What I know and what I don't know

Some would claim that the beginning of philosophy is a simple sentence by Socrates. Everybody knows it: All I know is that I do not know. That was a good start; unfortunately it was sort of ruined by Plato and almost the whole Christian tradition. By Plato because he used it as a starting point to place truth, beauty and value outside of this world. He took it to mean that this world was no good because it did not contain knowledge. By Christianity because it used it to back its claim that I know nothing and that I can say nothing. It has been used to diminish man, make him incapable of knowing. It has been used to torture poor students for centuries. But there are two parts to this phrase: The first one is I know, and the second is I don’t know. Let’s start with the second part.

What I don’t know:

? The truth
? What was before this universe
? What prompted its outburst
? Why it is there (to take Leibniz’s way to say it: why is there something instead of nothing)
? Are there other universes
? What is consciousness
? Why is there consciousness at all
? And so on…

What I do know

I know that I do not know. What does that mean? It means that there is more to this universe than meets the eye. The mystery cannot ultimately be solved. But I do know this.

Some of us call this mystery God, others call it Allah, Yahweh, others Buddha, Shiva, Tao, whatever, but then they claim to know what the mystery is. Others yet claim that there is no mystery, only unsolved problems. If you ask me, all those people are deluded. The first because they think they know, and the second because they think everything is knowable. Both forgot the meaning of the phrase I only know that I do not know.

But the best part is that both will claim that they are the true inheritors of the Socratic spirit.

Here is what I propose.

We know other things too. The universe has been unfolding. Since the universe is the mystery, and since we generally call the mystery God, I suggest we cut the middle man and call the universe God. So God has been unfolding. We are part of the universe, so we are part of God. We are the way God unfolds itself. But so is the star, the planet the stone, the rabbit, the empire state building and any other human. We don’t need a God that is outside this universe. God is not some immaterial being outside this universe looking in: that does not make much sense to me. He is matter and energy.