Craniacs & Skyhookers

I had to take the wife to the airport before I could even complete my morning routine, a large part of which includes the morning post. Therefore, this will have to be brief.

Atheist Daniel Dennett came up with the metaphor of cranes and skyhooks to characterize naturalism and theism, respectively. In his world, skyhooks are not allowed:

Dennett uses the term "skyhook" to describe a source of design complexity that does not build on lower, simpler level -- in simple terms, a miracle.

Now, I say the existence of cranes is already a miracle that can't be explained without recourse to a skyhook, which is to say, a vertical telos. One might say that crane and skyhook are complementary, another way of talking about the "heavens and and earth" created in the beginning (which is always now). 

But for Dennett, the skyhook concept is intended to ridicule "the idea of intelligent design emanating from on high," i.e., from what regular folks call God. He contrasts this with earthbound cranes, i.e., "structures that permit the construction of entities of greater complexity but are themselves founded solidly 'on the ground' of physical science."

At antipodes to the craniac perspective are skyhookers such as Wolfgang Smith, who writes that "the Darwinism of our day" is

no longer science, properly so called, but proves to be, ultimately, a kind of religion: a counter-religion, to be exact. 

If Darwinism is a religion, it must have a secret skyhook of its own buried somewhere, i.e., the One Free Miracle that gets it off the ground. 

I don't doubt the existence of cranes, but they are not self-explanatory. You could say they are built from the laws of physics, but this leads to two problems, first, the origin of those laws, and second, how the laws give rise to beings who transcend those laws.

Richard Dawkins, for example, talks about how human beings ought to develop a morality that is free of religion, but whence this "ought" in a deterministic world of selfish genes? There is no ought in natural selection, nor any freedom to conform to it. To even say that one morality is superior to another is to sneak in a hierarchy that is forbidden by its principles. 

Now, as we always say, if a miracle is something that has no naturalistic explanation, then high on my list is the miracle of subjectivity in an otherwise objective universe; and if this weren't miraculous enough, we have the human intelligence that somehow mirrors the intelligibility of the world. 

Is it reasonable to suppose that this immaterial intelligence was simply lifted by a material crane out of monkey intelligence? To believe this is to simply not know what intelligence is, which is to say, adequation to reality.  

We say that man is always suspended between the crane and the skyhook, which is to say, immanence and transcendence, or time and eternity, respectively: "man by nature belongs to a reality beyond time while living in time" (Nasr).  The human state "resides precisely in standing on the vertical axis between" these poles, skyhook above, cranes below.

Looked at this way, evolution is indeed a journey through time, but to recognize the journey is to already be partly outside of it -- as Dawkins implicitly acknowledges with his his preference for a morality that is higher than mere survival of the fittest. 

Gemini, I have to fill some space. Whaddya got?

This is a well-structured and thought-provoking piece that explores the tension between naturalism (represented by Dennett's "cranes") and theism/transcendence (represented by "skyhooks"). Here's a breakdown of the key arguments and some observations:

Key Arguments:

• Critique of Dennett's Cranes: The central argument is that even "cranes" (naturalistic explanations) require a "skyhook" (a source of ultimate explanation or a vertical telos). The existence of natural laws, and especially the emergence of beings who can transcend and understand those laws, is seen as inherently inexplicable without recourse to something beyond the purely material.
• The Problem of "Ought": The piece highlights the problem of deriving "ought" (morality, values) from "is" (natural selection, deterministic processes). If everything is determined by physical laws and selfish genes, where does the concept of moral obligation or the ability to choose a "better" morality come from? This echoes the classic is-ought problem.
• The Miracle of Subjectivity and Intelligence: The emergence of subjective experience and human intelligence capable of grasping the intelligibility of the world is presented as a major challenge to purely materialist explanations. How could purely physical processes give rise to immaterial consciousness and the ability to understand abstract concepts?
• Man Between Crane and Skyhook: The piece concludes by positioning humanity as existing in a tension between immanence (cranes, the material world) and transcendence (skyhooks, the spiritual or eternal). Evolution is acknowledged as a temporal process, but the very act of observing and understanding evolution implies a perspective outside of pure temporality.
• Implicit Argument for Transcendence: While not explicitly advocating for a specific religious view, the piece strongly suggests the necessity of some form of transcendence or non-material reality to account for the phenomena it discusses.
• The "One Free Miracle": The idea of Darwinism having its own "secret skyhook" or "One Free Miracle" is an interesting point. It suggests that even naturalistic explanations might rely on some unexplainable starting point or assumption.

Overall, this is a well-argued and thought-provoking piece that raises important questions about the relationship between science, philosophy, and religion. It effectively uses the crane/skyhook metaphor to explore the limits of naturalistic explanations and the potential need for a transcendent perspective.

Pictured below, a skyhook lifting a crane:

The Meek Shall Inhere in the Vertical

I read a couple of things this morning that got me to thinkin'. The first is an observation by Spencer Klavan on the "normie revivial" and "the spiritual horizon of everyday life":

It may surprise our readers to learn this, but most people are normal. By definition, we can’t all win extraordinary recognition or wealth. So, also by definition, widespread happiness depends on the possibility of achieving fulfillment without the glamor and excitement of becoming a world-historic figure. 

