Interview with a Universe, Part 4

Every beginning is an image of the Beginning; every end is an image of the End. --Dávila

Let's try to wrap up this interview -- or what has turned out to be an argument clinic with a stubborn monistic materialist. I'll throw out the first pitch:

before the Big Bang there were no laws of physics. In fact, the laws of physics cannot be used to explain the Big Bang because the Big Bang itself produced the laws of physics (D'Souza).

TOLD YOU SO. 

You don't get it:

The laws of science are a kind of grammar that explains the order and relationship of objects in the universe. Just as grammar has no existence outside the words and sentences whose operations it defines, so too the laws of science cannot exist outside the universe of objects whose relationships they describe.

Therefore, just as we must defer to metaphysics to account for physics, we must posit O to account for you.

O?

Yes, the timeless, living, and intelligent source and ground of everything that is, and which most people call God.

YOU ARE SPECULATING.

We never speculate.

THOU SHALL HAVE NO REALITIES BEFORE ME.

the term before has no meaning since time itself did not exist "prior to" the singularity. Once upon a time there was no time.

I AM A PANTHEIST. SO SUE ME. 

Well, good. It's a start. 

In reality, pantheism consists in the admission of a continuity between the Infinite and the finite; but this continuity can only be conceived if it is first admitted that there is a substantial identity between the ontological Principle -- which is in question in all forms of theism -- and the manifested order, a conception that presupposes a substantial, and therefore false, idea of Being, or the confusing of the essential identity of manifestation and Being with a substantial identity. Pantheism is this and nothing else. 

HE LOST ME.

Principle and manifestation. No matter how you slice it, you are the latter.

WHY CAN'T I BE BOTH?

You can, but it reduces to idolatry. In reality, the source of being is beyond being.

THE BIBLE? PLEASE.  

The Bible... asserts clearly that time is finite.... [It] insists that the universe came into existence at a particular instant in time as an act of voluntary creation by an already existing supernatural being (D'Souza).

Creatio ex nihilo:

Obviously, creation “comes from” -- that is the meaning of the word ex -- an origin; not from a cosmic, hence “created” substance, but from a reality pertaining to the Creator.... 

Creation is the great “objectification” of the Divine Subject; it is the divine manifestation par excellence. It has a beginning and an end insofar as a particular cycle is envisaged, but it is in itself a permanent divine possibility, a metaphysically necessary objectification of the divine infinity (Schuon).

Creator's gonna create. Say what you want, but at least this vision accounts for life, subjectivity, and intelligence (and therefore science) without resorting to primitive magic. 

YOUR SARCASM IS UNCALLED FOR.

You started it. Besides, I'm being literal:

createdness is the sole alternative to the assumption that the existence of things is self-explaining (Jaki).

Genesis 1 may be a myth, but it is a myth that embodies a principle: the principle of creation. 

Creation is the nexus between eternity and history. 

And

Everything in history begins before where we think it begins and after where we think it ends.

So, pick a beginning, any beginning. There is something on the other side. Which is where meta-physics comes into play.

Oh, but it is a game!

Insofar as the scientist uses his scientific method, he has no right to talk of the Universe, or the strict totality of consistently interacting things. 

Nor is it possible

for scientists or for their instruments to go outside the universe in order to observe it and provide thereby an experimental verification of it (Jaki). 

There can be no science of the utterly unique. Therefore,

Nothing less than the creative initiative of a transcendent cause can render adequate sufficient reason for the emergence at the end of the cosmic story of this amazing microcosm, the human person that integrates within itself all the levels of creation from the lowest material to union with the highest spiritual, the Author of the whole story himself (Clarke).

For

the intelligibility of being -- all being -- is inseparable from the context of persons: it is rooted in personal being, flows out from it, to other persons, who complete the circle by returning it back again to its personal source. In a word, the ultimate meaning of being is: Person-to-Person Gift (Clarke).

So I think a little gratitude is in order. 

THANKS FOR NOTHING.

And the creation therefrom.