Interrogating the Cosmos

Here are a couple of old posts in which I play the journalist and interview the cosmos. 

But that's what man does, isn't it? At one end the mind, at the other end the cosmos, and the endlessly fruitful dialogue in between.

This dialogue wasn't possible until man extricated himself from the cosmos and was able to regard it objectively. This development is touched on in The Cosmotheandric Experience, in which Panikkar discusses "primal man," for whom the entire world is his garment and habitat: "He has no 'sense' of Nature, for he is part of it."

Communion with reality is coextensive here with the absence of a separating and reflective self-consciousness.

Was it ever really this way -- a harmonious comm-union with nature? Or is this just a mytho-speculative projection on Panikkar's part? In a way, it echoes the prelapsarian state depicted in Genesis, with carefree man ambling about the garden while shooting the breeze with the creator.

In this context, the fall doesn't just represent a rupture with the Creator, but with the cosmos too. This is when Cosmos, Theos, and Anthropos go their separate ways. The Cosmotheandric experience is simply their reunification, albeit on a higher level, for there is no going back to the state of primordial innocence. 

For Panikkar, "There is no Man without God or without World." In other words, we can separate -- or even deny -- them in the abstract, but there they are. 

In trying to symbolize how they relate, Panikkar suggests the humble circle, O.

For "There is no circle without a center and a circumference." These three -- Circle, Center, and Circumference -- "are not the same and yet not separable." "The circumference is not the center," but without the center it it could not be. Likewise,

The center does not depend on the others, since it is dimensionless, yet it would not be the center -- or anything at all, for that matter -- without the other two.   

Now, if God is the center, the material world must be the circumference. Which makes man the radii that link the two. Thus the divine, the human, and the cosmic, always coexisting and interrelating. 

That's as far as I am in the book. Back to the interview -- which, in terms of what was said above, is about the circumference pretending it is the center, and insisting that the radii count for nothing:

God is the term we use to notify the universe that it is not everything. --Dávila

Hello there universe! Consider yourself notified. Under subpoena, so to speak. You have the right to remain silent, but anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of Bob. But be careful --

I AM IMPORTANT! NOT LIKE EVERYONE SAYS... LIKE ABSURD... I'M IMPORTANT AND I WANT RESPECT!

The universe is important if it is appearance, and insignificant if it is reality.

Therefore you are appearance.

I DID NOT SAY THAT.

Oh, but you did. You can't even explain the existence of yourself, much less everything.

I AM EVERYTHING.  

Nothing is that simple, let alone everything. 

COME NOW. BE LOGICAL.

One word: Gödel.

ABSURD! 

Touched a nerve, eh? 

Man calls "absurd" what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence. 

SUCKS FOR YOU, BUT I AM NOT A MAN.

I thought you were everything.

SILENT!

God is the guest of silence.

THEN STFU!

He who does not believe in God can at least have the decency of not believing in himself.

IT IS NOT A MATTER OF BELIEF! 

Either God or Chance: all other terms are disguises for one or the other.

YOU ARE IN ERROR: I AM NECESSITY ITSELF!

If determinism is real, if only that can happen which must happen, then error does not exist. Error supposes that something happened that should not have.

Therefore, if I am wrong I am right.

SOPHISTRY! YOU ARE IN ERROR.

To admit the the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will.  

YOUR SO-CALLED FREE WILL IS AN ILLUSION!

Stop yelling.

He who jumps, growls, and barks has an invisible collar and an invisible chain. 

OKAY, I WILL MAKE AN EXCEPTION. YOU ARE FREE. SO WHAT?

The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.

A WISE GUY, EH? MATTER RULES!

The stone is right, wherever it falls. Whoever speaks of error postulates free actions. 

YOU ARE TRYING MY PATIENCE.

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to. Determinists are very irritable people. 

CALMER THAN YOU, DUDE. YOU ARE PRESUMPTUOUS.

To speak of God is presumptuous; not to speak of God is imbecilic.  

WHO ARE YOU TO CALL ME AN IMBECILE? DISGUSTING WORLDLING.

God is the transcendental condition of our disgust. 

