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Rocco D’Ambrosca: 12/16/2009

During the Age of Enlightenment a major theme was the rejection of scholasticism in favor of Galileo’s New Science. Before the Enlightenment the appeal to a higher power for certainty in knowledge was the generally accepted source and many times the only allowed source. After the fall of the Roman Empire the Catholic Church was the ultimate source and ultimate authority of knowledge. Philosophical, scientific, and religious knowledge was based in the absolute confidence in the word of some ultimate authority such as Aristotle or the Bible. When Galileo discovered evidence that contradicted what the church believed to be the truth he was called a heretic and brought to trial. Eventually through rigorous work, absolute determination, and constant study, others over generations were able to separate science away from the church and ground scientific knowledge in empirical experimental results.  While the Enlightenment thinkers seeds for an epistemology free from scholasticism has come to give enormously beneficial fruits in all of modern technology through science, the scholasticism within religion remains. For man to ever truly reach enlightenment on every level possible a foundationalism of religion must be undertaken. Religion demands we accept its belief system and theology on blind faith alone. For religious belief to be reasonable or even cognitively sound we must find explanations, theories, and teleological metaphysical philosophies to defend said religious beliefs.

            As an example of the scholasticism inherent in religion, the church says God exists and that he exists with the definition of being the ultimate creator of the universe who is all powerful, all knowing, all present, and completely infallible; demanding that this extremely grand definitive truth be taken on faith alone saying that it is so because it is written in the Bible whose source is this very God himself passed through the hand and mind of man. The appeal to reason would beg for far more proof. The best the church’s appeal to authority gives you is that the human writer or writers of the Bible were divinely inspired by the word of God. On the appeal to authority this can now either be taken as a fact that by some means this God exists and he communicated his existence to a very small number of special individuals far back in time who are called blessed prophets or as still all just fantasy. The appeal to reason certainly begs more than this. The most logical and simplest of explanations of the given situation is that these few individuals are either completely insane hearing voices commanding them to write such outstanding things or they are extremely talented creative writers who have had all credit for their writings stolen from them and attributed to something or someone called God.

            It would be far too lazy and far too unenlightenment to write off all of Judeo-Christian belief in God to be fantasy and nothing more than fairy tale. We must be patient and methodical and attempt to find some means of foundationalism for or of religion to replace the very unappealing and logicless argument given by the church for our belief in it. A good place to start this foundationalist endeavor to find some kind of philosophical scientific account for the possibility for such a God to exist is within science. Perhaps if we attempt to create a scientific account for how such a God could exist, and how he could exist with such a definition attributed to him, we would be able to create a sound logical and teleological philosophy, grounded in reason instead of the old scholastic appeal to religious theology and church doctrines and dogmas.

            Why should we turn to science as our foundation for religion? Simply because foundationalism in science has already been thoroughly and rigorously undertaken to ground and serve as foundation for all technology and scientific understanding we now possess in the modern age. Following the aim of foundationalism, to build new knowledge upon old established foundationalist knowledge, we can build our foundation for religion upon all gathered scientific knowledge and evidence.  The problem as described earlier with attempting to find foundations within religion itself is the means in which its epistemology is naturally rooted; a purely scholastic appeal to authority which must be rejected as unacceptable and unreasonable as correctly determined by the enlightenment thinkers.

            Where do we begin but the beginning? The big bang is the start for science and is the most excepted point to begin from. It states that all matter in the known universe was at a singularity and at a specific moment burst forth to expand and continue to expand creating the universe we know and experience. Perhaps this singularity could be what is described as God by religious theology. This theory combined with advances in quantum mechanical theory may give us an endorsement for the Eastern and Western definitions of God when combined with our existing atomic theory.

Atomic theory states that between the nucleus of an atom and its outlying electron(s) is comparably an extremely vast and empty space. Various questions arise from this scientifically provable fact. What is within this space? What holds each atom separate from another if there is nothing but mostly empty space? Why don’t we fall through the chair we sit in? They are all held in a construct of an oceanic unified energy field, that could be said to be of pure abstract potential of being, that is potentially a self-aware consciousness, which unites and binds everything in the universe. This potentiality of being can be attributed to the fact that atomic electron movement is based not on a certainty but on probability. Atomic scientists only have a potential probability of where an electron is or can be at any particular moment. Additionally, the notion of this energy field being self aware can be attributed to quantum mechanical experiments that have varying results simply dependent on whether an observer is present.

This energy field of potential is what is between the spaces between particles. It rises in waves of vibration to give birth to everything physical in the universe as it has since the big bang, all while maintaining total unbridled potentiality. This field of energy is a strong candidate for the possibility of the specific God described in Christian theology. The Hindu’s come closest to this definition of God with Brahman, which they define as the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe. This now leads us to the Judeo Christian view of God, the all knowing, all present, all powerful, father. The theological questions about the nature of God that are all to be accepted on faith can now easily be understood in combination with this Eastern definition of God, along with modern scientific conceptual theories. God is all knowing because he is in between the spaces between spaces, consciously aware of all, reading our minds, forever observing history, in all places of the universe at once since he is its very foundation that everything exists upon and come out from, and all powerful based completely on this unifying truth that God as man has conceived him is the universe.

This new teleological world view and perspective on God as brought forth here is a far stronger explanation for the possibility of such a God, than to just accept his definition and existence on blind faith in the scholastic authority of the church and their endorsement of a specific book written by various and many unknown authors who may or may have not been inspired by a little voice in their head called God. The basic component in this new conception of God as an energy force is labeled in quantum mechanics, the Unified Field Theory, but that theory in combination with other known scientific theories can logically and reasonably be combined to create an explanation and foundationalist philosophy to describe the possibility of such a God and how he could potentially operate under this logical teleological framework.

It is not until the ramifications and applications of this foundationalism of religion is completely rigorously worked out to fill all possible holes and remove as many potential leaps of faith, that the enlightenment dream may finally come true. The last vestige of scholasticism which has been hiding within religion must be expelled with as much scientific explanation as possible. It is in the best interest of the church to embrace this type of foundationalism and make as much of an effort to step away from as much scholasticism as possible. The essential stories and history within the Bible will always remain as a grounding framework for the overall world view of God and man’s relationship with him throughout time. But the beliefs and religious doctrines and dogmas must be at least attempted to be explained and not simply forced upon the people on blind faith but perhaps informed faith. At one time the church burned people alive for even slightly questioning anything they deemed as the truth. Open discussion must always be available if any type of knowledge is to be found. The burden of proof is on the church to make us believe and threats just don’t work anymore.