Sunday 23 June 2013

What it takes to Prove that God Exists - (Part 3 of 5): The Truth through an Analogy

Proving God's existence is a very tedious task - something few people, even thinkers - achieve during their lifetime. Why bother proving God's existence? Because Inception doesn't work. And even if it did it wouldn't really fix the problem...

One more necessary factor in "proving" God's existence is The Truth of an Analogy.

In Wikipedia under "Analogy" it seems that some committee member decided to best define "Analogy" with the meticulously cumbersome:  
cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process.

I prefer the Google quick definition:




Since the beginning of time Man has had the capacity to think and articulate things metaphorically using similes and metaphors. Without them literature would be sloggish and in a cold Sovietesque way. Grammar Girl (my quick grammatical help-guide) gives "Simile and Metaphor" this sense:
Metaphors and similes both call attention to how two different things are similar, so people listening to you can apply the qualities of one thing to the other.

Though She (in this case Stever Robbins) doesn't link the notions of "Analogy" with "Simile" or "Metaphor" but you discover a similarity instantly.

Boiled down to just the essentials you will remember taking the SAT and having to choose a multiple choice that corresponded to the proportion represented mathematically such as:

1:2::2:4
Possibly represented in literature as such:

House : Family :: Beehive : Bees
or
As a "house" is to a "family" - so is a "beehive" to "bees"

Metaphors, Allegories and Hyperboles such as this one taken from Shakespeare show our mind's capability of 'connecting the dots' so-to-speak, of being able to see the similiarity yet their differences.
 
 All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; - As you Like it, 2/7 

Mathematics and Physics especially requires the use of especially mathematical proportions. There is no need to assert some sort of "intelligent design" but that of our own intelligence. Our own minds' capabilities, and its use within Math and Physics - beyond that of literature tells us that it is applicable to reality. Our minds can retrieve from reality, certain real proportions. The above proportions are valid in their own ways (obviously Shakespeare's should be taken 'allegorically').

Finally an analogy which we draw from reality - I think this could be the most difficult part of what it takes to prove God's existence, for example

a Human : Living :: a Being : Doing
 
The example is of a Philosophical abstraction. Instead of "a Human" just about any other real thing (purely mental concepts are difficult to "abstract" since they are already abstract but are in some ways also possible as well to be conducted to "a Being").
 
As a real Human Being, say "Thomas", is in reality and is alive i denote that his act of being is "living", since that is what he does. This connection "a Human - Living" can be abstracted to "a Being - Doing". Do you see the abstraction in the above analogy? Taken one more step above it could be presented as such as:

Thomas : Blogging :: a Human : Living :: a Being : Doing

 
 This analogy is presented in so-to-speak "real-time". Notice that "a Being" is both, on the one hand, a noun (ex. a human being), as well as a verb? We're not constraining ourselves to do doing a Linguistic Analysis (i.e. Philosophy of Language) but we're trying to find out the reasons behind these occurrences. In this case we see that to be something - be it "a human" or "a car" or anything else requires us to be "a being" and that that being is in action, is Doing.
 
Therefore: All things are beings and all beings are doing (what Aristotle would have called 'Act') and that if we use a valid analogy the truth behind the 'logic' of the 'ana-logy' is not lost.
 
 

 
Part 4 is on Causation
 





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