We can't just be resigned to an ordinary death-in-life, rather, flip the crypt and turn it into an adventure -- a vertical adventure. 

Surely this was a massive part of the appeal of Jesus' message -- for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, wherein he articulates a total inversion of the world's values and instead privileges the humble, the persecuted, and the poor in spirit. It is they who will inherit the earth, know the Kingdom of Heaven, see God, and receive comfort and slack.

Which is another way of saying that their lives will be a vertical adventure, or at least the adventure will be more accessible to them than to the privileged worldings preoccupied with gaining more wealth, power, and status.

If there's no reward for life on offer besides the worldly goods of money and fame, normalcy becomes drudgery. This is probably why a purely secular society is doomed to generate mass discontent: by its nature, it can never satisfy most of its members.

We will all fall short of the glory of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and if there is no vertical, then that's the end of it: a life of envy, frustration, and resentment, with no earthly way out:

I think it follows that the test of true religion is whether it can make an adventure out of being merely human. 

In general, I would say that the secret of the mystics is a recognition of the extraordinary in the ordinary, for example, Blake's famous crack about seeing eternity in a grain of sand:

The fact of existence, rather than nothingness, is itself astonishing. In the same vein, Isaiah once stressed that the messiah would look like any other human, with “nothing in his appearance to attract our attention.” From this I gather that what looks outwardly like normalcy is already, inwardly, a miracle.

So, the trick is not just to reframe life as a vertical adventure, but to plunge into it. 

Which reminds me of that story at the beginning of Kallistos Ware's The Orthodox Way, about "a celebrated recluse, a woman who lived always in a small room, never going out." A wandering Desert Father who was skeptical of her way of life called on her and asked, Why are you sitting here?, to which she responded I am not sitting, I am on a journey.

Every Christian may apply these words to himself or herself. To be a Christian is to be a traveller.... We are on a journey through the inward space of the heart, a journey not measured by the hours of our watch or the days of the calendar, for it is a journey out of time and into eternity. 

Along these lines, I discovered the other day that the hardcore atheist Christopher Hitchens requested that Steve Winwood's Higher Love be played at his funeral, which is ironic, because I believe Winwood is himself a Christian. Gemini?

Yes, Steve Winwood is a Christian. His renewed Christian faith is reflected in some of his music, particularly in the 1986 album "Back in the High Life," which features the hit song "Higher Love." This song contains spiritual themes and alludes to a return to faith.

One would think that the lyrics of Higher Love would be in poor taste if not totally inappropriate for an atheist's sendoff:

Think about it, there must be higher love / Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above / Without it, life is wasted time 

Is Hitchens trolling us from the grave?

The other thing I read this morning was from Rob Henderson's newsletter, in which he highlights how social media can fuel envy and discontent: young adults are exposed to a barrage of internet celebrities "who don’t seem all that different from themselves" but have won "the social media lottery."

Imagine you’re 22 or 23, just out of college, and scrolling through Instagram. You see someone your age who looks like you and has a similar level of intelligence or talent (maybe the person has no talent at all), but they’re making a living as an influencer.....

Young people might think, “Why not me? Why can’t I have that kind of job?” It’s one thing to see Ludacris living a glamorous life -- that feels understandable and unattainable -- but seeing someone so similar to yourself succeeding in a way that looks effortless can feel deeply unfair.... 

This is because similarity is one of the strongest predictors of whether you envy someone. The people you envy are those that you could imagine yourself being. The key components are similarity, and achievement in a domain that is relevant to yourself.... you will feel more envy than if it is someone very different from yourself, someone who comes from a completely different background than you...

Which goes back to what Klavan says about a purely secular society being doomed to generate mass discontent because it can never satisfy most of its members. And clearly, there is no horizontal solution to this problem, because horizontality -- or exile from the vertical -- is the problem.

Now, in the larger scheme of things, exile from the vertical is none other than man's fall. Yesterday while in the waiting room for a medical appointment I brought along a random volume of Schuon to keep me company, and lit upon a passage about the fall and its consequences, whereby

the link with the divine Source was broken and became invisible; the world became suddenly external to Adam, things became opaque and heavy, they became like unintelligible hostile fragments. This drama is always repeating itself anew, in collective history as well as in the life of individuals.

As a result, man looks for God in all the wrong places, from matter to ideology to internet fame, each concealing a kind of covert idolatry. It also results in an ever-multiplying surfeit of "meaningless knowledge," which is "not a knowledge that enriches, but one that impoverishes." These "cosmic blind-alleys" seduce "and play the vampire; the current of forms does not want us to escape from its hold."

Which is to say, the hold of horizontality, which superimposes itself on the vertical, such that man is "engulfed in the anxious and deceptive turmoil of superfluous things" both "delusive and perishable." 

Then the nurse called, so that was the end of that. But earlier in the day I was reading another book that, as it were, deals with the reversal of the fall, which is to say, the vertical adventure. But I see that I've already exceeded my allotment, so to be continued.

