Reality = Cosmos + X

I've been thinking a lot about the need for revelation. 

Now, first of all, we either need it or we don't. In other words, either we can form an accurate and complete map of the cosmos with wholly natural means, or we can't.

Well, we can't. Sez who? Sez common sense. But if that's not enough, sez Gödel. 

Stanley Jaki, in his Brain, Mind and Computers, correctly notes that Gödel's theorems prove

that even in the elementary parts of arithmetic there are propositions which cannot be proved or disproved in that system (emphasis mine).

And then, before philosophers had time enough to digest the implications of that little depth charge,  

even wider implications of his work came to be recognized. To begin with, Gödel's analysis centered on the most basic of all formal systems, the system of integers. It was, therefore, plausible to argue that as a result no formal system is immune to the bearing of Gödel's conclusion (emphasis mine).

Now, the mind is not a logic machine. If it were, then we couldn't be having this metalogical discussion about logic. At any rate, there is

a basic, insurmountable difference between the abilities of the human mind and of formal systems of which machines are obvious embodiments.... For a machine to be a machine, it can have only a finite number of components and it can operate only on a finite number of initial assumptions. 

And "it is a basic shortcoming of all such systems" 

that they have to rely on a system extraneous to them for their proof of consistency. Gödel's theorem, therefore, cuts the ground under the efforts that view machines... as adequate models of the mind.

The bottom line is that any machine, because it embodies a formal system,

can never produce at least one truth, which the mind can without relying on other minds.... No matter how perfect the machine, it can never do everything that the human mind can.

So, our most porfect manmade system of thought will necessarily have to put its faith in at least one thought or principle or axiom or assumption or intuition or speculation or delusion or hallucination that the system cannot justify, and which comes from outside the system.

Therefore, if I am following my argument correctly, there is no escaping faith. 

Back to our opening blast:"either we need revelation or we don't."

Looks like we do. But which one? 

Well, in point of fact there are surprisingly few. Buddhism, for example, is not a revelation. Nor are the Upanishads or Bhagavad Gita. Besides, what's wrong with the one that stands at the ground of our civilization? I'm old enough to remember that Western civilization was the best of all civilizations, so I'll stick with the Greco-Judeo-Christian revelation, thank you.

Greco? Yes, that's one of the things I've been thinking about vis-a-vis revelation. You're free to take it or leave it -- Raccoon opinion diverges in the subject -- but ancient Greek philosophy may almost be thought of as a kind of complementary Old Testament to go along with the jewsual one. 

Certainly the early Christian thinkers approached it this way, if not literally, then in spirit. That is, they were eager to ground the new revelation in the old, and also to show how the former was entirely consistent with the best available "manmade" philosophy.

I put manmade in quotes, because we already showed that no manmade philosophy is self-justifying, and must draw on something above, behind, or beyond itself. 

As it so happens, I'm reading a book called From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith that claims the works of Plato

can be most profitably read on two simultaneous levels: as works of genius in their own right and as inspired writings used by the God of the Bible to prepare the ancient world for the coming of Christ and the New Testament.

And why not? I say, the more testaments the merrier, so long as they not only don't contradict but deepen one another. Although you may not want to put him on the same level as the OT prophets, 

Plato was nevertheless inspired by something beyond the confines of our natural world.... Plato glimpsed deep mysteries about the nature of God and man, the earth and the heavens, history and eternity, virtue and vice, and love and death that point to the fullness of the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Moreover,

The very reason that Aristotle and Virgil could serve as forerunners and guides to the two greatest repositories of medieval Catholic learning (the Summa theologiae and the Commedia) was because Aquinas and Dante understood that their pagan mentors had access to wisdom that transcended their time and place.

I think you just need to widen out your world, so it becomes a place where it is a matter of course for vertical energies to flow in from above in all sorts of ways. This was Chesterton's Universe (another book I recently read), which is vastly larger than the one confined to scientistic naturalism. The cosmos is always more than the cosmos, such that... how put it.... 

Let's just say the cosmos = cosmos + x. And x is... further discussed in the next post, I'll bet.