A Mississippian's Redneck Philosophy
Can God and Empiricism coexist? The pandemic accelerated the idea that "science" is incompatible with faith and religion, but I'm not entirely sure Aristotle would agree.
I’ve been in a back and forth with an individual who describes himself as an empiricist, a follower of Aristotle, in that he proposes that reality is definable and identifiable and tangible as we experience it. In other words, if we could explain how and why something was, what its purpose and uses were, then we could explain what it was.
This gentleman is clearly versed in Aristotelian philosophy and according to his comments, there is no room for religion or a belief in God in my reasoning because such things are supernatural, and not subject to the senses; therefore, under Aristotelian rules, they are not real and a waste of time.
I’ve been defending my reasoning through my own experiences and faith but doing so with the reasoning of Aristotle seemed more productive. For all the denial of God, it should be noted that Aristotle’s own reasoning led him to theorize the existence of a single, supreme “unmoved mover”, which he called “God”.
For both Plato and Aristotle, as for most ancient ethicists, the central problem of ethics was the achievement of happiness. “Happiness”, as in our Declaration of Independence, was not defined as a pleasant state of mind but rather a good human life, or a life of human flourishing. Jumping forward a few thousand years, Immanuel Kant, most certainly an empiricist, called that condition the “Kingdom of Ends”, stating that in a true Kingdom of Ends, acting virtuously will be rewarded with happiness. In his writings on religion, Kant interprets the Kingdom of God as a religious symbol for the moral reality of the Kingdom of Ends. As such, it is the primary goal of both religious and political organization of human society.
Plato theorized that Forms were the permanent reality that makes a thing what it is, in contrast to the particulars that are finite and subject to change. For example, a beautiful black horse is so because it meets the Forms of beauty, the Form of the color black, and the Form of horses.
Aristotle believed in the concept of Forms (capitalized) but in a different way than Plato. He rejected the abstract Platonic notion of form and argued that every sensible object consists of both matter and form, neither of which can exist without the other. For Aristotle, matter was the undifferentiated primal element; it is that from which things develop rather than a thing in and of itself. In the above example Aristotle would simply say it is a horse and beauty and color are incidental because if it was not a horse, neither of the other two can exist.
Curiously, even though Aristotle claimed reality resides in things that can be sensed, he also further posited the existence of a prime mover, or unmoved mover, i.e., pure form distinct and apart from matter, eternal and immutable. Aristotle’s fundamental principle is that everything that is in motion is moved by something else. He then argues that there cannot be an infinite series of moved movers. So, if it is true that when A is in motion there must be some B that moves A, then if B is itself in motion there must be some C moving B, and so on, but the series cannot go on forever, and so it must come to an end in some X that is a cause of motion but does not move itself—an unmoved mover.
Since the motion it causes is everlasting, this X must itself be an eternal substance. It must:
Lack matter, for it cannot come into existence or go out of existence by turning into anything else.
Lack potentiality, for the mere power to cause motion would not ensure the sempiternity of motion. It must, therefore, be pure actuality (energeia).
For Aristotle, the revolving heavens lack the possibility of substantial change, but they must possess potential, because each heavenly body has the power to move elsewhere in space. Since these bodies are in motion, there must be a “mover” – and it must be a motionless mover and because that would involve a change, such a mover could not act as a cause - but Aristotle theorized it could act as a final cause - an object of love - because being loved does not involve any change in the beloved. The stars and planets seek to imitate the perfection of the unmoved mover by moving about the Earth in a circle, considered by the early philosophers to be the most perfect of shapes.
For this to be the case, the heavenly bodies must have souls capable of feeling love for the unmoved mover. “Upon such a principle depend the heavens and the world of nature”, concludes Aristotle.
Eventually, Aristotle reasons himself to a point where he is prepared to call the unmoved mover “God.” God must exist outside and above the world and the life of God, he theorizes, must be like the very best of human lives. The delight that a human being takes in the most sublime moments of philosophical contemplation is a perpetual state for God.
Of what, Aristotle asks, does God think? He must think of something—otherwise, he is no better than a sleeping person - and whatever are His thoughts, he must think of them eternally. Either he thinks about himself, or he thinks about something else, but the value of a thought depends on the value of what it is a thought of, so, if God were thinking of anything other than himself, he would be somehow degraded.
So, he must be thinking of himself, the supreme being, and his life is an endless cycle of thinking about thinking.
Unsurprisingly, every empiricist winds up in the same place as Aristotle, needing a placeholder to explain the unexplainable. In his “Critique of Pure Reason”, Kant filled that gap by saying that for the sake of morality and as a ground for reason, humans were justified in believing in God even though God’s existence cannot be empirically proven.
If Aristotle has room in his conceptions for God AND reason, who am I to question him?
At least that is my take.
But I’m just a Christian redneck from Mississippi, so what do I know?
The "winking God." He's blinking, and every blink is an epoch. For an eternity, can even God see every fractional second?
Maybeso. The concept is a God that IS the universe.
I'm not particularly "religious" ... but I'm not stupid. I see a potential for God's Hand in everything. From the Big Bang on. But it's hard for me. But, and Ultimate AI from the prior Universe, setting up this one:? Blaspheme! Possible. And a discussion point.
But I have SO many deeply Christian friends, and I never contradict them. Because, hey, I have no basis for being "right". As an agnostic ... where can I go with that?
Closet Christian with pure (not the F'd Up current communists) doubts.