Idiot Until Proven Intelligent

I mentioned that I've been rereading Garrigou-Lagrange's God, His Existence and His Nature, and it's a tough one, again, not because it's confusing or ambiguous, but because it's so lucid. The man never lets up, so it requires intense concentration to keep up with him. 

I suspect that most philosophers who have rejected the proofs have done so based upon ignorance, a garbled half-understanding, or a determined effort to not actually engage them, AKA intellectual inadequacy or dishonesty. Certainly I've never seen any refutation remotely equal to this level of demonstration. 

The aphorist reminds us that 

The text that admits of paraphrasing is a minor one. 

I guess that makes this a major text, since I'm finding it difficult to locate a convenient point of entry in order to cut it down to my (fun)size. Then again, there must be an easier way for the determined and resourceful lazy man.

Ah, perhaps here, on p. 251, section 35, which is conveniently entitled General proof, which includes all the others. Afterwards he examines Thomas' five ways in detail, but here he provides a view from the top, and perhaps this will be sufficient for those of us who don't need no steenking proof, just a little common sense and intellectual consistency. For, to paraphrase the Aphorist, proofs of God abound for those in no need of them.

Here G-L conveys the essential point which the two volumes explicate in detail over 900 or so pages. 

Come to think of it, Schuon has an essay called Concerning Proofs of God, and he gets the point across in just 16 pages! I realize there are a lot of ins & outs, to say nothing of what-have-yous, but Schuon manages to tie the cosmos together with less than 2% of what our esteemed priest expends. Seems Father Reggie just isn't into the whole brevity thing.

Besides, at a certain point there's a methinks thou protest too much thingy going on. Complicated, is what I mean. If the plan gets too complex, something always goes wrong. Besides, there's a saying, -- to paraphrase the Aphrorist again, The idea that does not win over in 16 pages does not win over in 900.

And in a way, since the summary takes less than a page, and so long as it registers in the cranium, perhaps our work here is done. You don't need to prove the existence of vision once you open your eyes and look. I got neurologists doing that for me. 

Perhaps I'll go back and forth between Garrigou-Lagrange and Schuon, and deploy them as warp and weft to weave our own cosmic area rug. 

"The greater cannot proceed from the less," condenses into one formula the principles upon which our five typical proofs are based (G-L).

Okay, but 

In order to clarify the function of metaphysical proof, one must start from the idea that human intelligence coincides in its essence with certainty of the Absolute (Schuon).

Now, the Absolute is precisely the greater from which intelligence proceeds, for to affirm the contrary -- that the principle of intelligence is the absence thereof -- is to say that intelligence is but the appearance of a reality called metacosmic stupidity or lifetime tenure. Frankly it's like saying light is parasitic on the principle of darkness, or what we in the isness of philosophy call reductio impossibile. 

The five proofs (Thomas calls them ways) "may be stated as follows":

Becoming depends upon being which is determined; Conditioned being depends upon unconditioned being; Contingent being depends upon necessary being; Imperfect, composite, multiple being depends upon that which is perfect, simple, and one; Order in the universe depends upon an intelligent designer.

Or, just say any being is dependent upon Being as such, or in a word, creation -- for creation is the nexus between appearance and reality, time and eternity, accident and substance, etc.

But in our day, in which science is superimposed over reality -- or left brain over right -- if these principles do not

appear as self-evident to the majority of our contemporaries, that is because for them awareness of "accidents" has stifled the intuitive awareness of "Substance"; hence an intelligence that is systematically superficial, fixed upon a fragmentary reality (Schuon).

Such people will in fact have to read the whole 900 pages, and even then, this may not be sufficient. For if someone insists upon denying "the innateness of metaphysical ideas," this is "equivalent to the destruction of the very notion of of intelligence," which if true, would mean "our intelligence could never prove anything at all" (Schuon).

Once upon a time I recall writing a post called something like Proof of Proof is Proof of God, and why not? If the meaning of the title isn't soph-evident, what it means is what Schuon just said.

Can we prove anything? If so, how? By virtue of what principle? We'll wait. But not long, because I don't have all morning. Or rather, I have only the morning.

Intelligence -- on pain of another reductio impossibile -- "is at the root of every intellectual and mental operation, man being obviously incapable of 'starting from zero' since this 'zero' is nonexistent" (Schuon), and if I recall my Yiddish correctly, from bupkis bupkis comes.

But "the skeptic starts, of course, from the idea that the normal man is an atheist, and from that deduces a kind of one-way jurisprudence" -- as if to say we have the presumption of idiocy and have to prove we're not guilty of it. 

Well, some people are guilty of idiocy, but only literally, as in idiota, "without knowledge." 

It's not that simple, Bob.

Agreed, it must be simpler. To be continued...