverishly overnight, managed to remove all the military stores to safe locations. The locals felt confident they could handle the threat: After all, the town had 600 drilled and trained Minutemen on spot, and there were some 6,000 other Minutemen and Militia a body composed of all able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 60 within fairly easy reach of Concord town who were already pledged to come to her aid in the event of the outbreak of actual hostilities.
The people of Concord evidently figured a show of force would suffice to deter the British officers from doing anything rash. But really what they were relying on was their expectation based on their understanding of the so-far prevailing rules of engagement, frequently tested that British troops would never open fire on their fellow citizens i.e., the Colonials themselves, who were British subjects also unless they were fired upon first. And the Americans did not intend to fire first.
In this assessment of the situation on the ground, they were sadly mistaken. In the approach to Concord, the Brits had provoked a bloody engagement at Lexington Green in which the British light infantry unquestionably fired the first volleys, killing eight men and wounding ten. Then the British forces continued their march into Concord, to secure the bridges of the town: The British commander Smith had detached four squadrons to visit a prominent local farm to see whether contraband might be stashed there; and feared his troops could not safely return if the North Bridge were under the control of the Colonials. In defense of the bridge, the Brits again fired first. For a moment, the Americans could not believe this was happening. Goddamn it, one man shouted, They are firing ball! Then their commander, Major Buttrick, whirled and shouted, Fire fellow soldiers, for Gods sake fire. The Americans sustained six casualties at North Bridge, all fatal. On the British side, Two privates were killed and a sergeant, four privates and four officers were wounded.
Then the Brits cut their losses and in disorderly retreat high-tailed it back to the security of their barracks in Boston empty-handed. Their mission was a failure: They had not found, let alone confiscated, any military stores.
But the American Revolutionary War was officially ON .
* * * * * * *
The French:
History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had just time to fly almost half naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
This king and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the kings bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded . Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell . After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings .
And thus, the French Revolutionary War was officially ON .
On the question of origins beginnings, inceptions, precipitating events it would appear that the American and French Revolutions do not seem to resemble one another very much. Its difficult to draw a common understanding of what human rights might be on the basis of such disparate evidence.
On the one hand, its possible to see that perhaps human rights had something to do with the defense of Concord: People coming together to protect and defend their lives, liberty, and property against the tyranny of George III, who then was most corruptly usurping the ancient rights of Englishmen not only in America, but also back in the home isles as the Colonials were very well aware.
People today do not appreciate how close was the tie with the mother country at the time, through the printed word: In that day, the London presses were offloading their publications directly onto American ships bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as soon as the ink was dry. It was from the London press that the Colonials learned of the usurpations of individual liberty that good King George was perpetrating at home, not to mention in their own backyard. They wanted no part of it.
On the other hand, its difficult to see what human right is implicated in the inception event of the French Revolution unless it be the right to commit regicide. Or maybe the right to agitate and deploy mobs as instruments of social and political change .
In the end, Citizen Louis Capet, formerly known as King Louis XVI of France, was tried and convicted of treason by the National Convention and was guillotined on 21 January 1793 the only French king in history to fall victim to regicide. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was also tried and convicted of treason: She was executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months after her husband.
Ostensible Goals
It seems clear that the Americans were not seeking to kill the king, or to overthrow the traditions of the British constitutional monarchy. Rather, they were seeking a complete, formal separation from it because they were motivated by the conviction that their historic liberties were being systematically violated by George III.
By 1775, the Americans already had a tradition of local or self-government going back some 150 years. When the king sent in his governors, who ruled autocratically as directed by himself and his council, the Americans were outraged. The maxim no taxation without representation was but one expression of their revulsion for what they perceived as the wholesale destruction of the historic liberties of British subjects in America. The Sons of Liberty at Boston, notably including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, eloquently argued for total separation from the British Crown not the most popular idea at first. But the events at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge caused many to reappraise their position on this matter. In the end, complete separation was the idea that prevailed, and which was finally achieved .
So what was this notion of liberty that had the Americans so exercised? John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, writing in Catos Letters serially published in The London Journal in 1721 and after, which was avidly read in America at the time describe human liberty as follows:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Mans honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
These were the ideas that had earlier inspired the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which the great British philosopher and political activist, John Locke (16321704) a thinker enormously respected in America was the intellectual father. Above all, Lockes ideas constitute a theory of the individual human being. This is the same theory that inspired the American Revolution of 1775: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . Indeed, it appears the author of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) was strongly resonating to Lockes essential political ideas in these passages.
Edmund Burke (17291797) the great Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist, and philosopher (who as already noted was sympathetic to the American cause) also articulated the historic rights of Englishmen, and of all free peoples universally, as follows:
If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; the law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in political function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. But as to the share of power, authority and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can a man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?
This last point draws attention to Burkes understanding that the foundational rights of man declared by the French philosophes Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité are purely abstract rights indicating no sign of understanding of, or connection with, the actual development and maintenance of a just civil society. In other words, the philosophes envisioned man abstractly, or to put it another way, as abstracted from both nature and society as if this abstract man stands as a total end in himself, as sacrosanct, beyond any demand of society which nature assigns to him as inescapable part and participant of it. It seems the philosophes first reduce the human being to an abstraction by taking him entirely out of the context of historical experience and traditional understandings of natural law going back millennia. Then, with man having been so abstracted, from there it is easy to dissolve him into an abstract mass: The individual is no longer the natural or even legal bearer of rights; rather, the legal bearer of rights is now the mass, the group mankind at large or however else defined.
There is a further consideration regarding the original American founding that we should remember today: The British colony at Massachusetts was not established by means of military power which is the usual way that states of whatever description acquire new territories. Instead, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by religious refugees: They were dissenters from the Church of England, the established church of which the reigning king was titular head.
