 H.B. Augustine is a senior undergraduate student at Denison University studying Philosophy and Communication. He has started a publishing organization called "Integral Publishing House" - contact him at august_h@denison.edu if interested in publishing Integral material.Actually, God
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I will make this response to Be Scofield's response to my article "The Simplest and Only Feasible Proof of God"on an Integral ontological argument for God as efficient as possible, and will proceed by listing all concerns that he raises and clarifying them to explain their insufficiencies and inconsistencies.
To begin, Scofield has a problem with the title of my article, as well as with how short the article itself is. Yet just because the holon H.B. Augustine titles an article, “The Simplest and Only Feasible Proof of God,” does not mean that H.B. himself is the sole author of such work. What I mean is that perhaps what I wrote may be the simplest and only feasible proof of God possible. Still, to claim such a thing does not elicit arrogance.
I am not claiming to be the originator of this argument. Even the originator is not the originator. The first human being to grasp and understand the Truth of an Absolute did not literally create this Truth; he or she did not merely decide to invent something, call it “True,” and subsequently take full praise, full credit, for its “authorship” (but rather discovery). Likewise, I am not the first to invent/discover the Ontological Argument for God, nor am I the first to invent/discover Integral Theory.
Perhaps “A Brief History of Everything,” and Integral Theory itself, is too arrogant and needs to be trimmed down a bit with regard to intellectual humility. Yet when we consider the whole unraveling of human intellectual history, every claim – from a certain point of view – is quite arrogant. I stand beside the title of my article because it accurately describes what that work is. Why is my proof “simple?” – because of its brevity. Why is my proof “the only feasible” one? – because its type is in fact the only feasible one.
Only an ontological argument can prove God. Cosmological, inductive, or empirical arguments such as Intelligent Design ultimately fail because they do not guarantee Certainty. Despite how likely the Existence of God is based on observation of cosmic design, the mere possibility that the Universe could have manifested as such without God makes the God-inference just as meaningless – because for something as philosophically important as God, probability just will not do. Rather, only Certainty can pass when considering issues as prolific and significant as this.
Although only ontological arguments for God can work, still, I believe past ones have been unsuccessful because they come from 1st-tier cognitive ability; thus, the significance of an Integral ontological argument. Why is the argument I presented Integral? The argument is Integral because it deduces from an Absolute that transcends God before even positing God.
Fundamentally, Integral is Integral because a) it begins with the acceptance of this Absolute and b) it comprehends all primary ways “It” manifests as the World. St. Anselm “introduced” the Ontological Argument without accepting “The Absolute” as a given. Just what is The Absolute?
The Absolute is what I meant by “pure possibility” and “pure potentiality” in my article. Surely, the existence of anything depends on the possibility for such to be the case (since if there were no possibility, then it could and would not happen). Possibility cannot be limited by any means, so – as mentioned – it contains all “possibilities and dualities of such.”
Literally, everything along with its privation is contained in The Absolute – black and white, good and evil, feminine and masculine, (quality foreign to this Universe) and (its privation), etc. ad infinitum. Ergo, a Positive, Perfect, or Greatest Being Exists in the Absolute. According to definition, “God” is not dualistic in nature. God Is not All-Powerful and not-All-Powerful simultaneously, for instance. Being All-Powerful aligns with Positivity, Perfection, and Greatness only.
Scofield uses relativist arguments in an attempt to refute my incorporation of the term “great.” For instance, who are we to say what “Greatest” is? Perhaps we can apply this same argument to The Absolute. Who are we to say what “Possibility” is? Who are we to posit “Spirit?” Who are we to poke our heads beyond Flatland and begin making absolutist claims concerning The Greatest Possible Being and Its contingency on Possibility? Nonetheless (as Integral definitely stands), relativist claims – when made ironically absolutist – have already failed.
Capitalizing terms such as “Perfect,” “Positive,” and “Greatest” signifies that, because of their definition, there is nothing greater than they are. Semantically, “All-Powerful” means “As-Powerful-As-Possible” or “Most-Powerful,” just as “God” means “The Being than Which nothing greater can exist.” In this case, “greater” has to do with positivity solely – not positivity as well as negativity. Furthermore, “The Being” is precisely as it means – a manifested existence of any kind (and “manifested” can refer to any layer of the Kosmos, as opposed to just the physical plane).
