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A pantheistic View of The Universe
There are many things about this mysterious Universe of ours which we should all like to know. Our concern is not so much with the facts about the Universe supplied to us by science as with the significance of these facts. We want to know not only what the Universe is but why it is what it is. This science fails to tell us.
they subjective judgements on our part ? Is what we call the moral law, a law of universal application valid for all times and all places and under all circumstances, or is it merely a man-made code of conduct designed to further human ends?
Are we free agents in what we do? Am I, for example, writing this book of my own free will or am I being compelled to do so because I am what my genetic structure and my environment have made me?
Why We Want to Know
The answers to many of these questions are still in dispute. Philosophers and theologians have argued about them for centuries. They have put forward their own theories about the meaning of the Universe, but these theories have, on the whole, been so contradictory that they have had a tendency to cancel each other out.
Some agreement has been reached in the sphere of Ethics (they all seem to agree that justice is better than injustice), but even if we do satisfactorily solve the problem of human relationships we are still no nearer knowing why the Universe is what it is.
These differences of opinion among the great thinkers are inevitable from the nature of the questions asked. The answers cannot be found by relying entirely on the empirical methods of investigation used by science and common sense. Too much has to be based on inference. Science can give us facts about the Universe, the truth of which can be verified by rational means, but the meaning or significance of these facts is, and seemingly always will be, a matter of speculation.
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