Atheists and How They Get That Way, Part One

A science of God? Pff.

It’s in the word: theo-logy, the Logos of the Theos. Except to say that the Theos is the Logos, the very Reason that bifurcates into anthropic intelligence and cosmic intelligibility and thus renders science itself possible. For again, the scientific catechism begins and ends — or stands and falls — with this principle. It is the necessary precondition that must be fulfilled in order for scientific investigation to be possible. Since science is obviously possible, its a priori foundation necessarily exists: science is contingent upon this all-pervasive Logos, and is that so bad?

Do I not fill heaven and earth?

That’s more like it.

Every medium requires a mediator, which is to say Cosmos and Anthropos, respectively. Except to say that man is the mediator between the poles of immanence and transcendence, thus creating the conditions for a dynamic adventure in both directions: science at one end, theology at the other. One might say that the latter is “logology,” the systematic study of a Logos that bursts into a whole spectrum of ologies first delineated by Aristotle, not excluding all-encompassing ones such as ontology and teleology. Metaphysics is really meta-ology, or in our terms logology. Which means that the Anthropos is pre-adapted to an invisible world of necessary principles that render both himself and the Cosmos possible. The Anthropos is a possibility of the Theos, but the Theos is a necessity of the Anthropos, or what are we even talking about (i.e., using the medium of language to explore and map the invisible Cosmos)?

The physicist and philosopher of science Henry Margeneau had the right attitude when he wrote that the scientist “holds with the fervor of a religious conviction” the belief that the world is lawful and intelligible — “that the search for truth is a never-ending quest, yet I pledge myself to seek it.” Nothing is in principle “closed to inquiry or understanding,” so what looks like “a mystery is but a challenge.”

Challenge accepted.

We believe the scientific belief described by Margenau is thoroughly justified, except no belief is self-justifying, rather, must appeal to a higher principle which renders the belief believable. Which is where cosmotheandrism barges in, since it renders scientific faith entirely rational. In the cosmotheandric framework science isn’t some miraculous occurrence carried out by an invasive species of damn dirty apes getting their stinking paws on the cosmic blueprints, rather, exactly what we might expect. Thanks to science, we now know that our little planet of the apes is where the Cosmos of the Anthropos is disclosed.

∞

For Whitehead, “faith in the possibility of science” was “derivative from medieval theology,” specifically, “the inexpugnable belief that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled,” derived from the “insistence on the rationality of God.”

Which leads into our next section, called

Atheists and How They Get That Way

We begin this section with a bold and presumptuous claim by Schuon: “Metaphysics cannot be taught to everyone but if it could there would be no atheists.”

It is no knock on the Average Man to say that he is decidedly not a metaphysician, with no interest in such. Nor is this Average Man capable of, or interested in, quantum physics, but this has no bearing on his ability to use and enjoy technologies that rely upon it. Moreover, if we are so inclined, we can also read popularized versions that dumb down the physics for the benefit of those of us who just want the bottom line without having to go to the trouble of obtaining a Ph.D. in physics.

Or even passing 11th grade physics.

You cannot leave that alone, can you? Maybe I had better things to do.

Such as?

Avoiding linear equations and right-triangle trigonometry — whatever they are — is its own reward.

Analogously, the man with no interest in, or aptitude for, metaphysics also has access to popularized versions of it in the form of religion, for every religion discloses a metaphysical vision of reality.

Christianity is Platonism for the masses?

Nietzsche wasn’t entirely wrong there, except to say that Platonism may also be framed as Christianity for the egghead, an insult we will explore later.

We might even think of religion as the “poetry of metaphysics,” which is not a potshot at religion if it is true that, as Shelley said, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. For this would imply that the metaphysical poetry of religion reveals something about the Ultimate Legislator.

The point is, revelation may convey the essential truths of universal metaphysics — or of cosmotheandrism — only clothed in a way that can be assimilated by Joe Sixpack or Jane Winemom. In the words of Kenneth Oldmeadow, “Revelation is the means by which the Absolute is made known to all mankind.” This facilitates “a downward descent of the Divine Principle” and “a vertical ascent back to the Divine” — which goes to a dynamic complementarity of upward and downward energies which disclose the very structure of vertical reality, AKA the metabolism of being.

