Jack777
January 15th 2005, 01:42 PM
AND IN TRUTH, AS I HAVE NO GROUND FOR BELIEVING THAT DEITY IS DECEITFUL, AND AS INDEED, I HAVE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED THE REASONS BY WHICH THE EXISTENCE OF DEITY OF ANY KIND IS ESTABLISHED, THE GROUND OF DOUBT THAT RESTS ONLY ON THIS SUPPOSITION IS SLIGHT, AND SO TO SPEAK METAPHYSICAL. BUT, THAT I MAY BE ABLE WHOLLY TO REMOVE IT, I MUST INQUIRE WHETHER THERE IS A GOD, I MUST EXAMINE LIKEWISE WHETHER HE CAN BE A DECEIVER; FOR WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF THESE TWO TRUTHS, I DO NOT SEE THAT I CAN EVER BE CERTAIN OF ANYTHING....
...BUT BEFORE I EXAMINE THIS WITH MORE ATTENTION, AND PASS ON TO THE CONSIDERATION OF OTHER TRUTHS THAT MAY BE EVOLVED OUT OF IT, I THINK IT PROPER TO REMAIN HERE FOR SOME TIME IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD HIMSELF--THAT I MAY PONDER AT LEISURE HIS MARVELOUS ATTRIBUTES--AND BEHOLD, ADMIRE, AND ADORE THE BEAUTY OF THIS LIGHT SO UNSPEAKABLY GREAT, AS FAR, AT LEAST, AS THE STRENGTH OF MY MIND WHICH IS TO SOME DEGREE DAZZLED BY THE SIGHT WILL PERMIT. FOR JUST AS WE LEARN BY FAITH THAT THE SUPREME FELICITY OF ANOTHER LIFE CONSISTS IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE DIVINE MAJESTY ALONE, SO EVEN NOW WE LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE THAT A LIKE MEDITATION, THOUGH INCOMPARABLY LESS PERFECT, IS THE SOURCE OF THE HIGHEST SATISFACTION OF WHICH WE ARE SUSCEPTIBLE IN THIS LIFE.
RENÉ DESCARTES
MEDITATION III
OF GOD: THAT HE EXISTS
René Descartes, Meditation III, Of God: That He Exists, in Discourse on Method, Rene Descartes, London: J. P. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 1912 Edition, Reprint 1946.
Descartes thought through the question of the existence of God and considered first the awareness of himself, then that which is external to him in a logical way. His meditations are instructive in that the delimiting factors with which mankind has as a fleshly being become manifestly obvious. From a rational view, Descartes decided that God Is. The fact that he noticed his way of knowing if indeed the man Descartes exists, has become celebrated. He is famous for the statement: "I think therefore, I am." Some have gone so far as to suggest that we think we exist and therefore that gives us being and substance. The knowledge of mankind is based on what we can know. Descartes was not so foolish to think that he exists because he thought that the did. This demonstrates the fact that our knowledge is limited to some indeterminate degree.
Logic and rational thought are certainly well appreciated gifts that we are born with to one extent or another. It is not a coincidence that John points to God as Logos as Jesus, rational and logical thought of the Highest Order. Others may meditate and conclude that God does not exist using a method of approaching reality that is different in significant ways from that which Descartes employed. Existential and experiential knowledge is limited to that which we can glean from our experiences and abstract means of acquiring what there is to know. If we are ever waiting for Godot and fully anticipate our existential and experiential expectations to be met, it may be that we could be disappointed. We might miss the arrival of God in our lives thousands of times if we innocently think that He will match what we logically conclude He is like. We may be logical but we do not possess exhaustive knowledge. God knows these limitations and we could know something of them if we might pause and reflect on the fact that no human has exhaustive knowledge of the Universe. If it is true that no one has exhaustive knowledge of the Universe, then why would we think that we would have sufficient knowledge of God based on our finite existence and experiences?
Descartes formulated a rough model by which we become self-aware at first and then become aware of the external natural world. However, Revelation from God to us, provides the means with which we can know God as He Is. No matter how well we come to know the Universe, there is the chance we will be stuck in a darkened room waiting in vain for Godot and miss God. Some choose to accept a "No Exit" in the absence of God.
