Believing to Understand

            

            On Tuesday morning I got up with the alarm and when I went to the bathroom I was greeted by a mystery. The roll of toilet paper on the shelf above the toilet was wet all the way through. That only happens every half a year or so when I accidentally drop a roll into the toilet. I would have noticed if I’d dropped it and then took it back out to dry on the shelf because I would have been pissed off at myself for the mistake. I don’t know what happened, unless I’ve started sleepwalking, which I’ve never done in my life.
I read some of Anselm’s “Proslogion”.  He argued that in order to understand “god” one has to believe in it. But the only way that two believers can understand “god” in the same way is if they share the same dogma. There are many opposing understandings of “god” that result from the same leap of faith. If “god” can be understood through believing, since to understand anything implies knowing the truth about it, there cannot be more than one truth about “god”. The fact that leaps of faith are all very similar to one another and yet result in different understandings of “god”, this disproves the argument that understanding results from belief. It also suggests that no understanding of god can even serve as evidence that god exists. By contrast, few of the millions of people that have studied gravity have a different understanding of that law. A leap of faith may simply be a jump into a non-rational part of one’s own mind, which is a good place to go if one doesn’t take too much dogmatic baggage along and if one doesn’t sever one’s connection to reality in making the leap.
Later that morning, as I was getting ready to leave for my philosophy class, I went out on the deck to check the temperature and it felt a little too cool for shorts. Half an hour later though, when I headed out, it was too hot for pants.
I passed a crew that was fixing a sidewalk on College. The youngest of the men was on his knees scraping old mortar from used bricks.
The front entrance was closed off because some workmen were doing some renovations, so we had to go in by way of the side door. I went to the lecture theatre and then looked for an outlet to charge my phone. I found one on the side wall near the left corner of the room. A student that sits in the second row behind me told me that there are several plugs under the long desks in each row. I checked under the front row desk though and found that while there are rectangles cut to hold electrical outlets, they haven’t been installed. I could probably run a cord behind me to connect to one of the second row plugs if the need arises in the future though.
Professor Black talked a bit about our tutorials that would begin the next week because some of us have been switched to other rooms so that the TAs have an equal number of students. She mentioned something about a third alternative but then corrected herself because alternative means a choice of two.
Our lecture finished up Augustine’s speculations about time. Genesis opens with “In the beginning …” What is the nature of time? What is creation? His arguments are similar to those of Islamic philosophers of that era. Creation is empirically evident because things cry out that they were created.

Beginning → Creation → Mutability of the physical world.

Mutability and flux points to the idea of changeability. That which is changeable must have been created. Where there is no stability there is a state of becoming stable and so there is no stable being. That which has no stable being cannot self-create and so it must have a creator.
Time is a manifestation of mutability. Time tends to non-being.
The difference between “god” and a creative human being is that the artist already has the stuff to work with in time. Augustine says “god” created the world ex nihilo, meaning out of nothing and outside of time. This is the hallmark of Abrahamic religions rather than that of ancient philosophy. The Greek philosophers would call the claim that something could be created out of nothing irrational.
         There are two models:
Plato’s model of creation was outlined in Timaeus and it resembles the big bang theory. He says that time is a moving image of eternity. The divine being or demiurge acts as an artisan on stuff to make things.
          Augustine drew his model from the Ennead. He says that “god” gives stuff being.
Emanation as eternal creation has its roots in Plato. Goodness is generosity pouring out from the source of goodness like light from the sun and water from a spring.
          The Greeks would say that creating a first moment is irrational. The skeptic asks, “If god one day created the first moment, what was it doing before that?” Augustine’s joking answer is that “god” was creating hell for people that ask smart aleck questions.
          Augustine says that the creator is immutable pure being.
          The idea of there having been a beginning suggests that “god” was being stingy beforehand and wanted to be alone.
          Eternity means all of time that is wholly present now to “god”. Eternity is the paradigm. Time is the image of eternity and not the other way around.
          Aristotle says the world is eternal and has always been here, so no need to explain what is there.
          A temporal question about an eternal event is improperly formed. Eternity is the ever presence of all time. Eternity is stable, while time is not. Time seems to be a process involved in becoming present. It is always changing. Aristotle says that time is the measurement of motion but Augustine argues that time would still exist without motion. He uses a special analogy with time. All times are modalities of the present. The present of things past is memory. The present of things present is observation. The present of things future is expectation. Time is stabilized through our awareness.
Augustine uses the analogy of singing a song. There are long and short syllables. We remember what we have just sung and anticipate the next lines. We stretch and prolong the song.
          Time is the act of pinning down moments as they pass. Time is a distinction of the mind that gives reality to time. Augustine identifies time with human measuring. The flux is not an illusion.