ARCHIVE: Presuppositionalism - What and Why?

[Balder]

Hi, Clete,

No problem about missing the post; I know you've been busy, as you explained in another letter. For the moment (since I'm a little short on time this morning -- it's my son's birthday and we're preparing for a party), I'll just ask one question that comes to mind and will respond to the rest of your letter later.

Is it possible for a Christian to hallucinate, to be deceived by his senses or his mind, to become mentally ill or deranged, to be fooled by someone (even a Biblical apologist or exegete)? How does he know absolutely whether what he sees or experiences in life is real or false, at all times?

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Originally posted by Balder
Is it possible for a Christian to hallucinate, to be deceived by his senses or his mind, to become mentally ill or deranged, to be fooled by someone (even a Biblical apologist or exegete)? How does he know absolutely whether what he sees or experiences in life is real or false, at all times?

Well yes, of course Christian's are fooled and make mistakes all the time without realizing it. But the point is that the Christian has a means of figuring out what the real truth of something is without question begging.
The point is that there is no way to reason backward to God without begging the question. The existence of God must be presupposed in order to make logical sense of the world around us. With that presupposition in place, then one can use logic and reason to figure out that what one believes is either right or wrong and that you perhaps had been deceived up to that point.
Some people may not ever use their ability to think skillfully enough to ever figure out that they have been deceived on some point of theology but the point is that without the presupposition that God exists, no such reasoning can be coherently justified. Even if they do figure it out, without God’s existence being the foundation of their reasoning, they have unwittingly borrowed from the proper Christian worldview.
In other words, unbelievers and unthinking Christians alike can all use logic and do so on a regular basis, sometimes quite well as in your case, but in doing so they (unbelievers) violate their own worldview and borrow from the Christian's because logic cannot be accounted for otherwise without question begging which violates the very rules of logic they are trying to account for.
So to answer your question directly, the Christian knows (or can know) whether he has been deceived the same way everyone else does, it's just that they can do so without violating the very foundational principles of their own worldview, which means, of course, that everyone else really can't know whether or not they've been deceived at all. They try to borrow from the Christian worldview but they cannot do that without being self-contradictory. Just because they use logic and come to the same conclusion that I do doesn't matter. The fact remains that when you get right down to brass tax, unbelievers are living in a fog of uncertainty that is utterly inescapable.

Resting in Him,
Clete

P.S. I love birthday parties! I hope your son has a great time.

 

[Balder]

Clete,

Naturally, as a Buddhist, I take exception to the claim that Buddhists are unwittingly borrowing from Christianity and that we are incapable of accounting for logic, order, morality, or any other fundamental aspects of reality from within our own worldview. I understand that you are simply stating the presuppositionalist position, but if you believe that presuppositionalism “stands” or is true because, in practice, the Christian worldview is the only one actually capable of making sense of the world without falling into incoherence, then I have a question: Is this a falsifiable belief, or not? In other words, if you believe “coherence” is the proof for Christian presuppositionalism, then is it also the test for it? If someone demonstrated to you that aspects of the Christian worldview were incoherent in one way or another, would you relinquish your belief in Christianity? Or would you say, as you did in the case of the problem of eternity and linear time we discussed, that even if it “doesn’t make sense” now, there must be an answer that will be revealed by and by?

Similarly, what would your response be if a representative of a different worldview – say, me for instance! – was able to account for all of the things that you regard as fundamental to reality in a coherent fashion, using the principles of his own tradition rather than yours? Would you say that Christianity must nevertheless be true, even if this worldview proved to have equal explanatory power? (In this hypothetical, I am not arguing that this worldview might even have greater explanatory power, because I am more interested in what your response would be if the “minimum requirements” were met.) If you would maintain that Christianity must nevertheless be the only correct view, on what would your confidence rest? How would you defend your presuppositional beliefs, if another worldview proved as robust as you believe Christianity is in accounting for the fundamentals?

Now, I expect you to say that my questions don’t matter, because this hypothetical situation can’t actually be true, but that is why I’ve agreed to let Hilston grill me. I am confident that I represent a tradition as robust as anything he has to offer, if not more so. Intellectual honesty should demand that you actually be able to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of Christianity, across the board, if you are intent on maintaining that it is in fact the only coherent worldview and that no other view has legs to stand on. If Hilston doesn’t show up here again, or even if he does, you are of course invited to demonstrate this superiority, or to attempt to reveal my own worldview as weak and insupportable.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Originally posted by Balder

Clete,

Naturally, as a Buddhist, I take exception to the claim that Buddhists are unwittingly borrowing from Christianity and that we are incapable of accounting for logic, order, morality, or any other fundamental aspects of reality from within our own worldview. I understand that you are simply stating the presuppositionalist position, but if you believe that Presuppositionalism “stands” or is true because, in practice, the Christian worldview is the only one actually capable of making sense of the world without falling into incoherence, then I have a question: Is this a falsifiable belief, or not? In other words, if you believe “coherence” is the proof for Christian Presuppositionalism, then is it also the test for it? If someone demonstrated to you that aspects of the Christian worldview were incoherent in one way or another, would you relinquish your belief in Christianity? Or would you say, as you did in the case of the problem of eternity and linear time we discussed, that even if it “doesn’t make sense” now, there must be an answer that will be revealed by and by?

