Proof of God Discovered in My Head

Even subjectivists, I suppose, must believe they are objective, for if subjectivism is the case, then there is at least one objective truth. Likewise relativists, for whom there must be at least one absolute. 

Furthermore, there is no empirical proof that empiricism is the case, any more than one can have a sensory experience of sensory experience. On the other hand, one

can have an insight into insight, a concept of the concept, a reflective question about whether reflective questions exist, a weighing of the evidence for the weighing of evidence in human knowing, and a judgment about judgment (Tekippe).

The point being? That, as mentioned two posts ago, knowing involves the mind turning back upon itself, like an immaterial version of the loop that occurs on the material plane with the emergence of life. Every biological process from top to bottom involves some kind of open loop, or dynamic process-structure. You’ll know when the looping stops, because that is when you’ll be dead, precisely.

There is a relationship here to space, in that life as such takes the form of an inside now distinct from the outside; and to time, in that the circular loop not only takes time, but entails the anticipation of future states. For example, hunger presupposes the nutrition that will satiate it, such that the moment reaches forward to its fulfillment. In so many words, that's the time of your life.

It seems to me that something similar happens vis-a-vis the epistemological dimension of human development. Thus, just as we have a desire to eat that reaches forward to its future fulfillment, we have a desire to know that reaches… where, exactly? 

The answer occurred to me back in the late 1980s and was subsequently fine-tuned in the early 2000s, shortly before publishing the book of the same name. There are various ways of approaching this question, and it seems to me that Lonergan’s is just one more. 

I recently read another book called The Intelligible Universe by Hugo Meynell, and it too says something similar. Like Lonergan, he takes a long tome to say it. I read the whole thing only to get to the bottom line, which can be expressed in six sentences:

If the world were not intelligible, it would not be that which we can in principle know.

But the world is that which we can in principle come to know.

Therefore the world is intelligible.

Conversely, if you argue that the world is not intelligible, you’ve acknowledged at least one intelligible truth about it. Next,

If there were not something analogous to human intelligence in the constitution of the world, the world would not be intelligible.

But the world is intelligible.

Therefore, there is something analogous to human intelligence in the constitution of the world.  

 Hello, noumenon! 

You can be stubborn and say That’s not God! 

Fine. It’s just a godlike transcendent intelligence that pervades being, so call it what you want. You can deny its existence, but your denial affirms it. The image comes to mind of a baby in the womb deciding to cut the umbilical cord in order to prove there’s no such thing as a mother.

Come to think of it, who hasn’t heard the sophism that a woman can do what she wants with her body? But if we’re going to be technical, the baby is not literally inside the mother. That’s just a figure of speech. 

Rather, the baby is outside the mother, because the human being is not a solid mass but a tubular form, with surfaces inside and out. 

Analogously, food isn’t literally “inside” us until it is broken down in the digestive system and assimilated into our substance. (By the way, we’re not trying to make a political point but an ontological one.)

In chapter 10 of Insight, Lonergan gets down to the question of whether you and I are entitled to call ourselves Knowers. But instead of beginning what what we claim to know, he starts at the other end, with the structure of the knower and process of knowing. 

Apparently this is a big deal, especially for a Thomist, since every commonsense realist knows you’re supposed to start at the other end, with the evidence of the senses. 

But since I’m on the spectrum -- the mystic spectrum -- I’ve never had an issue with starting at the other end, with the miracle of the human subject. Rather, Schuon speaks for me:

One of the keys to the understanding of our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world never measure up to the real range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or it is nothing.

Fact. As if there is some answer that could stop us from asking questions! Not for me. Not only do I never stop asking them, but I am even a question to myself.  

Correction: I actually do stop asking questions when I am simply abiding in primordial slack, which I often do informally even when I don't formally do so from 4:30 to 5:00 PM every afternoon.  

This post is starting to get away from me, so let’s get back to the structure of the knower. Let’s say you’re a locksmith. Ultimately you want to unlock the door. But to do that you’ll need to deal with the key. The key

will necessarily say something about the inner structure of the lock. Applying the analogy, knowing is the key, and the known is the lock (Tekippe). 

Let’s just say that being is the lock and knowledge the key:

Being is the object of the pure desire to know. But the desire to know is prior to any particular act of knowledge, so the known of the definition is completely open (ibid.).

We might ask, what is the key to keys? That they open things. And what is the key to being?  Yes, Thomas? 

Our intellect in understanding is extended to infinity.

And

This ordering of the intellect to infinity would be vain and senseless if there were no infinite object of knowledge.

Yes, Nicolás ?

Thirst runs out before the water does.

So, stay thirsty, my friends. At least until tomorrow.