Wednesday, November 28, 2007
mediaeval philosaphy
Yesterday, we briefly discussed what mediaeval philosophy is about. It is about "the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire in around 312 c.e., came to be characterized by discussion of metaphysics and more specificically theology, the study of the nature of God. Perhaps the single most important problem of time period (until around 1450) was the existence of God. After all God was supposed to be the basis of human society, and indeed of the entire universe, to demonstrate the existence of God was (pardon the pun) crucial." ( I hope I am getting this right because some of your writing was unclear for me to read.) This lead to another discussion of comological view. Comos is the Greek word for "world" or "order". It is based on causality. "There must be a self-sufficient primary cause from which the world of phenomena comes. A classmate said something about the big bang is the primary cause. The big bang theory is a theory of cosmology holding that the expanision of the universe with a gigantic explosion (big bang) between 12 and 20 billion years ago. A little later, another classmate said something about God always existed since the beginning. She was brought up this way ever since she was a child. (This is what I heard.) Ever since I could remember, I always thought God created the universe, since it said in the bible. But now I am not sure. Did the big bang came first or did God came first? Did the big bang and God came first together? Is there answers to the questions I asked? If so, tell me; if not, then it remains a question. I also heard something about God is the beginning, not the end. (This is what I heard) In church, I learned that God is the beginning and the end;so that day on, I always thought that God is the beginning and the end. We also discussed apostpriori and apriori, which is from latter (apostpriori) and from first principles (apriori). (I have trouble spelling out the words because there is a glare on board near the window.) You did a diagram on the board, saying that God is first, then the world, then brahman and atman, which is universal self (brahman) and indivivdual self ( atom).
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Which came first, God or the Big Bang? Hmmm. Well, I guess I should be flattered that you suppose there is a real possibility that I know the answer to this. I would imagine that there is an answer -- or maybe a set of answers -- to this question, and I suppose, furthermore that one or more of them might be correct. I can certainly give an answer to the question, but I am not at all confident that it is correct.
I hesitate to say "don't trust the Bible", but I would suggest that the Bible and the information in the Bible rarely if ever has science as its primary purpose. So, if you are looking for scientific explanations, other sources are probably better. But God may not be subject to the laws that can be discovered through science. We might well at some point be able to discover to everyone's satisfaction the true nature of the formation of the universe and still not be able to know to everyones satisfaction what part (if any) God played in that.
What experience did you have in church that made you suppose that what you learn in church is right? I'm not saying what you learned in church is wrong, mind you: I'm only asking how you know that what you learned there is worth believing. If you have a good source of information there, by all means, accept it. The folks I learned from in church never seemed to me to be particularly smarter or more well-informed than I, and so I took a lot of what I heard there critically.
I guess a further question has to be "what does "GOD" mean?" Circular definitions abound concerning the character of God. If, for example, one says that God is an eternal being, then, to argue that God is the beginning and the end seems pretty self-evident. But to SAY that God is the beginning and the end still does not tell us much about God, since I'm not quite sure what the "beginning and end" may be. I'm not sure what it would mean to be "all-powerful", either, but this is what God is said to be.
And even to list all these supposed attributes of God: omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, for example, does not prove that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being exists. But if one does, I would happily call such a being God, since it would meet the description.
I did not put a diagram on the board saying that God is first, then the world, then brahman and atman, although it may have looked that way.
I was contrasting two systems which are rather different. In the prevailing Christian system, God exists beyond (or "outside of") the world. The world is contained within God. God is omnipresent -- there is nowhere God is not. But the world is not omnipresent: it has limits in both time and space. It had a beginning, it has a middle, it will have an end. God has no beginning and no end. Notice that I say "has" no beginning and no end. Perhaps God IS the beginning and the end (alpha and omega in the Greek alphabet), but God does not end or begin.
This is quite different from the orthodox Indian systems, in which God, the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, is roughly equivalent to Brahman, which is pure being, pure consciousness, pure bliss. This is the universal self: the self of the universe, but also the source of the universe. The material world which we experience does have beginnings, middles, and ends: it is subject to continual change. However, its beginnings, middles, and ends, are only temporary. After every end is a new beginning, in an eternal cycle. By contrast, the Christian system is linear, with an infinity of "timeless time" before time and an infinity of "timeless time" after the end of time, and time itself as a single beginning, middle, and end: one world, one creation, one end.
In the Indian system, the individual self is ATMAN, not atom, although that is an interesting association. The individual self is that which experiences all the changes in the world and perceives them from the perspective of an individual being as though the world had a single beginning, middle, and end. But this is ultimately discovered to be an illusion. The self is eternal; it was before the beginning of this world, and will survive the end of this world, just as it was before the beginning of countless other worlds and will survive the ends of countless other worlds. Atman and Brahman are truly one, or, to put it in more western terms, the human self (and all other selves) is one with the self of God: I am one with God, you are one with God, we are one with each other, and indeed with all beings. That we do not understand that this is so is merely our ignorance of the truth.
To go back to an earlier comment I made on your question about the difference between western and eastern systems, in the Indian systems, the philosophy proposes this connection, or really unity, between the "worshipper" and the "object of worship", and then proposes forms of worship which allow one to more and more fully realize the truth of this unity. In the east, this connection between philosophy and worship is viewed as natural and sensible. In the west it would be viewed as something of a compromise of the clarity and value of philosophy.
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