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I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marveled how it might last, for methought it might suddenly have fallen to naught for little(ness). And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall (last) for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. Julian of Norwich

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Paradox is the search or wait for synthesis; it is the provisional expression of a view which remains incomplete, but whose orientation is towards fullness. Henri de Lubac

In my studies of various worldviews, with their different metaphysics, ontologies and epistemologies, it has seemed to me that they differ primarily in the way they approach paradox.

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1 : a tenet contrary to received opinion
2 a : a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true b : a self-contradictory statement that at first seems true c : an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises
3 : one that possesses seemingly contradictory qualities or phases

A paradox can be denied or affirmed in different ways: a) It can be denied by claiming that a given violation of common sense is an illusion. b) It can be denied by claiming that common sense is not being violated. c) It can be affirmed by claiming that a violation of common sense is only seeming or apparent. d) It can be affirmed by claiming that common sense is indeed being violated.

Let's apply these approaches to the paradoxes of existence and infinity.

a) These paradoxes can be denied by claiming that their violations of common sense are an illusion.

b) These paradoxes can be denied by claiming that they are not violating common sense.

c) These paradoxes can be affirmed by claiming that their violations of common sense are only seeming or apparent.

d) These paradoxes can be affirmed by claiming that they are indeed violating common sense.

Denials of the paradoxes of existence and infinity, which amount to attempts to resolve these paradoxes, can be seen in fideism, athesim, deism and pantheism. These denials are also at work whenever an overly dialectical imagination gets employed in the various approaches to the revealed theology of the Abrahamic traditions, whether in the fideism of a militant Islam or the fideism of a Barthian Protestantism.

Rather than resolving these paradoxes, we should affirm them. They do violate common sense. Further, we affirm that, if their violations of common sense are seeming or apparent, and we believe that, at bottom, they indeed are, then their resolutions are not attainable from our vantage points but only from another.

Those who deny these paradoxes are not totally in error because they at least share our conviction that the seeming contradictions are indeed resolvable. We part company with them, however, when we mainatin that their resolution is not to be had from our vantage points.

Only a radically both-and-ish approach to these paradoxes that nurtures dimensions that are both immanent and transcendent, apophatic and kataphatic, existential and theological, natural and supernatural, can properly grasp the irresolute nature of the paradoxes of existence and infinity from the human vantage point while, at the same time, affirming that there simply must be another vantage point where they'll resolve.

Denials of these paradoxes are most evident in the rationalism of Athens and the fideism of Jerusalem, in the post-Enlightenment arrogance of the French Revolution and in modern day radically militant Islam, in all scientisms and fideisms.

to be continued

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True peace is the hidden attunement of opposite tensions - a paradox and a mystery transcending both sense and will, like the ecstasy of the mystic.

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Herekleitos appears at first sight to be more Oriental than Greek, though his appearance can easily be exaggerated, and Herakleitos himself warns us against irresponsible guesses in difficult matters. "Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things." But it is true that the logos of Herekleitos seems to have much in common with the Tao of Lao-tse as well as with the Word of St. John. His insistence that apparently conflicting opposites are, at bottom, really one is also a familiar theme in Oriental thought.

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The variations and oppositions between conflicting forces in the world are immediately evident to sense, and are not a complete illusion. But when men become too intent on analyzing and judging these oppositions, and separating them out into good and evil, desirable and undesirable, profitable and useless, they become more and more immersed in illusion and their view of reality is perverted. They can no longer grasp the deep underlying connection of opposites, because they are obsessed with their superficial separateness.

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Herakleitos looks on the world not as an abstractionist, but from the viewpoint of experience. However, and this is important, experience for Herakleitos is not merely an uninterpreted datum of sense. His philosophical viewpoint is that of a mystic whose intuition cuts through apparent multiplicity to grasp underlying reality as one.

From Thomas Merton : Herakleitos: A Study

So, one lesson regarding the paradoxes of existence and infinity is don't rush to closure. Another lesson is that there is indeed closure, that is from God's perspective. Human intuition directly apprehends this closure, this fullness, in its potential. It is a deeply felt intuition that gifts us with a conviction about things unseen. To deny our experience of paradox is one error. To claim we see its resolution is another.