We first apprehend that God is the Creator and this only because He told us that He is the Creator in Genesis 1:1. Descartes wanted to know if God might deceive him or if God is a deceiver in his critical path thinking. If God might deceive him then logically that would imply the potentiality that God does not care about him, or anyone else for that matter. Humans can only go so far in knowing that we can trust someone else. If we cannot trust someone, we usually find out the hard way and that leaves a lasting impression on us. Experience takes us to the brink of trust and leaves us there unknowing.
Existential life is that unknowing on the brink, such as expressed in The Plague and The Stranger by Albert Camus and as he writes in his The Myth of Sisyphus. It leaves us unknowing and in harm's way under conditions that we may not have any control over. Camus wrote of its sudden unannounced quality coming from nowhere seemingly--and striking fear in us, catching us off guard in The Myth of Sisyphus:
"At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."
The problem that Descartes expressed is the same problem posed to us by mere existence, mere existential life. The absurdity of life is real in this sense. Rationally and logically we know that misplaced trust may end existence as Camus expresses in The Rebel:
"In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist."
The observations of Camus are especially true today in a highly secular society. There have never been any guarantees in life apart from those of God and Camus speaks to the world as existential under our reason and existential logic alone in Helen's Exile:
"Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly."
For Camus, the philosophy of the Greeks had been revived several hundred years before and refined in the modernism of the 20th century until it passed in the absence of Faith to something deadly. Camus was a contemporary of Adolf Hitler and as such the words "triumph of the will" were familiar. Hitler deceived people as a little god holding out lies and myths along with a supposed "aristocracy of nature" and "Eternal Will," that human will could rationalize and join with in some sort of mystical tour de force that ended in tragedy and violence with 60 million casualties in WWII, along with the extermination of some 12 or so million people. The world of the survival of the fittest was being realized in its fullest potential in the Spanish Civil War, the Brown Shirt Movement in the United States, the Vichy government under Petain, and the Gulag in the Soviet government. Pushing the point to its logical end and the reasonable conclusion claimed the lives of millions and produced horror for millions who were wounded, tortured, and changed forever.
Human will had indeed become the deadly arbiter of reason for Camus. This is predictable and repeats in generation after generation for those who forget that we are limited and stay at the brink in unknowing existential reality without God. It is God Who tells us that He is the Creator and that He created us for good, not evil. Who else would any human be able to trust based on reason and logic? Like Descartes, Camus and others point out these essential facts of life.
The Truth matters existentially and experientially. Descartes and any other sane persons are not going to take a chance on a known or unknown deceiver. Descartes knew that there were those who deceive and devour others in his time. This has been ever true. Jesus came in the flesh to rescue us from absurdity and mere existentialism and liberate us from experience alone. In a large measure we are saved from reason alone and logic alone as they lead to no hope, no exit, and no life. We are saved from ourselves in many cases because we do not need any external force to enslave us. We do it just fine all by ourselves.
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all--not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men
T.S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962, NY, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company, Copyright 1968 Esme Valerie Eliot.
It is good to say this or that based on facts we know. The study of how we are put together and about animals and plants that lived millions of years ago is exciting. The contemplation of the Universe is capable of filling any of us with awe and wonder. Thomas Chalmers lived at a time when astronomy was being investigated and delivered his sermon 17 years after Hutton had died. His sermons were published one year before Lyell published Principles of Geology. Questions about Catastrophism versus Gradualism emanated from controversies between Astronomers and Geologists. Chalmers saw the Universe as God's Creation and did not see why the earth had to be a certain age. Religious people had a problem with it as Bishop Ussher had published his Annals of the World (1654) which gave the date of Creation as 4004 B.C. Veneration can be mistaken for truth sometimes. Chalmers spoke of the Creation with awe and wonder.
"Now what is the obvious and fair assumption? The world in which we live is a round ball of determined magnitude, and occupies its own place in the firmament. But when we explore the unlimited tracks of that space in which is everywhere around us, we meet with other balls of equal or superior magnitude, and from which our earth would either be invisible, or appear as small as any of those twinkling stars which are seen on the canopy of heaven. Why then suppose that this little spot, little at least in the immensity which surrounds it, should be the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence?
