I apologize in advance for the length, I (foolishly) believe the meat is worth the meal.
"Man craves spirtuality. Since no craving (hunger, thirst, sex) evolves that can not be fulfilled in nature, there must spiritual plain"
Critical thinkers will quickly realize that this is not a sound proposition. It does not take much to disprove. One method would be to show a mechanism by which spiritual feelings could evolve absent a spiritual world. I claim spiritualism arose as a side effect cognative thought.
Let me explain.
Cognative thought arose to allow man to make better use of his surroundings. By understanding the underlying principals of preys, savanahs, and the weather we become better adapted to our surroundings. The next leap is rationalism, the attempt to unite each item to the next and each moment to the next in some uniform system. In many situations the link is apparent, but in those it is not, the mind plays a trick on us. The mind is not sophisticaed enough to handle great amount of unorganized information. As a result the minds creates a fictious order and a false link between objects and events [1]. Since some of these links necessarily must be metaphysical, spiritualism arises from rationalism. As a result, our spiritual craving is nothing more than a delusional side effect from our attempt at rationality.
A similar hash can be made of Aquintas' proposition :
"A Design implies a designer."
This is proof by proposition. I could just as well assert 'Disorganization requires a disorganizer' (a fact that anyone who sees my desk could see is patently false). But even if I accept the proposition, I could still claim there is no design.
Aquintas was saying that since the Universe is designed, a designer (God) did it. I claim it is only the appearance of a design. The the same mechanism which causes us to see spirituality also causes us to precieve design - man's attempt to be rational. If I toss a coin a hundred times I can generate a list of heads and tails. Staring at this list long enough I'll soon see patterns and design. Is there one? No, of course not. It is only the attempt of my mind to organize the chaotic into the rational.
The rational mind - in order to connect disconnected events - generates two things - design and designer (an orderly Universe and God).
So what am I saying? Am I saying that there is not a metaphysical/ supernatural that links events and there is no underlying order in the Universe? No - I'm just saying we can not use our own perceptions to see them. Our mind, in it attempt to generate catagorical understanding, is likely to create order where none exists, and so our own mental classifications can not be trusted.
300 years ago we thought we could. While we no longer believed we were the physical center of creation [2], this was more then compensated by Newtonianism [3]. We could conquer the Universe by figuring out all the rules and getting all the data. For the next two hundred years we scaled great heights in our role as dominion holder over nature. But as we challenged nature, it subtlely struck back. The more we learned, the more overwhelmed we were by the enormanity of nature. We learned how marginal our existance really was in the vast scale of space. We were longer the center of all orbits, but a small smattering of dust in a vast stillness. We learned our existance was just a small (possibly temporary) slice of the galactic timeline. We learned that instead of an original and unique creation, we learned we ourselves are an evolution of other creations, living anomoulously by ordering a small corner of a system that by physical law must fly to disorder. Vicerally we felt the limitedness of our existance. Eventually philosophy and science began proving it.
Philosophy led the way in proving this. Newtonianism as we think of it was proposed formally fifty years before Newton by Francis Bacon [4]. Through Spinoza and Descartes it reached new philosophic heights. But quickly it came under attack. Locke showed that connections between items were based on prior assumtions - not experience [5]. Berkeley soon showed that all we could know of matter was mere perception [6]. We can not precieve reality as it must be filtered through our senses. Hume went farther. He showed that mind is not an organized body, but a jumble of thoughts. Mind itself is an internal perception [7]. We were now philosophically at the state of 'no matter - never mind'. This is where Kant [8] traveled. If connection meant prior assumption, then there exists the framework for that a priori knowledge - ergo G-d (of course this disregards an evolved framework). He then runs with this proposition and shows some critical things about G-d. Namely we can not prove his existance by rational means, nor that free will can be proven (although he asserts both exist).
Where philosophy failed us, maybe science could succede. A century ago Newton still reign supreme. Unfortunately gradual problems were arising that our basic rules couldn't solve. Here Einstein stepped in. He showed that all creation could only be view relative to the observer. The measuring sticks we use here would be different in an absolute sense somewhere else (but still appear the same to us). Our rulers for both space and time could not measure the absolute fiber of the Universe. We were defeated but didn't know it yet. In 1926, Max Born advocated the abandonment of Newtonian causiality. The next year, Werner Heisenberg forced it. He showed you could not get the position and the speed vector of a electron at the same time. Not that these facts didn't exist, but there was no way to get this data. Not being able to get all the data meant that the Newtonian premise was useless. We soon began making compromises. The vast amount of data overwhelms us. We can't even get all of it. And the the methods are notoriously unstable due to minor flunctations in the data (which we can't get accurately). We must think in probablities and models. This is what quantum mechanics and chaos theory does for us. Not that the underlying reality doesn't exist, just we can't get to it. G-d doesn't have to play dice with the Universe but we must.
Other problems arose. In mathematics there were great attempts to classify all the rules, but they never turned out complete, or they showed contraditions between rules. We assumed this was due to our errors. But in the 1931 Kurt Godel published his incompleteness theorem. Here he showed that math could never be a completed subject and that there were mathematical facts that could never be proved. We could not get all the rules. The other leg was removed from under Newton. This implied the next finding. We could not get all the algorithms. Alonzo Church developed his famous unsolvable problem in elementary number theory. His student Alan Turing soon developed a class of problems (the stopping problems) which algorithms could never developed. Newton was defeated.
