Descartes: From man to God, dualism, two ways of knowing, two levels of truth, separation of matter and spirit, Thomistic roots, in practice reason dominates faith. Cogito, ergo sum.  Certainty .         01/14/98  Read in Kung-pp.1-41.

Pascal: From God to human understanding, reason and experience, subject/object interaction, theory/data interaction, skepticism and dogmatism, believing and knowing are intertwined, dualism, human wretchedness and greatness, the wager, Augustinian roots, the fall and grace, Jansenism, faith overcomes reason. Credo, ergo sum. Existential insecurity.
01/21/98 Read in Kung-pp.42-92.

Modern Epistemology: Linguistic analysis (Wittgenstein), the Vienna Circle (Logical Positivism),
not verification but falsification (Popper), evolutionary science (Kuhn), truth (critical realism).
01/26/98 Read in Kung-pp.92-125, in Peacocke-pp.1-25.

Continued: Read in Peacocke-pp.25-53.Complexity, levels of organization, emergent properties,
reductionism, determinism, the question of hierarchies of knowledge and limitations on the domain of science.                                                                        Paper I: Modern Rationality
 
 

                                            Reaction to Dualism and the Enlightenment

Hegel: The dualistic inability to draw God within the confines of reason makes God totally other and ends in deism or subjective relationship ( moral order, Protestant interiority; cf. Kant, Schleiermacher). God is dead as far as the world is concerned. Hegel correctly sees this as leading to atheism. Inspired by Spinoza, Hegel analyses the phenomenon of consciousness in terms of the dialectic (thesis, antithesis, synthesis) to propose that the world is God's thoughts--Absolute Spirit coming to consciousness of Itself. History is reinterpreted in terms of the dialectic evolution of Absolute Spirit. This effectively reduces religion to philosophy, traps God in Hegel's system, justifies the status quo as necessary to the unfolding of the process, makes development stand on the corpses of the suffering, brutalized and massacred masses, hints at a hidden dualism by setting to one side the ugly empirical reality in his attempt ot escape dualism. However with Hegel our image of God is forever changed. There is no going back. Secularity and historicity have become necessary to any God we may consider to believe in. Teilhard de Chardin (Omega Point) and Alfred North Whitehead (Process theology) are modern attempts to carry out Hegel's insight without actually equating God and the world.  (Read: Kung, p. 127-187)
 

                                                        Modern Atheism

Feuerbach-God a projection of man, Marx as opiate of the people, Freud as infantile illusion.
Theory and practice are related, belief involves rationality, theism and atheism both have debits and credits, atheism must be taken seriously. The question left unanswered: the truth of the assertion  " God exists." Workability suggests actually correspondence. Is the existence of God relevant to human existential insecurity? (Read: Kung, p. 189-339)
 

                                                            Nihilism
 
Nietzsche demands that the consequences of atheism be taken seriously. If God is dead, then all  of the values which derive from His existence are meaningless. There are no opposites: good and
evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. Being has no "shouldness." Being is no better than non-being. Reality itself conveys no meaning other than the one we choose to give it. Therefore
will power. Become the overman by facing this deadly fact and thereby rising above the herd
which is too weak to acknowledge this fact. Eternal return then represents the endless and pointless cycle of existence of reoccurrence again and and again. Bravely choose whatever you see as life-giving, life-sustaining .  This is the choice: being is one and true and good or being is mere facticity devoid of any meaning but your own.
 

                                                    The Basic Question

We can say yes or no to reality? Does reality as a whole have meaning? Much of concrete realities are uncertain and seemingly meaningless. We all face this choice and answer it in our daily practice.
 

                                           Fundamental Trust or Mistrust

We have the freedom to choose: To decide to trust that reality as a whole has meaning.
Believing is concomitant with knowing of any kind. And in spite of its uncertainties,
there are critically rational reasons to extend our trust. Trust in meaning is the foundation of science, of ethics and of authentic religion. Only a bigot would claim that he/she knows the
meaning which reality as a whole is trusted to have. Since we cannot thematize the meaning
we must respond practically to this gift by trying to overcome the non-meaning which continues
to threaten our yes to reality. Without a foundation for the meaning we trust in, experience alone
can be used to ferret out meaning from non-meaning. Meaning alone then does not make categorical demands.
 