Thomas Chalmers, 1814, Tron Church, Glasgow
Modern Astronomy
Thomas Chalmers, Modern Astronomy, NY, NY: American Tract Society, n.d. (publication date inferred from other sources as 1829)
That awe and wonder gets missed today by some as the Theory of Evolution is used to replace God as He reveals Himself to us in the Bible. Somehow the Theory of Evolution becomes a means to ask, "hath God said?" Even Darwin attributed Creation to God. However, the Theory of Evolution thinks that we were evolved from a single combination of organic material. Is that it, is that the important thing about us? Maybe some of us have it backwards and we should decide to look at science in the light of Scripture rather than the other way. Somehow Creationists make up stories that are not true sometimes to force the issue that way.
"We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human
We have an opponent, nihilism, and it has no virtues. We have an opponent, absurdity, and it has no virtues. We think that getting conned out of money or cheated is not absurd falsely console ourselves no harm was done as it is a hard experience that is a good teacher although a cruel taskmaster and unforgiving to the point of another opponent, Death. We like to think about a lot of things but some conclude nothing can be done and stick our heads in the sand rather than deal with it by adopting the absurd notion that nothing could come after Death for us. Maybe Death comes for us and that is it and Death has a reality. It is reasonable and logical to assume that Death has no virtue if Death is a reality. Scripture says that Death is a reality. Elevating the atoms and radiation of the Universe to explain reality in contradiction of Scripture is heterodoxy that leads to that brink of unknowing. If probabilities are all one accepts, one accepts absurdity. If probability is a co-Creator with God, one has established two gods and that is absurdity. The witness of Scripture negates absurdity. It is only by Revelation that we know that God is Creator and Redeemer. All other choices are absurd. Theistic Evolution is absurd, not because of God but putting stock in the absurdity that random chance orders things so nicely that surely God ignores His Creation. It is absurd not because of Scripture but because Scripture teaches that God is the Creator, the Author, and the Finisher--the Beginning and the End of all reality in the Universe. There is no One but Him. Theistic Evolution is absurd as it introduces heterodoxy, the same kind that was introduced into Christianity by elevating Aristotle and Plato as luminaries within the Ekklesia which touted "reason" only to end up described by Camus in the 20th century as having no virtue because "...we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly." That is always what happens with God plus something, even if that something is The much vaunted "Theory of Evolution."
Tertullian illustrates this point:
"It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, 'Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?' His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor."
Tertullian, Apology, Translator, Rev. S. Thelwall, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 3, Master Christian Library Edition, Albany, OR: AGES Software Version 1.0, Copyright 1997 Ages Software, 1997.
Thales did not even unknowingly stop at the brink but walked into the well. That is the rest of the story, that thing we fear beyond the brink. The reason, logic, rationality, wisdom, and understanding that God sent to us as a man, Jesus Christ negates absurdity and the pit beyond the brink. Jesus is the Creator in Genesis 1:1.
The rational mind can apprehend that there is a God and apprehend that there must only be One. Descartes demonstrates this. However, he also demonstrates the fact that rationality alone cannot identify God. Descartes reasons that God would not deceive him, but then he wonders how might he know that? Descartes acknowledges that Faith plays a part. Our ideas help to form a basis so we might have the necessary cognitive structures and reference points why which we might be able to apprehend a knowledge of God. This knowledge must come from Revelation and that Revelation comes from God to us through His Word, the Scriptures, and His Holy Spirit.
In the whole counsel of God in His Revelation to us Scripture speaks of the Father as Creator. In the Gospel of John, John begins by identifying Jesus Christ as Creator:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."
