“In the Beginning God..”Something must be postulated. This is not a “proof” of God’s existence (there can be no such thing) but is simply a feature of our minds, which implies God’s existence. Our minds are such that something must be postulated.
This initial postulate can be matter only, of course, but that requires that all the qualities we observe in ourselves are the operations of material causes and effects. The pursuit of the qualities through the material matrix seems to be recessive; that is, we can say that such and such a physical process corresponds to the appearance of such and such a quality, but is
What we know as human-ness is not accounted for by any materialistic approach. Oh sure, there are a multitude of assertions that such and such phenomena is “just” this or that neuro-chemical event, but it is logically impossible to prove such identities. To say A always accompanies B is not to say that A is B. In fact, the sort of statement A is B quickly dissolves its meaning under scrutiny. It is equally possible that the chemical event always attends the immaterial event because they are indissolubly bound. You say there is no evidence of the immaterial event? Of course there is: you directly percieve it everytime you think. Only if you pre-define evidence with constraints of verifiability do you get out of that test what you put into it. The definition of evidence which makes perfect sense for the scientific method is not at all axiomatic for all knowledge, unless knowledge is limited to scientific knowledge, whiich is, pardon me, stupid.
So we can either postulate a Person and think from there without needing reductionisms, or we can start from empirical grounds and try to build up to persons. But it is not possible to build out of finite blocks something which seems to have unbounded qualities, unless we make an effort to reduce those apparent unbounded qualities into boundaried perceptions — but why would we do that? Wouldn’t we have to have an a priori bias that it ought to be so reduced? Why?
Of course, the defining entity must be larger than the defined entity. Comprehension is a mode of circumscription. Therefore, the effort to define, which is necessary for knowing sub-personal things, destroys the knowledge of persons.
We maintain a person is by nature eternal, which is another way of saying the person cannot be conceived of as finite. We cannot think about our own beginning or end. I don’t mean we cannot think about the subject of our end or beginning; we cannot conceive, we cannot imaqine our end or our beginning. You can imagine your own existence, but not the non-existence of yourself. This does not prove you are eternal, of ocurse, but it proves you must think of yourself as eternal. Why would you have a mind with this feature?
Nothing that ends has a meaning. Meaning is just the term for whatever of the eternal future appears in the present.
Either God exists or the universe is particles colliding at random in the void.
TimothyOne 