the cuppboard
Two Interesting Arguments for God: Intelligibility & Desire
Quoted from Fr. Robert Barron’s Catholicism:
In 1968 a young theology professor at the University of Tübingen formulated a neat argument for God’s existence that owed a good deal to Thomas Aquinas but also drew on more contemporary sources. The theologian’s name was Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger commences with the observation that finite being, as we experience it, is marked, through and through, by intelligibility, that it is to say, by a formal structure that makes it understandable to an inquiring mind.
In point of fact, all of the sciences - physics, chemistry, psychology, astronomy, biology, and so forth - rest on the assumption that at all levels, microscopic and macroscopic, being can be known. The same principle was acknowledged in ancient times by Pythagoras, who said that all existing things correspond in numeric value, and in medieval times by the scholastic philsophers who forumlated the dictum omne ens est scibile (all being in knowable).
Ratzinger argues that the only finally satisfying explanaiton for this universal objective intelligibility is a great Intelligence who has thought the universe into being. Our language provides an intriguing clue in this regard, for we speak of our acks of knowledge as moments of “recognition,” literally a re-cognition, a thinking again what has already been thought. Ratzinger cites Einstein in support of this connection: “in the laws of nature, a mind so superior is revealed that in comparison, our minds are as something worthless.” The prologue to the Gospel of John states, “In the beginning was the Word,” and specifies that all things came to be through this divine Logos, implying thereby that the being of the universe is not dumbly there, but rather intelligently there, imbued by a creative mind with intelligible structure.