The Chicken Or The Egg Conundrum -- Take 3. Breathing Air

I have not written in any of my posts developing the metaphysics (all tagged, "onemanyproblem", except for the very first post of mine, which started the series and to which I can no longer add or edit) anything about finality.

Apparently there are some people disturbed because of the "vertical" direction the opposition between things, in this case, between chicken and egg, takes. Some seem to fear that this unnecessarily imposes "religion" on them. They feel that "God" is a menace and that there is no need for God, they can choose whatever they want without any reference to God.

I think that's true. I am not here to defend Christianity, but only the natural truth as I discover it. However, to be fair to Christianity, it too basically agrees that each person can choose whatever he/she wants. Christianity only adds that some choices will get the person into "Hell".

I am not going to even comment that: whether hell/heaven exist or do not exist does not seem to be a truth to be attained or determined by natural knowledge or reasoning. I am writing Philosophy, which per se does not go there. I want to stay in the natural.

Now the chicken-egg opposition is strictly natural, and from its consideration, and the "Principle of Metaphysical Induction", I attain, I believe with an certainty as close to absolute as is humanly possible, to the reality of a transcendent reality preexisting the chicken and the egg.

"I can choose whatever I want without God."

I guess the chicken "chooses" without God in the same sense. I suppose the chicken really doesn't have much of a choice -- and thus, the question of purposefulness, consciously chosen or determined, does not arise in this example. So I must object to the protestor(s) who indicate that I'm somehow forcing "God" and "guilt" down their throat.

That's far from my intention.

But let's swap the example for another to see to what extent free will and "God" play in a similar case.

Instead of chicken-egg, let's substitute human person and oxygen.

I breath. Moreover, I breath air that has to have a certain proportion of oxygen (I believe about 10 percent) or I die.

As the chicken is ordered to the egg, and the egg is ordered to the chicken, I, too, find myself in a reciprocal relation with oxygen. I am structurally ordered to breath air with oxygen and this same air is ordered to me: to be breathed by me and specifically, to fire my metabolism releasing energy in my body cells throughout my body, energizing all my life processes.

In this case I do NOT choose to breath air instead of something else, say swamp gas (methane). And if I am in an oxygen deficient environment (e.g., high altitude), I do not choose to need oxygen, so that I have to either bring oxygen with me or retreat to a "breathable" environment.

Neither have I structurally ordered the oxygen to me (to make it adequate to fire my metabolic processes) nor am I aware of the oxygen ordering my biology and metabolic structures so that it could oxidize metabolic processes in me.

Like chicken-egg relation: all that is in me cannot give origin to the oxygen. Moreover, if it were the case, I would be the "creator" of the oxygen, the existence of which would emanate/derive from my being. Furthermore, if it were the case, the oxygen and I would already be one thing, and the difference between me and oxygen would vanish -- against the evidence, and I would not need to breath, for the oxygen would already be in me.

This paragraph above is key. It looks at metaphysical opposition: an undeniable fact. Oxygen is not a human body that metabolizes, and the human body that metabolizes is not oxygen. We can even forgo the matter of "mutual ordering". All can rest on the fact of metaphysical opposition, that is, the structural diversity given between me and breathable air.

Again, neither does the oxygen derive entirely from me, nor do I derive entirely from the oxygen.

By the Principle of Metaphysical Induction, there must preexist a sameness from which I and air/oxygen can be "the same" even while being very different. That sameness no doubt includes the Totality, the existence of which has been established in earlier posts; and probably, in addition, something else may exist more specific to the me and the oxygen, specifically, the "mutual ordering", which involves everything from atomic structure to the chemistry of metabolism and the structural ordering of my lungs/heart and cellular metabolism/chemistry.

In any case, my will has nothing to do with this. "God" (directly) does not enter the picture.

God has nothing to do with this discussion, not unless readers want to jump in and insist on accounting for the ordering, in which case the question of an ordering intelligence looms as a possible or necessary answer. But at this point, I have not gone that far (at least not in the chicken-egg post; elsewhere I have, but even in those posts, it's forced on me by the metaphysical induction. It's not something I choose or can force on the arguments or on anybody; but is forced upon me to avoid falling into the absurd).

But metaphysical induction does not need to look at these particulars (of mutual ordering). It looks only at being, and being-in-opposition, that is, different or diverse or distinct beings.

So it is not fair to start accusing me of imposing my "Christian" program, or my theism on anyone.

I look at material facts, and derive conclusions that impose themselves under pain of incurring in the absurd.

What absurdities? Oh, things like saying that I don't need to breath, or that I am some sort of "God" that creates my oxygen as I breath it, or that I am entirely derived from oxygen, and that the oxygen itself is a sort of "God" that can account for all my being (not to mention personal freedom). This is what happens when the reality of the most real metaphysical opposition (or "difference") is suppressed between me and the oxygen gas in the air I breath, and which we all breath.

And the examples like these can be multiplied ad infinitum: water, sunshine and light, in their complex relations with living human bodies or other animal life, to mention a few.

I have not said a thing about "guilt", "purposefulness", or the like. The metaphysical inductions, at least up to now, have no need to mention these realities.

Now in the future, I plan to consider "movement". There are many kinds of movements. The jumble of atomic-sized and smaller particles don't require much explanation in terms of a governing intelligence. Human deliberate movements (moral acts) are more involved. I do plan to expound on these in the context of this metaphysics. But some people are really jumping the gun. It's when I get to these that a word on conscience and guilt won't be so out of place.

I hope this clarification has been helpful.