Beginning with Henry VIII and extending to all his successors, the king of England entirely combined in his own person both the fundamental secular and spiritual authority of British society. But, when religious pilgrims on November 11, 1620, at Provincetown, Massachusetts, ratified what has been described as the first written constitution in human history, the Mayflower Compact, they were acting in resonance to a spiritual authority superior to that of the then-reigning king, James I or of kings in general.
Just by making the voyage to America, the religious refugees were repudiating the authority of the king over their spiritual lives. Once there, the secular authority of the king was of absolutely no help to them. They had to shift for themselves, and basic survival was the highest priority: Almost the majority of the original colony perished during their first New England winter. They were forced to place their reliance entirely on themselves, on each other, and on God. The Mayflower Compact, moreover, made the pilgrims primary reliance on God perfectly explicit. Its first five words are: In the name of God, Amen.
Hold that thought while we turn to the French experience.
For centuries, the foundation of French society, culture, and politics had been the idea of the Etats General, of which there were three estates: the aristocracy, whose head was the King; the Church, whose head was the Pope; and everybody else; i.e., your average, everyday, common, small people .
What is known is that when King Louis XVI was decapitated, the social force of the French aristocracy was effectively decapitated with him. Also it is known that in the four-year period between the invasion of the queens bedchamber and the execution of the king, some 16,000 French men and women were guillotined at Paris mainly aristocrats and other well-off people as enemies of the State. Also all Church lands (probably accounting for some twenty percent of the total French real estate) and property were forcibly confiscated by the State, now reposed in a body called the National Assembly, composed by the Third Estate, the people of France. Thousands of clergy bishops, priests, monks, and nuns were murdered.
In effect the Third Estate utterly destroyed the other two: Thats the French Revolution in a nutshell.
Foundational Ideology
The French Revolution managed to kill off the first two Estates and with that, evidently hoped to extinguish forever all aristocratic and theological ideas, pretensions, and powers regarding questions of the human condition. Indeed, the general expectation then seemed to be the Third Estate, the people, unchained from past superstitions and repressions, had at last come into its own sphere, where it could finally define and exercise true human liberty.
But the people were not some sort of homogeneous mass. Rather, there is a natural hierarchical order within the Third Estate similar to that found in both the aristocratic and theological estates.
In France at the time, at the top of this natural hierarchy were the people with expertise in manufacturing, commerce, banking, and law. They were the beneficiaries of the rising tide of the Enlightenment, as plentifully nourished from the side of Newtonian science.
In the rank immediately below them were the skilled craftsmen. Below this, relatively unskilled laborers. Then, the least of the people, the peasants/serfs who mainly were the impoverished suffering victims of the feudal order then embraced by both the aristocracy and the Church.
Thus within the Third Estate there were marked disparities of wealth, opportunity, education, talent, and ability. Yet the doctrine of Egalité erases all such distinctions: An Einstein and the most ignorant day laborer were considered equal. All were equal in the National Assembly too. On this basis, the doctrine of Fraternité, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is blind and silent regarding the problem of: how the victims of the revolution become non-brothers in the first place, such that they could be destroyed with impunity by the mob, or condemned as enemies of the state by the National Convention and sent to the guillotine. On this basis, the doctrine of Liberté seems little more than a defense of gratuitous, passionate license that is immensely destructive to society.
Burkes analysis of the situation in France, the condition of the National Assembly, and their combined implications, retains its extraordinary political noteworthiness to defenders of Liberty in our own day:
It is no wonder therefore, that it is with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have the rights of men. Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament [modification], and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration .
Burke again reminds us a few pages later on that there is deep danger in relying on abstract rights when it comes to the organization of a just that is liberal, in the sense of liberty, the root idea of classical liberalism political society:
The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a mans abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.
In Burkes view and I daresay in the view of his contemporary American readers the French Revolution was a
usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.
Excuse me if I have dwelt too long on this atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men .
Clearly, Burke understands the French Revolution first and foremost as a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions that is, it was preeminently a social, not a political revolution. Certainly that was not the case with the American Revolution. Indeed, Bernard Bailyn, eminent professor of Early American History at Harvard, has asked a tantalizing question: Was the American Revolution a revolution, or was it an evolution?
The prevailing American view at the time did not reject the ancient British tradition of natural liberty under natural law; it was rejecting King George as the traducer and usurper of this tradition. They didnt want a king or a pope; they wanted a system of self-government that had already been in long usage in America. Ultimately they wanted a Constitution exclusively devoted to the defense of human liberty under just and equal laws. Which if history was of any guide meant that the action of the State had to be kept minimal in its scope by well-defined authority.
Most colonial Americans, being heirs of the same ancient, natural-law cultural tradition as Edmund Burke, likely would have agreed with him about this:
We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould on our presumption .
The allusion to Rousseau here is particularly instructive. Rousseau held that man is born perfectly good: He is born the noble savage. But as soon as he is in the world long enough, he becomes subject to a relentless process of corruption that makes him bad because of the bad institutions of society, including churches and states, educational systems, economic organizations, and so forth. Man is victimized by society and powerless against it. Bad institutions are entirely to blame for human misery.
In short, Rousseaus doctrine is directly opposed to the natural law doctrine that human beings are responsible (within limits) for whatever happens to them. Natural law theory holds that individual human beings alone have the ability to choose, decide, act; and that they are responsible for the decisions they make. And this implies the objective existence of good and evil. It also requires a universal (divine) spiritual authority to underwrite the foundational truths of the natural and moral worlds, thus to bring them into correspondence in human reason and experience.
In short, the Americans were not disciples of Rousseau . He stands their theory of man on its very head.
Two Views of Man Then and Now
The two revolutions have theories of man that are diametrically opposed, based on the idea of what constitutes human liberty, of the source of human rights. What Locke and Burke and the Americans held in common was the belief that human rights are the gifts of God, and are therefore inseparable from human nature itself. In other words, these rights inalienably inhere in concrete individual persons, each and every one, equally.