John 1:1-3
This account of the Good News was written in a way that the Jewish Targums would immediately be brought to the mind of Jewish readers and hearers. The Logos is the same as the Memra of the Targums. Memra means the same exact thing that Logos means and is from the same root as the Hebrew word davar is from. Memra is the word used to identify God as actively working in the lives of those in the Old Testament in the Targums. Logos did not simply mean rational wisdom to those who read the Gospel of John, it referred to God the Creator actively working in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. John therefore easily identifies the Logos as the Expected One and also the One Who created the Universe as shown above. The witness of God from the first verse of the Bible is that God created the Universe in the Beginning. Paul points out in Colossians that it is Jesus Who Is the Beginning. He writes to the Colossians in part to refute the Gnostic teachings and establish in the minds of the believers of Colossae the identity of God and His Son Jesus Christ. He says of Jesus that,
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell..."
Colossians 1:16-19
Paul says further that to this end
"...Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints..."
Colossians 1:25-26
Paul is telling that the people at Colossae are Gentiles and they are of the saints of God, believers in His Ekklesia even though they are not Jews by birth. The identifications made that God is the Creator and the Redeemer, the Savior and King of the Universe apply to those who believe on Him no matter the nation or tribe, race or sex, slave or free. In this dispensation the veil has been lifted and the eyes of all opened to know that the Creator is this Redeemer and is the Savior of all. It was a mystery and hidden from the eyes of the Gentiles and God made sure that the Gentiles would know of Him personally through His Son Jesus Christ by the preacher Paul. Paul says explicitly that it is Jesus Who is working in him to bring this knowledge of God as Redeemer that is the hope of to the whole world. God intended that all would know that there is hope for Eternal Life and that it is given freely to all Who believe, Gentiles,
"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:
Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily."
Colossians 1:26-29
God wants us to know that He created the Universe because that is our first clue as to Who He is. There are many things that people might wonder and think perhaps something else or someone else might be responsible for our existence. God goes to great lengths to prove to us Who He Is for our benefit.
The rational mind can apprehend that there is a God and apprehend that there must only be One. Descartes demonstrates this. However, he also demonstrates the fact that rationality alone cannot identify God. Descartes reasons that God would not deceive him, but then he wonders how might he know that? Descartes acknowledges that Faith plays a part. Our ideas help to form a basis so we might have the necessary cognitive structures and reference points why which we might be able to apprehend a knowledge of God. This knowledge must come from Revelation and that Revelation comes from God to us through His Word, the Scriptures, and His Holy Spirit. ) to their Creator and Governor."
...BUT BEFORE I EXAMINE THIS WITH MORE ATTENTION, AND PASS ON TO THE CONSIDERATION OF OTHER TRUTHS THAT MAY BE EVOLVED OUT OF IT, I THINK IT PROPER TO REMAIN HERE FOR SOME TIME IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF GOD HIMSELF--THAT I MAY PONDER AT LEISURE HIS MARVELOUS ATTRIBUTES--AND BEHOLD, ADMIRE, AND ADORE THE BEAUTY OF THIS LIGHT SO UNSPEAKABLY GREAT, AS FAR, AT LEAST, AS THE STRENGTH OF MY MIND WHICH IS TO SOME DEGREE DAZZLED BY THE SIGHT WILL PERMIT. FOR JUST AS WE LEARN BY FAITH THAT THE SUPREME FELICITY OF ANOTHER LIFE CONSISTS IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE DIVINE MAJESTY ALONE, SO EVEN NOW WE LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE THAT A LIKE MEDITATION, THOUGH INCOMPARABLY LESS PERFECT, IS THE SOURCE OF THE HIGHEST SATISFACTION OF WHICH WE ARE SUSCEPTIBLE IN THIS LIFE.
RENÉ DESCARTES
MEDITATION III
OF GOD: THAT HE EXISTS
René Descartes, Meditation III, Of God: That He Exists, in Discourse on Method, Rene Descartes, London: J. P. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 1912 Edition, Reprint 1946.
Descartes thought through the question of the existence of God and considered first the awareness of himself, then that which is external to him in a logical way. His meditations are instructive in that the delimiting factors with which mankind has as a fleshly being become manifestly obvious. From a rational view, Descartes decided that God Is. The fact that he noticed his way of knowing if indeed the man Descartes exists, has become celebrated. He is famous for the statement: "I think therefore, I am." Some have gone so far as to suggest that we think we exist and therefore that gives us being and substance. The knowledge of mankind is based on what we can know. Descartes was not so foolish to think that he exists because he thought that the did. This demonstrates the fact that our knowledge is limited to some indeterminate degree.
