Reflections on the Catechism

Reflection on the "Ways of coming to Know God" in the Roman Catholic Catechism

Let me ask you to partake in a thought experiment: envision a scenario wherein man should make a brain- with not eyes to see, no mouth to speak or taste, no ears to hear and no skin to feel- anything or anyone around it. this brain pulses with blood and fluid and all the compounds that allow for it to live on as an organ and not to suffer decay and damage from deprivation of such things necessary to it being alive. It is a brain- empty, but alive.

Should we give it eyes, a nose, a mouth- all the faculties that make a person as complete and in the state of proper function as a person should be and could, a question arises:

"would that person, built from the empty brain, know what is beautiful and know what is good?"

Knowledge of what is beautiful(1) and knowledge of what is good is observed to be intrinsic to humans the moment they are born, as one Yale study reveals(2). Therefore; an artificial brain, host to an artificial body, cannot witness or behold itself to what is good and what is beautiful unless it is taught these things. On the question of why the artificial brain and body must be taught beauty and good wherein these things are intrinsic to humans the moments they are born- the answer is simply because said artificial mind an body were made by man, wherein a human and natural mind and body is made by God. Where the concept of beauty and good is naturally and intrinsically present suggest a essence within man beyond biology; a soul created and having had, even if so briefly, beheld the infinite beauty and infinite good from which one's and all's concept of beauty and good, by henological means(3), come from. This infinite good and infinite beauty in which by comparison, a natural body and mind derive their sense of beauty and good, is God.

On the specific question of the basis of this intrinsic knowledge of love and beauty finds its basis on the argument against the aforementioned point made above, the argument being that:

"to intrinsically know good is evolutionary- in order to better socialize with fellow man and form social order; and to intrinsically know beauty is evolutionary- to associate aesthetically what is safe with what is beautiful and what is dangerous with what is ugly"

This argument was posited by a friend of mine so kind to critique my first reflection, but this argument proves nothing other than the fact that the intrinsic sense of beauty and and morality are primal and practical, and therefore evolution decided to keep these intrinsic qualities as a form of behavioral evolutionary opportunism(4). A counter to this would be that this intrinsic beauty and morality finds its collective end in one goal- survival. That is one more thing intrinsic in man other than knowledge of beauty and morality- a willingness to live, in which drives therefore the pursuit of beauty and morality to make this goal as easy and as achievable, and when failure to achieve this is met, causes a depression in that will and by the limits of the human perception- causes the illusion of existential meaningless in life.

A mind and body that is anxious of death and willing to live even up until the threshold wherein natural biology limits this suggest within it a soul recipient of beatific vision, from which comes our willingness to continue, that of which comes forth from a contingent infinite and contingent perpetual; God.

On the question of depression (in terms alluding to sadness, per se- and not of the clinical sort) and existential dread as a possible rebuttal to the aforementioned paragraph above; what it is is a fabrication. Happiness is the ignorance of misfortune, and when a natural human mind and body is born, they are initially and temporarily- usually in the first few years of one's existence, exempt from this fabrication. On why it is a fabrication is because existential dread comes from scientific egoism replacing the phenomenon of this happiness with the erroneous scenario that life must be lived and must be composed of solution and problem(5).

Existential dread is the drawing metaphysical conclusions from a sad materialistic viewpoint of hopelessness and a refusal to accept beatific vision. When you put your subjectivity in the backdrop of a material world, its limits and misunderstandings will be the limits of your start and end, dreams and goals, ambitions and prayers. For your subjective being is operated by an objective mind, played within the backdrop of a material world. When your being so subjective under a mind objective, its only objective goal within the material world, the being that is subjective subjects itself unto the limits and pitfalls of the material world.

When one's objective mind looks unto and considers an attempt to beatific vision, to which one comes to experience a beauty and good infinite, one's objective mind is therefore released from the egoism of science and the subjectiveness of one's being becomes irrelevant. The materialistic backdrop of this world becomes non-issue to a mind whose start and end, dreams and goals, ambitions and prayers are no longer limited to it, but rather rejoice in the hope and hardships of a life towards beatific vision, to a life towards God. Amen

(1)Sanatayana, George. The Sense of Beauty, Chapter 23. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896.

(2)Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2014). The moral baby. In M. Killen & J. G. Smetana (Eds.), Handbook of moral development (pp. 435-453). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press.

(3)Blackburn, Simon (1996-05-23). "Degrees of perfection argument". Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press.

(4)Michael Ruse, The Oxford handbook of philosophy of biology. Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 199.

(5)Ballard, Edward G. (1967). "Gabriel Marcel: The Mystery of Being". In Schrader, George Alfred, Jr. (ed.). Existential Philosophers: Kierkegaard to Merleau-Ponty. Toronto: McGraw-Hill. p. 227