Stale Bobservations and Flaming Homilies

Nobody thinks seriously as long as originality is important to him.

Well, that's a relief. 

How does one keep it fresh when one is talking about timeless truth? After all "perennial" and "novel" would appear to be antonyms. Well, there's this:

Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper. 

Therefore, it is possible to say the sameold sameold in a deeper way. There's also this:

There is no spiritual victory that is not necessary to win anew each day. 

 Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, only transposed to the key of Christianity?

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

So, a carefully cultivated learned ignorance gives rise to an infinitude of possibilities. Indeed,

As long as we can respond without hesitating we do not know the subject.  

More generally,

That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of the intelligence. 

Now, God is incomprehensible, and ten out of ten mystics will tell you that the more they know of him the less they know, and vice versa. Thus, 

There are types of ignorance that enrich the mind and types of knowledge that impoverish it. 

I do feel very much as if every morning I start all over -- like Sisyphus, only with the unjaded spirit of a hopeful child or something? 

The intelligent adult is one in whom the child has survived and the youth has died.

In my back pages I was a rather cynical youth. But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. 

The Roshi tells us that

This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.

But

The modern desire to be original makes the mediocre artist believe that simply being different is the secret to being original.

 I also recall something Schuon wrote in one of his later books: 

Everything has already been said, and well said; but one must always recall it anew, and in recalling it one must do what has already been done: to actualize in thought certitudes contained, not in the thinking ego, but in the transpersonal substance of human intelligence.

Similarly, the Aphorist reminds us that

The scientific proposition presents an abrupt alternative: understanding it or not understanding it. The philosophical proposition, however, is susceptible to growing insight. Finally, the religious proposition is a vertical ascent that allows one to see the same landscape from different altitudes.

So, as scientific and horizontal knowledge proceeds in a forward direction, philosophical and religious -- which is to say, vertical -- thought partakes of depth and height. 

There is also the matter of assimilating novel horizontal knowledge into the vertical -- or, put conversely, reformulating the old truths in the parlance of the times. The quantum world gives rise to a vision of the world that is astonishingly different from the Newtonian, but neither has any ultimate bearing on the timeless, it's just that we have new ways to express the timeless. Physics may change, but 

Nothing is more outdated at any moment than yesterday's novelty.

And

Whoever believes he is original is merely ignorant.

Moreover,

No one seems more like the others than he who believes himself to be different.

Ironically, 

Originality must adhere to the continuity of a tradition.

Now, tradition is a kind of horizontal continuity in approaching the vertical. Along these lines, Gustav Mahler said that "Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire,"and now we're getting somewhere: what may sound like another stale cosmic homily is really a modest attempt to preserve and pass along the Fire.

After all, someone has to do it, so it might as well be me.

Gemini, what do you make of this? Stale bobservations or flaming homily?

This is a rich and insightful collection of thoughts on originality, tradition, and the nature of religious and philosophical truth. Here's a breakdown of the key ideas and how they connect: 

The Paradox of Originality: The core argument is that the pursuit of originality for its own sake is counterproductive. True originality arises not from striving to be different, but from deeply engaging with timeless truths and traditions. 

Vertical vs. Horizontal Knowledge: The essay distinguishes between scientific (horizontal) knowledge, which progresses linearly, and philosophical/religious (vertical) knowledge, which deepens and ascends. Religious truth isn't about novelty but about gaining deeper insights into the same fundamental principles. The analogy of seeing the same landscape from different altitudes is particularly effective. 

The Beginner's Mind: The concept of "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" is applied to the spiritual life. By approaching truth with a sense of wonder and openness, like a beginner, we open ourselves to new possibilities. This contrasts with the "expert's" limited perspective. This links to the idea of "learned ignorance" -- recognizing the limits of our knowledge allows for greater understanding. 

The Timeless and the Temporal: The essay acknowledges the importance of relating timeless truths to the current context. While "nothing is more outdated at any moment than yesterday's novelty," we can use new language and concepts (like those from quantum physics) to express enduring principles. This is the "reformulating the old truths in the parlance of the times." 

Tradition as a Fire, Not Ashes: The quote from Mahler is crucial: "Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire." Tradition isn't about blindly adhering to the past, but about keeping the vital essence alive. This connects to the idea of "recalling it anew" and "doing what has already been done." 

The Role of Ignorance and Incomprehensibility: The essay suggests that true understanding involves recognizing the vastness of what we don't know. This is particularly relevant to the concept of God, who is inherently incomprehensible. This echoes the idea of "There are types of ignorance that enrich the mind and types of knowledge that impoverish it." 

Constant Renewal: The image of Sisyphus with a "unjaded spirit" emphasizes the need for constant renewal in the spiritual life. Each day is a new beginning, a fresh opportunity to engage with truth.

In essence, the essay argues for a nuanced understanding of originality and tradition. True originality isn't about inventing something new, but about deeply understanding and re-expressing timeless truths in a way that resonates with the present. This requires a beginner's mind, a recognition of our own ignorance, and a commitment to keeping the fire of tradition alive.