So while modern thought allowed us to free ourselves of preconcieved notions, it led us through a complex labrynth that left us more powerless than before. We went from being the pinicle of creation and soon ruler of all the Universe, to a mere bit actor who could not learn the full part. It was a long hard fall. We learned how minimal we are in both time and space. What more, we have learned we can not go beyond certain limits. Our rulers are inaccurate (Einstein). We can not get all the data (Heisenberg). We can not get all the rules (Godel). We can not get all the algorythms (Church/Turing). We can not prove G-d (Kant) or can we prove the universe is determined (also Kant). Nor can we trust our spiritual instincts (first section of this davar torah).
Thus, we have a choice. Either we believe there is a Universal that links and binds the universe in a metaphysical way, or we believe that there is not one. We can not ever prove either belief right or wrong. Both are just as simple and plausible, so no razor can separate it.
It really breaks down to an estetic choice. Which belief is more estetically pleasing to you.
And this is the great leap of faith. Faith in whether G-d exists or not is not irrational, but supra-rational. This faith can take us where reason can not. It lets us make this choice where knowledge and logic fails us (and proveably must fail us). Taking either choice is a leap of faith. Taking either choice is just as rationally valid as the other.
And its the choice taken that separates the the Gorgiases, Epicuriuses and Nietches of the world from the Platos, Kants, Abrahams and Moseses.
The first set believes that there is no metaphysical connections between unrelated issues and events, the second believe in a Universal that transends and encompasses all issues and events.
This is what is meant by Nietche's "God is dead". He means there is no Universal that unites the Universe. The opposite of course is Judaism's "G-d is one". There is one great Universal that unites the Universe.
Gorgias, Epicurias and Nietche leap of faith was that there is no G-d or Universal. Plato's leap of faith was that there is an Universal linker. And Abraham and Moses emphasize that this Universal G-d gives every second of our life meaning.
Both groups go out just as far on a limb for their beliefs. It just so happens that the respective limbs are on opposite sides of the same tree. And both sides are just as correct in their opinions.
Let's assume the premise is that there is no Universal that connects moment to moment. Why do we need one?
In Camus' L'Estranger the main character is Mersault. He is a charater who has dropped the metaphysical bindings between events. His mother's death doesn't effect him as much as the glaring of the sun. At the climatic moment of the book he is on a beach with a gun being approached by an Arab. He faces a choice, to shoot or not to shoot. The problem in being disconnected, neither choice is more relevant than the other. Shooting the Arab has just as much meaning as not shooting him. The is no grand philosophic right and wrong to guild him. Mersault actions have no meaning. His life has no meaning [10].
Nietche [11] went down the path and attempted to find meaning. He states that the is no Universal and thus no good or evil. Therefore one's own will takes one beyond good and evil. Namely a man's Will will allow him to dictate his own path beyond conventional morality simply because conventional morality is an abitrary construction with no sound Universal underpinnings. There really is no basis for ethics and morality. But what is the point of Will? To survive? What is the point of survival? If there is no Universal to give connections and meaning to disparate events, life and death have the same relevance (namely none). The will to survive is just as meaningless as any arbitrary convention of morality. We conclude (like Nietche) life is pointless. We find ourselves groping like a blindman in the darkness. The curses of Ki Tavo come out as a natural consequence.
Without a Universal, ethics become relative and meaningless. The famous atheist Bertram Russell realized this problem. He once said, "I'd like to think there was something more wrong with raping young boys than I that I don't like it." But without a Universal, that would be his only complaint.
It could be claimed that without a Universal, philosophy itself is a lame pursuit. If there is no Universal, the attempt to find meaning in life is vain howling in the wind. This may explain why so many philosophers choose metaphyics. Otherwise they'd be out of a job.
By assuming and Universal exists, we find a way out of this darkness. If there is a connection, then there can be a reason not to shoot. There is an explanation for morality and even the Will to survive. Things can be wrong beyond the reason that we don't personally like it.
Once we decide the Universal exists [12], each act we do takes on meaning [13]. And through that, our life. Because we give life meaning, the Blessings of Ki Tavo flow to us as a consquence.
Given a choice between meaningless existance verses the existance of an infinite being whose very existance gives my every action and thought meaning.
Given a choice of the curses of Ki Tavo verses the blessings of Ki Tavo.
Given a choice of unmitigated dispair verses boundless hope.
I choose hope.
This is my leap of faith. My estetic choice.
Maybe I'm an optimist and that's why I choose this choice. One would be just correct to choose the other choice. But that is a just as much a leap of faith and matter of estetics as mine.
Think about it.
Today I lay out the choice of life with meaning (true life) and life without meaning (a walking death).
I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life. (Deut 30:19)
Actually this is too limited a statement. Not only is there no need to denigrate any one of these three to enhance the meaning of any of the others, but that these three are cooperating areas of knowledge where any one of them can not be fully understood without a well grounded knowledge in the other two.
To deny rationalism to promote religion is philosophically
shallow as the deep rationalism leaves room for religion and
it makes religion irrational as opposed to supra-rational (This
is a major trend in fundamentalist movements - probably as a
longing for the time before rationlism where things were
theologically easier). To deny religion to promote rationalism
is naive because (as is shown) rationalism in limited and only
religion can fill in those areas where rationalism can not reach
(This is a major trend on strong rationalists who believe the
acceptance of a super-natural (super-rational) framework belittles
rationality). Only by embrassing all three can we truly make
progress.
Steven Ross Weintraub Office: 512-343-6666 | O Lord, PSW Technologies Home : 512-453-6953 | let me talk gently, Austin, Texas | for I might have to eat external Email: stevenw@pswtech.com | my words tomorrow.