In this regard, just as with ideology, it is possible to become entrapped and enclosed in a dogmatic matrix as opposed to using it as a means of vertical liberation — a probe as it were. To paraphrase the old Zen saying, the purpose of the boat is to cross the river. Likewise, dogma is not for its own sake, but for the sake of mapping and transporting us somewhere. In short, religion as such is always about — i.e., refers to — something that is not religion. Which is another way of highlighting the rookie error of absolutizing one’s religion instead of using it to engage with what it is pointing toward: the Absolute.

Don’t stare at the finger pointing at the moon.

Correct. Thus,

When a man seeks to escape from dogmatic narrowness it is essential that it be “upwards” and not “downwards”: dogmatic form is transcended by fathoming its depths and contemplating its universal content (Schuon).

Which brings to mind another of Dávila’s translogical zingers worth repeating: Religious thought does not go forward like scientific thought does, but rather goes deeper — or higher, toward the luminous end of the Primordial Tension between immanence and transcendence.

To repeat what was said above, the supraformal Substance is conveyed by the medium of form; put conversely, no terrestrial form can exhaust the celestial Substance, whether we are speaking of triangles or of God.

For Schuon, “What falsifies modern interpretations of the world and of man at their very base... is their monotonous and obsessive ignorance of the suprasensible degrees of Reality…” Which brings to mind yet another aphorism: We all have a key to the door that opens to the luminous and noble peace of the desert.

Neither math nor logic can get the job done, for reasons etched into the substance of reality by Gödel. Until his theorems are disproven — and don’t hold your breath — logic’s arms may be long enough to spar with God, but never knock him out.

What about a technical knockout?

That is indeed possible via various philosophical techniques, but these also result in rendering the Anthropos unconscious, or at least unintelligent.

Conversely, the Theos can certainly speak with logic, or better, speak logic. Which is why we can say that things are not true because they are logical, rather, logical because true. Math and logic can only “prove” tautologies. They are ultimately circular; we can of course expand the circle, but this hardly means we have left it behind or below. Like astronauts, we can leave the earth behind, but only by taking it — its atmosphere, food, and technology — with us.

Logic is always inside its own circle. In contrast, we are after knowledge from beyond or outside the circle (literally eso-teric). Is this even possible? No, better! It is necessary, or the circle of logic couldn’t exist to begin with. So, how do we exit or see beyond it?

For cosmotheandrism, Subject and Object are not a vicious and sterile dualism but a friendly and fruitful complementarity. The complementary dance between them proceeds all the way up and all the way down. But of the two, the Subject is obviously prior:

The subject as such takes precedence over the object as such: the consciousness of a creature able to conceive the star-filled heavens is greater than space and the heavenly bodies… (Schuon).

Carl Sagan can talk all he wants about those billions and billions of stars, but all of astronomy pales in significance next to the astronomer. Ultimately we are not contained by the galaxies, but rather, vice versa. The Cosmos itself isn’t even big — or small, or anything else — except in reference to us:

Man is situated, spatially speaking, between the “infinitely big” and the “infinitely small”..., so that it is his subjectivity and not a quality of the objective world that creates the line of demarcation. If we have an impression of being tiny in stellar space, it is solely because what is big is far more accessible to us than what is small, which quickly eludes the grasp of our senses (Schuon).

So, man is situated between — and defines — the Very Big and Very Small. And not only. For he is also the vertical “point of junction between two infinitely more important dimensions, namely, the outward and the inward.” Indeed, “it is precisely by virtue of the dimension of inwardness, which opens onto the Absolute and so onto the Infinite, that man is quasi-divine” (Schuon).

So much for not becoming a god to appear worthy of your manhood.

That is not the point, rather, it again adverts to Axiom 7, theomorphism. For there is a world and there are the cosmotheandric witnesses who transcend it: “Where there are objects, there must also be subjects: creatures that are witnesses of things form an indissoluble part of creation,” in the absence of whom the Cosmos “would be an unknown space filled with blind stones and not a world perceived under a multitude of aspects.”

There exist not only “knowable things” but “beings endowed with knowledge in varying degrees.” And whether you like it or not, “the summit-degree is man, at least for our world,” behind or before or beyond which is “the absolute Witness — at once transcendent and immanent — of all things...” There is nothing magical or miraculous per se about this magical and miraculous assertion. Again, it’s just a matter of turning the Cosmos bright-side up.