Scimus autem quoniam diligentibus Deum omnia cooperantur in bonum, iis qui secundum propositum vocati sunt sancti. And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints.

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Glenn’s comment tickles my funny bone. I mentioned to my ophthalmologist, just yesterday, one of those cheat codes: that up to a point, the human body can be relied upon to heal itself. MDs have to rely on that miracle, and they do so every second they practice.

As for atheists: every thought of theirs makes God; every word of theirs makes God; every act of theirs makes God. So who are atheists kidding? Atheism is an oxymoron. Talk about a melange of characters who refuse to acknowledge the paradoxical existence of cheat codes!

Hume is one of the greats of The Scottish Enlightenment. He anticipates Gödel’s Proof and in that capacity lays philosophical groundwork for statecraft that holds a loose rein. His great interlocutor Adam Smith lays economic groundwork for the like statecraft: loose rein. Henry Home / Lord Kames is preeminent among several great jurists of The Scottish Enlightenment: again, loose rein — regard to human nature and its genius for expansion — in matters of statecraft.

The English Enlightenment focuses on dynamics of personal life. The Scottish Enlightenment focuses on dynamics of statecraft. While the former is necessary (First Amendment), the latter is more consequential (Second Amendment). The American Enlightenment mixes the interests of both Scottish and English Enlightenments, often without realizing which is more precious in the long run for national sovereignty and affairs: namely, wise regulation of the dynamics of statecraft and thus reverence for and use of foundations laid during The Scottish Enlightenment by Hume et al.

Contemporary Americans, for example, have bred almost all wisdom of statecraft from out of their progeny, leaving their nation — their own lives and welfare — exposed to a millions of envious actors by way of paralyzing into personal profit her assets for diplomacy, finance, and war-fighting. And then the most profited want to escape to Mars and New Zealand, knowing they leave behind a mess and imagining that where they want to go they will not befoul!?!

The active marker of the middle class is that in their mind they keep the thought of God. That thought is their authority and strength. It generates the visible markers of a peaceful life. Remove the thought of God from the minds of the middle class and they retrograde into Heinlein’s bad luck.

Sardondi
I’ve grown very tired of these oh-we-can-be-just-as-misguided/bad faux-admissions which are sometimes used in hopeful persuade-through-“candor” posts: the day is long gone in public discourse when that kind of thing attracts those not of your mind. There simply is no intellectual honesty left on the other side. It’s gone, leaving a kind of anti-spiritual secular fascism in its place.

But more importantly, these apparently heartfelt confessions are not true. First since I suspect the writer ordinarily doesn’t actually believe his “side” is really all that bad; and second, and more importantly, because such “admissions” tend to draw an equivalence between the opposing ideas when there is nothing of the kind. In this case the “worst” and most ignorant and aggressive “Bible-thumper” (seriously?) doesn’t carry within him/herself the absolute seething contempt and hatred for those of opposing ideas which so many of the “Darwin Thumpers”* do. It is ceding far too much to suggest that believers are essentially nothing but the other side of the aggressive anti-theist coin.

And I wish we’d just stop doing it.

• By which I mean, and suspect Mark as well meant, militant atheists and anti-theists who see their role as defenders of and proselytes for their faith.

David R. Graham to Sardondi
You touch here on a theme in Hume’s work: the contingency of all human activity — including intellectual, religious, moral, political, and scientific — and the necessity, in consequence thereof — and for the gain of happiness — of forbearance and practice of the gentle, timeless virtues in personal, professional, and civic dealings.

Kristian Holvoet
In short, Gödel showed that provability is a weaker notion than truth, no matter what axiomatic system is involved.

• Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter; p. 19

I can’t think of a more succinct passage about the need for faith (even if the author didn’t mean it as such). I get that it is about math, that is, a dialect of the language of God. But ALL our science and models are based on math. All based on a system of thought in which we KNOW there are true statements we can’t prove.

ajacksonian to Kristian Holvoet
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems are a good starting point as our universe has mathematical expression involved in its workings up and down the size scales. Application of these Theorems would help to bridge gaps to demonstrate that we do not have enough mathematical knowledge to cover all phenomena. This shies away from phenomenology but does require the acknowledgement that axiomatic forms of math actually do have a representative meaning in the forms for which it is used.

Math cannot bridge a gap between belief and an actual mathematical system built of / on axioms, but it can show that we can’t know everything and that that which is not known does exist, which requires humility on the part of scientists, and recognition that events that transpire within an existing framework that cannot be explained are perfectly fine and not to be derided [because] they simply involve a system of math that we haven’t figured out.

For believers this means that the things they see as miracles or special events are in the unknown but not the unknowable, which does take mystique around such events away, but can be used to demonstrate a different order of math that may escape us forever as we are not the ones who made or can know about the entire system [because] we are limited to being forever incomplete in our comprehension.

Put those events into the concept of incompleteness of anything within the universe and you have a fit with math which also recognizes the exact, same thing.

David R. Graham to ajacksonian
The gap is bridged from the side one wants to be going to, if that side chooses to let that happen. That far side is known to be inclined to pull components of this side across the gap. In fact, just wanting to cross the gap to the other side is already an indication that the other side is using its power of attraction. One side is like iron filings. The other side is like a magnet. It is in the nature of one to go to the other.

Some scientists preen themselves on their discovery of this and that when in fact the this and that attract scientists to discover them. The credit goes there, to the this and that. In the same way, a sculptor is attracted by the statue within to liberate it from the stone sheath which imprisons it. The statue brings forth the talent of the sculptor. Credit goes to the statue.

We praise the sculptor and the scientists when really the statue or thing studied pulled the sculptor or scientist to themselves, across the gap. Finding out about the world is not so significant a fact as the world’s wanting to be found out. It does not have to be, you know. If the world were not so attractive, we would have no use for scientists, and their fundings would not exist.

These observations inspired, during the Middle Ages, what came to be called The Cosmological Proof For The Existence Of God. Actually, they are no proof at all. They are observations, although their existential accuracy is non-deniable. Provability is weaker than truth.

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Grief or joy is the image of the activity one engages in. It is the resound, reflection, and reaction! The individual soul can be the witness without concerning itself with the good and bad of the activity. When involvement happens, good has to be experienced when good is done; evil, when evil is done. Vedanta asserts that the individual soul is, by its very nature, pure and unblemished. This is the accepted doctrine, according to Bharathiya thought. But this truth has been befogged by ignorance and neglect, so illusion (maya) pollutes the experience and the shade of ignorance breeds evil. But when beneficial activity is engaged in, clouds of illusion are scattered and the reality of the Self is realised. All beings, all souls, are pure by their very nature. Good acts remove the taints of evil deeds and preserve this essential purity. Then, the soul is led into the Godward path. The Godward urge will transform the thoughts, words, and deeds of the individual!