To affirm our experience of paradox, essentialistically and philosophically, while intuiting its ultimate resolution, existentially and theologically, is the middle path. It has been taken by both Catholicism and Zen, as well as by some highly nuanced forms of agnosticism. The approaches of fideism, scientism, pantheism, deism, atheism and such are saying too much . The affirmation of God is an affirmation of Mystery, the Mystery that contains the resolution to all seeming contradictions, that entails the coincidence of all opposites.

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Wisdom, for Herakleitos, does not consist in that polymathy --the learning of many things--the scientific research which observes and tabulates an almost infinite number of pheneomena. Nor does it consist in the willful and arbitrary selection of one of many conflicting principles, in order to elevate it above its opposite and to place it in a position of definitive and final superiority. True wisdom must seize upon the very movement itself, and penetrate to the logos or thought within that dynamic harmony. Merton

I don't know the answer but I do know that there must be One.

pax,
jb

In essence, then, faith entails both the affirmation and the denial of paradox: We affirm that common sense is being violated. We deny that Uncommon Sense is being violated. (And we do not claim to possess Uncommon Sense, even as we intuit our relationship to One who does.)

As Viktor Frankl once put it, to crudely paraphrase him: Wisdom is knowledge plus --- knowledge plus the knowledge of knowledge's limits.

Based on our knowledge, reality is contradictory and paradoxical. Based on our experience that many paradoxes can resolve when our vantage points change, analogically, we can find reason to believe that, based on a higher knowledge and higher vantage point, the paradoxes of existence and infinity will also resolve. Still, there will NEVER be anything in the how things are of physics and metaphysics that can, in principle, illuminate the impenetrable mystery of meta-metaphysics and theology of THAT things are .

It is very curious, however, how so much of revealed theology is consonant with so much of natural theology and philosophy. hmmmmmm

JB, I'm kind of stuck at the beginning of this one, namely the paradox of existence. I can understand a paradox with regard to infinity--a concept that transcends time as we understand it. But what is the paradox of existence that some deny and others affirm in various ways? It seems to me that existence is simply a given. Do you mean that giving an accounting of existence brings an encounter with paradox(es)?

- - -

BTW, you've just passed up Brad again during the last couple of days! Will B.N. allow this to stand?

BTW, you've just passed up Brad again during the last couple of days! Will B.N. allow this to stand?

I think he's just making this stuff up out of his head now. Paradox of existence. Right. That ought to be good for twenty posts or more.

True peace is the hidden attunement of opposite tensions - a paradox and a mystery transcending both sense and will, like the ecstasy of the mystic.

I do think I grasp some of what you're getting at. Clearly we can create all sorts of trouble for ourselves and others when we condense reality too quickly out of the fear of living in uncertainty. Humanity could have spared itself a lot of pain if it would have grasped that concept from day one.

The variations and oppositions between conflicting forces in the world are immediately evident to sense, and are not a complete illusion. But when men become too intent on analyzing and judging these oppositions, and separating them out into good and evil, desirable and undesirable, profitable and useless, they become more and more immersed in illusion and their view of reality is perverted. They can no longer grasp the deep underlying connection of opposites, because they are obsessed with their superficial separateness.

That should probably go up on the refrigerator. Wise men might know this but cunning men also know that we are driven by are passions and fears. Almost nothing gains people personal power like pitting one side against the other. As wise as it might be to grasp the essence of that above paragraph, those who do are at a worldly disadvantage.

Some excerpts from this fine little essay may help:

"The Paradox of Existence" by wuliheron

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Existence is demonstrably paradoxical, that is, it apparently does not make rational sense. Nature makes an inordinate amount of sense but existence itself is patently irrational and, thus, possibly supernatural. Nonetheless, attempts to rationally explain existence have proliferated since the dawn of humanity, but all of these have led back to paradox rather than resolving the paradox of existence.


One proposed explanation for existence is that it just is, and is not contingent on a cause or anything else for that matter. This is rhetorical nonsense.