Logic and rational thought are certainly well appreciated gifts that we are born with to one extent or another. It is not a coincidence that John points to God as Logos as Jesus, rational and logical thought of the Highest Order. Others may meditate and conclude that God does not exist using a method of approaching reality that is different in significant ways from that which Descartes employed. Existential and experiential knowledge is limited to that which we can glean from our experiences and abstract means of acquiring what there is to know. If we are ever waiting for Godot and fully anticipate our existential and experiential expectations to be met, it may be that we could be disappointed. We might miss the arrival of God in our lives thousands of times if we innocently think that He will match what we logically conclude He is like. We may be logical but we do not possess exhaustive knowledge. God knows these limitations and we could know something of them if we might pause and reflect on the fact that no human has exhaustive knowledge of the Universe. If it is true that no one has exhaustive knowledge of the Universe, then why would we think that we would have sufficient knowledge of God based on our finite existence and experiences?
Descartes formulated a rough model by which we become self-aware at first and then become aware of the external natural world. However, Revelation from God to us, provides the means with which we can know God as He Is. No matter how well we come to know the Universe, there is the chance we will be stuck in a darkened room waiting in vain for Godot and miss God. Some choose to accept a "No Exit" in the absence of God.
We first apprehend that God is the Creator and this only because He told us that He is the Creator in Genesis 1:1. Descartes wanted to know if God might deceive him or if God is a deceiver in his critical path thinking. If God might deceive him then logically that would imply the potentiality that God does not care about him, or anyone else for that matter. Humans can only go so far in knowing that we can trust someone else. If we cannot trust someone, we usually find out the hard way and that leaves a lasting impression on us. Experience takes us to the brink of trust and leaves us there unknowing.
Existential life is that unknowing on the brink, such as expressed in The Plague and The Stranger by Albert Camus and as he writes in his The Myth of Sisyphus. It leaves us unknowing and in harm's way under conditions that we may not have any control over. Camus wrote of its sudden unannounced quality coming from nowhere seemingly--and striking fear in us, catching us off guard in The Myth of Sisyphus:
"At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."
The problem that Descartes expressed is the same problem posed to us by mere existence, mere existential life. The absurdity of life is real in this sense. Rationally and logically we know that misplaced trust may end existence as Camus expresses in The Rebel:
"In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist."
The observations of Camus are especially true today in a highly secular society. There have never been any guarantees in life apart from those of God and Camus speaks to the world as existential under our reason and existential logic alone in Helen's Exile:
"Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly."
For Camus, the philosophy of the Greeks had been revived several hundred years before and refined in the modernism of the 20th century until it passed in the absence of Faith to something deadly. Camus was a contemporary of Adolf Hitler and as such the words "triumph of the will" were familiar. Hitler deceived people as a little god holding out lies and myths along with a supposed "aristocracy of nature" and "Eternal Will," that human will could rationalize and join with in some sort of mystical tour de force that ended in tragedy and violence with 60 million casualties in WWII, along with the extermination of some 12 or so million people. The world of the survival of the fittest was being realized in its fullest potential in the Spanish Civil War, the Brown Shirt Movement in the United States, the Vichy government under Petain, and the Gulag in the Soviet government. Pushing the point to its logical end and the reasonable conclusion claimed the lives of millions and produced horror for millions who were wounded, tortured, and changed forever.
Human will had indeed become the deadly arbiter of reason for Camus. This is predictable and repeats in generation after generation for those who forget that we are limited and stay at the brink in unknowing existential reality without God. It is God Who tells us that He is the Creator and that He created us for good, not evil. Who else would any human be able to trust based on reason and logic? Like Descartes, Camus and others point out these essential facts of life.
The Truth matters existentially and experientially. Descartes and any other sane persons are not going to take a chance on a known or unknown deceiver. Descartes knew that there were those who deceive and devour others in his time. This has been ever true. Jesus came in the flesh to rescue us from absurdity and mere existentialism and liberate us from experience alone. In a large measure we are saved from reason alone and logic alone as they lead to no hope, no exit, and no life. We are saved from ourselves in many cases because we do not need any external force to enslave us. We do it just fine all by ourselves.
