It Takes a Cosmos to Raise a Man Capable of Transcending the Cosmos

Necessity and freedom are not symmetrical concepts: in fact, if I affirm necessity, I deny any freedom, but if I affirm freedom, I do not deny any necessity. --Dávila

Yesterday's post left us with a good news / bad news situation: yes, man has common sense, meaning that he can know reality and is free to do so. Ay, but there's the rube, because it implies that he is free to reject both reality and even freedom. 

Liberty intoxicates man as a symbol of his independence from God.

This negative capacity is, of course, unique to man. Other animals are not free to deviate from instinct, nor can they know anything beyond a narrow range of genetically determined and survival-based perceptions and behaviors. For which reason we may say:

In order to abolish all mystery, it is enough to view the world with the eyes of a pig.

In short, only man lives in the Cosmos, whereas it is truly animals who dwell in their neurology. So it turns out Kant had the right theory after all, only the wrong species.

Think about that for a moment: as we've said before, if man can explain natural selection, then natural selection cannot explain man, for it can never account for the being who escapes his genetically programmed environment into the cosmos and beyond. 

Freedom is not the goal of history but the material that it works with.

When we say "the cosmos and beyond," we mean this literally. For again, man knows things (i.e., their intelligible forms), knows that he knows, knows other knowers, and knows that all this knowing requires a source, ground, foundation, and principle of its own. 

To live in the cosmos -- as opposed to an "environment" -- is a remarkable thing. I agree that man has been selected for this role, only not by nature. Rather, nature too has been selected before it even begins selecting genetic winners and losers.

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

You humans perceive through the senses what the senses themselves could never perceive.

Spot on, my discarnate friend. Turns out that it takes a cosmos to raise a man capable of knowing the cosmos. In other words, it seems that the purpose of creation is the existence of self-conscious beings capable of knowing and returning to their creator. 

Prove it.

We are the proof. After all, we know that the possibilities of both life and mind are encoded into the big bang, and that if just one of the many parameters governing the big bang were changed one iota, then we wouldn't be here. But we're here, we're queer, and we're not going away without a plausible explanation for how we got here.

Of course, it could just be the most massive conceivable coincidence, but let's try to be reasonable. In philosophical terms its called the cosmic anthropic principle, of which there are weak and strong forms. I suppose we're advocating for the strongest possible form, since we mean it quite literally: again, that man is the raison d’être of the cosmos.

Come to think of it, if man isn't the raison, then I can think of any other possible raison. It reminds me of when the biologist J.B.S. Haldane was asked what nature reveals about God: that The Creator must have an inordinate fondness for beetles.

True, but there is quantity (of insects) and there is quality (of subjects, knowers, persons). Sure, God makes a lot of beetles, but so what. More importantly, he made entomologists, and the gap between insects and the people capable of knowing and reflecting upon them is literally infinite. 

Yada yada, the Strong Anthropic Principle affirms that the universe must have 1) "those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history," and 2) that it is designed "with the goal of generating and sustaining observers" (Wikipedia).

Again, can you think of a better raison? Actually, if man is not the raison, then I don't think there is one: it's either God or nihilism, with no other options on the table:

Only the theocentric vision does not end up reducing man to absolute insignificance.

If it is not of God that we are speaking, it is not sensible to speak of anything seriously.

So, which came first, the cosmos or the man? Must be the man, in the sense that first in intention is last in execution, so (to repeat mysoph) it takes a cosmos to raise a man capable of transcending the cosmos. 

Here is something I wrote down awhile ago. It seems to be a combination of me and someone else, but I'm not sure who:

In the beginning is God, who proceeds to the act of creation, centering on man, the only creature who is created in his image: creation is an exit from and return to God, via man. 

God is the ontological heart that pumps the blood of being through the arteries of creation, receiving it back through the veins of man’s knowledge-love-will. Thus, the structure of the cosmos is like a living body.

Here is an allegorical image for your post, representing the contrast between a purposeful, living cosmos and the alternative of nihilistic chance:

• The divine, radiant heart at the center of the image symbolizes God, the "ontological heart" and the ultimate source of all being. The light emanating from it represents the flow of creation.

• The streams of energy and celestial bodies are the arteries of this cosmic body, through which the "blood of being" flows. This represents the universe, or the "cosmos," as a purposeful, living entity.

• The human figure stands in a posture of both receiving and giving, representing man's unique position in this cosmic design. Light enters his mind and heart, signifying knowledge and love.

• The upward-flowing stream of light that he is channeling back to the divine heart symbolizes the return of this being through man's self-conscious knowledge and will, completing the circulatory system you described.

• The broken, chaotic machine on the left side of the image stands in stark contrast to the ordered, living cosmos. It represents the alternatives of chance or nihilism, where the universe is without purpose and reduced to a collection of inert, disconnected parts. The machine is broken and dark, visually communicating the idea that a universe based on chance is nonsensical and lifeless.