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Over the millennia these sometimes confusing images of infinity have been logically and mathematically manipulated to prove an incredible number of absurdities including, for example, that one equals two. Eventually mathematicians and philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell and Kurt Godel, established that mathematics and logic could not be used to prove the validity of infinity without producing paradoxes. In other words, if the concept of infinity is not irrational or just so much illusory smoke and mirrors, apparently no one can ever prove it logically or mathematically.

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For all these reasons and more, existence presents the astonishing likelihood that at least one paradox may be real in some sense and not merely the result of ignorance on our part. Whether invoking eternity, oneness, or the supernatural each new explanation proposed for existence has invariably lead back to paradox. For something to be eternal, God-like, or all encompassing invokes logically impenetrable paradox. If God or eternity really can explain existence, then where did they come from? If everything is profoundly unified, then logic is the illogical. Coherent explanations to this puzzle of existence are impossible by the very definition of logic if, indeed, existence truly is a paradox, as it certainly appears to be.

Basically, by saying that existence is paradoxical, what we are saying is that we can render no complete explanation of why there is something and not rather nothing. IOW, even by invoking God as the explanation of existence we still leave the question begging of how God could possibly exist. Calling God the Unmoved Mover or First Cause makes the concept somewhat intelligible but doesn't make God in any way comprehensible; IOW, when we use such descriptors, we do not really know what the heaven we are talking about.

To me, God is the Unpredicatable Predicator, the Unparadoxical Paradox

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He recognized in Chesterton an exponent of what he called the "lay style" of theology (mentioning him indeed in the same breath as Newman), and he finds in Chesterton's humour the providential response to much of the "bestial seriousness and desperate optimism of modern world views"; a brilliant demonstration that only in Christianity (and ultimately only in Catholicism) "can one preserve the wonder of being, liberty, childlikeness, the adventure, the resilient, energizing paradox of existence ". Was G.K. Chesterton a Theologian? by Stratford Caldecott

Moving right along then, for I was headed somewhere (hidden agenda-like) in this consideration of paradox, let us consider this resilient, energizing paradox of existence as a source of adventure and childlikeness.

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Modern investigators of miraculous history have solemnly admitted that a characteristic of the great saints is their power of 'levitation.' They might go further; a characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. -G. K. Chesterton

Rather than ramble on, meself, about levity, I submit for further discussion: Merton as Zen Clown by Belden C. Lane and propose we take this as a starting point for some serious clowning around with paradoxes and koans and such.

pax,
jb

Various quotes from "Merton as Zen Clown":

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Laughing at what others take seriously and taking seriously what others laugh at becomes a dual theme in the thought of Suzuki and Merton alike.

Why, we may ask, was Merton attracted to this Japanese and Chinese tradition that seemed outwardly, at least, so different from his own formation as a Cistercian monk? He found in the laughter of Zen a means of deliverance from the calculative and sober analysis to which Cartesian thought was inevitably prone in the West. "We are plagued today," he wrote, "with the heritage of that Cartesian self-awareness which assumed that the empirical ego is the starting point of an infallible intellectual progress to truth and spirit, more and more refined, abstract, and immaterial."

The self, as thinking subject, is continually involved in perceiving everything that is external to it as objects of intellection. In the process, we distance ourselves from reality, critically viewing the world from a hypothetical vantage point that stands completely outside of it. Subject to interminable reflection, our experience is always second-hand. Persons become objective personas, masks that serve as a shorthand notation for categorizing the rich diversity of human personality. Theology is reduced to abstract concepts that can be neatly catalogued. Language becomes exclusively descriptive. Action is the product of calculating purpose, subservient always to ends that lie beyond itself. The world, as a result, is stripped of surprise, immediacy, and laughter.

It by-passes altogether the incessant conceptual analysis that is central to our way of "making" the world. Zen is "nondoctrinal, concrete, direct, existential, and seeks above all to come to grips with life itself, not with ideas about life."11 The celebrated foolishness of Zen is able to offer a way of abruptly emptying oneself (a thorough-going kenosis) of all the intellectual barriers that lie in the way of pure experience. Zen became, for Merton, an invitation to live without masks, without conceptual controls, without purposes.

