Elihu Carranza Ph D

Epistemic Fragments Elihu Carranza Ph D

These reflections are meditations on the Spiritual Dimension of Existence (SDE). The SDE worldview assumption holds that all human beings possess God's endowment: the Image of God. Each individual is a created person with a vast library of spiritual characteristics, fashioned together in profound complexity and experienced in daily life and thought. Everyone at some stage will ask in wonder what lies beyond the epistemic horizon. Avoidance of ultimate questions concerning significance, meaning, belief, truth, knowledge, and value is not a live option. Suppressing the quest for meaning as bogus inevitably proves to be problematic for this choice assumes meaning itself. Scientific naturalism's hypotheses, theories, or models have proven to be unsatisfactory because its worldview arbitrarily limits knowledge to its methods and conclusions - all of which are probabilistic and subject to subsequent revision or rejection. Its assumption of a closed space-time system of matter in motion plus chance, wherein all reference to the supernatural is suppressed or denied begets a reductionist frame of reference leading to nihilism. "Man is a useless expression" resigns one to meaningless existence, or Bertrand Russell's "unyielding despair." Held to the prison of naturalism's worldview, Russell's conclusion is inevitable. However, beyond the boundaries of materialism, the supernatural beckons with a question: Who is the absolute and ultimate point of reference for thought and life: Man or God? Part One contains reflections on a sample of the Endowment's Image of God: Life, Memory, Meaning, and Truth. Part Two examines Confusion, Misology, Logic, and Destiny. Part Three offers reflections on the faith of "unyielding hope" Gospel, Resurrection, Time, and Worldview. A Glossary of Terms followed by an Index closes the main portion of the work. Appendices with related subject matter and various resources follow.