In contrast, on the French revolutionary view, human rights are the province of an abstraction known as mankind. Its doctrine is the Rights of Man not the equal, inalienable rights of actual men. It sets up scope for the idea of group rights, as opposed to the idea of rights divinely vested in the individual person in such a way as to constitute his or her very own human nature. Under the French Revolution, the metaphysicians Burkes term for intellectual elites would guide the rest of us in our understanding of such matters. In short, our rights as human beings ineluctably would be what politically powerful elites tell us they are. There is to be no higher standard of truth than that.
In the so-called post-modern world, the revolution that works overtime to kill truth wants to destroy it at its root at the Logos. Rather than engage in fully free and fair debate, the entire project of the French Revolution seems have been the delegitimation of the idea that there is an objective standard by which Reality can be ascertained and judged, the root criterion for the discernment of good and evil in the actual world, by which human beings, acting according to reason and experience, can guide their lives in fruitful ways or do the opposite. In short, once the concept of good and evil is destroyed, the human being has no firm guide by which to navigate his own personal existence.
Instead of the perennial question of good v. evil, in the post-modern world some metaphysicians tell us there is no objective truth at all which logically follows from the presupposition of the death of God which they have, like Rousseau, already achieved in their own minds. The description of human reality thus boils down to a competition of amoral human narratives, or skilled opinions; but in the end still opinions. And under the principle of Egalité, one mans opinion is just like any other mans, neither good nor bad.
It appears we have among us today metaphysicians who desire, in the words of the great Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot, to contrive and execute systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. And then to impose them on humanity. To succeed in this project, first they have to discredit the foundational motivating ideas of the American Revolution .
To speak of the Now: The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity on grounds that it is a system of negative liberties that has outlived its usefulness.
Indeed, it appears that he is doing everything in his power finally to drive a silver stake through the very heart of American liberty the historic liberty of We the People of the United States of America, and that of our Posterity for which the Constitution originally was ordained and established.
©2010 Jean F. Drew
ENDNOTES
1 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, David Fideler, ed., Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988, p. 97.
2 Thomas Fleming, Liberty!: The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 104f.
3 Fleming, p. 105.
4 Ibid.
5 Fleming, p. 112.
6 Fleming, p. 118.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, New York: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1982, p. 105f. Note: Because this edition is a facsimile of the original publication of 1790, Ive taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation.
10 John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, Catos Letters, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995, p. 406ff.
11 Burke, p. 8788.
12 Burke, p. 8586.
13 Burke, p. 8990.
14 Burke, p. 116.
15 Burke, p. 119; emphasis added.
16 Burke, p. 127128; emphasis added.
And 1010RD replied: Agreed, but then you immediately step off the reservation into eisegesis. You have only the Bible to base your beliefs on. Cutting and pasting it into convenient bits doesn't make your case. You lose the context and thus the idea. Eventually, you lose your way.... The use of the word "created" is arbitrary. You could just as accurately use the word "formed", perhaps even more accurately as to the eastern mind creating order out of chaos is the greatest act of God.
What "chaos?" Your view presupposes that there existed something before the creation event out of which God "formed" the world. But Alamo-Girl has never said this, and I have very strong doubts that she believes this. There was literally nothing for God to "form" until He created it: No matter, no space, no time. Nothing.
Some Eastern-minded physical cosmologists like to say that the physical universe arose out of a false vacuum. Yet a hypothetical vacuum field is not "nothing." It would already exist in space and time a space and time that had not yet emerged, and could not emerge, prior to the Big Bang.
Genesis 1:1 says that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Evidently on your theory, God used pre-existing materials to do this. What pre-existing materials? A hypothetical chaos?
Prior to the Big Bang, there was nothing the Ayn Sof; God was alone. Space and time did not exist. Matter did not exist.
As Georges LeMaître, the father of Big Bang/expanding universe theory, put it, the Big Bang (analogue of Genesis 1:1) was in fact "a day without yesterday." That is, there was no time before the singularity exploded the universe into existence. Time began only at the moment of this unique event, or slightly thereafter and also space and matter. There was nothing for God to "form" prior to His creating these "materials" (e.g., space, time, matter). Which is why Christians believe God created ex nihilo out of "nothing."
Something heaven and earth came into being out of nothing, solely by means of the Creator's creative Word, His Logos of the Beginning Whom the beloved apostle tells us "was God, and was with God." To me, the Big Bang is analogue of God's SPEAKING His Word into creation, whereby He created the universe, heavenly and physically (i.e., "the earth" of Genesis 1:1).
1010RD, you wrote: "The Rabbis recognize that surmising as to what occurred prior to Gen. 1:1 is unwise. Not knowing God you then aspire to describe his attributes."
Well, such surmising is not only "unwise," it pertains to a matter impossible for the human mind to know or directly validate. To that extent, the Rabbis are entirely correct. On the other hand, it is not needful to conjecture about the attributes of God beyond the revealed fact that He is creative. The Creation itself is proof of that.
There can be no "before" a "beginning." There is no time "before" time began.
LeMaître was one of the greatest mathematical minds of the Twentieth Century. (He was also a Roman Catholic priest.) It was he who conceived of the singularity which he called the "Primeval Atom"; this is what "blew up" in the initial explosion that got the universe started, the initial point from which the Universe expanded. He also described the singularity as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation." Later on, Sir Fred Hoyle coined a disparaging/derisive term for this unique cosmic event: the "Big Bang."
As LaMaître noted,
If the world has begun with a single quantum, the notions of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning; they would only begin to have a sensible meaning when the original quantum had been divided into a sufficient number of quanta. If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time. [See "'A Day Without Yesterday': Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang" by Mark Midborn, in Commonweal, March 24, 2000:, pp. 18-19.]From this I surmise the Beginning of the world was the Logos; then it "blew up" in a "Big Bang." And then space and time and matter came into existence.