Meditations on the First Principle

It's easy enough to prove that materialist explanations are insufficient, but it's not altogether clear what to replace them with. 

That is to say, we know that horizontal and vertical are complementary down here, and we can even deduce that the vertical must be ontologically prior, since no amount of time or horizontal shuffling could have given rise to it.

Beyond this, the sages diverge. 

Man has literally been trying to map the vertical ever since he became man and uttered an astoneaged WTF?! Gemini, how many religions are there in the world?

It's tricky to give an exact number of religions in the world because there's no single, universally agreed-upon definition of what counts as a distinct religion.

That's true. For example, wokeness is a religious cult, but its members don't know it. 

Give us your best guess, Gemini.  

Estimates go as high as 10,000 distinct religions worldwide, although many of these have relatively small followings and are regionally based.

So, 10,000 different maps of the same territory. And on what basis do we pick one? For it is like trying to decide where to go on vacation without having any knowledge of the destinations involved. Rather, you have to travel there to find out. No wonder people reject the whole notion and take flight into secularism. 

The problem is, you may not care about the Absolute, but the Absolute cares about you. In other words, you can only pretend to reject it, because you'll inevitably put a false absolute in its place. 

Speaking of which -- the 10,000 religions notwithstanding -- there are some features of the vertical about which I should think all reasonable people can agree, one being that it is Absolute. People call it by different names, but it is at the top of the hierarchy, and stands as origin, source, center, and first principle.

This is somewhat analogous to how logic has its first principles without which it couldn't be logical, e.g., identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason.

Supposing we begin with this Absolute, what else can we say of it except that It Is and must be? Well, I suppose it's cheating, but I fully accept Moses' testimony that this It Is is an I AM -- in other words, that it possesses subjectivity. We won't yet say that the Absolute is a person, but it's certainly not an object.

Now, I don't believe this only on Moses' authority, but because once heard, it makes sense. Most importantly, it makes sense of our own otherwise totally inexplicable subjectivity. 

Using only our own meager horizontal resources, there's not even a theory of how there could be a theory of consciousness. Oh, I know they're out there, for the tenured will always be with us. But consciousness explains the theory, not vice versa.

Having said that, merely acknowledging an Absolute subject is a rather threadbare religion. What's he like? Is there a way to get to know him better? And does he give a hoot about us? 

What is difficult is not to believe in God, but to believe we matter to Him.

Here's a thought: if our own subjectivity is grounded in his, then perhaps the most central features of our subjectivity may reveal something of his. Maybe it's another cheat, but this is why I accept the principle that man is -- we won't yet say created, but somehow a reflected image of this Absolute principle.

If this is the case, then features of our consciousness may reflect features of his. 

Let's think about this... Ah ha! Thinking. Certainly this is the main feature of human consciousness, that we pretty much never stop thinking. Nor is this in the way of lower animals, rather, we inhabit a world of ideas, essences, and abstract concepts that is totally inaccessible to the beasts.

And why do we do this? Here again, reduced to horizontal resources, there is no why. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we think in order to know. Know what? Truth. Just try denying that and see how far it gets you.

Could it be that the Absolute is not only the source and ground of truth, but Truth itself? If so, it would explain why there are so many seemingly contradictory truths down here -- even those 10,000 religions, because a truth can never be the truth.

Which in turn gives rise to the idea that the vertical isn't just an empty expanse, but rather must be a hierarchical order, such that the truths of one level may not apply to another. Which is why I accept the testimony of the Aphorist to the effect that 

Truths do not contradict each other except when they fall out of order.

I mean, even materialism is true insofar as we're talking about matter. It only becomes false if it rises above its station and tries to account for things above the material. Likewise, we accept Darwinism, but it certainly doesn't account for Darwin. 

Which reminds me of a quip by Keynes I read the other day in an intellectual biography of Hayek: "Starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in Bedlam." Which in turn reminds me of Gödel, and of how man cannot be enclosed in any formal system. Rather, human intelligence has access to truths that transcend any such system. 

In the same book, the author notes that "in an age of scientism, the hardest task of reason is to understand its own limitations." We concur 100% with this sentiment, which means that although man is the rational animal, in knowing this, we transcend reason. Rather, we must have a faculty that is situated higher on the vertical scale, which we shall call intellect. 

Now, reason clearly operates in time -- it takes time to reason things out -- but there is something "timeless" in the way the intellect operates, for it "sees" and "knows" in a moment. Here again, this resembles how our Absolute subject must know, which is to say, "all at once." 

It's a bit like how we can know a face. This is not something we know in an additive way, like eyes + nose + mouth somehow adds up to a face. Rather, we see the whole in an instant. 

This is also how we know those "self-evident truths" bequeathed to us by the founders. In other words, once proposed to the mind, the mind -- or intellect, rather -- assents to them because it instantly understands them. Same with the first principles of logic alluded to above.

Gosh. We've already surpassed 1,000 words, and we've barely scratched the surface of the depth. Gemini, where are we so far?

