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Scepticism regarding the Nature of GodPage 2Man cannot leave or transcend his own mind; yet the claim to have transcended it in a special case nevertheless remains a human assertion. True, one could reply that Man is, actually, able to transcend the limits of his own mind, as was admitted above in the example of forming an idea of infinity. Or, it could even be held that the very nature of consciousness is a kind of self-transcendence, whereby we obtain knowledge and experience of something extra-mental. Yet this would still be a natural way of obtaining knowledge of something; and, since it is natural,, this method tells us that every conception, reasoning or idea, however capable of referring to something extra-mental or super-human, remains a product of the human mind. One might, indeed, call such products of the mind inspired; one might conceive, as e.g. Hegel did, of Man and his mind as a mere instrument of self-existent ideas, part of a world-mind, (a logos ) as having Man, and not Man having ideas. But, then, the Divine is immanent to Man and open to the different interpretations possible within the human mind. No opposition, no contradiction between God and Man is then possible by Man. The Divine is, then, not only immanent, but exclusively to be thought about within the condition of human reason, which, in this case, is conceived to be human and Divine at the same time. To human reason, even if conceived as a Divine instrument, the human way of reasoning remains adequate, with all its doubt; one would think it to be more Divine, the more it follows its human ways, its conditions of reaching the truth, of sincerely doubting and settling doubts by reason. Any kind of non-rational, 'religious belief', any claim to know by non-human criteria, that God speaks, may turn out to be just that, a kind of idolatrous illusion that is against 'the will of God', one that He is, allegedly, seeking to avoid. Specifically, Man's awareness of the inconceivable 'otherness' of God should very seriously alert him to be aware of the questionability of this line of thinking (against the Barthians.) 2 One formulation for God is: the unknown region of the All of Reality, a region by means of which an entirely different perspective is added to the present perspective of the known part of the world, because the unknown region, given the bearing that it has upon the known, must contain the 'reason of being and quality' of the known part of the world, its ratio esendi et qualitatis; so, the unknown region of the world (not only its 'known' part), a region that is, among other things, certainly spiritual and mind-like, seems to be one direction in which Divine existence must be located. 3 The picture of reality, as received by our consciousness, is built up from parts which, as they merge, set in motion corresponding faculties in our consciousness. These regions of our consciousness which, at the same time, imply or indicate the various regions of reality, are markedly different in terms of the factor of continuity or inner coherence. The most obviously coherent area is the sensuous part of the picture provided by vision: the coloured visual field. The acoustic field, also seems to be continuous in itself; when attention is drawn to the acoustic sense, no absolute 'silence' seems to exist. The same applies to the tactile field when the auto-tactual sensation is focused on. To some extent, smell and taste may also be considered to be continuous. |
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