Funny thing about that Logos: It seems to have specified the creation without overdetermining it. That is, although it seems to account for some 200+ "finely-tuned" universal constants (specifying initial conditions), and to have specified universal physical laws ("guides to the system"), it leaves plenty of room for variety, diversity, innovation, development and change (within limits).
To me, "singularity" is effectively the scientific term for the Logos of the Beginning....
1010RD, you said that Alamo-Girl has only the Bible as a basis for belief. I don't believe this is an accurate statement. The Holy Scriptures articulate the infallible Word of God as He Himself reveals it to us. But He also gave us the revelation of "the Book of Nature," too: the Creation itself.
I see no "dispute" between Genesis 1:1 and the Big Bang/expanding/inflationary universe model. Both are revelations of God's Truth that, if anything, mutually support each other.
Well, them be my thoughts, FWIW.
Thank you so much for writing, 1010RD!
God's will is done, regardless, which is what Jesus is saying. Read a better translation...
"Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done."
Just like in the sermon on mount --
"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..."
Christ provides an example, a clear example as to his followers that faith is an act of will
Whose will? The natural man's will or the spiritual man's will? One is left in its fallen state, unable to choose righteousness, while the other has been reborn by the Holy Spirit to "know the things of God," in order to repent, obey and believe.
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" -- John 10:26-27"But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you.
So faith isn't "an act of will" independent of God. Faith is a gift from God to His own.
Not knowing the Bible or refusing to believe what it says because it doesn't say what we want it to say is idolatry and eisegesis.
I agree completely.
What is the value of an opinion (or as you put it, a "belief") that can be falsified on the basis of evidence, logic, and reason?
Steady state cosmology was widely accepted until the measurements of cosmic microwave background radiation in the 1960's. From that time forward, the measurements consistently agree that the universe is expanding - and accelerating, btw.
That means that space/time is created as the universe expands. It doesn't pre-exist. There was a beginning of real space and real time.
Those who cling to a steady state physical cosmology are laughed to scorn, i.e. like flat-earthers.
That there was a beginning was the most theological statement ever to come out of modern science, i.e. "In the beginning..."
None of the physical cosmologies proposed since the 1960's have been able to defeat the fact of a beginning - not multi-verse, multi-world, ekpyrotic, cyclic, imaginary time, etc. Many such theories merely posit prior beginnings but they can never explain the beginning.
The physicists are quite aware of that fatal flaw and worse that to even theorize prior beginnings they must presuppose with no basis in logic that the physics of this universe would apply to a prior universe.
Bottom line, every physical cosmology relies on space and time for physical causation:
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
Here's a mental exercise to see why that is so:
A space of zero dimensions is a point; one dimension, a line, two dimensions, a plane; three, a cube, etc.
That is the geometry of it. In zero dimensions, the mathematical point is indivisible.
It is not nothing. It is a spatial point. A singularity is not nothing.
In ex nihilo Creation, the dimensions are not merely zero, they are null, dimensions do not exist at all. There is no space and no time. Period.
There is no mathematical point, no volume, no content, no scalar quantities. Ex nihilo doesnt exist in relationship to anything else; there is no thing.
In an existing physical space, each point (e.g. particle) can be parameterized by a quantity such as mass. The parameter (e.g. a specific quantity within the range of possible quantities) is in effect another descriptor or quasi-dimension that uniquely identifies the point within the space.
Moreover, if the quantity of the parameter changes for a point, then a time dimension is invoked. For example, at one moment the point value is 0 and the next it is 1.
Wave propagation cannot occur in null dimensions nor can it occur in zero spatial dimensions, a mathematical point; a dimension of time is required for any fluctuation in a parameter value at a point.
Moreover, wave propagation must also have a spatial/temporal relation from cause point to effect point, i.e. physical causation.
For instance 0 at point nt causes 1 at point n+1t+1 which causes "0" at point n+1t+2 etc..
Obviously, physical wave propagation (e.g. big bang/inflationary model) cannot precede space/time and physical causality.
In the absence of time, events cannot occur.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. - I Corinthians 2:11-12
For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. - Hebrews 4:12
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, [they] are spirit, and [they] are life. - John 6:63
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. - Psalms 33:6
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. Psalms 19:1-3
Very well put, from my perspective, too.
The "thesis seems to be that there is no such thing as truth; but even if there were, it would be unknowable in principle. Therefore, all there can be is opinion. And one man's opinion is just as good as any other man's." . . . wherever I've ran onto it, in my 63 years--most of them around college campuses where lots of budding Bertrand Russels love to pretend they are erudite, novel, brilliant and progressive in spouting such pontifications . . . such a perspective has always shown itself, to me, that it
IS, imho, a pretty clunky and transparent rationalization for a somewhat haughty, smug, self-deceived rebellion. I hope that's not true in Kosta's case. I just know it seems to be pervasively true for those spouting such a perspective.
I think the motivation and certainly the result is that the one claiming to hold such a perspective is pseudo-intellectually deluded into construing reality such that they FEEL at least partially FREED to create their own reality to their own inclinations . . . which, apart from the Blood and Cross of Jesus--means that whatever the special on sin is at that moment tends to become a convenient if not prime focus . . . at least a good percentage of the time.
The pleasures of the moment tend to win out over eternal life whenever there's insufficient foundation in truth and in an intimate RELATIONSHIP WITH HE WHO IS TRUTH.
And, sin--particularly unconfessed, unrepented sin results in some degree or another of death, deadliness, isolation, loneliness, angst, adriftness.
However, there, too, the delusion comes rushing to the aid on the silver trays from hell . . . since there's purportedly no knowable truth, the truth of consequences can be conveniently denied and ignored, too.