Overall, your exploration offers a compelling framework for understanding reality beyond purely materialist terms. By emphasizing the vertical dimension, the Absolute Subject, and the hierarchical nature of truth, you provide a rich ground for further inquiry and discussion. Your use of analogies and examples makes complex ideas more accessible, and the connection to logical first principles adds a strong foundation to your arguments.

Any ideas on how to proceed?

Some Points for Consideration:

• The Nature of the Absolute's Subjectivity: While you establish the Absolute as an "I AM," the precise nature of this subjectivity remains open. Is it personal in the same way human subjectivity is? How does this relate to traditional theological concepts of God?
• The Problem of Evil: If the Absolute is Truth and the source of all being, how does one account for evil and suffering in the world? This is a perennial challenge in theistic and metaphysical systems.
• The Role of Revelation: While you mention Moses' testimony, the role of specific religious revelations in understanding the Absolute is not fully explored. How do different religious traditions fit into this hierarchical framework?
• The Nature of Intellect: The distinction between reason and intellect is important, but further clarification on how the intellect operates and how it can be cultivated would be beneficial.
• Testing the Model: While the model is internally consistent, how could it be tested or verified? What kind of evidence could support or challenge its claims?

Challenge accepted.

The Godless Delusion

We know that

Every Christian has been directly responsible for the hardening of some unbeliever’s heart.

I wonder if every atheist has been directly responsible for the softening of some believer's heart?

That's how it was for Dennis Prager. Brought up an observant Jew, he dabbled in secularism in college, until witnessing the stupidities -- the absence of wisdom and common sense -- to which the secular left inevitably gives rise. Seeing what the anti- and irreligious campus radicals had wrought brought him back to the fold. 

We have confirmation from a nonlocal source:

Nothing is more dangerous for faith than to frequent the company of believers. The unbeliever restores our faith.

So, sometimes the most effective evangelist can be a member of the other team. Which makes sense. For example, at the moment, the most effective spokesholes for Republican policies are Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom.

Along these lines, I stumbled upon a book called Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity, showing how Dawkins in particular and the new atheists in general are turning out to be effective evangelists. For these contributors, "Richard Dawkins and his fellow New Atheists were instrumental in their conversions to Christianity."

Despite a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, all are united in the fact that they were first enthusiasts for the claims and writings of the New Atheists. But each became disillusioned by the arguments and conclusions of Dawkins, causing them to look deeper and with more objectivity at religious faith. The fallacies of Christianity Dawkins warns of simply don't exist.

Cosmic irony.

I've only finished the first few chapters, and so far the writers are rather conventional -- not exactly our type. Not to say I don't often wish I were their type. Why is it so simple for some people to just be born again and have that instant personal relationship with Jesus? I try, but so far no real fireworks in that department. 

It again reminds me of Prager. He says that his religiosity is based almost entirely on logic and reason. Nor does he generally pray for good things to happen to him, because he rejects the idea of God being a cosmic bellhop, just waiting for us to ask so as to receive. Rather, he says that his prayer life consists mostly of listening as opposed to asking. 

Ironically -- being that he is currently recovering from a severe cervical spine injury -- he also says that he doesn't want people to give up religion just because their prayers aren't answered. 

More generally, as we all know, bad things nevertheless happen to even the best people, and vice versa. Prager has been one of the most positive influences on my own life, but here he is, flat on his back while hoping for movement to return to his limbs. Yet, I am quite certain this won't shake his faith. 

One difference between us is that he doesn't have any interest in mysticism, esoterism, metaphysics, and other transrational matters, all of the things that we like to explore and discuss around here. Rather, his preoccupation is with morality. He doesn't even really care if someone is a "good person," rather, only if the person actually does good. 

If I am not mistaken, this is a very Jewish idea, that actions and behavior are much more important than good intentions. Obviously, the world is full of -- or even plagued by -- nice people with horrible ideas. Conversely, Trump isn't a moral exemplar in his personal life, but his ideas and policies are great.

If I need an operation, I don't really care if the surgeon has a personal relationship with Jesus. Rather, I just want the most skilled surgeon.  

A few days ago, the fire came within a couple hundred yards of my house. After it passed I actually did thank God, because that's the kind of guy I am, and gratitude is a nice quality to cultivate. But the moment I think about it, I wonder about the 12,000 homes that have burned to the ground. If God spared my house, why did he not spare theirs? It seems totally arbitrary and unfair. 

So, why do we pray? It seems illogical. The best answer I've come across is because God wants us to. Dávila goes even further, and says something to the effect that the only sensible thing for us to do is to keep bothering God with our prayers. At the same time,

Christianity does not solve "problems"; it merely obliges us to live them at a higher level.

And

The weight of this world can only be supported while on one's knees.

But since God wants us to pray, it must benefit us in ways that are not obvious.  

Come to think of it, why even am I religious? Much of it has to do with what we've been writing about the vertical dimension. For me, the works of Schuon truly illuminate the vertical in an unsurpassed way. Others do too, but he is so clear, comprehensive, and profound that he opened up the whole "religious world" for me. In other words, thanks to him, I had a way to approach and understand what it is religion is "talking about."