He could abandon the persona of the serious contemplative, ceasing to be the personage in which his ego had invested so much. He could give up the comforting distance of intellectualization that his many words as a theologian had always supplied. He could even let go of the fruit of his work, taking a new pleasure in simply doing things for their own sake, without forcing on them an ulterior meaning. The promise of such freedom, as one might expect, could lead any Trappist monk in the Western world to break into laughter.

I won't analyze this or I'll be guilty of missing the point. Oh, heck, I guess I can turn that statement into a joke because you know it's darn near impossible for me not to analyze something. I'm as guilty as anyone of taking things too seriously and intellectualizing them. But I recognize an inherent freedom in laughter. While some might turn up their nose at something as seemingly crude and sophomoric as The Three Stooges, I see great wisdom and intelligence in humor. In fact, I used to believe that having a sense of humor was a sign of intelligence. I still think that's true. But now I also know that humor is a sign of one's ability to step back from intellectualizing everything. Humor is a way of really taking things seriously by letting things just take you without holding them at an intellectual distance.

Theology, important as it is, must, in a way, be considered so much straw by anyone who is doing theology correctly

What we do with the chopped wood and carried water is important. The chopping of wood and carrying of water is, in one sense, related to what will eventually be done with the fruits of those labors, and, in another sense, is a distinctly different enterprise, all its own. There are manifold and multiform rewards that come along with both being and doing , some intrinsic and some extrinsic, some that are pursued, some that ensue.

To me, the contemplative path helps me to stay in touch with 1) the doing that being is, 2) the intrinsic rewards, and 3) the rewards that ensue.

Here is the connect with laughter, then:

Laughter cannot be pursued. It must ensue. If you want a person to laugh, you don't order them to laugh. Rather, you tell them a joke.

Such is the immediacy of the awareness of contemplation. Such is the experience of existence. We are overtaken. We are overcome. We are pursued. By laughter. By love. By God. They ensue and cannot be captured via a pursuit.

So, as Teresa says: We desire and occupy ourselves in prayer, not so much so as to receive consolations but so as to gain the strength to serve. Consolations do happen though. So does laughter. They strengthen us. We serve.

Heard any good jokes lately?

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laughter involves a jarring confrontation with incongruities Humor, Sublimity and Incongruity

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The ancients greatly appreciated laughter, which they looked upon as a divine gift and a helpful remedy. There never was a time when such a remedy was more needed than now....
There are, above all, three things which modern man must learn in order to become a sane and complete being: the art of resting, the art of contemplation, the art of laughing and smiling. Here we shall briefly consider the latter, and primarily its superior and spiritual aspects.

Smiling Wisdom by Roberto Assagioli, M.D.

On a retreat intensive the master had been stressing the importance of single mindedness and only doing one thing at a time. "When eating just eat, when talking just talk, when reading just read", he said. One afternoon a couple of students saw him through the window sitting in his room - eating and reading a book at the same time. They were surprised and excited about letting him know what they had seen. They had an opportunity at the next gathering. "Ah" he replied, "When eating and reading, just eat and read".

A Western Buddhist woman was In india, studying with her teacher. She was riding with another woman friend in a rickshaw-like carriage, when they were attacked by a man on the street. In the end, the attacker only succeeded in frightening the women, but the Buddhist woman was quite upset by the event and told her teacher so. She asked him what she should have done - what would have been the appropriate, Buddhist response. The teacher said very simply, "You should have very mindfully and with great compassion whacked the attacker over the head with your umbrella."

Hey, this thread has taken a paradoxical turn.

----

JB, would it be fair to say that this question on the paradox of existence has become a koan of sorts for you? It seems to be at the heart of a great many of your philosophical reflections and dialogues. And like a good koan, it just won't leave you alone until you penetrate to some state of consciousness that transcends the paradox.

So, listen now to the sound of only one of my lips speaking . . .
Enjoy the delightful smell of Beethoven's 9th symphony . . .
Touch the beautiful reflection of a cypress tree in a calm bayou . . .
. . .
. . . . .
. . . . . . .