IF and I stress IF it could be demonstrated that Christianity was rationally impossible then yes I would abandon the belief system. That is of course very easy to say, but as you point out later, intellectual honesty demands such a position. After all, we have been trying to get to a point where we can show that your own worldview is rationally impossible, it wouldn't do to call foul when you try to do the same to us.
However, with that having been said, I do believe that the Christian worldview has been demonstrated to be logically necessary. The same issue cannot be both necessary and false at the same time, so I think you are fighting an up hill battle to say the least.

Similarly, what would your response be if a representative of a different worldview – say, me for instance! – was able to account for all of the things that you regard as fundamental to reality in a coherent fashion, using the principles of his own tradition rather than yours? Would you say that Christianity must nevertheless be true, even if this worldview proved to have equal explanatory power? (In this hypothetical, I am not arguing that this worldview might even have greater explanatory power, because I am more interested in what your response would be if the “minimum requirements” were met.) If you would maintain that Christianity must nevertheless be the only correct view, on what would your confidence rest? How would you defend your presuppositional beliefs, if another worldview proved as robust as you believe Christianity is in accounting for the fundamentals?

Both systems cannot be true because of the law of non-contradiction. Buddhism openly contradicts Christianity, if one is true the other CANNOT be, thus your question can have no rational answer. Whichever system is true will always do a better job of "accounting for the fundamentals", as you put it.

Now, I expect you to say that my questions don’t matter, because this hypothetical situation can’t actually be true, but that is why I’ve agreed to let Hilston grill me. I am confident that I represent a tradition as robust as anything he has to offer, if not more so.

We'll never know if we can't ever get to know what your presupposition actually are. Frankly the fact that they are apparently so difficult to explain in a clear and understandable manner is strong evidence that they are, in fact, much weaker than you suggest in their ability to explain anything.
Have you and Jim nailed down at all even a single one of your fundamental presuppositions? If so, I missed it. Please point out the post or else just briefly explain what it is.

Intellectual honesty should demand that you actually be able to demonstrate the superior explanatory power of Christianity, across the board, if you are intent on maintaining that it is in fact the only coherent worldview and that no other view has legs to stand on.

I agree. Jim is far better at doing that than I.

If Hilston doesn’t show up here again, or even if he does, you are of course invited to demonstrate this superiority, or to attempt to reveal my own worldview as weak and insupportable.

Well, I can try but I don't guarantee that I'll be able to do so. The simple fact of the matter is that I'm very much a beginner when it comes to presuppositional apologetics. When I started this thread, I didn't even understand what it was or what the arguments involved! I now understand the premise and have at least heard or read many of the arguments but I'm still very much a novice at actually arguing from the presuppositional position.

What I am even less familiar with is Buddhism. All this mumbo jumbo that you've been throwing around with Jim makes my eyes instantly glaze over. If it is necessary for me to learn a whole new vernacular in order to understand your belief system I frankly don't want to understand it. That might be intellectually dishonest on my part but there it is.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Hi, Clete,

Perhaps you've missed some of my arguments because your eyes have glazed over and you really haven't tried to understand what I'm saying. And I don't blame you -- if you're not interested in a topic, and a lot of unfamiliar words crop up in a discussion of that topic, it is natural to just tune it out. I will still be engaging with Hilston on this subject, so hopefully I will eventually state my position in language clear enough for you to understand without having to enter very deeply into Buddhism. But at the same time, I think it is necessary to recognize that no worldview is without its vernacular; if it weren't, it wouldn't qualify as a worldview in its own right, but just a "flavor" of the familiar. I can certainly try harder to make Buddhist concepts understandable to a Christian audience, and I have worked hard at that on other threads, but at the same time, there comes a point where efforts to "translate" central Buddhist ideas in commonly understandable terms leads to compromise and distortion -- precisely because of the presuppositions that are in place. To make sense of a fundamentally different worldview, to really grasp it and not just dismiss it as "mumbo jumbo" from afar, you have to unearth and face your own presuppositions -- and realize in the process that they are presuppositions, beliefs which have been taken for granted as "fundamental" without necessarily thinking them through or reasoning about them.

