Science Divinity Connection

Science Divinity Connection, Worldview, Logic


We must shift gears here and think of the universe not as something that consciousness defines, but, rather, as something that defines consciousness. The idea that consciousness pervades the universe is not new. The Greek philosopher, Heraclites, believed that a non-human intelligence or the Logos ordered everything. For Heraclites, all the discrete elements of the world were organized into a coherent whole. The Stoics, using this idea, turned the Logos into God—the God that is the source of all rationality. But, those ideas were developed some 2400 years ago. Can the Logos be equated with the universe and all its elements today? When the noted logician, Alburey Castell, was confronted with a similar question, he responded:

“Suppose the sciences divided into four major groups: the mathematical, the physical, the biological, and social. Suppose the philosophical disciplines also divided into four major groups: metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. Where among these does logic belong? Is it a fifth in either group? Or a subdivision of some one of the eight divisions? It seems to me to be neither of these, but somehow common to all divisions. The nerve of every science and every discipline is inference, or argument. In every science and every discipline two questions are always being asked and their answers sought: If these facts are granted, what follows? From what prior facts do these follow? That is If P, then what? And, Upon what does P rest?” (A College Logic, 329)

Before I begin to answer the question --Upon what does P rest? I want to give a little background information on the law of logical contradiction.

“The laws of logic,” says the Dictionary of Philosophy, “are regulative principles governing the pursuit of knowledge and the construction of scientific theories. Seen in this way, logic is the most general of all sciences… To assert a contradiction would be to depict things as being one way and yet at the same time not that way. But nothing can be p and not-p at the same time. To believe a contradiction is thus to hold as true something that is necessarily false” (Antony Flew, p.210).

What the rule of non-contradiction means in practical terms is that if a contradiction is found in a work of reasoning then that work is of little or no value. On the other hand, if a reasoned work identifies the condition for the possibility of any contradiction whatsoever, then that work would be valuable indeed!

Oh, by the way, freedom’s dialectic (the V structure) is the answer to the question --Upon what does P rest? This experience (the most free level of the V structure) opened the door to meaningful symbol creation, the door that swings forward into the creation of language, myth, religion, art, and theoretical knowledge…and into the creation of the civilizing processes that we call “civilization”. But, not to forget, all of this rests on the pre-existing liberating processes of liberation that have come together in human consciousness, and, ultimately, rest on the ground condition of the Affirmation Ideal, i.e., affirmed indeterminate Divinity. Freedom’s dialectic is at once bond and liberation, bond as Divine Affirmation and liberation as “the otherness of existence progressively becomes freer!”

What God’s freedom is defining here is God as Immanent (the phenomenal world) and God as Transcendent (the God of all religions). All we can know about Transcendent God is that God exists. The space of logical implication tells us that much. On the other hand, we can know a great deal about God’s Immanence because that’s what we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Everyday, as a self-conscious being, we participate in inquiry, analysis, conscience, and imagination. Now, let’s take a closer look at what the form of ~bb, of b~b~bb entails (self-consciousness expressed freedom).

What separates the second from the third level of existence/freedom is the experience of number, identity, language, etc., i.e., the potential to create and communicate through symbols. In so far as the human animal is defined by God’s non-being, humans become aware of non-being, and out of this awareness, by implication, arises the “mental given.” This “mental given” is experienced as the object pole of consciousness while “not being this mental given” allows for conscious reflection on the content of consciousness. Functionally, ~bb, or the cognitive experience of discontinuity occurring in continuity, is very close to, if not identical with, both Sartre’s pre-reflective Cogito and Piaget’s center of functional activity. Discontinuity occurring in continuity, or ~bb, not only identifies the source of conceptual representation-- symbolic meaning, it also explains why our thoughts should be able to represent the world outside our mind, especially when it comes to the application of mathematics to physical theories. Since both the world and our ideas are a product of the logic that structures all existence, there is a necessary correspondence between mind and world. The laws of mathematics, physics, and nature are all grounded in the same structure, the structure that separates, embeds and connects—connects to the “space of logical implication, connects to the liberation of God in the here and now. Probably the most difficult (and uncomfortable) thing to apprehend here is that all reality/existence is an aspect of the non-being of God,—the “otherness of God.” I didn’t invent this idea; there is a literature devoted to it. Unfortunately, I have not read much of it. Actually, maybe I did invent this idea, since I came upon the literature only after I had developed my argument for the structure of existence. Anyway, Robert P. Scharlemann, edited a journal devoted to this topic. Below is a quote from that journal:

The idea that God is free to not be God is unusual, but not unique. In the journal, Deconstruction and Theology (1982, p. 89-90), Robert P. Scharlemann, in the article The Being of God When God is Not Being God, adds some commentary to this idea when he says: “The thesis I should like to propound here is that, in the theological tradition of this picture (the concept of finite being as ens creatum) is that the world is itself a moment in the being of God; what cannot be thought is that the world is the being of God when God is not being deity, or the being of God in the time of not being.”

It follows from this view that an infinite amount of diversity is both permitted and discovered in God’s freedom not to be, a diversity that, ultimately, is at one with God. What makes this possible (and logically consistent) is the fact that all existence is grounded in one structure, the structure that separates, embeds and connects—connects to the space of logical implication, connects to the liberation of God’s non-being in the here and now. Another way to state this state of affairs is: all existence exists as being-what-is-not-while-not-being-what-is. This “way of being,” in addition to characterizing God’s freedom, also characterizes the liberation process that evolves God’s freedom (God becomes more free as freedom evolves) and this freedom, ultimately, achieves consciousness of physical, biological, and psychological events.