FOR THE SKEPTIC IN ALL OF US From the moment long ago, when we as a species became able to contemplate the world around us and not just react to it, one of the most perplexing realities our distant ancestors would have had to cope with is motion. A spear hurtling at a charging woolly mammoth; that sort of thing; or the moon and sun and stars and rivers and fire and the seasons - all moving and therefore changing. One of the earliest Greek philosophers, Zeno, argued 2500 years ago that motion and change were an illusion. His contemporary Heraclitus disagreed and believed all things are changing all the time – he called it “flux.” He cited fire as always in state of transformation: it always needs feeding and it always tends to fail if not fed. This orderly and balanced process leads to change; from kindling to ashes and heat. Nothing is lost. He saw the universe as the same – always changing and moving with nothing ever lost. The great Aristotle argued that change comes in many forms: motion, growth, generation and decay. Some changes happened naturally, some by the action of humanity. He tells us that if a stone thrown into the air had a rational thought process it would assume that it had set itself in motion. My point here is that despite having a rational mind many of us behave like the stone. Our pride assumes we are responsible for our own motion and change – and destination. Plato and Aristotle both argued that there had to be an Unmoved Mover that was the reason everything is in motion and subject to change. He likened this Unmoved Mover to a beloved who moves the lover just by being the object of love; moved by the power of attraction, not force. Saint Thomas Aquinas agreed and he chose to call that Uncaused Cause – God. You may think otherwise. amazon/Epistles-Prodigals-Catholics-strayed-stayed-ebook/dp/B00HEP4ITI/ref=la_B00AQPNUL0_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408490535&sr=1-11
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 23:23:49 +0000
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