For what it's worth, I have debated at length with other Christian partners, and one in particular finally found the "rosetta stone" in one of the writers to which I referred him, and he was then able to come back to my posts to him and see a lot in them that had simply been opaque to him before. So, while I do take seriously the responsibility in any interfaith encounter to speak clearly and to earnestly try to communicate, including making an effort to step into and inhabit the other's position (to the best of my ability), I also recognize that sometimes that "gaps" in communication are simply unavoidable, given the very different presuppositions and beliefs that we may hold.

If you prefer to take a back seat at this point and not debate the viability of Buddhism, that's fine with me; but if you would like to debate it, you might start with anything which you believe Christianity can explain that other religions can't, and I'll give it my best shot.

As for my conversation with Hilston, that is likely to continue on another forum. I'll let you know.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Originally posted by Balder

Hi, Clete,

Perhaps you've missed some of my arguments because your eyes have glazed over and you really haven't tried to understand what I'm saying. And I don't blame you -- if you're not interested in a topic, and a lot of unfamiliar words crop up in a discussion of that topic, it is natural to just tune it out. I will still be engaging with Hilston on this subject, so hopefully I will eventually state my position in language clear enough for you to understand without having to enter very deeply into Buddhism. But at the same time, I think it is necessary to recognize that no worldview is without its vernacular; if it weren't, it wouldn't qualify as a worldview in its own right, but just a "flavor" of the familiar. I can certainly try harder to make Buddhist concepts understandable to a Christian audience, and I have worked hard at that on other threads, but at the same time, there comes a point where efforts to "translate" central Buddhist ideas in commonly understandable terms leads to compromise and distortion -- precisely because of the presuppositions that are in place. To make sense of a fundamentally different worldview, to really grasp it and not just dismiss it as "mumbo jumbo" from afar, you have to unearth and face your own presuppositions -- and realize in the process that they are presuppositions, beliefs which have been taken for granted as "fundamental" without necessarily thinking them through or reasoning about them.

You are correct about my having "tuned out". I have to admit to having little patience with ideas that are not communicated in a way that normal people can understand them. But it was not my intention in my previous post to suggest that your ideas are stupid or not worth looking at or anything like that. My use of the term mumbo jumbo was just what popped into my head when I thought of the multi-syllable unpronounceable words you use when discussing Buddhism. I'm sure those words are packed with meaning that is very important and perhaps indispensable when trying to understand your worldview but it is the ideas behind those words I'm interested in, not the words themselves.

For what it's worth, I have debated at length with other Christian partners, and one in particular finally found the "rosetta stone" in one of the writers to which I referred him, and he was then able to come back to my posts to him and see a lot in them that had simply been opaque to him before. So, while I do take seriously the responsibility in any interfaith encounter to speak clearly and to earnestly try to communicate, including making an effort to step into and inhabit the other's position (to the best of my ability), I also recognize that sometimes that "gaps" in communication are simply unavoidable, given the very different presuppositions and beliefs that we may hold.

I of course agree that people with otherwise honest intentions may have points of misunderstanding that are difficult and perhaps sometimes virtually impossible to overcome due to many possible factors but I do not believe that any limitation in the English language can be blamed for a large percentage of them. Any truly important ideas that form ones basic presuppositional positions about the nature of the reality in which we live that cannot be communicated in plain English is not because of a lack on the part of the language itself but on the part of the one using that language to communicate the ideas. This might seem to be more of a claim than I am qualified to make but I think I'm on pretty firm ground based simply on the fact there are hundreds, if not thousands of books written about Buddhism in the English language and hundreds of thousands of people in this country alone who have become Buddhists based solely on what they learned in those English books.
I'm not attempting to deprive you of the Buddhist vernacular, I'm simply saying that you have to be able to clearly articulate the ideas you are trying to communicate in such a way that your audience can understand, which I'm sure is something you make an attempt to do anyway.

If you prefer to take a back seat at this point and not debate the viability of Buddhism, that's fine with me; but if you would like to debate it, you might start with anything which you believe Christianity can explain that other religions can't, and I'll give it my best shot.

I would be interested, although I don't know how qualified I am to debate the issue, in how a Buddhist solves the long-standing philosophical problem of unity and diversity. I don't know how familiar you are with this philosophical puzzle but let's just say that all attempts in philosophy, outside of Christianity (that I am aware of), to unify the diversity without diversifying the unity have ended in failure. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, it's a common enough philosophical issue that a Google search will yield plenty of info on it in short order.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Hi, Clete,

I would be interested, although I don't know how qualified I am to debate the issue, in how a Buddhist solves the long-standing philosophical problem of unity and diversity. I don't know how familiar you are with this philosophical puzzle but let's just say that all attempts in philosophy, outside of Christianity (that I am aware of), to unify the diversity without diversifying the unity have ended in failure. If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, it's a common enough philosophical issue that a Google search will yield plenty of info on it in short order.