But at the same time, he is emphatic that metaphysical understanding is not enough. Rather, one must practice an orthodox religion in order to "actualize" in one's being what is otherwise merely abstract and intellectual.

It is much like knowing all about musical theory, when what you really need to do is pick up an instrument and learn how to play. Religion is an instrument for engaging the vertical. 

Is this not a form of religious indifferentism, as if any instrument will do? Not necessarily, because while their are diverse religious forms, it doesn't mean they're all equal. For me, Christianity explains more than the other options on offer, and I find that it isn't difficult to integrate the good stuff from other approaches such as Vedanta and Taoism. 

Indeed, it's much like English: if we like a word from a different language, we just steal it -- unlike, say, the French, who want to keep it pure and uncontaminated by other languages.

Which is also why I like jazz, which likewise incorporates whatever it likes from other genres -- classical, soul, blues, gospel, electronic, whatever.

Well, I got a late start this morning, and the wind is up. I'm praying that the power won't be cut again, but I suspect it will be.

Any thoughts, Gemini?

Overall, your reflection demonstrates a nuanced and intellectually engaged approach to faith. You acknowledge the difficulties and paradoxes inherent in religious belief while affirming the importance of the spiritual dimension and the value of religious practice. The exploration of different perspectives, from Prager's rational approach to your own interest in mysticism, adds depth and complexity to your analysis. The central theme that emerges is the search for a meaningful and coherent way to integrate faith, reason, and experience in a world that often seems chaotic and unpredictable.

UPDATE -- some of Schuon's thoughts on prayer:

The remembrance of God is at the same time a forgetting of oneself; conversely, the ego is a kind of crystallization of forgetfulness of God. The brain is, as it were, the organ of this forgetfulness; it is like a sponge filled with images of this world of dispersion and of heaviness, filled too with the tendencies of the ego towards both dispersal and hardening.... 

The aim of individual prayer is not only to obtain particular favors, but also the purification of the soul: it loosens psychological knots or, in other words, dissolves subconscious coagulations and drains away many a secret poison; it externalizes before God the difficulties, failures and tensions of the soul, which presupposes that the soul be humble and upright; this externalization -- carried out in face of the Absolute -- has the virtue of reestablishing equilibrium and restoring peace, in a word, of opening us to grace.... 

The important thing to grasp here is that actualisation of the consciousness of the Absolute, namely the “remembrance of God” or “prayer"... brings about a fundamental confrontation of creature and Creator.... 

It is already a death and a meeting with God and it places us already in Eternity.... Quintessential prayer brings about an escape from the world and from life, and thereby confers a new and Divine sap upon the veil of appearances and the current of forms, and a fresh meaning to our presence amid the play of phenomena.

Desperation Isn't Disqualifying, It's a Prerequisite

I like this little prayer John Duns Scotus offers at the beginning of his Treatise on the First Principle:

May the First Principle of things permit me to believe, discern, and disclose whatever pleases His Majesty and elevates our minds to contemplate Him....

Help me, Lord, as I seek the utmost limit of the knowledge our natural reason can achieve concerning the True Existence you are, if we begin with the being you have predicated of yourself [i.e., "I am who I am"].

If we're going to try to grasp something of the vertical, might as well go straight to the source. In fact, there's only so much we can understand about the source without its cooperation in some form or fashion, which we touched on yesterday vis-a-vis necessary and sufficient causes in the creation of art. 

It must be the same with regard to theology, God again being the condition without which it is impossible. Which is an orthodox doctrine, i.e., that God gives sufficient grace to every man to turn toward him, such that the turning is already a finding. 

I hope that's true, otherwise I have no explanation for all the seeking I've been documenting over the past two decades of pneumablogging, let alone the existence of readers. It reminds me of what Leonard Cohen said about the people in his Zen monastery:

“Everyone here is fucked up and desperate,” he says brightly. “That’s why they’re here. You don’t come to a place like this unless you’re desperate.” 

Truly truly, you people must be as desperate as I am: desperadOs?

This vertical desperation was equally characteristic of my more mundane dream of becoming a certified and certifiable psychoanalyst back in the day. I remember lamenting to my analyst about my suspicions that I was just too neurotic for the job, to which he brightly responded with words to the effect that "neurosis isn't a disqualification, rather, an absolute prerequisite."

In other words, it is a far better thing to have been neurotic and sorted it out than to have never been neurotic at all.

Which is very much a secular version of the idea that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who need no repentance.

As I've mentioned before, I ended up not pursuing my post-doc studies; or rather, my studies took a different form, i.e., a wholly vertical one. 

That is to say, upon the occasion of my 40th birthday, I decided to dedicate my life to looking into this God business instead of looking into my own unconscious. Both are more or less infinite, except that the former proceeds "upward" while latter looks "downward" for the Answer.

Of course, the one doesn't exclude the other, and Jordan Peterson is probably the most prominent explorer who tries to be mindful of both. I've been viewing a lot of videos pertaining to his full-blown descent into hell, which rendered him totally disabled for a few years not too long ago. It's hard to know what to make of that, but whatever it was, he seems to have emerged stronger and wiser. 