. .

!

Yes, yes, yes. The Unparadoxical Paradox , the Unpredicatable Predicator is my master koan, containing patterns, like blueprints, for various inner exercises in attention, mental posture, and higher perception, summarized in this extremely brief vignette enabling me to hold entire universes of thought in mind all at once, without running through doctrinal discourses or disrupting my ordinary consciousness of everyday affairs. Cleary, Thomas. 1994. Instant Zen - Waking Up in the Present.

Trouble is, I have predicated the Predicator with the descriptor unpredicatable , thus my task is not finished. Rahner was closer, I think, with his Unsolved Remainder , but only if no-thing indeed remains

Seriously, I have vivid recollections from when I was just a little kid of marveling at the fact of existence and not having that wonder being in any way diminished by someone's quick explanation of same via God. It still didn't make sense. It still doesn't. Yes. It is the heart of all of my reflections on epistemology and ontology and theology. It exhilirates. It terrifies. It is mysterium tremendum et fascinans (however Haught spells that).

There are many paradoxes that can be resolved and have been resolved but the paradox of existence and infinity (very much reflected, in one aspect only, in Godel's theorems) is the irresolute paradox, in principle. I have also called it the ontological riddle. It is at the heart of my observation that we should eschew epistemological hubris as well as excessive epistemological humility and embrace epistemological holism.

Moving from metaphysics and philosophy, it is at the heart of my approach to revealed theology vis a vis Merton's distinctions of immanent-transcendent, existential-theological, impersonal-personal, natural-supernatural, apophatic-kataphatic. As a koan it is a STOP sign, a 404 Error (Page Not Found) and if one penetrates to such a level of consciousness that resolves these creative tensions, that makes comprehensible what has previously been merely intelligible ... Woe to them and their followers in their scientism, atheism, fideism, deism, pantheism, radical apophaticism, dialectical protestantism, militant fundamentalism ...

The best way to describe the level of consciousness that I have attained, at times, in meditating on this koan, the paradox of existence, is as a protracted senior moment . Ever had a senior moment? Can you get in touch with how you have experienced it, affectively, cognitively, spiritually? Can you imaginatively enter into the experience of such a senior moment? Well, close your eyes ... recall your last senior moment ... feel it ... relate to it ... let it sweep over your existence. Now, remember that experience as you would remember an experience of God in prayer for retelling to a spiritual director. Now, meditate on the paradox of existence and ... should a senior moment experience overtake you ... YOU'RE THERE! YOU'VE GOT IT! THE LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS PERTAINING TO THE Unparadoxical Paradox.

The discursive answer to the riddle is that 1) This paradox is inescapable for humans but that 2) no paradoxes, not even this one, are irresolute, for reality is one and, at bottom, uncontradictory, therefore 3) there must be a vantage point to which humans cannot attain and 4) Someone must be looking therefrom. However, for us to be able to even intuit 1-4, that SomeOne must somehow be gazing at it all through our very existence, seeing this truth through our own eyes. So, per Godel's Theorems, we can see the truth of our propositions while unable to prove our axioms. More to the point, we take Ignatius' invitation to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Now, I take that as a koan .. not an invitation to both taste with our mouths and to see with our eyes ... but to taste through experience and thereby know what we cannot otherwise see with the eyes of our minds ... (Enjoying the delightful smell of Beethoven's 9th symphony) ...

So, yes, that is my LMK (leit motif koan). And, you see, that is why so many of you, after reading my posts, experience senior moments. Enter the moment ...
Stay there ...
Let go ...
Relax ...
.........
........
......
....
..
.

So, this Paradox of Existence is the paradox of natural theology, but can also serve as a koan.

Revealed theology, for Christians, contains many more paradoxes, which no level of consciousness can resolve, which are mysteries to be penetrated and partially illuminated but never fully comprehended: the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, Pentecost, the Annunciation, and on and on and on. These scared mysteries may have koan-like qualities that give us endless insights from many vanatge points, never fully transcending the mysteries and yielding comprehensibility but certainly partially transcending same and yielding intelligibility ... mostly the intelligibility of relationship, of love ... which, alone, suffices, without words anyway!