I can offer a more detailed answer later. Here's a start.

Buddhism does address this issue; it is, in fact, quite central to its perspective, which is nondualism. Nondualism is not monism, where the "many" is reduced to just the "one"; rather, nondualism is precisely the philosophy of "unity in multiplicity."

As far as I know, Christianity doesn't solve this issue philosophically so much as it just takes it as a necessary part of the mystery of God. In other words, it says, "God is both one and multiple, though we don't understand how this can be. But since He is, that solves the problem." This isn't a philosophical solution, obviously, but a statement of faith. The closest Christianity comes to tackling this philosophically is the Catholic theological doctrine of the perichoresis of the Trinity, where the persons of the Trinity are understood to be radically interdependent and mutually determinative.

As I have written elsewhere, the doctrine of perichoresis is close to what Buddhists mean by emptiness or the nondual "dependent origination" of all phenomena (pratitya-samutpada). I've run out of time now, so I'll have to explain this in more detail in the next installment.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Nathon Detroit]

So....

I think after reading this thread I am more convinced than ever that....

While Presuppositionalism may be an excellent approach and apologetic style which can be somewhat effective it certainly could only be effective under certain circumstances, and it MOST certainly shouldn't be used as an exclusive approach.

In my opinion...
Presuppositionalism requires a willing participate that is prepared for a very long drawn out debate that can often times seems obscure and way off the beaten track. There just seems to me too much ground to cover and recover. And I have yet to see Presuppositionalism work in real life (anecdotal evidence to be sure).

I can however see Presuppositionalism being used as part of the apologetic arsenal in certain circumstances or to handle certain types of arguments that other apologetic styles struggle with.

Clete, Balder, if you could indulge me for a moment and summarize (at this point in the debate) what you think of Presuppositionalism that would be really great.

 

[Balder]

Knight,

In my opinion, presuppositionalism points out an aspect of "evidence-based" apologetics that is often overlooked, and which does often put Biblical apologists on insecure ground: to convince the non-believer, they often adopt non-believers' presuppositions and attempt to argue within them, rather than relying on strictly Christian presuppositions.

The direction that presuppositionalists take this is philosophically suspect, in my opinion, and ultimately indefensible: the claim that only Christian presuppositions are correct, and all others are false or else "borrowed" from Christianity. The reason I say this is indefensible is because, as Hilston argues, no amount of reasoning will ever convince someone that Christian presuppositions are the only correct ones, because they are not evidentially based: they are "pre-given" by God, and according to Hilston one must be regenerated to receive this gift and gain the confidence necessary to argue presuppositionally.

A more reasonable use of the knowledge of presuppositions, in my opinion, is simply the one acknowledged by hermeneuts in general: to attempt to expose and examine the presuppositions that inform all the "positions" involved. I personally do not believe that presuppositions are sacrosanct; they are just part of the way the human mind works, sometimes to its advantage, but many times also to its disadvantage.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Knight,

I basically agree with your assessment.
The title of the thread is 'Presuppositionalism - What and Why?'; I now know the 'what', but I am no closer to understanding the 'why'.
The Presuppositional apologetic boasts some very powerful arguments to say the least. In fact, the transcendental proof for the existence of God is perhaps the most compelling argument that I've ever heard, but what I have yet to understand is how such an argument isn't only just so much more evidence that is being presented. In other words, Presuppositionalists and Jim in particular, argue that the presuppositional apologetic system is the only allowable system and that Evidentialism (basing conclusions on evidence) is not allowed, but I have yet to see an argument made by anyone that did not present one sort of evidence or another including those made by presuppositionalists. Presuppositionalist simply present evidence that one's presuppositions are incoherent rather than showing evidence that supports some other aspect of the Christian faith. In the end, the approach is the same; it's simply the focus of the argument that is shifted.
Further, the position that their system is the only Biblical (and therefore the only allowable) system must be defended by the presentation of evidence. So one might be led to ask, which came first Presuppositionalism or the evidence that supports it? Or put another way, must the exclusivity of Presuppositionalism be presupposed or must it be supported by Evidentialism? Either way, it seems to me to be a problem for their position. Although, I must admit that this seems too simplistic. These people who came up with this apologetic system (Van Til and others) are way too smart to have overlooked something so simple so it could very well be that I'm missing something important but the point is that whatever it is that I'm missing has yet to be explained to me in any clear manner.