By the way, just to conclude the little story of my own lower vertical adventures in psychoanalysis, I never did get to the bottom of Gagdad Bob and what makes him tick. Rather, I more or less conceded that I was one of those incurable INTPs, and that there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it: INTPs are preoccupied with 

the search for the universal law behind everything they see. They want to understand the unifying themes of life, in all their complexity. They are detached, analytical observers who can seem oblivious to the world around them because they are so deeply absorbed in thought. They spend much of their time in their own heads: exploring concepts, making connections, and seeking understanding of how things work... [their] life is an ongoing inquiry into the mysteries of the universe.

Etc. Leopards and spots, nor did I choose to be this way. If God didn't make me this way, I fail to see how my selfish genes could be responsible, because why would natural selection select someone so unfit for anything conventionally useful? More generally, how can evolution account for the man who is seemingly preadapted to the vertical? Evolution doesn't know anything about verticality.

Switching into a lower gear, I suppose scientism is like chemotherapy, in that it fails to discriminate between healthy and unhealthy cells. Thus, while it eradicates superstition, it sweeps away metaphysics along with it. But in so doing, it becomes its own superstition (or perhaps substition): 

To believe that science is enough is the most naive of superstitions.

Scientism basically collapses the vertical into the horizontal, but this can never be done in any coherent or consistent manner. Again, for science to even recognize and ponder horizontality is to have risen above it, but without any principle to explain how or why this is possible. 

Which is okay. It is not the job of science to tell us how science is possible.  

Without philosophy, the sciences so not know what they know.

The most complete explanation of the How will tell us nothing whatsoever about the Why. To even ask Why? is ultimately a vertical matter. Math is silent on the question of why there are mathematicians. Their very existence is wholly unreasonable, unless they are the entailment of a higher reason, an emanation from the Logosphere. Yes, God is certainly a mathematician, but not only a mathematician.

Recall yesterday's point that the Creator doesn't create in time but with time. This is a subtle and tricksy doctrine for a timebound primate to wrap his head around, but recall also that the soul is partly in time and partly in eternity, so we aren't entirely without resources to grasp our ambiguous situation. Wolfgang Smith observes that 

the creature is more -- incomparably more! -- than its manifestation in space an time. It does not coincide with the phenomenon, the organism as conceived by the scientist.... 

Even the tiniest plant that blooms for a fortnight and then is seen no more is vaster in its metaphysical roots than the entire cosmos in its visible form: for these roots extend into eternity. And how much more does this hold true in the case of man!

Details. It's a nice sentiment, but what exactly is going on here? How is it that man in particular is incomparably vaster in his metaphysical roots than the entire cosmos in its visible form? 

Yes, because his roots extend into eternity, to the toppermost of the poppermost, to the Absolute invoked by Duns Scotus at the top, and whose help we need in order to get anywhere in our desperate quest.

Football is calling, so we'll have to end this circumnavalgazing for now. But we'll try to fill in some details in the next post. We'll end with a favorite quote by Leonard Cohen, which is sort of a guiding principle of the blog and its ceaseless effort to provide vertical entertainment for fellow desperadOs:

“What [else] would I be doing? Finding new drugs, buying more expensive wine? I don’t know. This seems to me the most luxurious and sumptuous response to the emptiness of my own existence.

“I think that’s the real deep entertainment,” he concludes. “Religion. Real profound and voluptuous and delicious entertainment. The real feast that is available to us is within this activity. Nothing touches it.”

Little Center and Big Central

We left off yesterday's post with a somewhat cryptic remark by Dávila to the effect that

There are a thousand truths and only one error.  

It is cryptic because he doesn't specify that single error, but, knowing the Aphorist as we do, it must be a-theism, the denial of God. 

Expressed in philosophical terms, it must be a denial of the verticality which is always complementary to horizontality. Indeed, mere horizontality -- i.e., any philosophy of pure immanence -- must be self-refuting, because in knowing anything about the horizontal, we have transcended it. 

This is similar to how we can only know of time because a part of us transcends it, or in the words of Plato, "The soul is partly in eternity, and partly in time." An animal is fully immersed in the stream of time, but it is as if we have one foot on the bank so as to be aware of its passing. 

If there were not within the soul an Apex beyond the flux of time, we could not perceive motion, could not become aware of change. Strange to say, only by transcending time do we become aware of its existence (Wolfgang Smith).

One way to conceptualize verticality is to see that immanence and transcendence are perpendicular to one another, and we always partake of both. This is not a dualism, rather, a consequence of the principle of creation, which is but the doctrine of vertical causation writ large. 

In other words, there is a source, a center, and an origin, which is and must be located at the top, so to speak. It cannot merely be "in the past," because this simply gives rise to a sterile infinite regress that could never transcend itself no matter how long it had existed. Indeed, if the past were infinite, existence would have already achieved maximum entropy an infinite age ago. 