BTW, yes, I decided to re-urge the thrust of this thread here, making the tie-in between natural and revealed theology.

What is amazing, really, is that many of the mystics and the early Church Fathers, some who didn't discourse much with Greek philosophy (although surely many did), and many other mystics, both East and West, came intuitively, through a direct experience, however ineffable, to the same realization of the paradox of existence (infinity). Further, so much of revealed theology is so very unconsciously competent, in a manner of speaking, with the very same conclusions one might draw through rigorous philosophical speculation --- yet having arrived at the conclusions even nondiscursively. The paradox of existence has been revealed to babes, on the playground, and many adults in their sophistry try to deny or explain it

Further, I recall Phil and I as young biology students, well satisfied with such distinctions as Fulton Sheen drew such as between Primary and secondary causality. That single distinction served the purpose, for us, of separating the truths of biology from the truths of theology, no angst required. For all of the reading and discussion with philosophers and scientists I have done in the past 30 years, not one of those philosophers or scientists advanced my insight, physically vs metaphysically vs meta-metaphysically, one iota past that original insight. Most of the confusion that reigns in science and religion discourse comes from improper predication of terms, folks not distinguishing between primary and secondary causality, between THAT things are and how things are. That's it. Period. I learned a WHOLE lot about HOW things are, re: consciousness and the cosmos, for instance, but none of it shed any light on THAT things are. I suppose I spent much time trying to convince some of my dialogue partners that so many of the things that they felt had theological import were actually theologically irrelevant or only pertained to analogical knowledge about God and not at all pertaining to one scintilla of knowledge about Her essential nature, wholly other as He is. (IOW, they attack strawgods is all they do.) I suppose I was just being an iconoclast, claiming that the gods the atheists were driving out of the temple were idols that deserved driving out -- thank you very much.

So, the next step in dialogue was to point out what Kung had pointed out -- that atheists had a paradoxical, unjustified, fundamental trust in reality. The stalemate that resulted was their counterclaim that the believer's attempt to justify that trust and remove the paradox was only metaphorical. That's true in the sense that it is only hypothetical but it is a very good working hypothesis that very reasonably employs the same analogical imagination*** that the materialists use in doing science and any hypothesis that suggests that, at bottom, the paradox will resolve (albeit only transcendently) is more rational (albeit meta-rational) than one that simply accepts the paradox as intrinsic to ultimate reality (or disingenuously denies it even).

Time for this wave functon to collapse. Half of me will enter a parallel universe where I do not hit "edit post" .............SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!


***something I discussd at length before re: veiled causes known by their effects, whether in particle physics or thomistic metaphysics

If a tree falls in the forest, will it have violated any environmental laws?

That's just a little neo-koan humor.

If a tree falls in the forest, will it have violated any environmental laws?

Actually, this is not directly analogous to the situation, as described in thomism, where we are observing effects that must be coming from veiled causes. Rather, in this case, the effect is veiled and the possible causes are many and not at all mysterious.

BTW, not all neo-cons have rushed to closure, facilely collapsing the creative tensions of irresolute paradox. I have known both good Buddhists and good Catholics who are are passionate koanservationists.

Time for this wave functon to collapse. Half of me will enter a parallel universe where I do not hit "edit post" .............SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

I'm glad I'm in the same universe as the edited post. It was a good addition. I would have hated to miss it.

I suppose I was just being an iconoclast, claiming that the gods the atheists were driving out of the temple were idols that deserved driving out -- thank you very much.

Yes, but what would you say to those who suppose that theological ideas, like an island that is slowly being deforested, are on the way out; that it's not simply a matter of religion being cleansed of false idols by science but of science replacing religion and the need for religion altogether; that the current trend � and because there is a trend � necessarily shows this to be so as inevitably as the bulldozer follows slash-and-burn? Do not some (or most) suppose that it's only a matter of time until THAT-ness is cultivated on this newly prepared scientific ground? Is *your* logic (or Goedel's) or the paradox of existence, a hardy enough weed to stay planted, let alone thrive, in this new garden?