It also seems to me that Presuppositionalism is simply a logical extension of Calvinism (or at least Calvinistic theology). I haven't worked it all out yet, but I suspect that Presuppositionalism would fall apart if its Calvinistic underpinnings were removed.

This thread has been very profitable for me though. I've learned some very powerful arguments for the Christian faith which seem to have their most impact in discussions with unbelievers (an area in which I have been lacking), and have managed to find some common ground with Jim as well. I've done more reading as a result of this thread than any other thread I've been involved with and I'm sure that will continue. I'm still very fascinated by this whole presuppositional approach and I'm sure there is more about it that I do not understand than what I do understand.






Balder,

In response to your last post, I would just say that there is no way I'm qualified to debate the issue with you. I can tell you're way ahead of me on the philosophical issue. However, if you wouldn't mind spending the time, I would still be very much interested in hearing more about how you resolve this issue. It would also interest me to hear more about what you think of the Christian resolution, which, as I understand it, is done by simply starting from the presuppositional position the One God is Triune in nature; that both unity and diversity are equally ultimate concepts.

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Hi, Clete,

I'm going to try to give a concise, brief, and fairly jargon-free presentation of the Buddhist views on the subject of unity and multiplicity. You'll have to tell me how I do!

As I stated in the previous post, the Buddhist solution to this problem -- nonduality -- is central to Buddhism's message. This sets it somewhat apart from Christianity, where "unity in multiplicity" is more a curiosity of God's nature than a central philosophical concern. Unity in multiplicity is not explicitly taught in Biblical doctrine, as far as I know, but many argue that it is implicit in it, at least in the notion of the Trinity, which some theologians have described as the "peri-choresis" ("around" - "dancing") of the Persons.

As I stated in an early letter to Hilston, order and coherence in the universe are accounted for in the Buddhist worldview by the radical interdependence of phenomena, the holism of reality, and the pervasive intelligence of Being known as buddhanature or rigpa (pristine cognitiveness). These aspects of reality also account for unity in multiplicity, as I will explain below.

According to Buddhist thought, reality is radically interdependent. Sometimes this interdependence is described as "emptiness," emphasizing the lack of inherent (independent) existence of objects; sometimes it is described as "continuity" (tantra), emphasizing the inseparability of all phenomena and the ultimate "wholeness," seamlessness, and completeness of reality. When Buddhists say that objects (including people) are "empty" or that they lack inherent existence, they don't mean that they don't exist at all, but rather that they exist dependently upon other objects. This interdependence is so complete that you cannot find a "bottom level" building block or ultimate "atom" of reality, out of which all other objects are built.

According to Buddhist teaching, this is not a negation of reality, but a precondition for its existence, for its manifestation. If any phenomenal object were self-existent, meaning completely self-contained and self-originated, complete in itself, it would be immutable and thus it could not interact with anything else or be in relationship with anything else. According to Buddhist thought, it is because reality is interdependent that we have objective phenomena at all: a ceaseless flow of interactions and mutually determining relationships that gives rise to all manner of things, from atoms to organisms to galaxies.

Put more simply, the phenomenal world is fundamentally a relational world. Interdependence is the precondition for multiplicity, for the infinite textures of the universe that make up the different orders of being, from the subatomic to the macroscopic (and Buddhist scripture describes atoms about a third the size of the hydrogen atom and a cosmos several times larger than the one currently measured by science). But interdependence is also an expression of the oneness of reality, because all phenomena exist inseparably from one another.

The spiritual and moral significance of this relates to our apprehension of self-hood. We take ourselves to be independent entities, self-existent, self-contained, and in Buddhist thought this is one of the causes of our predicament and our "sin." We seek to "cut up" and "possess" what cannot be cut up or owned; we seek to grasp as "ours" what is only and always a "gift" of the totality.

Another aspect of "oneness" has to do with what Buddhism calls Buddhanature: the fundamentally open, creative, intelligent, dynamic ground of reality that is the root or essence of all phenomenal objects and beings. Dzogchen describes the phenomenal world as the "radiance" of this creative intelligence or Presence, an intelligence which does not exist as an object anyplace in space or time, but which is the root and essence of everything that appears.

Dzogchen describes reality as "the single sphere, unbounded wholeness," the nature of which is fundamentally creative and self-organizing. All of reality is the seamless movement of this boundless wholeness: open with infinite creative potential at its timeless root, ceaselessly manifesting in multiple interdependent forms as its time-like "activity."

I have run out of time this evening, but it's probably for the best. This was longer and more complex than I intended. I hope you can follow it; but I may come back and edit it later.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Originally posted by Balder
Another aspect of "oneness" has to do with what Buddhism calls Buddhanature: the fundamentally open, creative, intelligent, dynamic ground of reality that is the root or essence of all phenomenal objects and beings. Dzogchen describes the phenomenal world as the "radiance" of this creative intelligence or Presence, an intelligence which does not exist as an object anyplace in space or time, but which is the root and essence of everything that appears.