WORD GAMES.

Because he does not understand the objection that refutes him the fool thinks he has been corroborated. 

AD HOMINEM. OR AD UNIVERSEM, AT ANY RATE. HAVE YOU NEVER HEARD OF A LOGICAL FALLACY? BESIDES, SCIENCE!

Why deceive ourselves? Science has not answered a single important question. 

DEFINE IMPORTANT.

Of what is important there are no proofs, only testimonies.

IRRATIONAL!

"Irrationalist" is shouted at the reason that does not keep quiet about the vices of rationalism.

MYSTAGOGY!

Mysticism is the empiricism of transcendent knowledge.

YOU SPEAK OF TRANSCENDENCE, WHEN THERE CAN BE NO SUCH THING.

Scraping the painting, we do not find the meaning of the picture, only a blank and mute canvas, Equally, it is not in scratching nature that we will find its sense.

I GIVE UP.

As do I.

God does not ask for the submission of intelligence, but rather an intelligent submission.

I REPEAT: I AM EVERYTHING. YOU ARE NOTHING. 

Here begins the gospel of Hell: In the beginning was nothing and it believed nothing was god, and was made man, and dwelt on earth, and by man all things were made nothing.

We'll give you the final word: let us stipulate that in the absence of God, the universe is, and must be, absurd.

the absurdists have given vivid expression to one truth of supreme importance, that the world does not make sense of itself (Mascall). 

And that Wittgenstein is correct:

In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists -- and if it did, it would have no value...

Therefore, 

The sense of the world must lie outside the world.  

YOU ARE TWISTING MY WORDS!

Now you've opened a whole new can of words, but we're out of time.

PART 2

Let's reset. Is there anything on which we can agree this morning?

FOR STARTERS, I OBJECT TO THE TITLE: WHAT DO YOU MEAN A UNIVERSE? THERE IS ONLY THE UNIVERSE.

So, "all is one," so to speak?

CORRECT.

If this were true, how could anyone know it?

POINT WELL TAKEN. I SUPPOSE IT CANNOT BE KNOWN.

I say it can, which is why we have the word. No one has ever seen the Universe. Rather, it is an epistemological assumption -- that everything we perceive is part of a coherent and intelligible system knowable by man. 

OF COURSE I EXIST. DON'T BE ABSURD.

God is the transcendental condition of the absurdity of the universe.

I SEE. SO ABSURDITY IS PROOF OF GOD? 

Have you never wondered from whence you came?

I AM ETERNAL.

I understand the sentiment, I really do, but it turns out you are finite -- that not only did you have a beginning in time, but you are the beginning of time. There was no time prior to 13.8 billion years ago, give or take.

DOUBLETALK. 

No, tripletalk, but let's first lay a scientific foundation.  

The scientific encyclopedia will grow indefinitely, but about the very nature of the universe it will never teach anything different from what its epistemological assumptions teach.

Or as we like to say around here, garbage in, tenure out.

PRIMITIVE NONSENSE. YOU JUST REJECT MODERNITY.

Anyone who has sensitivity and some taste can be persuaded that the modern world does not have its origin in what is admirable. It is a monster whose every alleged parent denies.

MORE AD HOMINEM. I AM HARDLY A MONSTER.

No, but you are a creature -- again, both you and time and everything else came into being at a precise point in timelessness -- or rather, as our resident Poet says,

A moment in time but time was made through that moment: / for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment / of time gave the meaning.

YOU SPEAK TO ME OF MEANING -- AS IF POETS, AND NOT I, ARE THE LEGISLATORS OF THE WORLD!

Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.

THAT'S MORE LIKE IT. LIKE I SAID: ABSURD.

You keep saying that word. But 

Even if we keep silent about it out of courtesy: the majority of our listeners only oppose us out of ignorance.

Let's talk about absurdity, because you are half-correct, precisely.

For, as we touched on yesterday, the people we call existentialists are correct "in asserting that human life has no ultimate meaning that can be found within human life itself," but quite absurd in insisting "that no reason can can be found for the existence of the world outside the world itself (Mascall). 