Yes, that's right. I'm asking for more fertilizer from you, JB.

Actually, this is not directly analogous to the situation, as described in thomism, where we are observing effects that must be coming from veiled causes. Rather, in this case, the effect is veiled and the possible causes are many and not at all mysterious.

I thought you put out a request for jokes, JB?

BTW, not all neo-cons have rushed to closure, facilely collapsing the creative tensions of irresolute paradox. I have known both good Buddhists and good Catholics who are are passionate koanservationists.

It's a tough tightrope to walk trying to be open-minded without falling fully into moral relativism. When do we collapse creative tensions into core values and truths so that we don't end up a weakened and directionless "middle of the roaders" who see shades of gray in everything and truth in nothing? Surely if we collapse them too soon we might find ourselves ensconced in fundamentalism. Where's is the baby bear "just right" point?

Do not some (or most) suppose that it's only a matter of time until THAT-ness is cultivated on this newly prepared scientific ground? Is *your* logic (or Goedel's) or the paradox of existence, a hardy enough weed to stay planted, let alone thrive, in this new garden?

To truly get to the bottom of a question, we must 1) carefully define and predicate our terms, 2) rigorously follow the rules of logic avoiding fallacy and 3) employ true premises.

Most of the science and religion debate that has been popularized is taking place between a fundamentalist scientism and a fundamentalist fideism and the scientistic (not scientific) approach wins this confrontation precisely because of fideism's careless definition and predication of theological terms. Most of the scientistic crowd that I have met seem to have come from fideistic, fundamentalist Protestant backgrounds who were disillusioned by the obvious errors in their God-concepts. In their disillusionment, they tossed out both their faulty God-concept and, along with it, any openness to God. They could have adopted a more carefully defined and predicated God-concept but, for whatever reason, probably felt so betrayed by their childhood religion, they threw the Baby Jesus out with their fundamentalist bathwater.

Now, it is true that it is quite possible that alternate scenarios can be contrived to approach the paradox of existence that both 1) carefully define and predicate our terms, and 2) rigorously follow the rules of logic avoiding fallacy. These alternate explanations for the paradox of existence can both be logically valid .

However, there is no getting pass the impasse (no pulling up of the hardy godelian weed) to establish a logically sound argument by either side because there is no way to establish which side is employing 3) true premises (re: ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy).

So, basically you have Betrand Russell and Hume and their followers saying that existence just is and a whole lot of other people, in manifold and varied ways, that intuit that why is there something rather than nothing? is a legitimate question.

Collapsing the creative tension between contradictory ideas and coincidental opposites is likely driven by our very human need to rush to closure. Hence, the therapeutic benefit of a Zen koan that invites us to give raw experience a say in addition to analytic thought. It is a mistake in either case, I think, to walk away with the nonduality of a nondiscursive Zen koan or the Cartesian duality of discursive analysis, for instance, taking an exclusively immanentistic or transcendental view of God, or going radically apophatic or radically kataphatic in our approach.

First there is a mountain (dualistically, distinct from me in how it is) then there is no mountain (nondualistically, sharing with me undifferentiated thatness , then there is, rising with me from the same ground of being in glorious that-ness, our mutual existence shining forth in splendor, and also rising before me in magnificent how-ness.

The trouble with resolving the mountain nondualistically is that science is stopped in its tracks (and this did happen in much of the East). The trouble with resolving the mountain exclusively dualistically is that the splendor of existence and the intuition of being are lost in a banal taken-for-grantedness, which is accompanied by the murmur of it just is .

There is a certain arrogance in resolving the irresolute paradox of existence. A prime example is the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is a making of the human mind into an idol in the most insidious way, claiming for it powers that it does not possess, a true tower of Babel that fueled communism and dialectical materialism. Without going into boring detail, this is not what a neo-platonic influenced thomistic metaphysics does when it abides with 1) God is |x|, 2) God is |not x| and 3) God is neither |x| nor |not x| -- where (1) is analogical and kataphatic, (2) is anagogical and apophatic and (3) is mystagogical and liminal. IOW, mystery properly perdures.

quote:

Actually, this is not directly analogous to the situation, as described in thomism, where we are observing effects that must be coming from veiled causes. Rather, in this case, the effect is veiled and the possible causes are many and not at all mysterious.

