Musing's musings

Because it's pretty

And because I can:

nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.
quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnis,
quod multa in terris fieri caeloque tuentur,
quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre
possunt, ac fieri divino numine rentur.
quas ob res ubi viderimus nihil posse creari
de nihilo, tum quod sequimur iam rectius inde
perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari
et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom.
nam si de nihilo fierent, ex omnibus rebus
omne genus nasci posset, nihil semine egeret.
e mare primum homines, e terra posset oriri
squamigerum genus et volucres erumpere caelo;
armenta atque aliae pecudes, genus omne ferarum,
incerto partu culta ac deserta tenerent;
nec fructus idem arboribus constare solerent
sed mutarentur; ferre omnes omnia possent.
quippe ubi non essent genitalia corpora cuique,
qui posset mater rebus consistere certa?
at nunc seminibus quia certis quaeque creantur,
inde enascitur atque oras in luminis exit,
materies ubi inest cuiusque et corpora prima.
atque hac re nequeunt ex omnibus omnia gigni,
quod certis in rebus inest secreta facultas.
praeterea cur vere rosam, frumenta calore,
vites autumno fundi suadente videmus,
si non, certa suo quia tempore semina rerum
cum confluxerunt, patefit quodcumque creatur,
dum tempestates adsunt et vivida tellus
tuto res teneras effert in luminis oras?

--De rerum natura, I, 150-179

In the context of one of the periodic Wars of (Ir)Religion over at Big Orange, I found myself in a philosophical argument with an atheist in the strange position of arguing that there need not necessarily be a particular cause for every thing or every event in the world. The foregoing is one of the things I quoted to him/her to refute that hypothesis. Since I know that not all of my legions of faithful readers are up to reading 1st century BCE Latin epic verse at sight, I'll translate below the fold.

What happened to the middle ground?

I was struck by something Richard Rohr said in his "This I Believe" essay this morning on NPR:

Whenever I think there's a perfect pattern, further reading and study reveal an exception. Whenever I want to say "only" or "always," someone or something proves me wrong. My scientist friends have come up with things like "principles of uncertainty" and dark holes. They're willing to live inside imagined hypotheses and theories. But many religious folks insist on answers that are always true. We love closure, resolution and clarity, while thinking that we are people of "faith"! How strange that the very word "faith" has come to mean its exact opposite.

It was that last sentence that got me to stop brushing my teeth and really listen. Rohr, a Franciscan priest, was speaking of religious faith--and his criticisms were, I believe, dead on target there. But I think they have a wider applicability as well. It is not only in our religion that we want certainty; it seems to have spread, cancer-like, into almost all areas of human life and endeavor in the course of my lifetime.