Metaphysics and Religion

That's the title of the second interview (of twelve) in Metaphysics for Everyone.  

Our view, more or less, is that religion provides a "poetry of metaphysics," even while not being reducible to the latter. I used to go back and forth on this question, but now I see the two (religion & metaphysics) as a complementarity of words and music, letter and spirit, or maybe even left and right cerebral hemispheres. 

At any rate, in all religion there is an implicit metaphysic, while in all metaphysics God is there implicitly (or sometimes explicitly).

For example, to say that "man is created in the image and likeness of God" can be expressed in metaphysical terms, e.g., that we are local or finite instantiations of a transcendent Principle that is nonlocal and infinite; or, we are continent expressions of Necessary Being, or eternity deployed in time, Absolute in relative, transcendence in immanence, etc. 

The Incarnation is a literal expression of this principle, i.e., of Infinitude, Eternity, Absoluteness, Beyond-Being etc., participating in finitude, temporality, relativity, being, etc. We do the same thing, only not exactly, since we can reascend only so far back to the Principle -- which is precisely the function of metaphysics: to take us to the farthest reaches of the expressible before taking that final leap into the inexpressible.

But the most complete metaphysics cannot eliminate that last leap from our side of the divide unless God himself assumes human nature. Then we got something. 

The Gap is actually infinite, analogous to how the gap between man and animal is infinite. The other day my son asked if dogs could ever evolve to personhood. I said no, but I couldn't provide a good explanation as to why. I suppose it could happen, if a man could somehow incarnate as "dog nature." Then by this means dogs could be drawn into human nature. Our descent would assure the possibility of the dog's ascent.

Your analogy needs work. For one things, humans are already human before the Incarnation.

Yes, that was off the top of my head and it shows. On the other hand, you are well aware of the venerable wisecrack that God became man that man might become God -- not identical to God, of course, but in order to participate in the divine nature via theosis, deification, sanctification, and Slack retrieval. 

Baptism, of course, grafts us to Christ in such a way that the return trip now becomes possible, since Christ was never separate from the Principle -- or Father -- to begin with. We, on the other hand -- especially having been wounded by some sort of primordial calamity that keeps repeating itself...

Enough of my speculations. Let's get back to Bérard's, and see how they compare. As I said, the book is somewhat holofractal and nonlinear, but we'll try to proceed in an orderly fashion without a lot of jumping around. 

Bérard begins with a review of the whole "death of God" business, ending in an "absolute atheism." That last term caught my eye, because it demonstrates something mentioned in yesterday's post, that we can only pretend to eliminate the Absolute; rather, any absolute statement presumes its existence, even if in an incoherent and self-refuting manner. In the words of the Aphorist, 

He avoids announcing to man his divinity, but proposes goals that only a god could reach, or rather proclaims that the essence of man has rights that assume he is divine.

But 

If man is the sole end of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors.

For we can't help noticing -- lookin' at you, Nietzsche -- that

The relativist rarely relativizes himself. 

In reality, the relative is relative because it is relative to the Absolute. Otherwise,  

The human has the insignificance of a swarm of insects when it is merely human. 

Bérard agrees that "the most anti-religious nonetheless ends up referring to God or to an Absolute in one way or another" -- for example, "after the French Revolution, with the summoning of the 'Supreme Being' in the Constitution of 1793 and the worship publicly rendered to him." 

How did that work out? Ideas, of course have consequences, and the bigger the idea the better or worse the consequences.

Biology, for example, limited to biology, regards man as a "survival-machine, a robot programmed blindly to preserve selfish molecules called genes." In which case,

Man is the animal that imagines itself to be Man.

Such pseudo-philosophies as biologism or evolutionism can never explain how they have access to truths that transcend biology and natural selection. Indeed, if these are true, they are false: "Here we have a case where scientific interpretation is distorted by ideology" -- the ideology of scientism.

This goes back to "the impossibility of ridding man of God" unless one presupposes the godlike abilities mentioned above. Just one more in a long list of "secular neo-religious perversions" -- as if "there is no principle behind the values immanent to humanity." Rather, they just magically "appear." A reminder that 

The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician's rule book.

Metaphysical Calvinball. 

Correct. Bérard quotes Pascal to the effect that "man goes infinitely beyond man," and why not? "Nothing is without cause," and "the cause is transcendent to the effects." Metaphysics, although expressed in "the language of intelligence," "points to what is beyond language and concepts, to ultimate reality." It 

gives the intellect access to the reality beyond it, access to the light of truth that never resides in words. 

Words are never just words, rather point to what is beyond words. Otherwise, to hell with it.

There is a "paradox of metaphysics," in that

it functions like a a science with its own language capable of formulating the ultimate; but, once this ultimate has been formulated, it gives access to it. It's the end of the road, after which the road no longer has any interest.

After this comes the Leap, for again, 

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap.

Gemini, I reckon even you get the point.

While logical reasoning and evidence can bring us closer to understanding, there's always a point where we must make a subjective or intuitive leap. This final leap often involves a degree of faith or belief, even in the most rigorous fields like science.

Even in empirical sciences, underlying philosophical assumptions guide research. For example, the assumption that the universe is fundamentally rational and understandable is a philosophical leap that underpins scientific inquiry. 

The statement highlights the inherent limitations of human knowledge and the complex interplay between reason and belief. While rigorous argumentation can bring us closer to truth, there will always be a point where we must trust our intuition, embrace uncertainty, and make a leap of faith.

Good place to end this post.