I thought you put out a request for jokes, JB?

My response was a joke -- probably should have emoticonned it.

quote:

BTW, not all neo-cons have rushed to closure, facilely collapsing the creative tensions of irresolute paradox. I have known both good Buddhists and good Catholics who are are passionate koanservationists.

It's a tough tightrope to walk trying to be open-minded without falling fully into moral relativism. When do we collapse creative tensions into core values and truths so that we don't end up a weakened and directionless "middle of the roaders" who see shades of gray in everything and truth in nothing? Surely if we collapse them too soon we might find ourselves ensconced in fundamentalism. Where's is the baby bear "just right" point?

This is where the theists have an advantage, believing as they do that there is an objective moral truth, that there is a foundation (hence it is called foundationalism). The nontheists, as nonfoundationalists, must rely solely on an analysis of consequences, on a strictly pragmatic take (but consequential for whom, useful for whom?). The theists can employ both deontological ethics, which mostly means a natural law approach (how things work in nature is instructive for how we are meant to employ them or not, just for example, our genitalia) as well as a teleological approach, which, again, focuses on goals and consequences, pragmatically (balancing the common good and the dignity of each human, best we can, made as we are in the Imago Dei). Now, this doesn't mean that theists don't have a problem in having to discern some thorny ethical issues and should not employ some humility in regard to whether or not they have truly discerned God's will (take Osama, for example), but it does mean that we can look with confidence for THE truth, its ultimate efficacy guaged in manifold ways that, again, advance the common good without inordinately trampling on any individual's innate dignity (Red Cross visiting Saddam).

pax,
jb

My response was a joke -- probably should have emoticonned it.

No, no. If I'm too dense to pick up a joke then the joke's on me. Wink. Smile. Cheese-face-grin.

This is where the theists have an advantage, believing as they do that there is an objective moral truth, that there is a foundation (hence it is called foundationalism). The nontheists, as nonfoundationalists, must rely solely on an analysis of consequences, on a strictly pragmatic take (but consequential for whom, useful for whom?).

If true, thus you can see how I'm sort of being "thin end of the wedged" by religious beliefs if I'm to believe in truth itself. I'm pretty hard wood though. Tough to split. Ironwood I believe they call it. I also trust in another logical principle: The Colonel Klink Principle. It's the one that says "I'm not sure what the right thing is. But I'm quite sure that they (fill in the group) will choose the wrong thing."

Let's just say that I think JB, at least for me, is not Klink-able. You should feel honored. That was not a joke. Well, it was and wasn't. But you know what I mean. I think. Or in the words of a Zen Clown: "The second paradox in Merton's experience is that the one who writes so much begins to question the value of words."

I'm also experiencing that effect at the moment. You wouldn't know it by all the words, but trust me.

Now, this doesn't mean that theists don't have a problem in having to discern some thorny ethical issues and should not employ some humility in regard to whether or not they have truly discerned God's will (take Osama, for example), but it does mean that we can look with confidence for THE truth, its ultimate efficacy guaged in manifold ways that, again, advance the common good without inordinately trampling on any individual's innate dignity (Red Cross visiting Saddam).

The problem thus encountered, at least in my experience, is that many feel that truth itself is tainted by any connection with theism. The proof is in the pudding, so they would say: Religion has a quite imperfect record (to put it mildly) of doing just what you say needs doing. Christianity, at least in my opinion, has cleaned up its act considerably, but the past is still the past and other religions today struggle with the same issues and, in the case of Fundamentalist Islam, is failing miserably. Thus either the believers are in error or the whole structure of religion is inherently an error. Many choose to choose the latter. I choose the former, particularly because I see the same abuses being carried out today under the name of liberalism, communism, Earth-ism or name your poison.