Trouble is . . . it's virtually impossible to live life that way.
CONSEQUENCES ACCRUE CONSTANTLY
Whether one wants to admit them or not.
The TRUTH is that if one tries to go through life constantly running red lights, the life will tend to be short.
The TRUTH is that if a bloke thinks it's great fun to be receiver of another guy's fairly cheap bodily fluids, a sad, diseased course of death will likely accrue . . . and the life will be at least 20 years shorter than it might have been otherwise.
The TRUTH is that if a heterosexual likes to collect and spread jollies far and wide, disease will knock persistently on that abode, as well.
The TRUTH is that if one pretends in relationships that there is no truth, no standard of conduct . . . particularly apart from the pleasure of the moment . . . then the relationships will be shallow and usually rather short-lived . . . with plenty of pain in the parting or insufficient substance to result in pain to begin with.
The TRUTH is that if one picks food out of the gutter in a drunken stupor and eats it . . . routinely . . . complications to life and the pursuit of happiness will accrue with gathering interest payback.
The TRUTH is that if one tries to relate to one's boss, co-workers and customers as though one's own opinion were all that counted in life, one's employment will tend to be short.
The inexorable TRUTH is that GOD IS NOT TO BE MOCKED. WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWS, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.
It doesn't really matter whether one believes that such a universal law applies, operates, results in consequences, or not. The law works quite effectively regardless of anyone or anything's opinions about said law.
Fantasies can be fun and entertaining in a number of realms to a number of degrees about a number of things.
Fantasies about God and His laws and priorities tend to be costly when they don't match up with God's perspectives on HIS CREATED AND ADMINISTERED REALITIES.
Oh so beautifully, beautifully said, Dr. Eckleburg!
You and I, your Dad, and Pythagoras all evidently "see eye to eye" on this "The beginning is the half of the whole" in just the sense you give in the above italics. :^)
The Logos is Alpha and Omega, the Beginning (first cause) and the End (final cause). And everything in between (i.e., immanent cause, a/k/a "guide to the system").
You wrote, "To perceive reality as accurately as possible is ultimately a gift given by the Holy Spirit. So maybe it's not so much a "refusal" as an "inability.""
Inability, perhaps. But increasingly nowadays, willful refusal cannot be ruled out. One can "close one's soul" to the Holy Spirit by means of an act of will. The ideologues of mechanistic, deterministic, materialistic universe theory have no "use" for the Holy Spirit. For God; or even for souls. They cannot even account for minds. So all of these things are simply denied. (E.g., mind is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain that of itself can cause nothing to happen in the phenomenal world. Anyone with eyes can see that this is fantastically untrue!)
Anything that can't be directly observed and measured doesn't exist for them.
Notwithstanding, I so agree with what you wrote here:
So in the long run our lives either prove the love of God, or they prove something else. Either men are happier, more secure, better grounded and fruitful believing we belong to the Triune Creator of heaven and earth and everything therein, or we're not. And experience shows me, we are.Thank you so very much for your outstanding essay/post!
It is a very Momronesque concept to believe that Christ is not the current Prophet, that a mere man is needed to reset the people. Even Islam tries this perspective, calling Jesus a prophet but humankind needing another, more 'up-to-date' prophet. That is anathema to Christianity. We are no longer a tribal people needing to be reset collectively, for we are individually delivered by the Deliverer. Therefore our individual prophet and High Priest is Jesus, acting within us and upon us and through our lives in the presence of His Holy Spirit. He IS, not He has been.
The very notion of ascribing 'thought' to God The Creator is an anthropomorphism. We may ascribe to Jesus human traits to our liking, for He was God with us as a man, but to then reach back to the beginning with an anthropomorphic perspective is bound to be incomplete in scope. ONLY God IS before even the concept of universe comes to be. That is why John was given to write that in the beginning was The Word, and The Word was with God, and The Word was God, and in the beginning was not anything made that was not by Him. In Mormonism and other peculiar religions, the concept of eternal matter is posed as axiomatic, then things occur. But God gave to the Israelites the proper perspective ... and John was an Israelite, then a Christian Israelite when he authored the Gospel of John to be written.
Momronism teaches that god gained the attributes of godhood through exaltation. That is anathema to the teachings from God about Himself. His name is I AM, not I became.
Yes; but the fact remains (or so it seems to me) that man is free to reject God's great gift of faith. This would be an act of will independent of God.
My dear brother in Christ Quix gives several examples of the forms this attitude can take, at Post #864.
But then again, I take your meaning WRT the qualification, "from God to His own".... God's sheep know their shepherd, and the Shepherd knows His own.
Omniscient God knows from timelessness how individual men (souls) will choose in time; but He does not compel or determine their choice. In this sense, there is free will in the world. A man is free to choose evil even the evil that he knows (consciously or perhaps subconsciously) will hurt him.
God's answer for this was to send His only-begotten Son into the world, His Truth, Whose example redeems us from this sort of soul-destroying, fatal error.... At least among those who have the "ears to hear," and the "eyes to see."
But that amounts to persuading, not compelling, those with the ears and eyes.
What I don't know is whether there are human souls born into this world without ears and eyes. Would the God of justice and truth allow this to happen?
What if every man was born with the ears and eyes, but then some choose to shut them up against all the freely available evidence that God is Lord and Master of all creation from beginning to end? And humans are His natural-born children, made in His image?
The great philosopher Henri Bergson spoke of the situation of l'ame overt and l'ame close of the condition of a soul open to God, or as closed to God. Bergson suggests this is a matter of human will. It seems to me God would not have created a soul to be inexorably, determinedly closed to Him in the first place.... Thus made for damnation from the very beginning?
Whatever the case, the Lord alone knows how it all turns out in the End....