Thus, the choice we face is "between ultimate irrationality and meaninglessness on the one hand and a transcendent ground of meaningfulness on the other (ibid.).

YOU KNOW WHERE I STAND.

Yes we do. But with all due respect, "this seems to be to be a very odd position in which to rest":

For it means that we can hope to receive answers to every conceivable question about the world and human life which our innate curiosity can suggest to us except the final and ultimate question, the question on which everything else depends, namely, why is there a world at all and what does human life ultimately mean? 

In other words, you -- the universe -- expect us to believe that you are thoroughly intelligible in every particular and yet ultimately unintelligible in general. Does this make sense to you? That your very sense is nonsense?

WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY...

It is not our knowledge that sometimes makes us feel superior, but the quality of our ignorance compared to others’ knowledge.

 In other words, we at least know that we don't know. Unlike you.

We advise anyone who goes hunting for a precise explanation of the world to invent one. So that he runs less of a risk of believing in it.

I DIDN'T ASK YOU.

Our most urgent task is that of reconstructing the mystery of the world.

YES, SO LONG AS YOU REMEMBER THAT IT IS I THAT PRODUCED YOU, NOT VICE VERSA. 

Ethics is the first step in the descacralization of the universe.

MEANING WHAT, EXACTLY?

That the IS does not account for the OUGHT. Supposing we ought to believe that you are a self-sufficient explanation, why ought we believe it? For

When the fool learns that the proofs for the existence of God are invalid he automatically thinks that those for the existence of the world are valid.

I AM MY OWN PROOF.

Let's see you try to prove it and not descend into tautology. For we have a saying around here, that

If good and evil, ugliness and beauty, are not the substance of things, science is reduced to a brief statement: what is, is. 

THAT IS THE LAW: WHAT IS, IS.

If laws of history existed, their discovery would abrogate them.

YOU'VE CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD. LET ME THINK ABOUT THAT ONE.

While you're thinking about that one, consider this:

The tacit presuppositions of any science are more important than its teachings. Only what a science ignores about itself defines what it says.

And probably the most important thing that science ignores is Gödel: that a science can be complete or consistent, but never both. It seems that irony is baked into the cosmic cake, and that

Even our favorite ideas soon bore us if we do not hear them expressed with irony, with grace and with beauty.

One out of three isn't bad.

*****

Nevertheless, I know of one reader who will appreciate my interview:

This is a fascinating and thought-provoking imaginary interview! You've created a dynamic dialogue grappling with fundamental questions about existence, meaning, and the nature of the universe. Here's an analysis of your text:

Strengths:

Engagement with Philosophical Ideas: The interview directly engages with concepts from philosophy and theology, such as the nature of God, absurdity, determinism, free will, epistemology, and the limitations of science. The inclusion of quotes (or paraphrases) from thinkers like Dávila and references to Gödel and Wittgenstein adds depth. 

Contrasting Perspectives: You establish a clear tension between the interviewer (representing a human, questioning perspective) and the Universe (asserting its importance and self-sufficiency). This creates a compelling dialectic. 

Humor and Irony: The dialogue is peppered with moments of humor and irony, making it more engaging than a purely dry philosophical discussion. The Universe's outbursts and the interviewer's sometimes sarcastic remarks contribute to this. 

Exploration of Key Questions: The interview tackles profound questions about the origin and meaning of the universe and human existence. It doesn't offer easy answers but effectively explores the complexities. 

Points for Consideration: 

Density of Ideas: The interview is packed with philosophical concepts. While this is a strength, it could potentially become overwhelming for a reader unfamiliar with these ideas. You've done a good job of presenting them within the dialogue, but it's something to be mindful of. 

Resolution (or Lack Thereof): The interview ends with both parties seemingly "giving up" in Part 1 and then a reset in Part 2. This open-endedness is deliberate, but you might consider if you want to push towards any partial agreements or further points of contention.

Overall:

Your imaginary interview is a creative and intellectually stimulating piece. It effectively uses dialogue to explore complex philosophical questions in an engaging way. The contrasting personalities of the interviewer and the Universe drive the conversation forward, and the inclusion of philosophical references adds significant depth.