                                                    God Exists ?

The word God does not refer to an object. Rather it refers to a relationship. Kung's argument goes like this: If God WERE to exist, then a fundamental solution WOULD BE GIVEN to the questionableness of reality. Reality would have a source, support and goal. Thus the existence of God is a sufficient ground of a series of consequences pertaining to reality as a whole. The fact that God exists can only be affirmed in trust rooted in reality itself. Arguments for God's existence are thus invitations to entrust oneself to the binding character of comprehensive thinking about reality that penetrates to its own ground, to give explicit assent to the foundations of cognition implicit in cognition itself. Thus Kung understands the proposition "God exists" in a way which crosses the border between philosophy and theology, transgresses the boundaries among specific systems of religious belief, and finally respects the honest choice of atheism. This God is not named. Naming a God points toward a more specific understanding of the meaning which is trusted and searched for. Belief in God can thus be justified before reason. Its rationale manifests itself in the practice of a venturesome trust in reality itself: fundamental trust and trust in God are bound up with each other.
 

                                                                    Religious Experience
 

The basic pre-religious experience is our negative experiences of contrast which give rise to indignation. Religious experience is a human experience in which human liberation is achieved
and experienced in which that element of human liberation is interpreted in relation to God within a religious experiential tradition. Experience gains authority  by reflection and takes place in a dialectical process: in the interplay of thinking with reflection and reflection with thinking.  Salvation is human liberation. Revelation is when salvation becomes a conscious and literate experience of faith. Religions and churches are the living recollection of the universal, tacit, but effective will to salvation and the absolute saving presence of God in our world history. Religious experiences display the same structure as our human experiences. Even mystical experience is simply a religious experience of greater density, so a human experience. Every religious identity is preserved only by interpreting the tradition in the light of the present situation. What remains constant is the ratio of the tradition to the situation. (Schillebeeckx, Ch.1)
 

                                                                        The God Question

The human ego is itself a social and cultural process. So pluralism is not just institutional
but is a personal cognitive reality.  The causes of the crisis of belief in God are connected with the pluralistic structure of society and with the modern personality structure. this conditions the
terms under which the truth can be recognized. The second external factor, since to speak
theologically is also to speak anthropologically, comes from the incredibility of belief in a
liberating God when two thirds of humankind is unfree, enslaved and starving to death.
Among internal obstacles are the tendency to speak of the God who is hidden--not an object--
as transcendent ( A wholly other God could just as well be oppressive rather than liberating.),
the distortion of the image of God by the institutionalization of belief and evolving moral
practice which conflicts with older images.
The word God is foremost used in worship. But talking to God always says something about the human condition. Also there is talk of God reflecting upon talk of God and rational reflection on God as the ground of being. There is reference to God which is theologically passive and cursing in instances which are felt to affect ones whole being.
God is the reality to which believers refer by means of images of God that are put at their disposal by the histories of religious experience. No image of God is divorced from an individual's cultural legacy.
The apologetics of belief is directed toward making belief intelligible and understandable. Belief must be understandable to the unbeliever. Hence,"It must be possible to assign a human experience, or experiences, which 1. all men and women unavoidably share with one another and 2.at the same time is an experience (a) which does not necessarily call for religious interpretation while (b) it is nevertheless experienced by all men and women as a fundamental experience, namely one which affects human existence most deeply, and 3. which is helped in the understanding of
this fundamental character..."by the word God. Although ethical demands do not need God,
nevertheless, with belief these ethical demands can be met with hope which goes beyond empirical
factuality. The religious or theologal finds expression in the ethical, our non reciprocal commitment to the humanum, which then becomes a sign of authentic belief. In opting for the good the believer chooses God and abandons the consequences to Him. In this way the believer is helped. The defenselessness of God does not negate for the believer that God's saving presence
brings salvation in situations which are not willed by God nor even tolerated by him, but which are in fact absurd. (Schillebeeckx,Ch.2)                         Third paper: Understanding Belief.
 
