Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Why? part II- anything in particular

Previously on the Zacchaeus Letter:

Like Jean Paul Sartre said, the question is that something is there rather not being there.

We all have a world–view so, in that sense, we are all philosophers.

The answers for our existence must be logical and rational, as opposed to their being irrational.

At this point in rational argument, Christianity is not just an answer, but it is the only answer for what is.
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Saying this, generally assures criticism:

But the basic concept is simple: God objectively exists in contrast to His not existing. Which, in reality, changes everything in the areas of:
existence,
morals, and
knowledge, in all of life.

We need to see that which is not abstract and that which is undeniably there.

As I spoke in the previous post, the great problem of beginning with the impersonal is that there’s no meaning or significance for any individual thing, any particular, nor any separate part of the whole. A rock and a man are both particulars.

Whether it is mass or space or energy, there would be no basic philosophic difference with which we begin. They are all just as equally impersonal. So then everything must be explained in terms of an impersonal, plus time, plus chance. There are no other factors to consider. And, ultimately, that means there's no design, meaning, or purpose in any natural phenomena.

We even must reduce personality to the impersonal. As a result, we’re being faced with some form of reductionism. Which is where everything is finally understood by reducing everything to its original factor, everything begins and ends as an energy particle, on a single note.

The problem of modern man is rather simple: he doesn’t know why he has any meaning. Man’s damnation today is that he can find no meaning for man. He’s a zero. He’s lost.

If we begin with the impersonal, how do we, or any other particular, have any meaning or significance? No one has given us a clue.

Often, it is at this point that some sort of pantheism is introduced into this impersonal beginning. But it’s only a semantic trick in order to solve the problem.

The very connotation of the root ‘theism’ introduces the personal into the equation, when what is meant is the impersonal.
In pantheism, there is no personal. Nature is god, and god is not personal. So, pantheism connotes the personal, but it isn’t. Thusly, pantheism becomes an illusion. The ancient religions of Hinduism and Buddhism are pantheistic. Their modern solutions are usually semantic illusions, and this is one of them.

Unfortunately, the form of pantheitic illusion that modern science has embraced reduces everything to an impersonal energy. Everything starts and ends with energy particles, there’s no variance.

One thing this pantheism does give us an answer for is our need for unity, for form. Yet, it's answer is devoid of  meaning for diversity, unable to give any meaning for any individual thing. It has no answer for freedom or morality, much less: man's personality or his aspirations. There is none; because, everything in pantheism is finally equal.

Modern liberal and progressive theology, naturalistic science, along with the new mystical thought, is almost always pantheistic. Beginning with the impersonal, as the pantheist must do, there are no true answers in regard to existence with its complexity, or for the personality of man.

If everything, including man, were the result of nature only, the latest step in the process of natural selection, then there is nothing in his behavior that is not the continued results of natural selection, nature evolved. There would be no difference between right and wrong.


So, what does it mean to begin with that which is personal; the opposite of impersonal?

If we begin with the personal origin of all else, then man and his aspirations are not meaningless. Man’s aspirations in the reality of personality are in concert with what was originally there, and what has always intrinsically been. This is our answer, the solution not only to the problem of the existence of bare being and its complexity of meaning for the particulars- but also for man’s being different, with a personality, which distinguishes him from non-man.

But, when we begin to consider a personal beginning, we have another choice to make: God or gods?

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