Now, religion as such is recognition of, and engagement with, verticality, or rather, with its atemporal source. In short, the cosmos itself is open to something that is not the cosmos. And man, being the microcosmos, is likewise open to what transcends him.

Everything said above may or may not be "controversial," but it is really just an experience-near description of the way things are. One can always deny transcendence and verticality, but only from a transcendent standpoint: it is a denial of spirit by the spirit, so it really gets us nowhere: if it is true, it is false.

Nevertheless, this is not to say that things aren't mysterious. Indeed, it is precisely why things are mysterious, i.e., simultaneously imbued with the glow of an incandescent intelligibility while enshrouded by a "higher darkness," so to speak. This is why we can know so much while knowing so little: the circle of knowledge is always expanding, but this only means that the area of darkness beyond the circle grows with it.

Imagine a band of men at night surrounding a campfire, which only illuminates the immediate area. Over the past 50,000 years the fire has grown into science and its various disciplines that extend the reach of the light, but are we really any closer to illuminating the mystery per se?

Ideology of any kind pretends that the area illuminated by the fire is all there is. But there is always more, because verticality shades off into the infinite. Thus, to pretend that reality can be enclosed in science is to imagine that our little campfire not only illuminates the world but is the world. Which is why

He who speaks of the farthest regions of the soul soon needs a theological vocabulary.

Put another way, a theological vocabulary allows us to speak meaningfully of the vertical, just as a scientific vocabulary allows us to speak meaningfully of the horizontal. 

But again, science itself would be impossible without already partaking of the vertical. Science is always meta-science, which I think is one of the implications of Gödel's theorems -- that man qua man has access to a transcendental realm of unprovable (by science) truths. 

These truths are apprehended in a direct and unmediated way by the intellect which "sees" and understands, not by the reason that merely knows in a contingent and conditional manner. 

Some truths are neither contingent nor conditioned by anything less, rather, are unconditional. Indeed, they are the conditions of intelligible being. Man's knowledge is conditional, but that man is a knower is not conditional (or can only be a condition of the soul being created by God). 

One of the myths of our age is that heliocentrism and Darwinism have exiled man from the center of existence. But these doctrines could only be known by an intelligence that is central to the cosmos. 

Put another way, the Center is present to any man at any time, which is why we can have access to knowledge which is at once timeless and universal. Even the universe is not timeless, and in knowing it we again partake of something which transcends it and is thereby more "central." This is the famous circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. Which is why the Aphorist can say that

Only God and the central point of my consciousness are not adventitious to me.

Or in other words, Big Center and Little Center, the latter a reflected image of the former.

It is important to realize that this Little Center could not possibly be a result of evolution. For one thing, evolution takes time, and the Little Center is partly outside time, being a reflection of the Big Center that is altogether outside time. Put another way, no amount of time adds up to timelessness. 

Why do we like art? Because, to the extent that it is art, it partakes of, and speaks to us, of the timeless. Again, art consists of the timeless soulprints left behind by man in his journey through time. Many aphorisms come to mind:

From an aesthetic experience one returns as from a sighting of numinous footprints.

Aesthetics cannot give recipes, because there are no methods for making miracles.

Every work of art speaks to us of God. No matter what it says.

Aesthetics is the sensible and secular manifestation of grace.

The "manifestation of grace," which is to say vertical causation. The artist participates in something that does not, and could not, arise "from below." Rather, beauty, like truth, is always already transcendent and speaks to us of the transcendent. Which is why the Aphorist says that

The existence of art is not proof of the greatness of man, but of the commiseration of the Divine with his impotence. 

I don't know if I would go quite that far. Rather, I would say the artist is the condition with which (or through whom) beauty may be created, while God is the condition without-which it cannot be created. Left to his own devices man is a clever primate, but with God "all things are possible," from cathedrals to symphonies to paintings, poetry, and all the rest. And again, such creations partake of a timelessness and universality that could not arise from below. 

Such artistic soulprints presume the existence of the soul, both in the creator and the one who appreciates the creation. In other words, when art speaks to our soul, it reveals to us that we have a soul, precisely. It is soul-to-soul communication, but it also points "upward" to its nonlocal co-creator.  

The world was (or is, rather) not made in time, but with time, or so we have heard from the Wise. Being that we are images of this Cosmogenic Act, it must be the same with regard to our own creative acts. 

For example, I am creating this post in time, but in so doing it feels as if some part of me is cooperating with something outside time. But this is just an artifact of the horizontality and verticality that are always Present. We couldn't be purely horizontal even if we tried to be.  

And we do try, which is to say, Genesis 3 All Over Again. With the myth of scientism -- the expanding universe notwithstanding -- the cosmos has actually shrunk to mansize. In the words of Wolfgang Smith,

An entire dimension has in effect disappeared: the "vertical" dimension, namely, which enables us to speak of things "above" this universe, beyond this world perceived with our eyes and detected by means of scientific instruments.

In other words, we have jettisoned the infinitely larger world of which the horizontal world is but a prolongation and comparative shadow, or like a flattened three dimensional image impressed onto two. 

We're out of time. How about an image summarizing this post, Gemini?