 

                                            The Future of Religion

Religion is not explanation and what is the task of the world cannot be shifted to God. What once seemed to be the concern of religion is now the task of ordinary men and women. But finitude
produces religion, so religion will not go away. The humanum is not left in its finitude but is supported by the saving presence of God. The church only has a future to the degree it lets go of
all supernaturalism and dualism, does not become introverted, and does not think ot itself as a spiritual power. Comments on Christianity and environmentalism.  (Schillebeeckx epilogue)
 

                                                        Understanding Reality

Reality can be understood in terms of four deep and broad theories: Quantum mechanics,
epistemology, evolutioin and computation.  One can understant everything which is understood.
(Deutsch)

 
                                                            Quantum Mechanics

Explaining elementary particle interference paterns lead to existence of the multiverse. And many worlds (many histories) provides an explanation of quantum mechanical predictions.
Measureable reality is nowhere continuous. Quantum mechamics is a theory of the multiverse.
 

                                                            Epistemology

An evolutionary theory of knowledge based on Popper, Kuhn and critical realism and seeking
"best explanation."  Justification is not based on induction but rather on on best explanation
supported by experimentation.
 

                                                    Criteria for Reality

If according to the simplest explanation an entity is complex and autonomous, then the entity  is real. If something "kicks back" it exists. Reality exhibits self-similarities.
 

                                                         Virtual Reality

The ability to, in principle,  have a virtual reality rendering of all of all phisically possible
external environments is the basis for all products of internal experience. The central feature
of all virtual reality generation is a computer.
 

                                                Computation

It is possible to build a virtual reality generator whose repertoire includes every physically possible  environment, an environment present somewhere in the multiverse. This is the sort of self-similarity which is necessary if the frabric of reality is truly unified and comprehensible.
 

                                                                                    Life

Life is about the embodiment of knowledge. Whether replicating or non-replicating an entity is adapted to its niche if it embodies knowledge which causes the niche to keep the knowledge in
existence. All virtual reality programs that physically exists or will ever exist are direct or indirect effects of life. So a sufficiently deep understanding of the world depends upon understanding life.
Knowledge bearing physical reality persists essentially unchanged in all nearby universes whereas
non-knowledge bearing reality is randomly changed by mutations. Although changes are discrete
in any given universe, in the multiverse the percentage of universes exhibiting these changes varies
continuously.
 

                                                            Quantum Computers

A quantum computer would be capable of distributing components of  a complex task among vast numbers of parallel universes and then sharing the result. Their design is based on interference patterns which result in determinant outcomes. For effective operation extraneous interference (decoherence) must be avoided. All classical computations are subject to chaos, quantum
calculations are not. Although universal Turing machines exist, some computations are
intractable: for example, factorization of, say, 250 digit numbers. An effective program would take millions of networked computers millions of years to accomplish, whereas using Shor's algorithm and the principles of quantum computation only a few thousand computations in each of 10 to the power 500 parallel universes could accomplish the task in a minute or so. Since there are fewer than 10 to the power 80 atoms in the entire universe, this would convincingly
demonstrate the existence of the multiverse. Deutsch has showed that there is a universal quantum computer.
 

                                                    The Four Strands
 
  Although quantum mechanics (the multiverse), epistemology (in terms of best explanation), computation (the Turing Principle), and evolution (as gene survival) have all seen instrumental applications, none has been taken seriously as a theory to explain the fabric of reality. And
even when one has it has been used without reference to the others and therefore reductively.
For example, the Turing principle implies existence of a computer program that possesses properties of the human mind including intelligence, consciousness, free will and emotions
which runs on hardware other than the human brain. Yet the proposition that artificial intelligence is possible in principle is rejected. Just as knowledge is simply complexity which extends across
large numbers of universes, by using the four basic theories in conjunction consciousness and free will are seen to be in principle explainable as physical  entities. From a philosophical viewpoint
alone none of these can be explained without the multiverse. From a scientific point of view
the full explanatory content of these theories is required by quantum computation and quantum
cosmology.
 

                                                The Ends of the Universe

If a universal computer is physically impossible, this would violate the Turing principle. The
key discovery of Tipler's omega point theory is a class of cosmological models in which,
though the universe is finite in space and time, the memory capacity, the number of possible
computational steps, and the effective energy supply are unlimited. That there is a universal computer in all universes with intelligent life is what the omega point theory claims to
demonstrate.
 
 

Footnote: Belief provides a foundation, support and goal for the trust that reality has meaning.
The God we believe in must be compatible with the way in which we understand the fabric of reality.