List, For many scholars, Peirce's metaphysics--perhaps especially his religious metaphysics and what he sometimes referred to as his pre-scientific cosmology--has been the most problematic aspect of his philosophy. Personally, I have never found this to be the case and, indeed, I am quite aligned with his thinking in those areas while, as I've noted here from time to time, I arrived at my own not incongruent metaphysical and religious positions long before I was exposed to Peirce's.
For the past few years I've been attempting, as a year's end message to the list, a kind of Peirce-inspired brief counter to such arguments as Betrand Russell's in his essay, "Why I Am Not a Christian." I've never succeeded in getting anything into reasonably good enough shape to send to the list, but this year, encouraged by an email interlocutor, I've finally decided to risk sending forth this year's attempt (it's the 5th year. and I don't save drafts of earlier attempts). I suppose I am doing this against my own better judgment. Although Peirce once described his religious views as "buddheo-christian," I am, for the very limited purposes of this argument, going to use a principle of at least one school of Zen Buddhism as a foil to Christianity. I should immediately note that I have great respect for Zen having studied apsects of it for many years, and continue to find it to be one of the healthiest psychologies ever invented or discovered (see Alan Watts, *Psychotherapy East and West*, 1961). Zen is rich and complex, and my bouncing off this small piece of it is nothing more than a rhetorical device I'm employing to make a point. The great Zen master, Rinzai (Chinese: Lin Chi), once said "The Buddha appeared in the world, turned the wheel of maha-dharma, then entered into nirvana; yet no trace of his coming and going can be seen." I consider that to be a rather succinct expression of an important facet of the cosmology of at least this branch of Zen. But if this is a précis of that cosmology (while some scholars would no doubt argue that it is not and so is misleading), then it is certainly very far from Peirce's religious cosmology or that of Christianity more generally. As Peirce and Christianity see it, God didn't merely 'appear' in the world to then absolutely disengage from it (i.e., enter nirvana), but rather, He continuously creates it, and eternally loves it. For me the surest sign of this is *evolution* such as it appears in Peirce's agapism and writings on evolutionary love. And this is so even if as a race it would appear that we have sufficient "free will" to impede the fullest growth of love and thought, the latter considered by Peirce to be one of the few things in this world still capable of evolving in any significant sense. From the standpoint of those who are believers in God, some might say (and even though this is surely not the case for any number of individuals) that as a race we have turned our backs on God. Turning now to Peirce's somewhat idiosyncratic ideas regarding cosmology, God, and religion, suffice it to say for now that it seems clear enough, at least to me, that he was indeed a theist, although not a dogmatic or doctrinaire one. Still, while some have questioned the authenticity of his religious convictions, it is my view that not only was he a theist, but that he was as well at least a *kind *of Christian. One could offer many quotations suggesting this, but here's one I often reflect on: I do not believe that man can have the idea of any cause or agency so stupendous that there is any more adequate way of conceiving it than as vaguely like a man. Therefore, whoever cannot look at the starry heaven without thinking that all this universe must have had an adequate cause, can in my opinion not otherwise think of that cause half so justly than by thinking it is God (CP 5.536, c. 1905). Yet he also argues that God's Mind is so unlike ours that our minds are as to His as an insect's is to ours. Again, according to the theory being outlined here, God does *not* but 'turn the wheel of dharma' and enter into some cosmic nirvana leaving us to struggle on our own in a cold, uncaring universe, but works in each one of us and in communities of good will to further the growth of love and intelligence. Indeed, as I now see it, the only hope for our world is that enough of us come more and more to embrace something like Peirce's vision of an *Ens Necessarium*, God, truly Creator of all Three Universes of Experience; and, further, that we find ways to express and share this vision so that even, and perhaps especially, a scientific mind can affirm it and guide her life and actions in accordance with it. In truth, it ought seem sensible to *any* normal mind including those less open to learning, to trusting, to believing that this world--this* life*--has any meaning, any purpose beyond what we can as individuals (and corporations) make of it. As I understand it, love--whether one is speaking of our love of God, the love of another person or community, or that of the earth and the cosmos itself, the truest love is not a mere evanescent feeling, a mere 1ns, but rather a commitment, a 3ns, a* habit of acting lovingly, *involving those 2nses which are our loving actions. Or, as the aforementioned interlocutor has suggested. this trichotomy might be taken further in characterizing love "as a habit of thought, action, *and *feeling--the final interpretant of God's great argument and poem, the entire universe." It is conceivable, I believe, for religious and non-religious people to embrace something of the spirit of the evolutionary love which, while we Christians say, *surpasses all understanding*, yet is* not* beyond all reason. In this evolutionary view of creation, it is not only we who need God's help, but God who needs ours in order to make human life more reasonable (I'm always thinking something along this line of thought when in praying the most famous of Christian prayers, The Lord's Prayer, I say, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"). While our great technologies may suggest that we've made the world more rational in some ways, rationality is not equivalent to reason as Peirce conceived of it. Reason will require our garnering a richer, much deeper sense of our human vocation and purpose even in the midst of this tragically fractured world. But entertaining for the moment that thought that we may have as a race decisively turned our backs on God and will not be capable of finding our way to Him, I would still like to imagine that in the vastness of the cosmos that there is a small planet revolving around a medium sized star, and that there the people have embraced the wild beauty of their earth, and so cherish and serve it and each other, growing ever stronger in the love of their only home in the cosmos and the sentient beings which inhabit it, especially all the members of their own race whom they call 'brother' and 'sister', 'son' and 'daughter'. And I would hope that their faith in God is such that when one day at last their sun fades and their planet dies (as all stars and planets will and must), that they will indeed enter something less like nirvana and more like heaven, not only as individuals, but as a race, a vast community of those past and present who together have come to see their human vocation as that of together growing ever more reasonable and loving in the faith that life is of inestimable and eternal value. Winter: Tonight: Sunset by David Budbill Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road, my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first through the woods, then out into the open fields past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue, green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere. I pause in this moment at the beginning of my old age and I say a prayer of gratitude for getting to this evening a prayer for being here, today, now, alive in this life, in this evening, under this sky. "Winter: Tonight: Sunset" by David Budbill from *While We've Still Got Feet*. © Copper Canyon Press, 2010. Finally, as Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: "And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been." Best, Gary R [image: Gary Richmond] *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York* *C 745* *718 482-5690 <(718)%20482-5690>*
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