Another Proof for God's Existence

(C)Copyright By Anthony J. Fejfar and Neothomism, P.C.

Each Person has an Immortal Preexistent Soul

Following Plato, and the Story of Er, it is clear that the afterlife, purgatory, heaven, hell, and the reincarnation of each person's soul is a valid Episcopalian Catholic teaching. However, reincarnation is to be discussed and taught with caution. You see, some persons, out of ignornance or even malice, attempt to claim authority on earth by reason of some claimed past life reincarnationally. It is unclear whether such claims are valid, and moreover, it is often the case that nothing at all can be said to substantiate such claims. Thus, it is better to teach reincarnation with caution. In fact, the experienced Spiritual Director should treat any discussion by a directee of reincarnational experience as psychological fact, rather than asserting the the experience by the directee was either real or unreal. Another way of putting this, is to say that reincarnation accounts by a directee in Spiritual Direction should be treated as relative real. What can always be taught, however, is the Doctrine of the Preexistent Immortal Indestructible Soul. Each person has an preexistent, immortal, indestructible soul. This can be taught to everyone, regardless of a particular religious orientation on the basis of Plato and the Story of Er and other Near Death Experience Accounts.

(C)Copyright 2011 by Anthony J. Fejfar

How the Scientific Method Works

Following the Philosopher Hume, Scientific Method involves the use of the cognitive faculties of: Experience, Underdanding, Judgment and Reflection. The old way of looking at this was to refer to science as: Experimental Data, Scientific Theory or Hypothesis, Theory or Hypothesis confirmation or Conclusion. We can contrast the two approaches with the chart below:
3. Verified Hypothesis Judgment and Reflection
2. Theory or Hypothesis Understanding
1. Experimental Data Experience

Now, the way that real science is done is that the scientist starts at level 2 with Understanding, and uses intuitive analysis to look at the world around him or her, with curiousity, and come up with a theory to explain how it is that things are the way they are, or how it is that certain things work the way they do. This involves asking the questions, Who? What? How? When? Where? Then, the scientists generates a theory and uses the theory and creative artistry to set up an experiment, using Understanding, and then run the experiment and use Experience to monitor the experiment and collect the data. Then, once the data is collected, the scientist then goes back to level 2 and Understanding, and then classifies and categorizes the data, and, compares and contrasts the data, reasserting the previous theory or hypothesis, or, changes or developes another theory which is more explanatory to explain how it is that certain things or processes are going on. Once this is done, the scientist then goes to level 3, and confirms the hypothesis or theory using an intuitive judgment or fact or reflection. Thus, we can see how the scientific method really works is the chart below:

4. The theory and hypothesis are confirmed with intuitive Judgment
and Reflection
3. Understanding the Data is categorized, and compared and contrasted
in the context of the theory or hypothesis
2. Experimental Data produced and observed with Experience
1. Understanding and Creativity and Theory or Hypothesis generation

Kant and Hermeneutics

The idea that there is a Neumenal World and a Phenomenal World is attributed to the Philospher, Emmanuel Kant. Kant wrote that the phenomenal world is the world of sense experience, while the neumenal world is the world of ideas. Kant tells us that we can only really know the neumenal world of ideas, because, starting very early in childhood, human beings only really have sense experience which is interprested and constructed in light of ideas, or, meaning categories. Thus, Kant says that we never really know the phenomenal world of sense experience, as such. Philosopher, Bernard Lonergan says the same thing when he asserts that at Level 2 Consciousness, we only know the World Mediated by Meaning. Do we have any connection at all, then, with the material world of sense experience, which the empiricists claim that exists. Well, the Philosopher, Han Georg Gadamer tells us that us that there are "forestructures on knowing" which are in the human mind, prior to cogntition. Gadamer's position is a type of Neo-platonism, where he asserts that there are essentially, "Interpretive Forms" front loaded into the mind, just as Neo-platonists assert that there are "Immutable Platonic Forms" which are front loaded into the human mind, prior to cognition. However, there is yet another approach which asserts that we can know the real of the "world out there," which is Lonergan, stating that we know the world, or the real, through the cognitive process, of, experience, understanding, and then, judgment and reflection. Now, it is apparent that the cognitive level and operation of judgement and reflection involves a cognitive, intuitive function, not just ideal, analytic understanding. This is consistent with cogntive and epistemological, phenomenological reasearch which states the intuition involves high speed, preconscious or unconscious analogical thought processes in the mind, which can go quantum, and thus non-local at a distance, so that the person can have an immediate intuitive sympathy (Bergson) with an object or an idea which is out there is the physical world, and or, the historical world of the past.