If my life as a physicist has taught me anything at all, it's that Plato was right: Modern physics has made abundantly clear that
the ultimate nature of reality isn't what it seems.
One Berkeley evening in 1990, while my friend Bill Poirier and I were sitting around speculating about
the ultimate nature of reality, I suddenly had an idea: Our reality isn't just described by mathematics — it is mathematics, in a very specific sense.
Naturalists don't agree with each other about
the ultimate nature of reality (though all of them would call their pet theory «natural»), they don't agree about the foundation and content of morality (provided they don't deny its existence altogether) and I could go on and on to list the countless varieties of naturalism out there.
One idea often associated with this tradition is that objective, impersonal knowledge of
the ultimate nature of reality is a will - o» - the - wisp.
Not exact matches
«My point is that any summary conclusion jumping from our conviction
of the existence
of such an order
of nature to the easy assumption that there is an
ultimate reality which, in some unexplained way, is to be appealed to for the removal
of the perplexity, constitutes the great refusal
of rationality to assert its rights.»
It is one
of the central, but one
of the most disturbing, insights humans have had about the
nature of ultimate reality.
The Tao, the
ultimate principle
of reality, is said to exercise its influence on
nature and man not by active causation but by wu - wei, an untranslatable term for «active inaction» or, as I would prefer, «effective non-interference» or «non-interfering effectiveness.»
In this way the ontological argument, by drawing out the presupposition
of metaphysical understanding, indicates that the choice before us is between holding that there is a God and that «
reality» makes sense in some metaphysical manner, whether or not we can ever grasp what that sense is, and holding that there is no God and that any apparent metaphysical understanding
of reality can only be an illusion which does not significantly correspond to the
ultimate nature of things — unless this «nihilism» be regarded as a kind
of metaphysical understanding instead
of its blank negation.
What Greenawalt accepts as «rationality» is actually the irrational assumption that we can get along very well without employing any controversial assumptions about the
nature of ultimate reality.
This is not an
ultimate community whose solidarity is an expression
of an ahistorical human
nature or derived from some nonhuman objective
reality, but the kind
of democratic community endorsed by thinkers like Dewey.
Elsewhere, Berger elaborates by pointing out that religions provide legitimation and meaning in a distinctly «sacred» mode, that they offer claims about the
nature of ultimate reality as such, about the location
of the human condition in relation to the cosmos itself.
Is not the dialectical
nature of the Christian community and separation really not dialectical, thus not reaching the core
of ultimate reality?
The
ultimate object
of man wherein lies his greatest happiness in future life is to gain knowledge
of the
realities of things so far as his
nature allows, and do what is incumbent upon him.
Whether or not one uses the word God, we are all engaged in a discussion about the
nature — the
ultimate nature —
of reality.
Concerned with the
nature of the world ground, it is also interested in how man must relate himself to this
ultimate reality in order to achieve what, in Christianity, is called salvation.
Historic symbols and careful delineations
of the
nature of ultimate reality are both needed as necessary correctives one to the other.
Looking at these passages it is clear that the authors were investigating fundamental questions about the
nature of reality, and seeking for
ultimate principles that would explain its existence and
nature.
They maintain that the very
nature of reality is to be temporal and related to others and that even the
ultimate reality denoted by the word «God» can be properly conceived only in these terms.
However, he denies the fairness and accuracy
of this allegation, contending that his method is the only way philosophy can escape both radical skepticism about
ultimate reality and an unwarranted tendency to assume that all
of nature resembles human experience.
But whether the «
nature of things» be grounded in God, or whether God be the primordial exemplification
of «the
nature of things» with respect to an independent, abstract «category
of the
ultimate,» it is the case that both the biblical record and process - relational thought recognize a pervasive movement toward greater richness
of experience as a generic feature
of reality.
God is: the supreme or
ultimate reality, perfect in power wisdom and goodness — Merriam Webster the creator and ruler
of the universe, the source
of all moral authority, superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over
nature — Oxford Dictionary the one Supreme Being the creator and ruler
of the universe — Dictionary.com
It requires also that one resign oneself to an
ultimate irrationalism: For the one
reality that naturalism can never logically encompass is the very existence
of nature (
nature being, by definition, that which already exists); it is a philosophy, therefore, surrounded, permeated, and exceeded by a truth that is always already super naturam, and yet a philosophy that one can not seriously entertain except by scrupulously refusing to recognize this.
It rather appears to be the degree to which, in and through the experiences to which these statements point, there is effected an actual deepening and widening
of spiritual insight into the
nature of ultimate reality,
of human existence and
of the destiny
of man.
The differences seem to be over whether these tensions can be resolved through our better understanding
of nature (our position), or whether they are inherent to created
reality and can not be rationally resolved but only founded upon the
ultimate intelligibility
of absolute love.
Religious symbolism pointing to some
ultimate context
of cosmic significance, to a ground
of meaning and love, to a comprehensive preservative care, is at least not incompatible with what we now know about the logic
of emergence and he
nature of physical
reality.
Although they generally agree that mystery is in some sense gracious, salvific, and fulfilling, there are endless variations in their imaginative envisagements
of the
nature of ultimate reality.
Merriam Webster defines «mystical» in concrete terms as «involving or having the
nature of an individual's direct subjective communion with God or
ultimate reality.»
> This is how science is supposed to work for the
ultimate arbitrator
of reality is Mother
Nature and not the scientist.