How can a "thing" that does not exist anywhere, at any time, ever give rise to location, duration, sequences, and the rest of what we experience every single day? How could I have ever come up with the phrase "every single day" if that from which I originated does not exist in time or space? Where did time and space come from? Or put another way, how does something become its fundamental opposite? How does non-existence become existence? How does the non temporal become the temporal?

Dzogchen describes reality as "the single sphere, unbounded wholeness," the nature of which is fundamentally creative and self-organizing. All of reality is the seamless movement of this boundless wholeness: open with infinite creative potential at its timeless root, ceaselessly manifesting in multiple interdependent forms as its time-like "activity."

Although, I appreciate your efforts to explain these things without all the fancy jargon, it is also this is the sort of thing that caused my eyes to glaze over in some of your previous posts. How can you not see that this statement makes a total mess of anything logical or rational?
How does "activity" occur without sequence and duration of events (time)?
Where did the "single sphere, unbounded wholeness" come from, and how long did it take for it to "timelessly" create "all of reality", which I presume it is a part of?

I'm sorry Balder, but this stuff just doesn't make any sense! It is self-contradictory and fundamentally illogical.

Sorry it took so long to respond, this last week was crazy and then I've been out of town because of the holiday. Things should slow down for me this week, I hope!

Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Clete wrote:
How can a "thing" that does not exist anywhere, at any time, ever give rise to location, duration, sequences, and the rest of what we experience every single day?

From the Buddhist point of view, Mind-as-such (Buddha-nature or Being) precedes the “existence” of the manifest world of time, space, and objects, not in terms of temporal sequence but in terms of being their “matrix” or ground. Mind-as-such is not imagined to be a specific entity in the way the Judeo-Christian God is, but I believe even many Christian theologians do not believe that God is an object or entity to be found within the time-space continuum. Augustine claimed that God created time along with the manifest world, and that He necessarily transcends both.

What is your opinion? Does God have a form? Does He exist in time and space, like other objects even if He is the greatest among them?

I will attempt to address some of your questions, but I think I ought to point out that the perspective that you take for granted – that there is an absolute, linear time with absolute “moments” in eternal succession – is regarded as naïve and outmoded by most modern scientists and philosophers, and has long been questioned by many Christian theologians as well. I understand your objections, and I will attempt to address them, but the alternative that you present is also a “logical mess.” Kant points out that eternity will never be attained by successive synthesis. One implication of this, as I argued in a previous letter, is that if you posit an infinite succession of real moments before God decides to create the world, then that “point of decision” will never actually arrive, having an “infinity” of moments before it.

I worked on a response to the remainder of your letter this evening, but suffered too many interruptions from my wonderful rambunctious son and just couldn’t get it done. So I’ll have to try to finish up tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Balder

 

[Balder]

Clete,

I’ve written a long treatise on time, but I am holding back on submitting it because I think I am getting into more detail than you really want. If I really strip down what I am saying, I think I can put it like this: Buddhism posits that time, as we conceive of it and commonly experience it (as a linear unfolding of moments), is a particular (always relative) perspective on a much vaster reality – a reality whose essential vitality makes possible the appearance of temporality, a vitality which may be called “atemporal” (pointing out that Being itself has no temporal onset), or which may alternatively be called Absolute Time: what Buddhists call the Fourth Moment. The Fourth Moment is commonly labeled the “Now,” a concept which points to the fullness of time, a dimension which indivisibly encompasses the whole range of temporality and which gives it life or makes it possible, as space transcends and makes “objects” possible. The “deep” dimension of time is not time itself, as temporality, but rather the vitality of Being. Vitality still is a metaphor in a sense, but it communicates dynamism and presence that at the same time is not qualifiable as a particular type of conventional temporal “activity.” This language is intended to point past conventional conceptions of time, since the "activity" of the totality (which transcends and encompasses all space and time perspectives) should not be conceived as just another object with parts and definite location, moving and acting in space and time.

There are a number of examples from quantum cosmology and recent books on time which do question the fundamental “reality” of time as we normally conceive of it, and experimental results which point strongly to the primacy of the Now over any “fixed” or intrinsic time. I can go into them if you like.

Best wishes,

Balder

 

[Clete]

It is not necessary to go into physics. Most of what passes for science today, especially theoretical physics is predicated on theories (string theory in particular) that cannot be tested except mathematically. They make no predictions that can be verified or denied by any experiment or observation. In short, "science" today is not science, it more closely resembles a religion or at the very least a philosphy and thus would get us nowhere in this discussion.

