I beg to differ with you there, dear kosta. I would say that human reality is a difference of kind, not of degree, vis-a-vis insect reality. This ought to be self-evident: I haven't noticed any insects around devising scientific theories, for instance, or writing novels, or creating music and other art forms, worshipping God, ceremoniously burying their dead, etc.
If there's "not much difference" between a man and an insect, then why don't we routinely find insects doing such things?
It is true that all living beings have some form of consciousness, or perception, or basic sensitivity. But it appears that only man possesses self-consciousness and rational mind.
Of course, consciousness itself is one of those things we do not and cannot directly "observe." We recognize it from its works — the things man creates, which would not be there if they depended on (material) physico-chemical processes exclusively.
When you say that God "must" communicate with us in human terms, do you mean exclusively on the basis of direct observables, or customary languages?
You wrote:
...If God wanted man know what he is he could do that only on man's terms. That ought to be very simple for someone with whom "all things are possible." And, asking to be understood within our capacity is like asking God to speak our language rather than insist on a foreign and unintelligible one.You seem to be saying that there's nothing man can do to "enlarge" his terms. Even God communicating to us via four great revelations — only one of which is language-based, by the way; i.e., the Holy Scriptures — cannot enlarge our terms?
You have a bad habit of telling God what He ought and ought not to do. Thus you do make of yourself His "measure" — in your own mind.
BTW, I also take issue with your remark that Plato "reduces" man to "a cosmos in miniature." How can this be a reduction, when it vastly expands our concept of man's nature? E.g., that man recapitulates in himself all aspects of cosmic life — psyche, the organic world (animal, vegetative), and the inorganic world (compounds out of which physical bodies are composed). And at the same time that he exists eternally in the tension between the two divine "poles" of Limit (divine Nous, Epikeina) and Unlimited (the unfathomable depth of divine becoming, Apeiron)?
You call that a "reduction?"
They live in their own reality, defined and made possible by their nature.
For the same reason you don't find humans weaving spider webs. It's their nature.
To a greater or lesser degree. I am not sure to what degree a Neanderthal, 60,000 years ago, possessed self-consciousness and rational mind.
It must be something we can detect and understand, in agreement with our nature, i.e. something we can see, hear and comprehend.
Sure he can, within his nature. It can't be something that requires organs he doesn't have, something above his auditory frequency or outside of his visual spectrum, or his mental capacity; it must be in the language he understands, etc. The message must conform to the "measure of man" for man to receive it and understand it.
What four great revelations?
You mean like God cannot lie? Even God cannot be what he is not by nature.
It does?
What cosmic life? Where in the cosmos do you find life except here on earth? Last time I checked, the divine Nous was not part of the cosmos, but rather its maker.