Three Circles

                                Three Circles


Just because God gave us a brain it doesn't mean He expected us to explain everything with it rationally. The fact that God's existence cannot be proved rationally says as much about rationalism as it does about God. There are, presumably, other ways of knowing. And we shouldn't put pressure on ourselves to logically explain and justify everything. That would not be wise because it can't be done and only or a fool or group of them would attempt to do it.

Suppose knowledge and truth are a function of working intelligence. What about the product of the collective intelligence of humanity down through history to the present and far into our future and our end. This set of rational ideas will be large ( for us ) but finite. What about the ideas that, even now, lie beyond it? The former represents the way civilisation could go, i.e. a rational or, worse, a positivist approach. The latter set of ideas includes the rational but largely goes beyond it. Suppose you are a rationalist though and that is how you define truth.

Will you, as St. Thomas Aquinas has said, step out into the darkness that lies beyond the rational to touch the mysteries and attempt to know them because your mind insists on knowing the truth even if it is too big for you, too deep or will you recoil in fear and terror from this dark realm that is too much for our your rational mode of knowing? If you stand in this darkness beyond the provable and fear that your next step could kill you, will you make a leap of faith if you have heard in old religious books that you will not fall? Or, will you retreat to your familiar world of rationally-based knowledge and truth which has been the character of the pursuit of wisdom on this planet for centuries and might be for centuries more? Alone at night will you now feel cheated that you know that there are truths out there which cannot be accounted for in a purely rational model? Maybe one day, as a species, we will have exhausted the rational approach but will we still stubbornly accept no other? Maybe we will then have a remarkable TOE but maybe as a species we will be stunted and restless for new vistas without even fully realising it. Perhaps, if another advanced race out there in the dark realm could advise us they would say that the basic rule for a civilisation to get to the next level is to go beyond the purely rational. Not to drop it but to transcend it and enlarge our definition of truth, of knowledge, of reality, etc.

Personally for you though, in light of your recent experience, doubt gnaws at you and you remember your journey to the edge of reason and the threshold of the dark realm. You hear a report about Someone who lives in the dark realm but you must make the leap that terrified you to meet Him. You can't bring yourself to do it but a more intuitive, trusting friend can and he is not afraid. He returns with stories of many mysteries from this Stranger, adventures in truth and reality, extraordinary places. But to experience these you must trust the Enigmatic Tale-teller, you must believe Him because these ideas can't be grasped rationally. He requires an act of faith and together with the leap of faith you don't really have to do anymore except be good and explore at your own pace and, of course, have a lot of fun.

You burn to ask your friend a question and eventually you say to him, 'Tell me about truth.'
Your friend turns to you and says 'I was taught that truth is a deep ocean but all that concerns man for now is the three circles, that is, the rational which he has almost filled and also the real which includes the rational but also includes the value of subjective experiences such as beauty, meaning and love which man knows about but tries to analyse and reduce. Sometimes doing this he concludes that they are illusory because unprovable and this is a mistake. Finally, there is the transcendent  circle which includes the first two but also introduces 'imaginary' concepts because they do work but which are deep mysteries in themselves.'

Curious, you ask your friend 'Can you tell me more about the real and the transcendent circles?'

Your friend replies, 'About the real, remember that your feelings and your responses to love and beauty are real – ask your heart- so if they are real aren't they relevant in a discussion about God whom you deny? That is, if they are real don't they point to God who is, in a sense, Ultimate Reality? Don't you see that when you expand beyond the purely rational and provable you have access to more ideas that can help you discern the truth on the really big questions?’

About the transcendent, it utilises mysterious entities whose very existence and not just their veracity is questioned but which have extraordinary explanatory power if we just assume they are true or, in some cases, that they exist. Such things are the axioms that underlie our mathematics and logic – Can you prove any true? A better example for you might be the imaginary numbers, numbers which in one sense defy logic but their existence gives us the rich set of complex numbers which is the basis of complex analysis which is used in quantum theory to describe things like wave functions and Hilbert spaces which, in turn, are vital to the most successful theory we have – Quantum Field Theory all from the imagined phantom that is the square root of negative unity, something that should not be and hence is a mystery but a very fruitful one. Now do you see?'

'I'm beginning to, thanks, let's go!' you reply.

'You have now stepped into a larger reality that is not knowledge-based but is instead a hierarchy of levels of being and with many levels to it.' you friend says.

Feeling no fear for the first time in days, maybe in years, and like the cobwebs have been blown out of your head by a cold but refreshing breeze you can now almost pick up the faint music of truth for the first time as opposed to the low drone of a small conception of same. You now think to yourself before leaving that Reality is much bigger and brighter that you ever thought and that is very good.