Obviously dear sister in Christ, I have more questions than answers.
Thus I rest in God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit: If I don't have the answers, I'm entirely confident that God does. And maybe someday He will share them with me. But probably not in "this" world....
Whatever the case, God's will WILL be done, in heaven and on earth. I'm entirely confident about that, too.
And with this understanding comes peace and joy.
God's blessings be upon you, dear sister in Christ!
If that were my thesis, that would be a foolish thesis indeed!
...but even if there were, it would be unknowable in principle.
That is correct simply because we (human beings) can never know the whole truth simply because we can never know all there is to know.
Therefore, all there can be is opinion. And one man's opinion is just as good as any other man's.
No, we also know some facts. Opinions come in where the facts are lacking.
But if there is structure and order in the universe (and we perceive that there is), then there must be something universally "true" at the foundation of the order we perceive.
Yes, that something is structure and order. We all agree on that.
Otherwise the world would be one way this instant, and something entirely different at the next instant.
Isn't that what happens when cataclysmic events take place?
In short, the universe would be fundamentally chaotic. But if so, then why are things persistently the way they are, and not some other way?
Perception of order does not say whence came the order. We simply don't know why.
Such a view requires denial of the universal order which we do perceive.
No it doesn't betty boop. It acknowledges the order without hypothesizing as to why or how. It accepts the fact that we are too limited to know everything. It is quite humbling.
Such a refusal to apperceive the obvious constitutes an "opinion" that rests on nothing but a refusal to recognize that truthful human knowledge is the product of engaging the real world by observation and experience.
A refusal to acknowledge order in the Universes would indeed constitute such a denial.
This is to acknowledge that there is a "givenness" to the universal system of which we are parts and participants. That givenness entails that the phenomenal universe (which we perceive to be ordered) and the human mind (which also possesses order by virtue of its capacity for logic and reasoning) can be brought into correspondence.
No argument there, betty boop.
This is the basis of all truthful knowledge. This is the basis of science.
This is the basis for all truthful knowledge within our capacities, which are limited in scope.
Case in point: There are many fans of "eternal universe," "steady-state" or "boom-and-bust" cosmological models. These opinions are increasingly being undercut by physical observations of, e.g., the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the cosmic expansion, which point to a real beginning of space and time. Despite the accumulating evidence, many still cling to their preferred opinion that the universe is eternal, and/or steady-state, and/or boom-and-bust.
Indeed, the Steady State die hards are no different than Flat Earth believers. Their models are not what the current evidence supports, although the Big Bag is approaching the periphery rather quickly as well.
In effect, the holders of such views are attempting to make their own preferences the measure of what the universe is.
True, but there is no guarantee that the holders of the Big bang are any closer to the truth either.
All such views seem motivated by a deep distaste for, and desire to avoid the "origin problem," i.e., a universal beginning of space and time in a unique cosmic event.
The problem with the "original problem" begins with the invocation of the "cause" which is not supported by any observed evidence and cannot be even defined.
In other words, a creation event. They cling to their preferred opinion, despite the piling up of evidence that refutes it.
Again, the creation event is in itself nothing to hand one's ego on. The creation event become problematic when one invokes "God" in it, and in particular one specific man-made god.
What is the value of an opinion (or as you put it, a "belief") that can be falsified on the basis of evidence, logic, and reason?
Beliefs tend to resist evidence to the contrary. They also accept as "fact" that which is by necessity imaginary. The "value" of such a belief has to do with the degree to which one's whole existence or life depends on it. If you invest all your hopes in one belief, if that belief is a sanctuary, discovering that it is false would be extremely threatening to one's psyche and the mind would tend to tenaciously hold on to it despite the evidence to the contrary. In other words, a denial.
What is faith, Kosta, in your calculus? And does faith require an object of faith? And can there exist a feedback from exercising faith?
Well thank you for your acknowledgement of that "fact," dear kosta!
The problem is you refuse to acknowledge a basis, a cause of the structure and order we both perceive.
Do you suppose that such can be a product of a random, purely "natural," "accidental" development? Or that some sort of purposeful mind has specified such?
In human observation and direct experience, all instances of design and order can be traced to a creative mind. All purpose-built "machines" (or more generically, systems) are the result of the creative mind of the person who built them. We have never seen an example of a machine (or natural system) that built itself....
You have to go with what you know....
Or do you insist on remaining "agnostic" on this point? If so, WHY???
Because you don't "know everything there is to know?" Who does? If we had to wait until we "know everything," there would never have been any human progress, in the arts or the sciences. Even Newton, say, or Einstein would have been mute, had they followed you prescription.
An observer can see only what he can see from where he stands. Some observers believe the only things that are "real" are things that can be directly observed and measured. Which leaves God out of the picture in principle.
I think you want to see as God, the Ultimate Observer, sees.
But as a mortal human, stuck in the four dimensional block of normal human awareness, you can't. Get used to it!
Meanwhile, you have to live your life according to your own best lights.
If you have no light from the Holy Spirit, I doubt you will ever see the most important things in the world of human experience.
Cataclysmic events do not change the underlying structure of the universe. They are temporary departures from it. And when they blow over, we get back to the status quo ante. Cataclysmic events, in short, in no way permanently change the essential order of things.
You wrote, "Perception of order does not say whence came the order. We simply don't know why." Jeepers, kosta, I think you don't want to know WHY; for in your heart of hearts you already know that the order comes from a Source you don't want to acknowledge. For whatever reason.
My sense is you know ever so much MORE than you are willing to acknowledge publicly. Privately you know it; but you don't like what you know.... Again, for whatever reason.
You wrote: "...there is no guarantee that the holders of the Big bang are any closer to the truth either." To believe that is to believe that scientific evidence for the Big Bang is nonexistent. But this would not be true. Indeed, quite the contrary increasingly is the case.