What I would like is for you to present any evidence that what you said in your last post is true. Can this Fourth Moment be detected somehow? Can it be demonstrated to be a rationally neccesary concept? If so, please show me the syllogism. If it is not rationally necessary is it even rational at all? If so, how so? It sounds to me to be self-contradictory and irrational to the extreme, and if, in addition to that, you cannot provide any verifiable evidence that the real world displays anything like what you are discribing, what is the point in believing it?

Resting Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Clete,

I will respond in more detail in the next letter. I have mentioned one of the rational problems of your version of "time," which makes it "rationally necessary" to at least question our common presuppositions about it. Do you have anything to say about the fact that time as you conceive it would make it logically impossible for God to ever get around to creating the world?

Peace,
Balder

 

[Clete]

Originally posted by Balder

Clete,

I will respond in more detail in the next letter. I have mentioned one of the rational problems of your version of "time," which makes it "rationally necessary" to at least question our common presuppositions about it. Do you have anything to say about the fact that time as you conceive it would make it logically impossible for God to ever get around to creating the world?

Peace,
Balder

The logical problem you present is a variation of Zeno's Paradox.
"There is no motion, because that which is moved must arrive at the middle before it arrives at the end, and so on ad infinitum."
You are talking about time but the same logic applies. One might say you are talking about motion through time. Indeed, according to Zeno, God would not have even had to have existed for an eternity before creation. Even if God had begun His existence one second prior to creation, before He came to the end of that second, He would first have had to experience the first half and then half of the remainder and so on ad infinitum. In fact, things are even worse than that because before God could have experienced half a second He would first have had to experience a 4th and before that an 8th and a 16th and a 32nd and on and on. According to Zeno, God could never have experienced any passage of time at all and neither, by the way, can you!

There has been lots and lots written about Zeno's paradoxes, some even say that he was only a step or two away from arriving at something similar to the theory of relativity by logical means but that is neither here nor there (pun intended, get it ).
But paradoxes aside, the point is that we do in fact move and this post has now taken me almost an hour to think through and type up. And in the same way, God made it, one way or another to today. Can I explain how, no. Such is the nature of paradoxes, but paradoxes only indicate a lack of information or understanding, which I suppose is your whole point. The bottom line is, I cannot explain it, but that is not proof that it cannot be explained.

I would also like to present some thoughts that Bob Enyart offered when I asked him about this issue. His insights were valuable, I think. Perhaps you'll agree...

Originally written by Bob Enyart...

• On Infinity:
  In God, infinity finds its being.
  That is the implied claim of theists when we say that God is eternal. For, we do not mean only that God will exist forever into the future (thus approaching infinity, as any permanent creation of His would also do), but that He has already existed throughout eternity past. So, God is already infinite.
  He is infinitely old in the past, and eternally existing into the future, with the past being truly infinite, and the future only approaching infinity throughout all eternity. Not a single moment can be added to God’s infinite past existence prior to creation, and nothing will shorten his eternal future. God existed infinitely, before “the foundations of the earth,” and He will exist forever into eternity future as the Creator. Thus the infinite God became the eternal Creator.
  People have a harder time conceptualizing eternity past than eternity future. Much of humanity has comfortably held a belief in life after death, immortality by way of reincarnation, resurrection, etc., yet theists struggle to conceptualize God’s existing eternally in the past. Why would it be more comfortable and even perhaps intuitive for men to believe in an eternal future, but much more difficult, even for committed theists, to conceive of God existing eternally throughout the past? Well, if the Creator made mankind and “put eternity in their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11) with immortal souls, then with that in our own nature, man would expect to have a better intuitive sense of forever and ever, approaching infinity in the future, while being far less able to identify with eternity past (which is true infinity). This is why so much of mankind readily assumes an eternal future, yet even committed monotheists struggle to comprehend God’s infinite past. As Solomon finished that verse, “He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”
  When applicable, software engineers check their program functions for accuracy with three kinds of test data, low or small, middle or average, and high or large. Testing the Calculator program distributed with MS Windows, the programmers entered test data of 0 + 0 and checked the results, and they did tests with numbers very far from zero in both directions on the number line, among negatives to positives, like -9999999 + -888888, and they tried large positive numbers like 777777 + 6666666. When testing an idea (as with a software function), it’s a good idea to use not just average test data, but evaluate the extremes also. Theists attack atheism with arguments from our daily lives, and by looking off into the distant future, and by looking at origins. Similarly, the atheist tries to attack theism by questioning the origin of God. How can an atheist reason against the idea of God existing infinitely into the past? No challenge based on the natural laws of physics can apply to God’s existence, because He is defined as supernatural, not physical but spiritual. And the atheist may argue that there is no evidence for God’s existence, an argument which the theist relishes. But the atheist may also attempt to refute God’s infinite existence in the past as a logical absurdity Can the theist defend God logically existing infinitely in the past?
  The New Testament quotes Jesus Christ as attributing the authorship of Genesis to Moses, and that book opens with:
  “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. … Then God said, "Let there be light" … …and God divided the light from the darkness. … So the evening and the morning were the first day.” -Genesis 1:1-5
  Once “God created,” and once He “divided the light from the darkness,” this introduced a beginning of a series which could not, physically or logically, represent an actual infinite. Once he brought about “the first day,” a logical and physical series of events followed, which itself contains divisible events, which cannot be infinite but can proceed toward infinity. However, God never had a “first day,” and thus, God had an eternal existence into the past.