In sum, the argument I present is Integral as well as ontological because it centers on the significance of The Absolute first (like Integral), and because it acknowledges the implications that this has based on the significance of “God.” Without first accepting The Absolute, or “Possibility,” the Existence of God does not necessarily follow; the idea of God existing within one's mind is one thing, while the possibility of God Existing For the entire Kosmos is another.
Scofield alludes to past articles I have written about God. I will concede that none of these works successfully proves God – they simply describe God. As mentioned, only an ontological argument can prove The Ultimate, and past arguments I have used are ignorantly cosmological (if still compelling).
Scofield claims that what I meant by pure possibility and pure potentiality implies Santa Claus exists – and this is True. Santa Claus does and must exist in some parallel Universe, regardless of whether such exists at or below the fifth dimension.
Scofield asks which version of God I embrace, and I reply “all of them.” God Is as the theist, pantheist, deist, and panentheist together preach. After all, this (again) is an Integral ontological argument for God. Just as we with vision-logic understand, these versions of God are complementary and compatible with one another, just as science and spirituality (among countless other things) are.
Scofield raises the classic “problem of evil” by asking how an Omnibenevolent God Could Allow for suffering of any kind. In consideration of this objection, we simply must see that a World with suffering in it is better than one always without it because the former is able to evolve, to complexify, to grow, while the other is not. There is no synthesis without both thesis and antithesis. There is no progress without struggle. Suffering is a natural consequence of struggle. Struggle arises from the friction between new and old, change and chaos coming from the novelty guided by creative potential. God Is Omnibenevolent in that God Allows everything to progress toward a sort of Chardinian Omega Point. Unfortunately, this progress brings suffering – but Certainly, the end justifies its means. After all, there would be no means if there was no end and the end can only exist by virtue of process – by virtue of its means.
Scofield claims that Satan exists by using the same logic as I to prove God. However, such rationalization is not even possible to use for Satan with which to begin, because the very denotation of Satan does not allow Satan to exist. By definition, Satan is the antithesis of God – the antithesis of an All-Positive and All-Perfect Being. By definition, God Overrules Satan and Keeps Satan from existing. If we compared God to infinite light and Satan to infinite darkness, then we would understand that God consumes Satan just as light consumes darkness. As always, but especially when using this logic, definitions matter immensely.
Scofield wants me to define the terms “holonically connected,” “celestial Kosmic blueprints,” and “Kosmos.”
- holonically connected: structured in accordance with the structure of holons, forming a holarchy (and not hierarchy)
- celestial Kosmic blueprints: (essentially) Plato's intelligible realm of Eidos or Absolute Ideas; all concepts in their Divine Forms corresponding to all beings or manifestations that illustrate the Kosmos
- Kosmos: the All in its holistic entirety: the causal or infinite realm manifested as the psychic or celestial realm manifested as the subtle or intermediate realm and the gross or terrestrial realm
Lastly, Scofield says I need not justify the existence of this or any Universe because it is self-evident. Yet as we know, self-evidence or knowledge derived from experience is never Certain the way knowledge derived from Reason is. There is a “why” to complement each “that.” Other than the fact that, the Universe exists, what remains is that the Universe exists be-cause non-existence contradicts itself and be-cause existence alone (containing no-thing to exist) is meaningless, though possible and necessary.
In conclusion, it seems Scofield's biggest problem with my article lies in his failure to distinguish between “Spirit” and “God.” “Spirit” and “The Absolute” or “Possibility” is the same, in this case. “Spirit” means “Emptiness,” “Source,” “Origin,” “Big Mind”; “God” – more poetically speaking – means “The Personality of Spirit,” and what Wilber means by “Eros” or “Spirit-in-action” as opposed to “Spirit (Alone)” or “Spirit-in-itself.”
Instead of writing “The Simplest and Only Feasible Proof of God Possible,” I could have simply stated, “'God' Is ontologically Necessary.” However, although the latter statement is True, many individuals simply would be skeptical without having seen the logical structure that deduces from and supports it. The resulting article was my attempt at conveying such logic, and this article defending it provides further closure.