You wrote: "The problem with the 'original problem' begins with the invocation of the "cause" which is not supported by any observed evidence and cannot be even defined."
Often it's the case that we infer causes from their effects. Effects are actually observed. Thus they constitute some kind of evidence regarding their cause. Though it's true that causes are identified through a process of induction, not deduction. But this is how science goes about its business. Do you have a problem with that?
God is not "man-made." You've got that exactly backwards. :^)
And not only that, but you can offer zero evidence that your view is correct or true. Such evidence simply does not exist.
Thus I regard the following as a complete non sequitur:
Beliefs tend to resist evidence to the contrary. They also accept as "fact" that which is by necessity imaginary. The "value" of such a belief has to do with the degree to which one's whole existence or life depends on it. If you invest all your hopes in one belief, if that belief is a sanctuary, discovering that it is false would be extremely threatening to one's psyche and the mind would tend to tenaciously hold on to it despite the evidence to the contrary. In other words, a denial.FWIW.
I have thought and prayed long and hard about this, dear brother in Christ; and it seems to me the only true freedom that human beings have is freedom in and under God.
Anything else is mere "license." It has no foundation in truth. That is, it is a delusional "freedom." Usually self-delusional.
Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for your outstanding observations!
Predictable results.
And does faith require an object of faith?
Yes. Faith is trust. You have to trust in something.
And can there exist a feedback from exercising faith?
Just faith? No. Just because your prayers are 'answered" does not constitute a proof that your prayers are 'answered."
Thanks for the response to my questions. I have a better understanding of where you’re coming from. Again, thanks.
BTW, I don’t think I asked anything about prayer or praying or answers to prayers. For the sake of understanding, you could take my queries as regarding the use of a chair in a dining hall. To sit upon a chair requires the most basic sort of faith. Sitting without crashing to the floor is a reinforcer of faith applied. It would be a very different exercise if one entered a totally dark room, blindfolded, seeking a chair upon which to sit. Listening very acutely and feeling about would be advisable before just lowering one’s butt. A Christian ‘listens acutely with ‘spiritual ears, and feels about via applied interactions with the still small voice within. As my behavior amkes The Holy Spirit within uncomfortable, His whisper—at frist—reminds me and reinforces the reminders with instructional passages found int he Bible. If I ignore the whispers, He will take more severe action. The process is ‘faithing’, as in a verb form of faith, the noun. Sitting in enough chairs builds confidence in the reliability of chairs.
No, the problem is that you seem to refuse to acknowledge that the cause is unknown.
Do you suppose that such can be a product of a random, purely "natural," "accidental" development? Or that some sort of purposeful mind has specified such?
If we knew all the facts we would know, wouldn't we? But guess what? We don't!
In human observation and direct experience, all instances of design and order can be traced to a creative mind.
Really? You mean God gave fireflies their lights?
We have never seen an example of a machine (or natural system) that built itself
DNA
Or do you insist on remaining "agnostic" on this point? If so, WHY???
Sheer honesty, admission of ignorance, acceptance of my limited human capacity to know everything, unwillingness to make a leap of faith into blind faith or blind atheism.
Even Newton, say, or Einstein would have been mute, had they followed you prescription.
I am not advocating lack of learning. Discovery should not involve seeking God trough science.
An observer can see only what he can see from where he stands. Some observers believe the only things that are "real" are things that can be directly observed and measured. Which leaves God out of the picture in principle.
That is correct. God cannot be observed or measured or, for that matter, defined.
I think you want to see as God, the Ultimate Observer, sees.
Ultimate Observer?
But as a mortal human, stuck in the four dimensional block of normal human awareness, you can't. Get used to it!
You are preaching to the choir. I am the one who says man is limited and cannot know the truth because he cannot know everything. I am perfectly at home with that. Others, however, have to invent god so they can "create' their own version of truth.
If you have no light from the Holy Spirit, I doubt you will ever see the most important things in the world of human experience.
You just made an unsubstantiated presumptuous leap. Where does the Holy Spirit come from if not form man's own head? Man invented God so he could claim to know the truth.
Cataclysmic events do not change the underlying structure of the universe. They are temporary departures from it. And when they blow over, we get back to the status quo ante
Sweeping generalization. And exploded star does not go back to status quo ante. Cataclysmic events change the reality irreversibly. That includes death.
Jeepers, kosta, I think you don't want to know WHY; for in your heart of hearts you already know that the order comes from a Source you don't want to acknowledge. For whatever reason.
Want to know? How can I want to know everything? In 857 you wrote "In effect, the holders of such views are attempting to make their own preferences the measure of what the universe is." It seems to me that those who insist to know everything are guilty of it. In condemning the non-bbelievers, you have condemned the believers, and rightfully so!
We can only surmise that the universe was at some point in time a singularity. What existed prior to our existence is a postulate, a hypothesis, a blind belief, and not a fact that you can just "want" to know or freely invent. Certainly not even your God existed since only the created things exist. God, not being part of existence, cannot even be spoken of as existing because that which exists does so in terms of time and space. That's why the eastern Orthodox speak of God in apophatic terms as "beyond everything," ineffable.
My sense is you know ever so much MORE than you are willing to acknowledge publicly. Privately you know it; but you don't like what you know.... Again, for whatever reason.
That's very kind of you, betty boop, but I really don't. If God is, we cannot even speak of him. In the word of Archbishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of the Russian Orthodox Church, spiritual ascent by necessity becomes "the Divine abyss where words fall silent, where reason fades, where all human knowledge and comprehension cease, where God is." He continues It is not by speculative knowledge but in the depths of prayerful silence that the soul can encounter God, Who is beyond everything" and who reveals himself "as in-comprehensible, in-accessible, in-visible, yet at the same time as living and close to her as God the Person."