Bob's comments are obviously incomplete. They are portions of personal notes he's made to himself on the issue that he has not published anywhere and he ended these remarks with "to be continued". I can hardly wait!

So, to sum up, I would acknowledge that you bring up a good point. There doesn't seem to have been enough time for an eternity to have passed yet. However, I'm not sure what that proves except that there is something we don't understand about God's existence. One thing we do know is that it is logically necessary that God not only exists but that He has always existed.


Resting in Him,
Clete

 

[Balder]

Hi, Clete,

Thanks for your letter, and for sharing Bob's thoughts on this as well. This issue is one that has perplexed some of the best minds of humanity, so I don't think you or I will get to the bottom of it in a few posts. Recent scientific/philosophical books on the nature of time acknowledge that time makes sense intuitively, when we don't examine it; but when we attempt to draw close and analyze it, it gets more and more baffling and contradictory seeming. Einstein had a number of insights, obviously, into space and time, but acknowledged that the "now" is a mystery, and speculated that it may even be beyond the reach of science to grasp.

I personally find the Buddhist perspective on this issue to be compelling, and perhaps you will as well when I make a bit of it clearer -- because it actually works a little better to explain God's eternity, in my opinion, than Bob's thoughts above. As you will have no doubt noticed, Bob is positing an eternal "linear" time before God created the universe, and adds a second eternity on top of that one, with the creation of our world being a kind of "dividing point" between God's two supposed eternities. But if something is infinite, can you add something to it and thereby increase it? Certainly, there are different "orders" of infinity, if you imagine different sorts of "sets" of infinite objects or numbers, but Bob doesn't indicate whether God's infinity "before" creation is of a different order than the one after, nor of course does he explain how God could have "gotten" to the point of creation if in fact an eternity preceded it.

The Buddhist answer is to look past time to its ground, which is pure presence. This perspective holds that eternity itself is the child of the Now. This may strike you up front as mumbo-jumbo, but think about this: eternity only happens now. Every moment that has ever happened, has only happened in the present. Things change, phenomena come and go, increase and diminish, but the "now" is invariant: it is always already here. "Time" is the experience of differentiation in manifestation, and it shifts according to perspective (as the theory of relativity makes clear), but all differentiation takes place in the invariant and inviolable field of Presence, or the Now (the Fourth Moment).

We may confuse the "past" with memory (which is a recollected image experienced in the present) and the future with anticipation (which is an image of an imagined future event also experienced in the present), but the "actual" past and future also only "take place" Now. Time passes now, and thus "now" is actually pre-time or atemporal: differentiations in manifestation have a delineable onset and conclusion, but the Now does not. Likewise, the "Now" should not be confused with the "specious present," that intellectual construct of the "now" which is basically a dimensionless point sandwiched between "what just happened" and "what's about to arrive."

As one student of Dzogchen puts it: "Time-space is the self-structuring of now, which is Being." This Presence is identical to what Buddhists call "true nature," buddha-nature, the essence or ground of all manifest reality. Thus, when Ecclesiastes says that God put eternity in the heart of man, this actually has a new meaning when you think that the "heart" of man lives and knows only Now, which is the source and ground of all phenomena, including all apparent "eternities."

Thus, this perspective allows for both invariance and change: the invariant Now, Absolute Presence, is the "space" in which temporal and physical change take place, and the "invariant" is at the heart of all changing things, as their presence. Buddhist traditions teach that spiritual experience will disclose both timelessness, which would be the experience of pure presence, dropping deep into presence so that manifest differentiations are no longer perceived and there is only the sense of boundless light and well-being, always already here; but also the experience of eternity, in which you are aware of the Now and the flux of manifestation simultaneously, and are aware that this has "always already" been, beyond imagining.

Peace,
Balder

 

[Balder]

Clete,

I don't know if you (or anyone else) is interested, but Hilston and I have continued our part of this debate here.

Peace,

Balder

 

[Redfin]

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