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us--if at all--not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men
T.S. Eliot
The Hollow Men
T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962, NY, NY: Harcourt Brace & Company, Copyright 1968 Esme Valerie Eliot.
It is good to say this or that based on facts we know. The study of how we are put together and about animals and plants that lived millions of years ago is exciting. The contemplation of the Universe is capable of filling any of us with awe and wonder. Thomas Chalmers lived at a time when astronomy was being investigated and delivered his sermon 17 years after Hutton had died. His sermons were published one year before Lyell published Principles of Geology. Questions about Catastrophism versus Gradualism emanated from controversies between Astronomers and Geologists. Chalmers saw the Universe as God's Creation and did not see why the earth had to be a certain age. Religious people had a problem with it as Bishop Ussher had published his Annals of the World (1654) which gave the date of Creation as 4004 B.C. Veneration can be mistaken for truth sometimes. Chalmers spoke of the Creation with awe and wonder.
"Now what is the obvious and fair assumption? The world in which we live is a round ball of determined magnitude, and occupies its own place in the firmament. But when we explore the unlimited tracks of that space in which is everywhere around us, we meet with other balls of equal or superior magnitude, and from which our earth would either be invisible, or appear as small as any of those twinkling stars which are seen on the canopy of heaven. Why then suppose that this little spot, little at least in the immensity which surrounds it, should be the exclusive abode of life and of intelligence?
Thomas Chalmers, 1814, Tron Church, Glasgow
Modern Astronomy
Thomas Chalmers, Modern Astronomy, NY, NY: American Tract Society, n.d. (publication date inferred from other sources as 1829)
That awe and wonder gets missed today by some as the Theory of Evolution is used to replace God as He reveals Himself to us in the Bible. Somehow the Theory of Evolution becomes a means to ask, "hath God said?" Even Darwin attributed Creation to God. However, the Theory of Evolution thinks that we were evolved from a single combination of organic material. Is that it, is that the important thing about us? Maybe some of us have it backwards and we should decide to look at science in the light of Scripture rather than the other way. Somehow Creationists make up stories that are not true sometimes to force the issue that way.
"We do not place especial value on the possession of a virtue until we notice its total absence in our opponent."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Human, All Too Human
We have an opponent, nihilism, and it has no virtues. We have an opponent, absurdity, and it has no virtues. We think that getting conned out of money or cheated is not absurd falsely console ourselves no harm was done as it is a hard experience that is a good teacher although a cruel taskmaster and unforgiving to the point of another opponent, Death. We like to think about a lot of things but some conclude nothing can be done and stick our heads in the sand rather than deal with it by adopting the absurd notion that nothing could come after Death for us. Maybe Death comes for us and that is it and Death has a reality. It is reasonable and logical to assume that Death has no virtue if Death is a reality. Scripture says that Death is a reality. Elevating the atoms and radiation of the Universe to explain reality in contradiction of Scripture is heterodoxy that leads to that brink of unknowing. If probabilities are all one accepts, one accepts absurdity. If probability is a co-Creator with God, one has established two gods and that is absurdity. The witness of Scripture negates absurdity. It is only by Revelation that we know that God is Creator and Redeemer. All other choices are absurd. Theistic Evolution is absurd, not because of God but putting stock in the absurdity that random chance orders things so nicely that surely God ignores His Creation. It is absurd not because of Scripture but because Scripture teaches that God is the Creator, the Author, and the Finisher--the Beginning and the End of all reality in the Universe. There is no One but Him. Theistic Evolution is absurd as it introduces heterodoxy, the same kind that was introduced into Christianity by elevating Aristotle and Plato as luminaries within the Ekklesia which touted "reason" only to end up described by Camus in the 20th century as having no virtue because "...we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly." That is always what happens with God plus something, even if that something is The much vaunted "Theory of Evolution."