I have nothing to hide, betty boop, but you must understand that my agnosticism is not directed against God. I am not on a crusade against him.
To believe that is to believe that scientific evidence for the Big Bang is nonexistent. But this would not be true. Indeed, quite the contrary increasingly is the case.
Scientific evidence is a small part of the puzzle. It must never be believed absolutely. Big bang will be replaced in another generation or two with a new theory, each having a little of the truth but none all of it.
Often it's the case that we infer causes from their effects. Effects are actually observed. Thus they constitute some kind of evidence regarding their cause
True.
Thus they constitute some kind of evidence regarding their cause.
In the case of the Universe, the only evidence is that it was caused. It doesn't reveal how, why or how many times. It also says nothing of the nature or the attributes of the cause.
Though it's true that causes are identified through a process of induction, not deduction. But this is how science goes about its business. Do you have a problem with that?
The only problem is inferring the nature or character of the cause, because the effects seem to suggest none.
God is not "man-made." You've got that exactly backwards. :^) And not only that, but you can offer zero evidence that your view is correct or true. Such evidence simply does not exist.
The universe itself does not say anything about God, so God must come from us. Everything we 'know" about God is through man-made words.
Thus I regard the following as a complete non sequitur: Beliefs tend to resist evidence to the contrary
You are certainly entitled to that, bb. People believe in talking donkeys despite the fact that none has seen one, or that no such phenomenon occurs in the real world. :)
It seems to me the only thing that could "pre-exist" the Creation is God the Creator Himself. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary.
Personally, I'm with Alamo-Girl: Nothing preceded the Creation but God and the Ayn Sof. The Ayn Sof is certainly not "chaos." Rightly or wrongly, I interpret that term as meaning the "nothing," which describes the "state" (for lack of a better word) of the living God alone, utterly outside of time and space which did not then exist. That is, not alone in the universe; for He hadn't created it yet. One can barely imagine/think about such a situation, so totally removed as it is from ordinary human experience.
Chaos implies and evokes its opposite number, order. But neither order nor its opposite existed before God made the world, the universe.
Perhaps my friend kosta50 would say there is no direct evidence for my view. But it seems to me there is a lot of indirect evidence.
For one thing, things don't create themselves. There is nothing in nature that we can perceive as sui generis. Everything we observe as existing has a cause outside of itself.
MHGinTN, you point to the source of the confusion: our insufficient idea of the nature of time. Humans are "condemned" to do their observing of the natural world in terms of four-dimensional space-time three dimensions of space, one of time. The really hardcore materialists/determinists out there imagine time is merely the "result" of natural processes occurring in three-dimensional space. Thus time is imagined as an irreversible linear process inexorably moving from past, present, to future, that is "created" by the sequence of spatial events. It has no other reality than to be the cumulative product of the sequence of spatial cause-effect relations in nature.
It took Einstein to inform us that time is an independent dimension in itself, not just the result of natural cause-effect events. On the Einsteinian view, time is itself a bona-fide, non-spatial dimension which, when married to the spatial dimensions, produces the construct of spacetime. Yet on this view, time is still essentially linear, irreversibly moving along the line of past, to present, to future.
And yet some physicists now say that the natural world reifies or reflects events taking place in another, "higher" (non-linear) temporal dimension inaccessible to direct observation altogether. Your name for this is "volumetric time." That is, non-linear time. That is, an idea of spacetime as involving additional temporal dimension(s) not readily visible to or easily conceivable by human observers.
To me, it's like our 4D spatiotemporal block is enfolded in an additional temporal dimension or dimensions. We don't "see" it (them) directly. But we need them, if we want to understand the way the world that God made actually is.
You said, "I don't agree that there was an actual state of chaos, from The Creator's perspective," and I think that is true. The reason being God is not ensnared in the 4D block of normal human experience, while chaos has no meaning outside of it. Not only is He outside of time altogether, but His Creation involves more than the 4D block. Momenta at higher temporal dimensions "distill" and find expression in that 4D block.
That is to say, neither divine reality, nor the natural world most importantly including the Creation, can be entirely reduced to three dimensions of space and one of time. To me, that is an incredible expectation.
I thank you so very much for your work in this area, dear MHGinTN. (And I hope I'm understanding you correctly!)
And thank you ever so much for your outstanding, thought-provocative essay/post!
Dear man, the cause is not unknown to me.
That's all I can say for now. I have to go make dinner; but I'll be back later.
Yes, but this "faith" is based on something solid, not on voices in your head (and I don't mean ti disparagingly).
It would be a very different exercise if one entered a totally dark room, blindfolded, seeking a chair upon which to sit. Listening very acutely and feeling about would be advisable before just lowering ones butt. A Christian listens acutely with spiritual ears, and feels about via applied interactions with the still small voice within
It's an interesting analogy which, I am sure, makes a lot of people accept it easier, but it's not analogous. Religious faith is something completely different.
As my behavior amkes The Holy Spirit within uncomfortable, His whisperat fristreminds me and reinforces the reminders with instructional passages found int he Bible. If I ignore the whispers, He will take more severe action. The process is faithing,
How do you know it's the Holy Spirit? Does the whisper lead you to the passage that says that even Satan can appear as the Angel of Light?
Sitting in enough chairs builds confidence in the reliability of chairs.
Not with me,. I test each and every one. :)
I will look for your expansion on this fascinating statement in the morning. I am still on Spanish time having been in Seville for the past 10 days and just about ready to drop. Buenas noches. Luego.
You are so kind to acknowledge my ramblings. May I additionally point out/repeat that all expressions of spatio-temporal reality are created by the Creator, and we have some very interesting hints on other where/when realms not directly accessible to our sensing, like the enigmatic scene in Daniel Chapter Five, and the astonishing exit from the burial wrappings without unwrapping them and the rock tomb without rolling away the stone blocking the 4D entrance/exit.
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