The ancient Greeks believed in order. This is fairly often referred to by historians and philosophers. One can induce/deduce from the Greek preoccupation with order in nearly everything they did. For example, even the architecture followed a prescribed order. If the columns were a particular length one could deduce what the size of the windows would be, or the doors, or the cross beams. Buildings were constructed to last, partly because the order would last. Deduction prevailed. This is addressed by Murray Jardine in his: The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society. (Page 184 ff.) He accented the differences between induction and deduction known so well to scientists and logicians. Deduction moves from an observation (statement) back through factors to a causation. Induction takes factors (evidence) and moves forward to a conclusion. This last is an important procedure for modern science, and seekers of natural truth. Deduction carries its force in logic that lights upon possibilities/probabilities. Both methodologies have problems in finalizing anything with certainty, partly based on conflicting presuppositions, inadequate evidence, and complexity including change. This or that may be true today and false tomorrow. One of the reasons chess is so highly rated as both a game and mental exercise is that it uses the mind to finds ways to win, or failing to win, gain a draw, and all that to avoid losing. There is complexity, always a bugaboo in everything important to life, including a way to succeed (win). To win consistently a person plays by the rules and the competition plays by the rules. Most losses occur in life because one person (or nation) is playing by a context that is different than another context. Mutuality loses out to competition (cleverness and creativity) resources (wealth and culture) and power (force and influence). Under God, success (winning) is related to the better situated entity mentoring the lesser in the complexity. Mankind’s success is seen in a win/lose situation. God’s instruction is to build a win-win situation. That is not easy to do what with variants in cultures, beliefs, ethics, resources, status, and attitudes found among peoples. Religion is a division of culture. It is significant because so many use it.
Life is the evidence of God, and life is abundant wherever God visits it to the universe. Order is found in the universe, and that order includes some disorders (paradox). It is factored in, and if we knew enough that disorder is part of the order, providing resources for the life order. For example, the disorder in Hawaii in the eruptions of nature and the flow of lava provides more land along the seashore for habitation – ultimately. Many crops of sugar-cane have been taken from former lava beds. I have read that tons of dust from space rests each year on the earth. Is this a necessary order for the replenishing of top-soil? Do we know? Do we know why all creatures have so great attachment to life, and the giving and taking of life appears so spiritual an event – birth and death. Even in the animal world there is something of a mystery of meaning in the copulation to life and the adaptation to the effort of birth and nurture to the infant. For the animal world the order is simple survival, in alternation of eating and resting with the order to serve other life, at the cost of its own life. Mankind tries to order society, and sometimes does a rather fair job of it, but never good enough because of faulty human ways. God helps in the effort by offering morality out of which we can draw ethics practical to ordered life. Sometimes we use the resource, and sometimes we don’t. Failure in some areas blots the slate for other areas and raises questions about order, even equality.
It was about 1250 A.D. that a great movement, called the Renaissance got under way offering a new order to much of life. It began change in religion, literature, government, education, arts, exploration, styles, humanism – everything. All this was inspired from the Greeks/Romans who flourished before the time of the birth of Christianity. Much of what happened after the ancient decline was sought in the Renaissance, but cast in a new mold – as was Christianity. Luther’s break with Catholicism was the Renaissance of the Church to accent biblical meaning in the first century after Christ – the Apostolic Church, but with some vital retentions of what had survived through the centuries. In our era we may be passing through another transition borne along by technology so recasting everything in a new order. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020