Tertullian illustrates this point:
"It therefore served Thales of Miletus quite right, when, star-gazing as he walked with all the eyes he had, he had the mortification of falling into a well, and was unmercifully twitted by an Egyptian, who said to him, 'Is it because you found nothing on earth to look at, that you think you ought to confine your gaze to the sky?' His fall, therefore, is a figurative picture of the philosophers; of those, I mean, who persist in applying their studies to a vain purpose, since they indulge a stupid curiosity on natural objects, which they ought rather (intelligently to direct) to their Creator and Governor."
Tertullian, Apology, Translator, Rev. S. Thelwall, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 3, Master Christian Library Edition, Albany, OR: AGES Software Version 1.0, Copyright 1997 Ages Software, 1997.
Thales did not even unknowingly stop at the brink but walked into the well. That is the rest of the story, that thing we fear beyond the brink. The reason, logic, rationality, wisdom, and understanding that God sent to us as a man, Jesus Christ negates absurdity and the pit beyond the brink. Jesus is the Creator in Genesis 1:1.
The rational mind can apprehend that there is a God and apprehend that there must only be One. Descartes demonstrates this. However, he also demonstrates the fact that rationality alone cannot identify God. Descartes reasons that God would not deceive him, but then he wonders how might he know that? Descartes acknowledges that Faith plays a part. Our ideas help to form a basis so we might have the necessary cognitive structures and reference points why which we might be able to apprehend a knowledge of God. This knowledge must come from Revelation and that Revelation comes from God to us through His Word, the Scriptures, and His Holy Spirit.
In the whole counsel of God in His Revelation to us Scripture speaks of the Father as Creator. In the Gospel of John, John begins by identifying Jesus Christ as Creator:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."
John 1:1-3
This account of the Good News was written in a way that the Jewish Targums would immediately be brought to the mind of Jewish readers and hearers. The Logos is the same as the Memra of the Targums. Memra means the same exact thing that Logos means and is from the same root as the Hebrew word davar is from. Memra is the word used to identify God as actively working in the lives of those in the Old Testament in the Targums. Logos did not simply mean rational wisdom to those who read the Gospel of John, it referred to God the Creator actively working in the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. John therefore easily identifies the Logos as the Expected One and also the One Who created the Universe as shown above. The witness of God from the first verse of the Bible is that God created the Universe in the Beginning. Paul points out in Colossians that it is Jesus Who Is the Beginning. He writes to the Colossians in part to refute the Gnostic teachings and establish in the minds of the believers of Colossae the identity of God and His Son Jesus Christ. He says of Jesus that,
"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell..."
Colossians 1:16-19
Paul says further that to this end
"...Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints..."
Colossians 1:25-26
Paul is telling that the people at Colossae are Gentiles and they are of the saints of God, believers in His Ekklesia even though they are not Jews by birth. The identifications made that God is the Creator and the Redeemer, the Savior and King of the Universe apply to those who believe on Him no matter the nation or tribe, race or sex, slave or free. In this dispensation the veil has been lifted and the eyes of all opened to know that the Creator is this Redeemer and is the Savior of all. It was a mystery and hidden from the eyes of the Gentiles and God made sure that the Gentiles would know of Him personally through His Son Jesus Christ by the preacher Paul. Paul says explicitly that it is Jesus Who is working in him to bring this knowledge of God as Redeemer that is the hope of to the whole world. God intended that all would know that there is hope for Eternal Life and that it is given freely to all Who believe, Gentiles,
"To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus:
Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily."
Colossians 1:26-29
God wants us to know that He created the Universe because that is our first clue as to Who He is. There are many things that people might wonder and think perhaps something else or someone else might be responsible for our existence. God goes to great lengths to prove to us Who He Is for our benefit.
The rational mind can apprehend that there is a God and apprehend that there must only be One. Descartes demonstrates this. However, he also demonstrates the fact that rationality alone cannot identify God. Descartes reasons that God would not deceive him, but then he wonders how might he know that? Descartes acknowledges that Faith plays a part. Our ideas help to form a basis so we might have the necessary cognitive structures and reference points why which we might be able to apprehend a knowledge of God. This knowledge must come from Revelation and that Revelation comes from God to us through His Word, the Scriptures, and His Holy Spirit. ) to their Creator and Governor."