Thursday, September 21, 2006
(10:59 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Hypothesis
In most of Western philosophy, the word "God" refers to a stopping point to stave off infinite regress with regard to causality. Even Feuerbach, perhaps at first glance a counterexample, could be understood as using the word "God" to refer to the final or teleological cause -- which in his case is the human species.There is no need to use the word "God" to refer to such a logical stopgap: for instance, the scientific idea of the "Big Bang" bears a definite affinity with the idea of the "unmoved mover." (I understand that the Big Bang is no longer thought of as a strictly absolute beginning, or at least not by all scientists, but then, theoretical physicists are becoming more comfortable with the idea of infinite regress anyway.)
